14. Success Tips From a Professional Travel Blogger @ Julie Falconer

A Travel Path Podcast

www.atravelpath.com

00:00 Introduction

03:40 What Does a Typical Day or Week Look Like for a Professional Blogger?

05:22 How Long Did It Take You to Leave Your 9-5 Job?

06:00 What Was the Biggest Challenge You Had to Overcome to Leave Your Job?

08:30 Have You Discovered a Sweet Spot for the Number of Times to Post on Social Media?

12:40 Are Hashtags Still Valuable in Your Posts?

13:18 How do You Use Threads to Grow Your Blog?

13:40 How Long Does it Take You to Post a Blog?

15:15 How Long Should You Try Something New For Before Adjusting?

16:30 How Quick Can Someone Become a Professional Blogger?

17:50 What are Your Favorite Plug-Ins?

19:20 What Changes Have You Seen in the Blog Space?

19:50 What are Your Thoughts on Guest Blogging?

21:50 What Are 3 Tips for Someone Starting a Blog Today?

23:18 What Are Your Most Effective SEO Strategies?

25:45 What are Your Biggest Travel Frustrations?

26:40 What do You Love Most About Your Travel Lifestyle?

27:30 What Does Your Travel Budget Look Like?

29:20 What are Your Best Money Saving Travel Tips?

31:30 What Has Been Your Coolest Travel Experience?

31:50 What is One Thing You Can’t Live Without While Traveling?

32:30 What is One Thing You Learned You DON’T Need While Traveling?

34:15 What are Your Safety Tips for Solo Travel?

36:10 How to You Get a Visa to Relocate Overseas?

37:14 How Can Someone Start a Blog?

What an incredible episode! Julie offered so much insight in the blog space after spending over 20 years blogging herself. There is valuable information in here for anyone who hasn’t yet started a blog or wants to enhance and optimize what they currently have. In this episode you’ll learn about:

How Julie left her high paying job to pursue a career in travel

3 important blogging tips she has been sharing with her clients for over 10 years as a blogging coach

Some tools and techniques Julie personally uses to enhance her blog and SEO

And More!

Julie’s Social (California Wayfaring)

https://californiawayfaring.com/

YouTube

Instagram

Facebook

X

A Lady in London:

https://www.aladyinlondon.com/

YouTube

Instagram

Facebook

X

Julie’s Blogs Mentioned in the Show:

Red Panda Blog

Blogging eBook

Julie in the Media

NY Times Article

National Geographic Article

Importance of Authentic Followers

Website Tools

SimpleTOC

Yoast

Travel Tips

TrustedHouseSitters

Packing Cubes: https://amzn.to/3I3McA2

Bose Headphones: https://amzn.to/42FZ9JU

(We may receive a commission from purchases made on this page)

Resources:

Lonely Planet

Johnny Jet Blog

Past Episodes

#8 With Andy and Rachel

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/abbynoise/rocky-mountains

Related Blogs:

https://atravelpath.com/travel-blog-tips/

*All content from atravelpath.com, including but not limited to The Travel Path Podcast and social media platforms, is designed to share general information. We are not experts and the information is not designed to serve as legal, financial, or tax advice. Always do your own research and due diligence before making a decision.

Transcript from YouTube:

right Julie Falconer thank you for joining hope and ey in episode 14 of the travel path podcast you're welcome so we know you or we knew you on Instagram as California wayfaring and then once we connected and scheduled this podcast we did some research and found out you have a separate blog in a website called a lady in London which we then found out was the top ranked travel blog in the UK You' been to over 112 countries now um we found out you've been a National Geographic and then not only are you a blogger but you also do coaching and speaking you've been speaking to people at universities across the country um so we started thinking who is this person um so I just want to say you know thank you very much for coming on our show uh we appreciate your time looking forward to jumping in here I do want to get into the blog space I think there's a lot of overlap between traveling and blogging so anybody looking to get into that or to grow their blog so be a great episode to tune into um but why don't we first just start by having you share a little about yourself sure so my name is Julie and I'm originally from California and I moved to London in 2007 after quitting a job in finance that I didn't like very much and I had no plan and no job and I started a Blog in the process of moving never thinking it would be anything more than a hobby and two years later blogging became my full-time job uh it was a travel blog it still is um I've been doing it full-time now for over 14 years and it's been a total adventure and like you said um I started with the London blog and then two years ago I started splitting my time between London and California and launched the California wayfaring blog so I'm traveling all over the world I'm running two blogs and uh I'm trying to stay afloat as I do you having a hard enough time as it is with one so to my um what does a typical like a day or a week look like for a professional full-time blogger it depends on the on the day and the week um if I'm at home all week then it's a lot of time at my desk um either catching up from being away from my last trip or getting ahead for going away on my next trip or if I'm lucky enough to be home for a little bit longer um it's a lot of sort of blogging editing photos and videos um responding to emails uh negotiating Partnerships and sponsorships um whatever else comes my way and in between it's a lot of social media because that's my main channel for marketing the blogs sure so it sounds like when you're actually in the places that you're blogging about you're not doing a ton of blogging there you're doing research taking notes and then once you're back home you're taking care of doing all that exactly yeah I mean I'm always working while I'm on the road too but it's more sort of just um you know the bare minimum to keep things going uh so you know responding to emails that I have to respond to or things like that um but I try to spend as much of my time in a destination doing the things that people do there and sort of experiencing the destination so I'm not just working the whole time and missing out on what there is to actually do you mentioned when you had left your job in San Francisco you didn't really think too much about it but I do want to dig into that a little bit this podcast we we spent a lot of um time talking about how people can just start traveling and just getting started so obviously I know you didn't plan a ton there but obviously there was a time frame between when you decided you wanted to exit that job and start this new career and actually doing it so what was that time frame if you can remember know was like 20 years ago but definitely I I do remember so I left a job at an investment bank and I went to a hedge fun and I remember thinking I don't know how this is going to go but I'll give it a year and if I like it at the end of a year then I will stay and if I don't then I'm just going to do something probably move overseas is what I thought and within a very short time I realized I did not like the job and I did want to go so I had about you know 10 or 11 months of lead time to know that I wasn't going to stay past a year and to prepare myself for a for moving overseas and B for just a life change sure great and then during that time frame between when you actually left that 11mon period what was the biggest challenge you had to overcome to make that transition I think for me it was the first of all the decision of where to actually go I knew I wanted to go to Europe because IID studied abroad there in college and I'd spent a couple Summers interning at the US Embassy in Paris and the US mission to the EU so I really liked that part of the world but I had no idea you know how you get a Visa how you actually move overseas so that for me was the biggest challenge of just doing the research from a financial standpoint a lot of people when they want to make that transition especially going overseas or doing something that drastically different um they're saving up a lot of money sounded like you had something in place or a way to make income or or a job lined up I actually didn't but the nice thing about working for a hedge fund is you get paid very well so that was actually the lucky thing for me is I didn't have to worry about the money um the second time around though when I quit my job my first job in London to actually run the blog full-time about two and a half years after that that was when I had to start preparing financially much more and I had a job um in London with a a startup that I worked at for just under a year and I basically spent probably about eight or nine months before I left that job saving up money so every paycheck I would just put some aside until i' saved up a Year's worth of living expenses because I kind of thought okay if I have a Year's worth of living expenses it gives me six months and if I fail you know and fall flat on my face I have six more months to find another job so that was really how it went for me um you know first time I was sort of Lucky and that I didn't need to worry about the financial side but the second time I really was um you know diligent about saving so that I had a cushion in case things didn't go the way I wanted them to sure so long story short it's basically having a Year's worth of savings as a cushion um when you're going to be making a change like that that way if something falls through you have to make another change you have that savings there to you know help you out if you potentially need it yeah and I think I don't I think everybody needs that much I mean I'm definitely one of those people who worries about everything and so for me a year was sort of the minimum I was comfortable with I think some people you know they're like ah it's fine I'll I'll save a couple months and if nothing works then you know I'll figure it out so I think it's it's kind of I definitely worth having a plan but it's different for everybody it's different for everybody yeah um so we'll transition a little bit into the actual blog space you've been blogging for like we said over 20 years now and you're still posting pretty consistently on Twitter on Facebook I see your post PR every time I log in you know you hear all sorts of things of Facebook and Twitter are useless but clearly it's working out for you have you discovered a sweet spot in terms of like the number of times to post on those platforms yeah it it's different for each of the blogs for the London blog I've definitely discovered a sweet spot partly because I've been running the blog for I think over 16 years now um and so over time I figured out you know exactly what works exactly what to share exactly what people like and don't like um and so that's been nice for me to kind of get into sort of a Groove and a routine that I change it up every once in a while obviously because things change and the world changes and social media changes um but I generally with that blog I'll post once a day across all my platforms um with the California one because it's newer um a I'm still learning a lot from that one what people want to see what goes down well what people don't like as much um and B because it's newer I tend to share a little bit more depending on how things are going or what platform it is you know there's there's always that balance you have to strike though because you don't want to share so much that people get annoyed and they're like oh my gosh everything in my feet is you uh but you also don't want to share too little and you know risk people not even really knowing you're there so I think it's a matter of trial and error and testing things and really understanding your audience as well yeah have you figured out how much was too much uh I think depends on the platform you know on platforms like Twitter which are lower volume than they used to be um you know one post a day is probably enough on platforms like uh threads where people are just posting constantly these days you can get away with more um Facebook is always the big one that surprises me because I found once a day is great for me um but I know other people who say they post 25 to 30 times a day on Facebook and that works really well for them so it really depends on you and your strategy and your audience yeah yeah we're just getting started out with the Facebook and the Twitter we I think we just created the account about a month ago and it's been it's been like incredibly slow it's almost you're talking to a wall you post and then like I think we're at like I don't know on Facebook we're at like 50 followers now and then on uh Twitter it's just like seven eight it's it's it's it's gr it's very slow growth yeah it's I mean it's one of those things it's just that repetition but it's like and then but then randomly we'll get some somebody to like our post like a minute after it's been posted and we don't even follow them we have no affiliation with them it's like how is it reaching that person but it's not reaching anybody it's such a tough thing to figure out it seems like yeah sometimes the algorithms working weird and wonderful ways but I think a lot again it's testing things out seeing what works and it's also been consistent um you know I I posted on Facebook I think it was about 10 years every day and you know things grew and I had an okay click-through rate to my blog and then one day uh in I think it was 2020 one maybe a post just went viral and then ever since then my growth has been amazing and I I haven't done anything different it's just one day the algorithm decided that it wanted to show my Stu to more people so sometimes you just don't know uh other times it's more you know again a process where you can really understand uh how the algorithm works better and play that game too um and yeah sometimes it's just a total mystery so almost like there's no real way to figure it out but as long as you're posting consistently at some point whether it's tomorrow or next year at some point it'll hit that algorithm at the right time whatever it is and it'll it'll take off yeah I do believe that and I think also you know it's about being consistent and reaching the audience and the demographic you're trying to reach and if you do that um you know you're bound to to reach those people at some point and you may need to tweak it and you may need to you know change your strategy this way or that way but I do think being consistent is key now you're not hashtagging it doesn't seem like is our hashtag still a thing uh on which platform I think I just saw Twitter uh yeah I don't use hashtags on Twitter that much anymore I haven't found that they're that valuable these days um I use them definitely on Instagram I use them on threads I use them occasionally on Facebook but um yeah again it just really depends on the platform um you had mentioned threads we looked into threads briefly it didn't seem like it was like a platform that would support growing your blog but you do so how are you growing your blog with threads um yeah absolutely I it depends kind of how I'm posting but sometimes I'm just sharing a photo or some kind of content that is just sort of appealing to people which helps build my following and then other times I'm sharing links to my blog um and that way people can you know click on the link come to my blog see what I'm doing now this answer is probably going to vary quite a bit um but for somebody just starting out how long does it take you to to create a blog and I know probably varies by the word count but is there like a ballpark number in terms of like the amount of time per word count you've discovered it really depends what the topic is some topics take a lot longer because there's just more to write other topics are pretty quick um I'd say on average the actual writing part of it takes me anywhere from an hour to two hours maybe three if it's a really long post um but I find a lot of times you know it's it's the writing plus it's adding all the photos adding the videos doing the formatting coming up with titles tagging everything doing the social media for the post so it's it's a lot of work beyond that and that I think for me anyway is what takes the most amount of time it does seem like the writing is like half of it because then it's uploading and then doing the file name so it search engine optimizes and then yeah posting are you doing anything different when you post from Facebook to Instagram because I just take the URL and I'll just post it to that account is there a different way you're doing that for a different social media account yeah I mean I try to post different captions for different platforms or um just different content entirely on some of my platforms certain content works really well that doesn't work at all on other platforms so I tailor everything really specifically to the platform that I'm sharing on to the people who follow me there but um I think again it's a matter of trying what works and sort of seeing what's what's going to do well for you and then keep doing that and uh if something doesn't work then learn from it and you know don't do it again and move on to something how long should you try something before you realize it doesn't work and move on from it I think it depends how badly it does you know if you get no engagement at all then it's probably a pretty clear sign if it's you know a weak response you might TW it and try it again uh one one or two more times but I I found usually in my experience it's pretty clear what people are interested in what they're okay because our approach so far like this year this is the first month of January right now is we were thinking about doing like monthly kind of after Action reviews seeing like going like sitting down seeing what's worked what hasn't worked and then making adjustments then but it sounds like you can almost tell quicker than that almost like a week if you're posting every day you can get feedback pretty instantly yeah and it's a lot of the well I think all of the plat forms save a few give you pretty good analytics on even on the post level so you can look at how the post did what the reach was uh you know click-through rate whatever whatever your metrics are that you're measuring your your success by and you can see that pretty easily so you went pretty quickly so you you left your job and then in within two years you were blogging full-time I feel like that's a pretty quick time frame for somebody to become a professional blogger in terms of somebody starting out to manage their expectations is that still reasonable today how often were you posting during those two years to get you to that point yeah I mean I think there are two things I one I was posting probably once a week in the very beginning um and two I think it's so different now than it was back then I mean in 2007 no one even knew what a Blog was and even when I went professional in 2010 nobody knew what a Blog was um and it was not as easy to monetize blogs it was a very different landscape back then um nowadays it's everybody knows what a Blog is it's very easy to monetize blogs um I know people who go professional full-time with a full-time income in less than six months but you have to be posting every single day uh preferably multiple times a day and putting all your resources into either SEO or social media or both it also depends what uh vertical you're in you know if you're in travel unfortunately we just don't get as much traffic as food blogs or other types of blogs that just get loads and loads of traffic where you can go professional so fast um so again it really depends on you you know the pace that you're going how much time you have to dedicate to it but the good news is is today it's a lot easier to make a full-time income from a Blog than it was back then it is good news yeah right now we're goal this year is to be doing five weeks so Monday through Friday and so far it's the third week in January we've hit it but it is a lot it's a a big big workload yeah have you found like what are your favorite plugins on your website um I don't actually use that many plug plugins partly because they slow your site down and so it's not great to load up too many um I think probably the most important one for me is yoast which is a an SEO plugin that just kind of helps you optimize your blog posts for being found in Google um and it also kind of optimizes your whole site in general for SEO yeah Yos has been great I just I work on getting the uh the green lights there and then it looks good and I hit post nice the table of contents that's something I was I was doing a lengthy blog and I saw another blog that had a table of contents and I was like that was that seems like a really good way to keep readers engaged on there when I searched how to get one onto your blog I came across article saying that this greatly enhances your SEO because not only are you making people stay in your blog longer but you're actually adding those keywords again um do you agree with that yeah I mean I think it's whatever you find works for you SEO is a weird and wonderful thing in that what works for one person might not work for someone else and one strategy that works amazingly for one blog might not work at all for another so I think if you found that that is helpful for you from an SEO perspective then I think it's great I'll put I can't think of the name of it off the top of my head but I'll put a link in the show notes for that plugin we downloaded yesterday um you mentioned the blog space has changed quite a bit in terms of the number of bloggers um since you first started out what other changes have you seen so far I mean huge ones when I first started my my very first blog it was 2002 and you couldn't even put pictures on a Blog it was just writing and text and there was no social media Facebook didn't even exist yet um and today you know we've got you can do so much with a Blog and social media is everywhere and so I think that's probably the biggest change is just there's a lot more that you can do with a Blog and there's a lot more that you can do to Market your blog what are your thoughts on guest blogging guest blogging you as a blogger guest blogging for someone else or or I guess either or and I I asked that because we I just got a I've gotten like a couple inquiries over the past couple days like people they'll go to our contact us box and they'll ask about Guest blogging like oh reach out to us pay us x amount and we we have 50 million viewers you know we'll get um so I guess the first part would be guest having someone else guest blog for you that's what it looked like they were trying to do yeah I think that's fine as long as they're a legitimate person with without an agenda of trying to get you to add you know spamy back links to their website or something like that um 99% of people who approach you to guest post on your are those people um they're just SEO people who are trying to get you to do that and that's not great for you or your blog um but if it's you know if it's somebody who genuinely has an expertise in the topic that you blog about and you think that they're you know going to be a good person to write for you I think that's great so I know you had mentioned uh in a video previously that it's really important to having authentic followers on your account similarly with guest bloggers how what's a good way to make sure that anybody you're bringing on is an authentic guest blogger I think usually it's prettyy easy it's a matter of looking at who they are what they do if they've sent you a link to their website or what they're trying to uh promote and it looks legitimate then it's probably is if they're promoting you know teeth whitening toothpaste and you're a travel blog then Pro probably not a great fit so I think a lot of it is just common sense and kind of you know if it if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck and that kind of thing I would air on the side of caution anyone from a corporate standpoint going a guess blog probably it wants the SEO uh value out of it they're not doing out of the goodness of their heart so I would be very skeptical there but if it's a blogger or somebody like that and they have a legitimate blog and they want to write for you um you know that's something you can think about what are some of the best tips you would have for somebody looking to start their blog today I would say so basically I've spent I think I spent 10 years teaching classes about blogging I've written eBooks about how to blog I do Consulting and coaching for bloggers on how to blog and the number one thing I always say is there are three things it takes to be successful as a blogger especially in the beginning and those are time patience and consistency uh first one's the most important you got to put the time in I think a lot of people hear these get-rich quick schemes or oh start a blog and you'll make millions and this and that and and people think it's going to happen overnight and it does not and it takes a huge amount of time to actually even set up a Blog let alone put content on it let alone Market it and get the traffic to it um patience is is the second one it kind of go to what I said it doesn't happen overnight for 99.9% of people uh you really have to be patient and you can't give up just because you know the third day and you don't have 10,000 followers uh and consistency and that is the key to being successful as a blogger you have to publish consistently you have to be consistent with marketing it on social media if that's what you're deciding to do or doing your SEO if you want to go that route or both if you're going to go down the middle um and those things are really key to being successful as a blogger right so time patience consistency I just want to repeat that because keep in mind everybody she's been blogging for 20 years and she's been telling people this exact same tip for 10 years so that's got to be the key time patience consistency what have been some of your most effective SEO strategies you know I think it's a combination of on page SEO and off page so you know making sure all your posts are optimized in terms of the keywords that you choose and how you're structuring your site and all that kind of thing is important and then off page you know you want to get those backlinks from other places around the web you can be as assertive about that as you want to I mean some people are really um you know out there trying to get their backlinks other people including myself uh Focus just more on producing and creating high quality content so people will want to link back to it naturally um but again it's really up to you there's so many different strategies for SEO so many ways to do keyword research um I think everybody finds their own path in terms of how focused they they are on it how much they do uh about it but it is definitely an important part of blogging if you want to be found in Search and if you want to grow your site that way um I just my number one piece of advice though is you know be aware of scuzzy tactics if you're using what they call black hat SEO tactics you're probably going to get penalized by Google at some point and you don't want that to happen because you lose all your traffic that black hat that's like if you're making text like invisible but the keywords um what are other black hat techniques I guess yeah I mean there are a lot of them that's one of them buying or Andor selling links um that's a big one for Google um any kind of any kind of thing that sort of web spam keyword stuffing so repeating the same keyword you know 500 times in one blog post like it's a lot of it is just common sense if it doesn't seem like it's something you're probably supposed to do it probably isn't something you're supposed to do if it reads awkwardly because you have too many keywords and that's probably that's why I like yoast is it'll tell you if you have too many keywords or not enough keywords so I'm glad that you use the same um the plugin that we have I know there's a ton of different plugins out there so that's cool that we're using the same one yeah yeah for sure awesome well that was an incredibly fastpaced conversation about blogging I was trying to take notes and mental notes at the same time I feel like I've just got to relist this entire thing to get the everything we talked about but um yeah that was that was some great information I think we'll transition a little bit into more of the travel lifestyle cuz this is a travel podcast too um but yeah do you have anything to add hope no I think um it just transitioning into travel would be great and so you can let us know some of your frustrations currently that you face while you're traveling uh I think to be honest it it sort of depends where I am when I'm in California with my California waering hat on and I'm traveling um most of my travel here is road trips whether it's a day trip or a weekend trip or a multi-day multi-week trip um and usually my biggest frustration is just traffic which you know we all have to deal with when we're driving somewhere especially if it's a rush hour or a city or whatever so you know that is what it is uh when I'm in London it's more more of my trips are uh trips require flying and um I would say the number one frustration is just how difficult it is to fly anymore you know airport security has just gotten more and more tedious um Airlines have just started charging for literally everything you have to pay to breathe now um so it's just you know one of those things that just it is what it is but it's not uh it's not my favorite part of traveling pivoting from that what do you love most about your travel lifestyle I love the independence and freedom that I have and it's funny because sometimes it's more perceived Independence and freedom than it is actual uh because it is a lot of work to run one blog and it's a huge amount of work to run too and so I you know I work seven days a week 365 days a year there's no time off I haven't had of vacation in 14 years since I started doing this full-time but I do get to call the shots on my schedule I do get to travel all over the world all the time so again it's it's freedom and Independence uh or at least the perception thereof that that I love about it and if you were traveling consistently so it sounds like your travel lifestyle it changes quite often you're traveling full-time and then you're back home doing a lot of stuff catching up and doing your blogs um if you were traveling consistently for a week or for a month what would that budget look like yeah it for me it really depends where I am uh you know if I'm in a part of the world where cost of living is very uh low compared to what I'm used to then my budget is going to be a lot smaller than if I'm traveling in let's say you know London or San Francisco which are very expensive um so for me budgeting is a lot about backing into uh what my my costs are probably going to be in terms of accommodation food uh anything I want to do in terms of sightseeing or tours or something like that um looking at again cost of living average prices and then kind of saying okay based on all of those things I probably should budget X for this trip do you have any examples of any lower cost of living countries you've been to yeah I mean all over the world I'd say um you know for in Europe uh Portugal tends to offer really good value uh it's a great destination and every time I go I'm always pleasantly surprised by the costs um a lot of there are a lot of countries uh in the eastern part of Europe that tend to be really reasonable too Romania is great for that um and then I'm trying to think where else I've been the last few years Central America I had a great time there and it was not you know prohibitively expensive in most of the countries that I went to um yeah but again I could name I could name more south southeast Asia there's some countries I've been to Africa there's countries I've been to it just it just depends where you go think we talked before the podcast started we haven't been overseas quite yet where we we're kind of wanting to more and more after you we're watching videos and seeing blog posts about it and it's beautiful out there Portugal particular we watched a video on that a little while ago and didn't realize how beautiful that country was so great so someone looking to start traveling maybe on a budget maybe consider some of those countries that Julie just named what has been your best some of your best money-saving travel tips so far that's a good question and again I think it depends where you go um if you're traveling you know again to Europe and you're open to where you go I would say you know again research what countries aren't going to be as expensive as others so again Portugal for example or Romania or something like that um or if you're going to Asia you know you might want to choose let's say Thailand over Japan where your money is just going to go farther um I'd also say in terms of just everyday things um you there are lots of different little ways that you can save money um uh going to a grocery store instead of eating out the whole time you know accommodation if you can do uh something like uh trusted house sitters or one of those where you get accommodation for free in exchange for pet sitting for somebody instead of paying for accommodation those are great ways that you can start really saving a lot of money if you're interested in doing that method of house sitting or pet sitting you can listen to episode 8 we had Andy melon who had talked about how they still to this day they do that they travel they' been to Hawaii for free because they pet sit it pretty incredible to opportunities there a couple more questions before we start wrapping up part one here what has been the coolest experience so far traveling wow I think probably for my birthday a few years ago I went to Nepal and I did not do the usual thing people do in Nepal um instead because my favorite animal is the red panda uh I spent a week tracking red pandas in Nepal and it was amazing I stayed with host families and different Villages uh went tracking red pandas every day got to see two of them which was very exciting um and it was just a great experience it was a great cultural experience um it was an amazing experience just to be in nature all day tracking these pandas and it was nice because I did the whole trip through a charity and you know it was great to be able to know I was supporting conservation efforts while I was doing it yeah sounds incredible sounds you were tracking them were you expecting to see I know you saw it two is it rare to see them it is fairly R to see them yeah they're just there there aren't that many of them and they tend to hide in trees so it's not easy to spot them even when they are around I'm sure you have a Blog and some photos about it so we'll add that to the show notes this episode here yeah great um over your 20 years of blogging and traveling what has been one thing that you learned you can't live without noise cancelling headphones that's 100% I I don't know if I'm just very sensitive to noise or or what but if I'm on a flight or a train or wherever I am I have to have noise ging headphones it keeps me saying uh blocks out a lot of annoying noise in airports or wherever I am and it's definitely definitely my my go-to sure do you have any brand recommendations that you use yeah I I've always been pretty loyal to Bose I just got a new pair for Christmas of the uh the wireless ones that use Bluetooth and they've been amazing so far so I definitely recommend those awesome yeah good tip um contrary to that what has been one thing you've learned that you don't need a suitcase uh I'm a big never check a bag person I've been interviewed about it in the New York Times I've written blog posts about it um I'm very diard uh don't overpack don't bring more than you need and a lot of times things you think you need you really don't need them um so definitely be a minimalist capsule wardrobe travel size every everything roll your clothes um you don't need to bring that big bag use the packing cubes I I you know I have never Ed them but I know people who swear by them so I think they're great if you want to do it yeah yeah we swear by them so don't check a bag you're bringing probably a carryon and then a backpack maybe how long are you traveling for when you're not checking a bag I've done it up to three weeks before um I did laundry once in the middle I didn't rewear anything people are always like oh that's so gross but I really I really was actually clean the whole time don't worry um but you know it depends where you're going to where I was going for 3 weeks it was very warm and so my clothes were pretty small if I were going skiing for three weeks it probably wouldn't have worked because you need a lot more clothes so it depends but yeah I got away with it for three weeks at one point well one of us here I'm not going to name names so if we're packing for a weekend you'll think we're moving our entire house that's all right that's all right I understand I'm getting better that's good yeah it takes time hence the pack in cubes you've been to 112 countries so you have been through tons of different airports and solo travel and I'm sure travel in groups do you have any safety tips for traveling as a Solo Traveler or in a group yeah I mean for me it's always been a matter of just using Common Sense uh you know don't walk down a dark alley by yourself at night um don't go out and get too drunk or do too many drugs alone and then not know where you are and not be able to get home uh you know it sounds obvious but you know it's it's worth at least pointing out um I think also not as big of a deal I think in a lot of places in the US um as much as it can be in Europe although it does happen everywhere is you know just keep your bag closed and on your person and don't you know walk around flaunting valuables everywhere um that kind of thing can always be a good idea don't leave your bags unattended don't leave them you know sitting somewhere on public transport and walk away um but again a lot of it is just more common sense than anything else yeah absolutely do you find that you're traveling solo mostly or I know that you got engaged recently do you get to bring your um fiance on these trips with you ever uh it's it's a huge mix I do a lot of solo travel I do a lot of group travel and I do a lot of travel with either friends or my fiance or or whatever else so um it's it's a always a a crapshoot in terms of what I ends up doing yeah perfect well it's probably nice to be able to have that variety so you know you can get that solo time with yourself and really focus in on you know whatever country you're in to blog and get all the information but I'm sure it's wonderful to you know have your significant other or your friends with you just to travel and enjoy we typically just travel the two of us so this is all we know but that's not bad no it's not we like each other so it works out if you could have listened to this podcast when you were first starting out when you made that transition from your job in San Francisco what is one question I didn't ask tonight that you would ask and how would you answer that now I probably would have asked about visas is in terms of living overseas you know how do you even do that how do you get a visa do you need a job to get a visa and a Visa get a job that whole thing I had to sort of figure that out on my own and it wasn't the easiest thing to figure out um but I did um and I think that's probably something that I would have wanted to know and to get your visa was that just a lot of time involved in that or how was that process and we're not going to go into too big detail into it but um I guess kind of roughly yeah it took a couple months it wasn't as timec consuming as as you might think um there's the application is long and it's very detailed but if you are you know T ticking all the boxes and doing everything they ask you to do uh it didn't actually take too long um again this was a long time ago so it could be different now and it certainly wait times vary depending on what's going on with the government um but it's a lot of times you know once you figured out how to do it it's just a matter of applying if you're eligible and then waiting great and then if somebody were wanted to get into the blogging lifestyle and become a professional blogger but haven't started yet what is one thing they could do today to get them going well they could start a blog today that's always a good way to start the thing is I from years and years of teaching blogging and coaching on blogging I've realized that people think blogging is much more sort of intimidating and difficult than it is um starting a blog just creating a Blog takes about a minute and a half um it's the everything you put on to the blog content wise that takes a long time and so I think people put off actually even creating a Blog because they just think it's going to be so hard or so much work um and really all they need to do is go to whatever website they want to start a blog on and create a username and a password and you basically have a Blog after that so I think the the number one piece advice I give people is don't be afraid of it just start it's easy now with me there's so many YouTube tutorials and it's so userfriendly WordPress or whatever site you're using to actually create that website and start blogging do you feel that cuz we're in the real estate business and we've heard in in this kind of business people they they just don't start it's intimidating and once they start things start moving smooth and they start moving faster one of the big handicaps is just starting it's it's ring it's intimidating do you see that a lot with the blog space too where once people actually take that leap then they get more comfortable and it grows and it moves forward but what's the biggest thing that prevents people from getting started once people get started is it easier and and I think absolutely it is and I think the biggest thing that prevents people from starting is like I said just fear or intimidation or thinking it's going to be too hard but I definitely think once people get started you know they get that momentum going and then it's easier every day all right excellent when you were starting out in San Francisco and even today were there any other bloggers or YouTube channels or even books that influenced you and helped you get to where you are today to be honest when I was first starting there wasn't anything I mean I don't YouTube barely existed and there certainly weren't any blogs or or any books on blogging um so it really was just a matter of kind of stumbling through it myself and then there was a small blogging Community online you know in the very very early days um through like Lonely Planet forums and things like that and we all kind of found each other and started following each other's blogs um but I I you know I would say for me it was more in my blogging Journey after a few years of it once I started networking with people um I definitely found inspiration in blogs like Johnny jet if you've come across his blog it's great um lots of uh good like airline miles and credit card point points tips on his blog in addition to everything else um so that's one that I have always just really loved and admired great so we'll put a link to Johnny jet in the show descriptions as well as every the other resource we talked about today and one last question Julie where can my audience find out more about you well my blogs are a lady in london.com and California wearing. comom and then I'm all over social media on both of them with both of those names excellent I can vouch for that she's all over the place thanks again for coming on you're welcome thanks for having me