Immersive Global Travel and Business-Building for Humanity with Kirsten Gardner

In this episode of Soul of Travel, Season 5: Women's Wisdom + Mindful Travel, presented by @journeywoman_original, Christine hosts a soulful conversation with Kirsten Gardner.

Passionate about the people, landscapes, and cultures of the Americas and Asia, Kirsten is the Co-Founder of Outlier Journeys, a small tour operator offering thoughtfully crafted private adventures for the modern explorer. She's been lucky to spend her entire career - all 18 years - working in various arms of the tourism and travel industry, and was particularly inspired by her time with Clark Kotula Representation, where she worked closely with independently owned luxury lodges throughout Latin America that were deeply committed to conservation, cultural preservation and supporting local economies. Kirsten is an advocate for slow travel, time in nature, digging into the multiple facets and narratives of a place and of small, under-the-radar hideaways that redefine luxury as something extraordinary and rare as opposed to homogenous and highly repeatable.

Christine and Kirsten discuss:

· How a powerful experience during Kirsten’s Semester at Sea Program changed how she thinks about travel, what it means to be a traveler, and how she can bring that awareness into her work at Outlier Journeys
· Some of the ways she advocates for independent properties
· How she layers impact into multiple facets of her business
· Looking at personal journeys, leading through loss, and developing grace and a workplace culture that honors the broad spectrum of humanity

Join Christine now for this soulful conversation with Kirsten Gardner.

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To read our episode blog post, access a complete transcript, see full show notes, and find resources and links mentioned in this episode, head to the Soul of Travel Website. 

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Visit Outlier Journeys to book your custom global travel experience.

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Credits. Christine Winebrenner Irick (Host, creator, editor). Kirsten Gardner (Guest). Original music by Clark Adams. Editing, production, and content writing by

Transcript

Christine: Welcome to the Soul of Travel podcast. I'm Christine Winebrenner Irick, the founder of Lotus Sojourns, a book lover, Yogi mom of three girls and your guide On this journey. We are here to discover why women who are seasoned travelers, industry professionals, and global community leaders fall in love with the people and places of this planet. Join me to explore how travel has inspired our guests to change the world. We seek to understand the driving force, unending curiosity and wanderlust that can best be described as the soul of Travel. Soul of Travel Podcast is a proud member of the Journey, woman Family, where we work to create powerful forums for women to share their wisdom and inspire meaningful change in travel. In each soulful conversation, you'll hear compelling travel stories alongside tales of what it takes to bring our creative vision to life as we're living life with purpose, chasing dreams and building businesses to make the world a better place. But the real treasure here is the story of the journey as we reflect on who we were, who we are, and who we're becoming. We are travelers, thought leaders and heart-centered change makers, and this is the soul of Travel,

Christine: Passionate about the people, landscapes and cultures of the Americas and Asia. Kirsten Gardner is the co-founder of Outlier Journeys, a small tour operator offering thoughtfully crafted private adventures for the modern explorer. She's been lucky to spend her entire career all 18 years working in various arms of the tourism and travel industry and was particularly inspired by her time with Clark Cor representation. There she worked closely with independently owned luxury lodges throughout Latin America that were deeply committed to conservation, cultural preservation, and supporting local economies. Working with these partners throughout the pandemic, she gained a firsthand understanding of the challenges faced by small operators within the larger tourism landscape. She's an advocate for slow travel, time and nature, digging into the multiple facets and narratives of a place and of small under the radar hideaways that redefine luxury as something extraordinary and rare as opposed to homogenous and highly repeatable.

She is a home chef gardener and semester at Sea alumni founding member of Women's Travel Leaders, a graduate and mentor with women's work and prefers hotels that come with a fluffy dog. In our conversation, Kirsten and I talk about how a powerful experience during her semester at Sea program changed how she thinks about travel, what it means to be a traveler, and how she can bring that awareness into her work. At Outlier Journeys, she shares some of the ways she advocates for independent properties and layers impact into multiple facets of her business. She and I also bring in personal experiences we've had over the past year and look at them through both the context of leading through loss and thinking about how we can pull from these experiences to give ourselves and others grace and develop a culture in our business that really honors the humanity and broad spectrum of experiences of those we work with. This discussion was deeply personal and emotional and a beautiful exchange that I feel grateful to hold space for and to share with you. Join me now for my soulful conversation with Kirsten Gardner.

Welcome to Soul of Travel podcast. I'm Christine and I'm really excited today to be joined by Kirsten Gardner, who's the co-founder and JourneyMaker at Outlier Journeys. And this is a really special conversation because we've spent a lot of time together in really I think sacred containers. So compared to some of the other people, I feel like I know you professionally, but personally and we've kind of supported each other in all these different ways over the past few years, and so this feels like a really special conversation to land in and I'm happy to be sharing it here. So welcome to the podcast.

Kirsten: Thank you. Very excited to talk with you today.

Christine: Thank you. Well, just to begin our conversation, I'll actually just turn it over to you first to introduce yourself and tell our listeners a little bit more about you and Outlier Journeys.

Kirsten: Thanks. I'm Kirsten Gardner. I am co-founder of Outlier Journeys. We're based outside of Seattle, Washington, and I would describe us as kind of somewhere between a boutique tour operator and a specialized travel agency. We try to focus on travel that combines the elements of active adventures moving your body in nature, what I like to call approachable luxury and travel that is not only beneficial to the individual taking the trip, but to the hosts that we partner with in different countries and destinations as well. We are specialists in travel to Latin America, Africa and Asia. It's myself and one partner right now, Jeff Stivers. We worked together years ago at a company called Wildland Adventures and came back around more than a decade later to co-founder own company, and we do private custom travel, so we don't do group trips some of your other folks have done.

And in terms of my story, I've been in the industry for 18 or 19 years now and I really got my start in travel late in life. I think I didn't grow up traveling internationally. Most of our, I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I now live in the Pacific Northwest, but my parents when I was really young were both teachers. Most of our vacations were in the summer, maybe camping. We would go to Asite and Chin Island a lot. If anybody, any of your listeners know the Marguerite Henry books about horses. Misty Apt was a huge, I was definitely a horse girl and loved that book and loved being able to camp on that island as a kid. But I was exposed to the world outside the horizon. I could see because my mom was a Peace Corps volunteer and she lived in Lisutu, I think she was there for three years and when I was little, we would receive these postcards and letters with all of these really different looking stamps that looked like they were on their own journey of two to three months to even get to our door.

She had a really cool collection of slides from her time traveling throughout southern Africa. After her service in the Peace Corps, she went to Israel. She spent time traveling up the eastern coast of Africa and into the Middle East. And so through her stories and kind of memorabilia and the little bits of connections from that time in her life that would pop into our life in the form of postcards and holiday cards, I had that curiosity about the world from a pretty young age. And then it was really, I have my dad to thank on another hand because when I was an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh probably growing up, I don't think my parents anticipated that I would one move so far away or be gone so much. But it was my dad, he encouraged me to do Semester at Sea as an undergraduate.

And I think at the time I was more of the mindset that I was going to stay local and be close to my boyfriend at the time. But he encouraged me to do my final semester on that study abroad program where you board a boat, we were circumnavigating the globe. You have classes while you're at sea and then when you're in port you can sign up for trips or it's sort of a free for all of be back on the ship by this time or the ship is leaving without you. And that was my first real kind of venture out into the world beyond our country's borders or going to Canada. And it was wild. And I can definitely say looking back that it was transformative for me personally.

Christine: Yeah. Well, I'm going to start there and then I have a few other things I wanted to talk about, but I remember being, I was working for Linblad and we had our boat, we were in, I'm trying to think if we were in Vancouver, but we were somewhere in the Pacific Northwest and a semester at Sea Boat was there where we were. And I remember seeing the kids all over the boat and coming off and on and I was like, what is that thing that is happening right there? And then I kind of did some walking around and saw a semester at sea and I hadn't heard of the program and I just thought, for me it was something like Swiss family Robinson meets college. That's what I envisioned. And I was like, I can't even imagine what an incredible experience that must've been so Well, I want to talk to you more about that as well.

But I was also thinking about the postcards that you received and the stories from your mom and how that kind of, I think in a weird way or a beautiful way, gives us permission to belong to the world when we have that kind of touch points when we're really little. And I think my children kind of feel that way because I know people in all over the world and I speak about it kind of casually to them. It doesn't feel like an obstacle to be so connected to the world. And so I think it's such a beautiful experience to have that sort of deep connection and understanding that the world is bigger than the place you're growing up in. Because I think it's hard as a kid to conceptualize that, especially when we were younger and you didn't have access to social media and information the way that kids do now. But I wonder for you, do you think that opened a door of even the way that you traveled and how you thought you could connect to the world?

Kirsten: That's a good question. And I mean beyond social media, we are both of the age we grew up before the internet really took hold of and blew the door open for you to find anything out in an instant. I think I grew, I think because of the way that my mom funded her curiosity, and this was never held over my head or never lectured about, but my mom was the only one of five to go to college. She was first generation college educated in her family and she wanted to travel, but obviously financially that was never going to happen. So she figured out a way to leverage teaching and the Peace Corps and education to be her springboard to that. So I think I maybe grew up with the background idea that travel, it's a huge privilege to be able to travel out of curiosity, out of leisure.

And it's also an education. It is maybe the world is our biggest classroom and maybe having parents that were teachers kind of helped fuel that belief too. No one was dogmatic about it, but I think I've always retained a little bit of that core belief and how I think about travel now as someone who makes a living creating trip experiences for folks who largely are traveling for leisure. But of course there's education, there's curiosity, there's challenge and stretching our own borders wrapped up within that as well as relaxation and lots of different reasons that we venture off into the world.

Christine: Yeah, I do think it's so interesting just how we start to understand and shape travel. And we're going to talk too a little bit about just even what travel can mean and how that influences how we move around the world as well. But my kids, I took them to an all-inclusive resort for a friend's wedding once. And I remember sitting after you go through the buffet and everybody sits out on the patio to eat breakfast, and one of my kids was looking around and I think at the time she was maybe, I don't know, five or six, and she was like, mom, didn't you say our plan plane landed in Mexico? Where are we? And I just remember, oh my soul. And I was like, we are immediately leaving the boundaries of this resort so that you can understand where you are. So there's I guess that awareness.

I was so surprised by her perception of that. And then when we did go and I found a place where there was a whole bunch of different artists and shops and a street market and stuff like that, and that's what they really loved about that experience, and I just was so curious about it. I was like, how did they one have that perception? Where did that come from? And then also thinking about how I speak about travel influences, how they feel about travel. And even my oldest daughter, she will be like, which women's social impact project are we going to be visiting on this trip? Because she knows that's the thing I love. So it's just an expectation that for them that travel can be about fun, but there's also, they understand there's all these pieces that come together to create moving about the world even bigger than travel.

Kirsten: And it that's so cool that that's what your children have observed in you and soaked up and adopted on their own. And it's not because you are engaged in a marketing campaign every single day trying to make them think that way. It's simply by your actions and interests and values and just the decisions you make in your own life that yeah, I think it reflected back to your children in ways that or anyone who's around you, whoever is engaged with you in ways that we're not cognizant of all the time.

Christine: Yeah, it is interesting. Yeah, it's not like I'm like, this is the only thing you do for sure. We go places and have fun and that's our intention in that moment. But yeah, I just always think it's so interesting to see how people start to write their own narrative around travel based on the experiences that they have. I did want to talk to you a little bit more about your semester at sea and how that began to shape your understanding of the word traveler, because again, you were moving around the world in such a different way, really focused on education, but in this unique space and meeting different people than you would have if you had been doing completing your education without that experience. So I'm curious for you what that started to unravel for your perception of travel.

Kirsten: Yeah, so first just to give a little bit about the structure of Semester at Sea, since it is such a non-traditional study abroad program. At the time that I did it, which was fall of 2005, it was sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh, so it's always sponsored by one university. I don't know where it is now, but then it's open to students from all over the world, from all different colleges. It's still primarily North American students are the majority, but I remember we had students from Egypt and Mexico, and so it had a smaller international component in the student body and we were gone for a hundred days and you were, as I said earlier, you had classes while on board, and then when you were in ports of call, you had a set amount of time with which you could explore that country. You could either go out on trips that professors had organized or you were on your own.

And so I quickly realized that I very much enjoyed trying to figure out the logistics of moving through a destination and doing things on my own. They had a small library on board. It was stocked with lonely planets. So prior to arriving in a port of call, I was up late pouring over things, trying to figure out just how to get from a B, how to buy plane tickets in India or train tickets in South Africa to go to the wine country. But one certain aspect of this trip that I would like to tell the story about is our time in Myanmar, and I meant to look things up earlier, so I didn't misspeak about the history of the US embargo against Myanmar, but in fall of 2005, I'm pretty sure we were the first educational student group from a US university that had been allowed to enter the country since the embargo.

And at the time we entered Myanmar, one of my classes on board was called Literature of the World, and we were reading Paul Thoreau's Great Railway Bazaar, and he has a chapter to about traveling by train through Myanmar. And we used that as our inspiration. We're like, okay, let's retrace this journey to Kgu, which was one of the former capitals of the country when it was a kingdom. And using that as our guide, we got off the boat. I remember we were sailing up the Iati River to Yangon, and unlike other ports of call where there was actually more of a port and docks and facilities, we literally, the boat stopped along the side of the river. There were high grasses, there was one wooden gangplank and there were oxcarts and old Soviet era trucks. And it was stepping back in time. And even though in 2005, cell phones were pretty normal at this point, obviously you were using the internet for research.

Myanmar had been very closed, so there were no ATMs, there was no electronic banking system. You took cash with you and you changed it on the black market. There was absolutely no cell phone coverage, there was no internet. So it was being transported back kind of into the style and era of travel that Paul Thoreau was writing about in the sixties and seventies. And I remember when we got on the train, we had the book with us, and it was like watching the pages come to life the way that he described these rickety old Soviet era cars kind of swaying back and forth and to a degree rather frighteningly at pretty high speed wondering like, oh, is this going to derail? To describing the women that had baskets on their head that would come onto the tracks when the train was stopped and sell different eggs and different foods and just the smell of Myanmar.

I remember very distinctively, they smoked something called Charu, which are a type of rolled bark cigar. And the aroma of that has just stuck with me. So I can think of three times since I've been in the country where I've smelled that elsewhere and instantly I'm like, wow, that smells like Burma. But so we traveled to tango, I'm going to chasta myself here. At the time, our goal was from the Lonely Planet to go visit an elephant logging camp where they were used for logging teak. And definitely at the time I was not aware and didn't think about, it's not great to use elephants for tourism in this way. And taking pictures on them and riding them is definitely frowned upon or even having them work in this because they're such intelligent, amazing beings. But we were going to this elephant camp. It was a misadventure that I won't get into getting there, but in tango we were staying at a guest house and across the street it was called the Happy Restaurant, and it was owned by a family, the Yang Yangs, and one of the family members, his name was Victor.

He had worked in international shipping on cargo vessels for a while. So he spoke several different languages. He spoke very, very good English, and he was just so surprised that there were Americans in his town because again, no one from the US had been in Myanmar for a really long time. So he welcomed. I was traveling with my good friend Dana at the time. He welcomed us in. We had this amazing feast in his restaurant, just sharing stories, probably drinking too much whiskey, all of the impromptu kind of human connection you get that comes with travel organically. And he said something to us, he's like, the next day I want to take you somewhere. And we did for two days, we went with him by boat to a small community called ti. At the time it was Victor was Karen or Karen, K-A-R-E-N. It's one of the ethnic minorities in Myanmar.

It's a group that their ethnicity and their identity transcends borders. They're not just of Myanmar, but they were heavily persecuted by the Burmese government at the time. And this village that he took us to was Rin, and it's where his father, who had been a doctor was one of the folks who would go and make the pilgrimage to provide medical services to this community once or a couple times a year. And Victor would go with him when he was younger. And I don't know what made him do this for us, but it was one of the most special experiences I've ever had in my life. We stayed overnight in this village. There was so much genuine curiosity. We were showing each other our ID cards and our passport, and then they had a government document and just commenting on how different it was at the time, we could smile on our passport photos and Myanmar.

No one would think of having a government photo where you would smile in it. We stayed in a monastery overnight in the village. People just, they were so generous and welcoming in terms of feeding us and just sharing their community with us overnight, and we had such a gift and Victor inviting us in, we never would've had that experience without meeting him. And I can't, story can go on forever, but we came back, we said goodbye to Victor, and somehow I was like, I'm going to come back and see. This was so I remember when we left this village by boat just hugging him and crying. I'm like, thank you for this gift you just gave us. And we promised we would stay in touch and we did. We were pen pals. I would get letters from him from Myanmar, completely censored, cut up. They were being read by the government and I would write back to him.

I think sometimes he would get them, sometimes he wouldn't. But because of his ethnicity and his ethnic group being persecuted, he eventually left Tgu and I didn't hear from him for a gap of time. And then he contacted me from a refugee camp in Thailand called the Mela Refugee Camp. It's outside of ot, and I think I was in my late twenties, so it had been probably like eight years or so since I had seen him. And I decided I was working in travel at the time for a virtuoso travel agency, and I decided that year I was going to go to Thailand and find Victor and keep this promise that I would see him again.

And I did. I went to Mela. There was a Catholic Charities organization that I stayed with when I was there, and this priest helped me. He got me, I had what U-N-H-C-R, fake credentials that kind of let me move in and out of the camp and visit Victor. And I think I was there for a week. And I just remember that experience being the camp was so big. It was a city of people who were displaced and people who without a home. And in talking to Victor and him sharing stories of what the people he knew, there were generations of folks who had children born in that camp. They lived their lives in that camp and they would die there without ever really being able to claim a place as home. And I think that's that experience knowing Victor, knowing that he had no peace in his home, knowing what he went through, living in this refugee camp, and he eventually left and went back into Myanmar 10 years ago for my 30th birthday, I went back to Myanmar.

I tried to locate him both in Yangon and in Tgu and couldn't find any trace of him at all and emails went unanswered. And so I don't know what happened to him. He could have been imprisoned or killed just because of what has been going on in the country with the military dictatorship. But that experience in Mela and my friendship with this man who our lives were so different across more than a decade has really impacted how I think and then what I think our power as individuals can be from just the decisions we make as single people to being small business owners and how we can try to help to impart change. And I hope I'm not romanticizing any of this. It was the experience of being there and Mela was shocking and sad. And at the time I was in graduate school for international development and I eventually dropped out. I didn't finish my master's degree in that, but I was really struck by thinking what a massive tragedy this is that we have in the world, that there are just so many people who can't find home, they can't go back home, they can't integrate, they don't want to integrate into the society they're in, and what can I possibly do to impact that?

Christine: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing all of that story. And I mean, I think I would love to hear from you with that as a context. How do you create experiences, I guess both that show the real? I think one thing that you and I love because if I look at the experiences that kind of stick with me deep in my heart like that, it has been moments that you wouldn't plan for for sure. They probably aren't even called travel, I guess they're just called human interaction in a different country. I don't even know. It's such a different, it's so hard to convey, but you really beautifully shared the gift of that connection.

That is what I want people to feel when they are traveling. There's something that transcends everything we know about the way we live and the way people exist. When you have that connection with someone that you would least expect it. And it's such a beautiful gift. And so for me, that's what I would wish people could experience. And so I try to create travel that allows for the breathing room for that to happen. But it's really hard, right? Because that's something that you really can't plan for it, but you can create something that embodies that type of connection. But for you having that so deep within you, how do you bring that forward when you're thinking about creating and crafting an experience for someone else?

Kirsten: Yeah, it's challenging. It's kind of what I want. And then what I do I say in some ways are sometimes at odds with each other because once you commodify something and put a price on it, I think the human, or at least the American expectation, that that exact thing should be given to you simply because you paid for it and not because you have any have to do any personal growth or introspection. So it is, and I think a really beautiful thing about group travel like you do and so many others who we've connected with through women's work do is you can be very intentional about the types of experiences you want to create for a group and lay that framework. It's a little bit different with doing private travel design. One thing I really think we do well is the soft storytelling about who our partners are, who the small local businesses are that we work with, the independent who hotels and lodges throughout the world.

I was looking at our stats last year and for All of a Bed Night is a number of rooms you've booked at a place overall for all the travelers we sent around the world last year, 88% stayed in independent owner operated hotels, and that's not by accident. It's because the way we talk about travel and the clientele we try to attract to us share those values of they view travel as curiosity and an opportunity to expand their horizons and their worldview a little bit. And I think simply by exactly how your daughters learned from you that the development goals around women and gender equity people pick up on what you give off. And I think simply by weaving this into our communication to what we promote on social media to newsletters we write, we lay the groundwork to attract people who seek something similar and also understand that singular moment that I described with Victor, that connection that cannot be bought, it cannot be promised.

It comes from being open to saying yes to things. It comes in from, I talk a lot about serendipity time with clients and that I don't want to plan every minute of every day for you, I think you should spend, and I don't mean to, should is not a great word. So I have that a little asterisk next to that, but I think it benefits you if you spend a little longer in a certain destination and have some unplanned time to see where it leads you to see who you talk to. I think it's great if you put down your phone and stop looking at every list of where you should eat and which bars are the best, and just ask someone what you want to do because you never know how those connections are going to happen. But what we can do is we can coach people and making space for them.

We can encourage people to slow down and being open to speaking with someone, or we can facilitate at least those first meetings between someone traveling who might come with one set of values and a mindset about the world and have them engage in meaningful conversation and just connection with someone who comes from a very, very different place. So I think how we do it is we do it softly. We don't bang a drum super loudly about any of this, but I try very hard not to use the word luxury too much. You'll never see us at the top of on any large multinational luxury corporations top producer list. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not what makes my heart race and makes me love what I do every day.

Christine: Yeah, there's so many. I think things that resonate in there for me as well, and the first thing that you said that really struck with me is the commodification of travel. And the minute you package it, it almost steps away from the thing that we most hold dear, and I feel like that's a place that I wrestle with all the time on one hand, really want to have this intentional business that allows people to have this experience, but I know full well just by being there, we're creating a different dynamic, so then how can we make that dynamic as positive as possible? How can we create an interaction that's as positive as possible, the thing that I have within my control? Right. Hey, this is Christine interrupting this episode for a minute. To share a bit about a professional organization, I have found so valuable over the past few years.

As you all know, I am passionate about supporting women in travel and sharing their journeys, successes, and the impact they're creating around the world. I also love to connect with other women in the industry to learn from them and receive their support. Groups of women have proven to be more valuable to me professionally because there are different challenges we face that are often difficult to share in a mixed group. As luck would have it, two incredible women, Janine Cohen and Catherine Gallagher founded the perfect organization for me. It's called Simply Enough Women Travel Leaders. Women Travel Leaders is a professional association, comprising inspirational and influential business owners, executives, influencers, journalists, managers, hoteliers, representatives, and directors from around the world. I found myself a part of Women Travel Leaders in the early days of the pandemic as I was looking for information support and community. That is exactly what I found.

We know this was a unique time, but for me, women travel leaders was and continues to be a solid foundation and a source of inspiration. The consistency offered in a variety of virtual monthly gatherings is so helpful to me. I may need a specific resource introduction or just a place to be amongst peers, and it serves the purpose I need in the moment. The other thing I find so refreshing is the honesty and vulnerability found as we gather together. Again, for me, this experience was forged in the instability of 2020, but it has carried on. As I sat in the first circles, I heard well-respected professionals, sharing honestly about challenges, professional and personal. They were showing up in a way I hadn't seen in a business setting. It was refreshing and also so needed today that safe space to connect and share is still strong.

As the community has grown, women travel leaders has evolved to create even more safe and practical places to share by offering small groups with focused goals. For example, there are small groups for travel advisors, DMCs, tour operators, or retreat leaders. While there is great support in the monthly magic circles, these small groups offer very specific support where members can address the things most relevant to them. I was also part of a small group, which was offered at an additional price from the annual membership fee, which took it all to the next level. Again, groups staged by type of business or groups go even deeper meeting monthly with focuses on very specific topics, masterminding to find solutions and help members grow to the next level. This year, a lucky group of women have also been offered the opportunity to sign up with one of the past Soul of Travel guests, Casey Heco, for a leadership.

This carefully curated group provides a safe and supportive place for sharing insights, overcoming challenges, and fostering growth amongst a trusted group of female founders. Casey is now running three groups called Fig, Baobab and Banyan, and she has a couple of spaces in Banyan and Fig. Fig is more for founders at early stages of business. While Banyan is more for members with a turnover of one to 3 million. For me, community is everything, and having a professional community of women who continue to grow together and support each other is so valuable. The Women Travel Leader mission is to elevate diverse female professionals in the travel industry through Community Connections, peer-to-peer coaching, tailored community-led learning and masterminding. This commitment to elevate diverse female professionals aligns with my personal mission and that of the podcast, and I'm happy to share that Women Travel Leaders has joined with Soul of Travel as an amplification ally.

If you're listening and would love to be involved in women travel leaders, please just reach out. Membership is offered on a referral basis, and I'd love to connect you with Janine or Catherine to learn more. You can also visit their website for more information@www.wtleaders.com. That's www.wtleaders.com and let them know you heard about women travel leaders here on the Soul of Travel podcast. Thank you again to Janine and Catherine for creating such a beautiful space and for supporting me in my journey as well. Now, let's hop back over to our soulful conversation, and I do want people to travel, and I do believe that it's necessary, but I feel like I'm constantly on that seesaw of what is good and what is right and what is actually at odds with how I really feel about what I'm creating. It's a real hard place to be in and I don't know for you, how do you walk yourself through that?

Kirsten: Yeah, it's tough because at the end of the day, we are a business. I don't fault anyone from wanting to make a living off of what they invest time and money and energy into. It would be great if we could all just volunteer and follow our passions a hundred percent, but that is not reality. I think going back to something I mentioned earlier, it was that I really believe that small business owners and entrepreneurs of all scale have a lot of power. And in a capitalistic society, we have a lot of power over our money and how we spend it, how we choose to invest it, and the message that those decisions send to our larger audience. I know with you, you really seek out to work with lodges or small entrepreneurs that are women owned and promote gender equity.

I care a lot about sustainability throughout. This is kind of a tangent, but it comes back and makes sense. Before founding outlier journeys, I spent four years on the hospitality and representation side of travel. So working directly with these independent lodges and hotels throughout Central and South America and really gained an appreciation for the challenge. These small, exquisite, and super special duplicatable properties were, but the challenges they face in reaching a larger audience and working with the travel trade. But anyhow, I learned from them. I learned, especially from Hans Fist of the Cayuga collection, how if you walk the talk, if you put your money where your mouth is, people notice and they follow. One thing in our business that we do is, I mean, digital itineraries are kind of the way everybody has gone, but in deciding to be digital from the onset, I was really thinking about waste.

And I remember working for these larger tour operators where we had four or five of those giant printers that were just churning out paper itineraries and stapling them all of the time, and I definitely knew I didn't want to do that. I think there's a lot of beauty in maybe having something wonderfully printed. I'm memento from a trip, but I knew I didn't want to be creating a lot of waste, and we've made decisions strategically on what we've chosen to brand for ourselves. Initially, I was doing these beautiful tote bags working with a nonprofit in Seattle called Refugee Artisan Initiative, and they, again, all the values tied in. They work with women who have recently resettled in Seattle who have some sewing skills, and they help them develop micro businesses around fabric arts. They also use a hundred percent upcycled materials, so they're not producing any waste.

They're making useful objects of things that would be otherwise diverted to the landfill. So our first and second year in business, we worked with them and we made tote bags for our travelers. They pay a living wage to their artisans, and in Seattle that is high, and I think they were the most expensive tote bags you could buy. They've cost us, I think $55 a bag to make, but they are gorgeous. They're super sturdy, and we had a little card about the partnership that would go to every client, and just that subtle messaging I think helped explain that. Now we're working with a gentleman who runs a company called Enjoy Hand Planes. He's down in Ventura, California, and he uses scrap from the Patagonia factories and parts of old surfboards and wetsuits and turns them into really durable luggage tags. So that's one thing we're doing now.

Another thing is, again, I have control over our finances In the small business, a big sudden, I don't know if you call it an elephant in the room, but with the climate crisis and climate change and we're all getting on airplanes and we're telling people to travel, how do you justify that with what we're doing? We were part of 1% for the planet. We have been from the day we started, and we commit 1% of our revenue, so not profit. It's revenue towards vetted conservation projects that are addressing climate change around the globe. And our strategy has been primarily to give to orgs that are in countries where we're extending the most travelers and groups that we can then meet with in person and partner with and learn more about their stories and help connect our travelers to them somehow. I'm trying to think of other, yeah, I think there's, there's so much power and subtlety and softness and how you live your values as an individual and a company.

Oh, the last thing, a more recent way that we're going back to that concept of traveler and who is a traveler, and this ties into again, the impact that knowing Victor has had on my life. We have these playlists for each destination. We have a Spotify channel, and each destination, right now, I think we're up to nine or 10, has a playlist, and we've worked with a friend of mine who runs a public radio show called Duty Free Radio in Missoula, Montana. He's curated them for us, doing kind of a deep dive and research into artists from that country or destination, trying to look for queer artists, indigenous artists, like showcase a wide range of genre and voices that we can then share those with a traveler as another way of learning more about the nuance of a country, maybe the challenges, the culture, the politics before they go again in subtle ways. If you want to learn about these individual artists, their bios are all right there. And in exchange for each playlist that my friend Campbell has created, we donate it's $20 per playlist to a nonprofit in Montana called Soft Landing Missoula that helps refugees and resettled individuals build community in their new home In Missoula,

Christine: You probably don't know this about me, but that's where I went to university. Oh, really? In Missoula? Yeah. I didn't know that. It's so great to, yeah, that's a little tug at my heartstrings. Also, even just you being the Pacific Northwest, I always have a little soft spot when I know that's where you're sitting. I lived there for so long too. Anyway, that's a total sidebar, but

Kirsten: Another connection.

Christine: Yeah. Yeah. I love all those things that you just shared, and I think that's so great when we can look at our businesses and just see how can we just layer all these other things in to be the business that we want to be in when we're shaping it. We really have the control of what that is, and I do think that's a really powerful thing for people to just consider.

Kirsten: I think it's a good reminder too. There's so much that goes into running a business. It often feels really overwhelming. I think when you feel like you have no control or everything's kind of spiraling. It all feels too big. Start small, look small, and look for where you can have small, intentional impact, and often getting one thing in place leads to others as well.

Christine: Yeah. Well, I want to go into something else that you and I have connected on and have had some beautiful conversations about. And so I'm really, I guess excited is not the right word, but proud to be able to have some honest conversation about being a business owner. And some of the challenges that we face, and this is something that you and I reached out to each other and particular about is how do we as small business operators, when something happens in our life that derails us, how do we get back on board with our business? And then also how do we create spaces where we can show up when we're navigating challenges and loss and grieving and still be ourself in our business and not always be our best self in our business or our a hundred percent self in our business because it's not realistic that that's how we can operate. And I feel like even in all business, even in the corporate world, I feel like we really need to understand that people are in your business. We're not robots and we're not numbers and we're not performing, but I think we see this most when it's us, when it's me and something happens and now my business actually can't function. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about maybe part of your journey and what you've learned about how to navigate that as well.

Kirsten: Yeah, yeah. It's hard. First of all, every, there's any individual, regardless of if you're a woman or a man, there's challenges in your life that are going to and other things happen that maybe derail the course trying to pursue for yourself or whatever you have your goals set on. I think with women especially, there are the joys and challenges and the whole role of emotions and feelings that go into our identity as being mothers, as raising children, and just the whole journey of trying to get pregnant, which is what I have been on for almost five years now.

So my story around this and how it relates is I don't have any children. I've had five losses, and my husband and I pursued IVF, which is now a hot button topic in a lot of the news that's coming out right now. But we did three rounds of IVF simultaneously. The first year the outlier was in business. And so I was always, I feel a lot of women maybe who have gone through something similar or who have children, you always feel torn because you have so many things you have to devote energy to and time to that, you almost feel like you're never giving enough to any one thing, and if you have to take coins out of one bucket to put them into something else, then something's suffering. So it's this constant scarcity mindset that I think is, I wish I had an answer of how not to have that, but it's just, I think it's reality right now for so many people.

In this process of, we did three rounds of IVF retrievals. We ended up with one embryo and we successfully transferred it, and then in my second trimester, I lost the pregnancy and it was very complicated. I ended up being hospitalized for five days, and I have a partner engaged full-time in the business. Now. He was part-time at that time, and I had created something that very fortunately, we had clients traveling at the time or departing on trips, but at that moment in the hospital, I was like, I can't do this. I don't have the space for this. I don't have the clarity in my mind to, I don't have the capacity to care right now in the same way that I normally care. Which is a hard thing to say because I think we really, as entrepreneurs or just I, knowing you personally, the group of women we've connected with through women's work, everyone really, really, really cares about what they're putting out in the world, which I think makes 'em all really exceptional.

But in that moment, I just decided that honesty and kind of showing my human side was the best answer. And I wrote an email from the hospital bed and just told without a lot of detail that I think I had about a hundred clients or so that I was actively working on some stage of their trip at the time, and I don't want that to sound like there were probably a hundred people. I had to send that email to let them know I needed some time. And I told them what had happened and said I was really going to be at no capacity for the rest of the month. This was in June and probably at very, very limited capacity until August, and I was fully prepared to lose a lot of the business. That was in kind of the early stages of us collaborating on travel design and the silver lining if that thing exists in this, I don't know.

I was reminded that when we let down our guard, when we show people our humanity, they often show it back. And I was treated with abundant grace by every single person, and that was in its own way, kind of a powerful moment of how I want to try to make everyone feel that I work with on our end, shit happens. We are people, life is messy, and the only thing we can really control is our reaction to that situation. What the book take Nothing personally, I can't remember The Four Agreements is one of my favorite books, and I'm blanking on what those four agreements are right now. But I think one of them is take nothing personally. The other one is always do your best and being okay with your best, being different on different days and giving others that grace and understanding that their best is going to be different on different days because life happens, I think was a big lesson from my experience with loss and with having that just something that I tried so hard for be taken away from me. And I know that we've connected on this because you've also gone not, I don't want to, there's no equating anything in our experiences. It's more of equating this idea of loss of something you've, and I'd say kind of a feminine loss in that way of something you've really tried for that's tied up in your identity of being a woman, of being a mother, and how you've dealt with that in your own life recently.

Christine: Yeah. Well one, thank you so much for sharing that. I really appreciate being able to hold the space for that conversation and you showing up to share that. And I think as you were speaking, one of the things that I really felt, and you just really landed there, but is I think one of the things I've had the hardest time with, and this is going to sound so ridiculous, but I'm going to hope you're going to understand, is just being a woman and owning it. For some reason, that feels really hard. And I think especially working in a career, in beginning in adventure travel when I was 20 and just being a woman in general, there's so many things that tell us that's not the right choice, and you don't have any ability to change that. So then all the experiences that are related to being a woman feel even just more shameful or more challenging. You have to navigate it behind closed doors because it's like your Achilles heel, and it's such a, I don't really know. It's such a hard path to navigate. And so for me, really just, it's so interesting because the space I create is for women because I deeply want them, I guess, to be able to say that is who I am, and it's the most powerful and important thing about me, and I'm really having this revelation as we're speaking. So thanks for the therapy session. Yeah, thanks too.

But for me, the loss that I really was navigating, I was meant to have spent this year traveling with my three daughters. It's something we've been planning for seven years. It's something that I couldn't even believe could be true. And just as we were to kind of set out upon it, about a year ago, I started pursuing hormone replacement therapy because I was entering menopause early, which was a hard thing in and of itself. No one would even listen to me or believe that it's true. And I was like, okay, here I am justifying to medical professionals that I am in menopause. I was like, it's a pretty clear answer. It's not something that you are in it, or I'm like, I wasn't menstruating anymore for a long amount of time, so I feel like this is the answer. That's what's happening to me. And anyway, so one that was hard because I felt like at the same time that I had finally embraced that being a woman was powerful, I was also losing the thing that made me most a woman.

So I had that, and then I had no one believing this scenario. And then when I finally went on to hormone replacement therapy, it triggered horrible amount of vestibular migraines and vertigo, and they thought I was having a stroke. Had a moment. I think, gosh, I feel like the universe was giving us whatever this test was at the same time, but I didn't know if I was going to walk out of the hospital. And it was a really scary place to be, obviously. And then we did start out on this trip, I got clearance literally the morning that we were supposed to, I had an appointment at eight 30 in the morning, and our flight was at five 30 at night that day to start traveling for a year. So it was probably a little bit crazy that I even started in that moment, but we didn't make it.

We should be in Guatemala right now, which interestingly, I don't know how that would've looked, which has also been really interesting for me as we would've moved around the world. All of these things have kind of happened around the world that have been huge. We would've been in Israel around October. We would've been in Slovenia when there was huge flooding where there was, but we switched things. So this weight of the world has felt really difficult. I could see the weight of the world in a different way because of this experience I was having. And coming home, deciding to come home was so hard because there's so much loss in this experience I could have with my children the way I want them to fall in love with the world that I have the possibility I wanted them to see. It feels like it was all erased, which I know is not true.

I can still take them to travel, but this kind of container I worked so hard to create fell apart. And so there's that. But then there's also trying to run my business when I'm grieving that. And then I'm still having, I was just telling you, I had physical therapy this morning for migraines, and one of the things she was just moving my head back and forth, back and forth, and she's like, what do you feel? And I was fear and sadness, and she was like, oh, I just meant dizzy or nauseous. And I was like, oh, yeah, well, I feel fear and sadness.

But then learning how to navigate that. And for me, that has been the lesson of doing less or the lesson of does this action honor who I am as well as what I want to create? I just feel like I'm stuck in that cycle with every single decision. And I don't know for you if having that moment where you see your capacity and you feel your limit, you literally feel your human limit if that has changed, just the way that you expound your energy or evaluate how you're expounding your energy. I know for me, that's been a real, I feel like that's my lesson is to just kind of keep coming back to knowing that 70% is okay, that I'm lucky if I have that to give most days. And I was joking with my therapist, I was like, yeah, I've been a person that gives like 110% always.

And she's like, if you had to tell me how you were giving me your energy before last year, what that would look like. And I was like, well, 110% to my kids, 110% to my job, 110% to my relationship. She's like, do you know how many percents that is? I was like, yeah. I was like, that's a lot of percents. You're right. We should be taking a hundred percent. And then chunking that up, not giving 110%. But I think that also relates to how I wanted to show up as a woman. I felt like maybe I needed to do that to just feel my own worth. It was my own sentence I gave myself maybe, but that was a huge, I don't know. That was a lot of information I just shared. But for you, how does that resonate with the impact of your experience to how you want to show up?

Kirsten: Oh, that's a really good question. And I think maybe the answer is different on different days. I think one trap we can fall into with anything that we are tying our identity too close to is putting too much of ourselves into that at the neglect and expense of other areas of our life. And I think this process of grieving and moving forward has not been linear at all. I think my reaction to what happened to me initially, especially because physically I was so drained, was to pour myself more into the business and really almost double down on work, which I wouldn't say was the healthy thing or to do, but it was a coping mechanism of I can't do this other thing, but I can do this thing that I'm good at. And it really, I think, helped give me some focus and just helped me get out of bed to be perfectly honest, for a long time with the gift of hindsight and that being eight or nine months ago now that I can look back on, I think I've done, I'd like to think anyhow that I've done a better job of being more intentional with time and how things that I know will help me live a better, more holistic life.

I've really tried to prioritize exercise and being outside in nature more and in different ways than I would before, and it really loss. Like that really challenges a partnership it's very, very hard, I think, on whether you're, however you define your partnership, but it's made, in my case, my husband and I think be more intentional about checking in with each other about where our charge levels are on given days, which is another way of being like, I don't have 90% to give to this today. I have 60%. And then maybe seeing where we can give each other grace or lend a hand to keep things moving forward and have realistic expectations of the other person. And I try to adopt that mentality and just how I work with folks that I work with. You never know what people are carrying around and what they're dealing with, and maybe they forgot, maybe something slipped through the cracks, but there's no reason to get angry or you can get angry. There's no reason to act nastily or treat someone poorly because of something. I think you can have high expectations and you can still be very realistic and pathetic. And I would say maybe in a perfect world, or when I am, I think clicking on all cylinders, it is finding that balance between having high expectations and also being empathetic of myself and everyone that I correspond with F.

But we're still, we are entertaining when we're round of ivf, so we're not quite done with it yet. But I know just with so many women, and I can only see this as a white woman, I can't, which is a place of privilege to even go through IVF and have access to that treatment and be treated differently by doctors and the whole healthcare system. But I know for anyone who's going through it, it's already such a challenging thing that to have it debated openly in the media and by politicians right now is very, very triggering and hurtful. So I just want to, to any of your listeners who that resonates with. I just want to blast out a lot of care and compassion to them because it's very hard.

Christine: Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah, I think part of my nervous system being a wreck, honestly, is the fact that it feels like just, again, to go back to this thing that I finally acknowledged, just the thought of being a woman feels so fearful for so many reasons in today's day and age. And I have had many a therapy sessions on just like, I don't even have words, but to send the care, to have something that's so deeply personal, constantly, like you said, be a political decision and not be, or just to be so showcased it would be something that should be this internal process, but to have it picked apart in a container that isn't yours, it feels even harder. So I think it's one of those things that it makes me feel more vulnerable in ways that I wouldn't have expected, and it shows up in places that I wouldn't have expected.

And so I'm really grateful for the spaces that we have been a part of women's work. As you've mentioned, women travel leaders, there's been some great spaces for women to be women and business owners and actually talk about sometimes what that means because it can mean a lot of different things. And to actually be able to bring your personal experiences into a professional conversation has been helpful because I feel like we really want to separate that and that's that masculine energy, but for us to be the healthiest and strongest and most able to create what we want to create, we have to be able to have those in the same room together. And that has been really a part of the growth, I guess for me. There was one other thing I really wanted to say, but I can't remember. Well,

Kirsten: And Christie, thank you for creating the space with your podcast to have conversations like this that are not black or white. It's not just about one thing, it's not about business. It's not just about feminine or identity. It's everything. And I don't think that exists anywhere else in the podcast universe right now. And I love listening to it and I love the conversation. The tangents that these conversations go in, I think are the richest. So thank you for making space for people to share these stories that hopefully foster more connection and understanding.

Christine: Yeah, thank you. Well, I think we could go on, but our listeners are probably like, Hey, that was great. No, I agree. I mean, that's what I hear the most and that's why I really wanted to honor that part of the podcast moving forward. Is that what we call women's wisdom or this the part where we speak about our humanity in relation to our career and our profession and the work we're doing was that what people were most surprised by when they listen to the podcast and what they love the most? And actually it's the piece that I feel is actually what is the soul of travel because it's the part of us that gets to express ourself through our business. And that's the important part. And I think that's where you see these really beautiful businesses and people doing incredible work is when they're coming from that part of themselves.

And that is the part, that's what I was thinking of, that sometimes allows us to really burn out because we are doing our soul's work and our heart's work. We really, really believe in it. And it's so hard sometimes to have it be just a business. And when you're sending that an email to a hundred people, it's not necessarily just some a hundred arbitrary people. It's a hundred people who found you and who you want to create this beautiful experience for and you don't want to let down. And it's just such an emotional exchange that I think some people don't always resonate with if they haven't had the gift of deeply loving what they're doing.

Kirsten: Yeah. Yeah. It's beautifully put.

Christine: Okay, let's do our rapid fire questions before we're completely over on our time. Forgot about

Kirsten: This.

Christine: The first one is what are you reading right now?

Kirsten: I'm reading a book called The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. I may be butchering the title slightly, but it's about a Hoon girl who has had really severe epileptic seizures and just that the clash and intersection of different cultural beliefs. Again, what it means for people to travel from their home as refugees and try to rebuild their community in the us how that clashes with our American sense of what should be a melting pot and assimilation. So it's about all of these things, but a lot of it is about medicine and kind of that clash of cultures. And towards the end of the book it's sort of more the message is there that we can be our best when we actually try to understand where the other person's coming from instead of trying to force one side too strongly. But it's a wonderful book. It's kind of like almost like an anthropology ethnography style.

Christine: Thank you. What is always in your suitcase or backpack when you travel?

Kirsten: I've been a big convert to the liquid IV electrolytes. I just find I can't drink enough water on planes, and especially for, I was in Namibia in November and I was handing them out to people on our trip and they were just lifesavers with how hot it was and how you just could not get your hydration up to actually feel good. But yeah, liquid IV is my go-to,

Christine: I usually have scratch, which is similar, but I also have found that that can be a real lifesaver, especially if you get sick, that can really make the difference between being okay soon or not being okay to sojourn is to travel somewhere as if you live there for a short while, whereas somewhere that you would still love to sojourn.

Kirsten: I've never been to North Africa, so I'm really looking forward to hopefully in the next two, spending some time in Morocco and Egypt and that part of the world, and that would be a dream of mine.

Christine: Yeah. What do you eat that immediately connects you to a place that you've been,

Kirsten: I'm going to go back to Burma. Tea leaf salad. It's so good when it's made well, there's nothing like it.

Christine: Who was a person that inspired or encouraged you to set out and travel the world?

Kirsten: I'd like to give a shout. I mean, I talked about my parents already, but a shout out to one of our clients, Ann Becker, who as well, who is just the most incredible person and connection of people. I think she continues to challenge me to stay this course in my business and not give to what, I don't want to say easier money and going the luxury travel route, but to keep finding that reason and helping people connect with the true challenges and stories of a place and help small operators grow to their full potential together. So Ann Becker, you are a gift to everyone who has the opportunity to befriend you so

Christine: Special to her. Thank you so much. Yeah. She is such a great supporter, and to have her in your corner is a real gift. If you could take an adventure with one person, fictional or real, alive or past, who would it be?

Kirsten: Oh, I would do the past. A real person. My great aunt Helen, who was my father's aunt, she never married. She died when she was, I think 93, about 10 years ago, and she had traveled to Cuba, the Loar Valley, did all of these cool trips on her own, and I think she probably had the coolest secrets and stories, but because she was a woman of her time, she did not share too much.

Christine: Yeah. How interesting. Okay. The last one, you kind of already did this, but I'll give you the space for another mention. Soul of Travel is for recognizing and honoring people that we want to celebrate in this industry. So is there a woman that you would like to bring attention to?

Kirsten: There's so many women doing really amazing things. I think I am grateful to Iris who connected us with women's work. I am grateful to Janine and Catherine with women's travel leaders in all of the ways that they've offered connection. I think if I'm going to call out one person, I want to recognize Bethany from Hinoki Travels. I am so inspired by what she's doing and the small group experiences she's creating. We had the opportunity to travel together in Chico, Japan before the Adventure Travel World Summit, and her commitment to her intentionality. I want to do one of her group trips, and I definitely am going to make that happen in the next two years to experience that.

Christine: Yeah. Well, maybe we can try to do it together. I agree. And I did a pre-summit trip with her in Switzerland, and we had just, it was the most, I was like, how is this even work that I get to meet humans like this and then spend time hiking through the mountains of Switzerland and talking about these things that mean so much to me. So thank you. I agree. She's a really beautiful soul that's creating beautiful things, and I will link her podcast, interviewed her as well. But yeah.

Kirsten: Can I do one more shout out too? Yes, sure. Yeah. I'd also like to give a shout out to JSA of book trips, who was also a women's work alumni and kind of equal to Bethany the intentionality and care that she puts into these curated group experiences for women based on traveling through a nation. I just think it's super unique. She does a killer job with her marketing and her storytelling, and also supporting small entrepreneurs, black-owned businesses, women-owned businesses with her travel, I think is really, really inspiring and cool.

Christine: Yeah, I agree. And she's doing so, I mean, just so incredibly, people are really receptive to what she's creating and watching that happen feels just from the sidelines. Super fun to be able to cheerlead and witness that happening. So thank you for mentioning her. Definitely. And thank you so much for being here for this conversation and spending so much time with me. Extra time. I appreciate that too, and I feel like this will be a conversation that people really connect with and appreciate, and so I'm really grateful for you being here to share that with me.

Kirsten: Okay. Thank you, Christine.

Christine: Thank you.

Christine: Thank you for listening to Soul of Travel, presented by Journey Woman. I hope you enjoyed the journey. If you loved this conversation, I encourage you to subscribe and rate the podcast. Please share episodes that inspire you with others because this is how we extend the impact of this show. Learn more about each of my guests by reading our episode blogs, which are more than your average show notes. I think you'll love the connection. Find our episode blogs at www.souloftravelpodcast.com. I'm so proud of the way these conversations are bringing together people from around the world. If this sounds like your community, welcome, I'm so happy you are here. I am all about community and would love to connect. You can find me on Facebook at Soul of Travel podcast or follow me on Instagram, either at she Sojourns or at Soul of Travel podcast. Stay up to date by joining the Soul of Travel podcast mailing list. You'll also want to explore the Journey Woman community and its resources for women travelers over 50. I'd also like to share a quick thank you to my podcast producer and content magician, Carly Eduardo, CEO of Conte. I look forward to getting to know you and hopefully hear your story.