Everyone tells you travel = freedom.
​
Here’s why it didn’t for me:
​
From November 2023 to November 2024, I drove across Europe.
​
Manchester to France.
​
France to Spain.
​
Across to Albania, down to Greece, and then all the way back again.
​
It sounds like a dream year on paper.
​
Sunshine, beaches, new cities every week.
​
But here’s the reality:
​
Most of that year I was sat in front of my laptop, taking 1:1 calls and chasing DMs.
​
The travelling itself became secondary.
​
New places blurred into one because I wasn’t really in them.
​
I’d trade beaches and mountains for hotel Wi-Fi.
​
And instead of exploring, I was checking messages, pushing conversations, and squeezing calls into inconvenient time zones.
​
That’s not freedom.
​
That’s carrying the same grind into a different country.
​
Looking back now, I can see the real issue wasn’t the travel.
​
It was the model.
​
Basing everything on 1:1 work and DM hustle just doesn’t work if you want a life outside of the laptop.
​
It traps you, even when you’re on the road.
​
What I’ve learned since then is that you don’t need to fill your calendar with 1:1 calls to deliver value.
​
Not everyone needs (or wants) that level of support.
​
What I realised is that people need different things depending on where they are.
​
• Some people just need free content because they don’t even know what their problem is yet.
​
• Some need a focused workshop to solve one specific bottleneck.
​
• Some are clear, ready, and willing to pay for one-to-one so they can get the answer quickly.
​
But the real shift is this:
​
The community becomes the engine room.
​
If you sell by demonstration meaning you share the work you’re already doing with clients, people naturally find their way to you.
​
And when you have light systems running in the background to capture and convert that interest, you no longer need to grind in the DMs or chain yourself to endless calls.
​
The lesson?
​
You need to design your business around levels of sophistication.
​
Not just pile everything into one offer type.
​
That year of travel showed me the cost of ignoring that.
​
This year, I’m doing it differently.
​
Workshops and community are now the backbone.
​
1:1 is reserved for those who really need it.

Until next time,
Dan