Thank you Angela Tuell for interviewing me on Communications Redefined: “Chasing Adventure: Travel Journalist Lisa Niver’s Global Odyssey”
Angela Tuell: 0:05
Welcome to Media in Minutes. This is your host, Angela Tuell. This podcast features in-depth interviews with those who report on the world around us. They share everything from their favorite stories to what happened behind the lens and give us a glimpse into their world From our studio here at Communications Redefined. This is Media in Minutes.
On today’s episode, we are talking with award-winning travel journalist, tv host and author, Lisa Niver. Lisa is an adventurer who has explored all seven continents and over 100 countries. She is also the award-winning author of Brave-ish: One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After 50. With a passion for pushing boundaries, she has journeyed through the desert in Mongolia, scuba dived with bull sharks in Mexico, snorkeled with whale sharks in the Philippines and swam with the humpback whales in Tonga. Her adventures include polar bear walking safaris in Canada, twice taking a polar plunge in Antarctica and experiencing thrilling safari encounters with Africa’s Big Five. Lisa is also a sought-after international speaker and the host of the podcast Make your Own Map!
Hi, Lisa.
Lisa Niver: 1:23
Hi Angela, I’m so excited to be here with you.
Angela Tuell: 1:26
Me too, I am very much looking forward to talking with you today. In researching for this episode, I determined I must start with your fairly recent book and memoir Brave-ish, which I love. One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless after 50. Please tell us more about your story and how you became a travel journalist.
Lisa Niver: 1:50
Well, thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here with you and, yes, I have a memoir -Brave-ish. It’s kind of funny about that book is a lot about my travel journalist journey. How I got started. I was teaching and I left on an adventure and my students were really sad that I was leaving and I promised to send back a newsletter and while I was traveling for a year, mostly in Asia, it was the beginning of the blog revolution and so when I came back from that trip, I started We Said Go Travel, which is my travel site. I started that in 2010. And building that site was the beginning of becoming an actual, real travel journalist.
Angela Tuell: 2:39
So you were a teacher. Was that your first career?
Lisa Niver: 2:42
No, I tell people my career is like remember the game shoots and ladders. I grew up in California, I went to Penn, I went to med school in California. I wasn’t that happy. I took a year out. I tried to think about what made me happy and I ended up starting to teach and while I was in my sort of gap year after college –now it’s much more popular to take a gap year. At the time, I had studied in Israel for a semester abroad and anyway, I guess we can call it my gap year. I learned to scuba dive and I fell in love with scuba diving and I was teaching. I also worked for a little while at Planned Parenthood because I was like, am I going back into medicine? Am I doing education? Where am I in science? Right? So when I was teaching, I really couldn’t afford these exotic, amazing scuba trips that everyone else was going on, so I ended up.
Lisa Niver: 3:43
a friend of my sister’s had worked for Club Med and, through a series of crazy events, which is all in my book, I ended up working for Club Med skiing.
Angela Tuell: 3:54
Okay.
Lisa Niver: 3:55
Which is confusing, because I told you I wanted to go scuba diving, but that’s how it got started.
Angela Tuell: 3:59
Right, there’s quite a difference between cold weather sports and warm weather sports, although it doesn’t have to be warm to scuba dive, right, if you have the right gear. No, it doesn’t.
Lisa Niver: 4:08
After Club Med, I worked for seven years on cruise ships and at one point my dive buddy and I from the Caribbean we actually went scuba diving in Juneau in Alaska in dry suits.
Angela Tuell: 4:19
Wow, okay. So yes, that is a thing.
Lisa Niver: 4:23
Dry suits. Cold is a thing, When I was working on the memoir and going back and forth through my whole career, you can see that there were a lot of through lines. But it’s hard when you’re in your 20s or trying to figure out. During COVID or after 9-11, which were all things that shifted my career again you don’t have a lot of perspective. Sometimes, when you’re in the middle of the storm, you think– am I making good choices? Should I keep going? Do I start over? A lot of times I went back and taught. I thought I’ll just go teach again and figure out what am I going to do next?
Angela Tuell: 4:59
Yes, so how did you make it your career then? The travel writing? At what point did that happen and how’d you do it?
Lisa Niver: 5:07
I was teaching and traveling, and teaching and traveling. I had started the website and I went on another long trip. So one of the things that helped make it my career was having very low expenses and traveling in Asia on low expenses. I could run the website and hone my craft. I did not go to journalism school but I started going to different workshops and there’s so many conferences. I have a whole playlist on my YouTube channel. That’s just all the different conference videos going to travel classics, tbex, imm. I don’t think there’s a conference I’ve heard of that. I haven’t been to, although I am going to a new conference in April. I’m going for the first time to Sea-Trade, which is the cruise line industry, so I’ll be there. I’m going to be in Miami for Sea-Trade and then I’m going on the brand new MSC ship. I’d say that what made my career happen is really a lot of networking and persistence.
Angela Tuell: 6:08
Yeah, you have to be very self-motivated in that type of career.
Lisa Niver: 6:13
Yeah, people ask me — how do you get so many videos done, or how do you get so many articles published? I tell them it’s because I used to be a teacher and I basically just give myself homework.
Angela Tuell: 6:24
And deadlines right.
Lisa Niver: 6:25
And deadlines. Yes, ma’am.
Angela Tuell: 6:28
So you mentioned spending three years traveling across Asia. What was the most surprising thing you learned?
Lisa Niver: 6:36
The most surprising thing I learned is that you really don’t need a lot of stuff, and that slowing down can make travel so much better. I noticed sometimes people will be on a short trip and they’ll ask me –Can I go to these four countries in Europe on my seven day trip? and–you can, but you’re going to come home so tired. You’ll definitely get a flavor. On a cruise, going to a country every day is different because you only unpack once. I don’t really like the unpacking or wondering will we get there in time? Which room key is it? Do we have the right address? I like to slow down. One trip I went to Mongolia. We went on this 11 day van trip to the Gobi Desert and they told me that we were going to the vast expanse of nothingness and I said, how will I know when I get there? They said– Lisa, you’ll know and I knew.
Lisa Niver: 7:49
Being in Asia felt just so miraculously different. I speak decent Spanish and I could be mostly understood in French and Italian. However, being in Asia. I told someone “Frey Chan Hao” in China. I said Frey Chan Hao. And the man looked at my traveling companion and said I don’t speak English. And he looked at her and said she’s not speaking English. Sometimes it’s very hard to be understood We’re in a really different place. Also, when I was traveling in China, we literally walked up to the bus station, kind of in the middle of nowhere. The Lonely Planet had all of the information in the local dialect characters and I held open the book and some random person looked at the book and I pointed, and they pointed and I put money in my hand and they took money and they put me on the bus.
Angela Tuell: 8:43
And you were hoping you were on the right bus.
Lisa Niver: 8:46
Not only was I hoping I was on the right bus, I was hoping someone would throw me off the bus at the right stop. They could have just taken all my money and not put me on the bus. But I felt like we really trusted in the town. And we went to this little town and the man was making noodles by hand and I took a video of him making the noodles and you can imagine my surprise when he took a video of me eating the noodles.
Lisa Niver: 9:15
And then he showed me a photo of essentially the last Western tourist who’d come into his store and eat. It was a teeny little town, it was a thousand years old. It was amazing. It was in the Lonely Planet. We felt like we were on the backpacker trail sort of. But it’s very different and you just have to really trust that y’all are going to get to the next place literally.
Angela Tuell: 9:44
Right, you have so many incredible travels and you’ve been to over 100 countries. Are there any that you would say top the others? I won’t ask for a very favorite or anything, but ones that really stick out Actually right now.
Lisa Niver: 9:58
You could ask me that because I just went in January to Antarctica, and so that was my final continent and the subtitle of my book says six continents. So I was really hoping during my book tour that I’d get to my final continent, because it felt like such a part of the whole book process. Writing the book and thinking about the book and going to Antarctica. Antarctica to me was such blessing of just believing that you could make something happen, to be invited to go there and write stories.
I went with Quark Expeditions. It’s an expedition ship, so a lot of the things they’re not sure, like this is our plan but we’ll see how it goes. So every night they have recap and briefing and they talk about the day and they said, we always hope when we’re here in this part of Antarctica that we’re going to see all three species of penguins that you might see here. And you know, today we saw the third one, the Adelie penguin. You can only see them in Antarctica. Sometimes people come here and because of the weather or because of the ice, or because of X number of reasons, we don’t see them. And basically every night was like that. They’re like well, we really hope we might be able to go through the Le Maire channel, but we have to wait till we see it with our own eyes and look at the ice and see how the flow is.
Lisa Niver: 11:30
And one morning we were generally up, 7:30am. There’s so much to do with Zodiac cruising and landing, and my ship had two helicopters, which was amazing. So one morning the the speaker goes off, it was 6:20am. “Good morning, get out of your beds, we can see orcas.” Oh, wow, and it felt very magical.
Lisa Niver: 11:57
Some people want all their lives to take their kids to Disneyland. I wanted all my life to go see the ice in Antarctica and I got to do funny things. I travel with a hula hoop and asked for permission and I hula hooped on the bridge of the ship. Then I got permission, I hula hooped at the southernmost post office in the world, at Des Moines Point, and the woman at the post office told me it was the weirdest question anyone had ever asked her– “if someone could hula hoop at the post office.”
Lisa Niver: 12:44
I hula hooped on the fast ice south of the Antarctic Circle. They claim about 800,000 people in human history have been to Antarctica. And they believe just under 100,000 have been south of the Antarctic Circle. And so when we were south of the Antarctic Circle, we were able to come alongside the fast ice and they took out their drills and were checking, was it safe? I took the hula hoop with me. I couldn’t take off my jacket or my life jacket because of the conditions, but I was able to hoop on my arm and so I applied– I’ll have to keep you posted, but I applied for Guinness Book World Record.
Angela Tuell: 13:31
Oh nice, yes, Do keep us posted, and we will make sure to link to these videos in our show notes too, for anyone listening. I do have to ask, and this might go along with that. But what has been the scariest brave thing you’ve done?
Lisa Niver: 13:46
Oh, that’s such a good question, so it’s funny. I normally talk about the scariest one from the 50 that are in the book. I had a lot of eye issues growing up. We believed that I was clumsy and not athletic. It turns out there was something wrong with my eyes. So I had a lot of childhood accidents, and part of this book was, you know, reclaiming myself. I did these 50 things after my divorce to reinvent myself, and so one of the worst accidents I had was biking, and so the scariest thing I did was I went mountain biking in Lake Tahoe on North Star.
Angela Tuell: 14:25
Okay.
Lisa Niver: 14:26
That was super scary and I really was channeling how brave I was when I was on the ship in Antarctica, because I agreed to go stand up paddle boarding in Antarctica. Wow, and the whole time I was so nervous I was going to fall in, yeah, and once I did fall in, of course I had on a dry suit, but once I did fall in, of course I had on a dry suit. But once I did fall in I had a much better time because I wasn’t so worried.
Angela Tuell: 14:54
Yes, I could see that. You mentioned divorce. Was that before you started, before you went fully into travel writing? Or was that in the midst of it all?
Lisa Niver: 15:06
It was in the midst of it all because when I took the year in Asia, I was traveling with the man who I got engaged to the end of that first year and then we got married. When I was traveling again in Asia, that was with him and we had started the website together. I say– we started together. He came up with the name and I did everything else.
Angela Tuell: 15:26
I don’t really think that counts as an even partnership no, no, not at all.
Lisa Niver: 15:33
So I had built a lot of the website and starting to work as a journalist, kind of on and off while I was traveling, and married and then when I came home from Thailand by myself and got divorced, that was when I really went all in like networking with all the PR teams and going more conferences and taking it more as an actual job.
Angela Tuell: 15:58
Yes, okay, makes sense. I’m sure we can read much more about it in the book as well. How often do you travel?
Lisa Niver: 16:08
Now I travel every month. And sometimes twice a month, it depends what’s going on. The Antarctica trip with being in Argentina before and after, I was gone almost three weeks. So that was one trip. And recently I was in Washington DC filming with the Jet Set TV. I did the Ireland TV special that was on The Jet Set TV.
LINK to 2025 Telly Award winning Ireland TV special on The Jet Set TV
Angela Tuell: 16:29
Yes, that’s great. We’ll link to that also. Is there anywhere that you haven’t been? That’s on your list.
Lisa Niver: 16:37
You know it’s funny, people are surprised that there’s still so many things on my list. Okay, I would like to go to both Bhutan and Tibet. In Asia, I have not been to those. That’s top of my list. And although I’ve been almost everywhere in South America, I haven’t been to Brazil, which is the biggest country. When I was working at sea, the ship companies I worked with didn’t go there yet. And in Africa, I’ve been on safari and actually hula hooped with the Maasai warriors, but there’s 53 nations in Africa and I’ve been to four, so there’s a lot of Africa.
Angela Tuell: 17:18
Yes, yes, a lot there. Well, we’ll keep watching and see some of those adventures, right?
Lisa Niver: 17:25
I just love to learn about different people and see how they live, and I really want to go see the silverback gorillas.
Angela Tuell: 17:36
That would be amazing. What are you most proud of professionally so far in your career?
Lisa Niver: 17:43
One of the things I’m the most proud of is my book because, in fairness, it was so hard for me to write, to be so honest about how terrible the situation was in my marriage and the abuse and feeling like a failure and starting over and feeling alone. It was awful to live through, and then writing it a lot of times felt like reliving it in a terrible way. I did write the first part, the first chapter, in my therapist’s office.
Angela Tuell: 18:21
Wow.
Lisa Niver: 18:22
We kept talking about it and she said, do you think it would help you if we did some here and I said– how would we do that? And so we kind of we did a few different versions, tried to figure it out. So I had a lot of support and if I actually was at a book event last night and the woman asked me about my book when we went to dinner and I said, if I had just written the book and never published it, it still was worth it and so cathartic. But it has. The book came out September 2023 and I’m still doing events almost every month for the book. People keep inviting me, which is so I feel very grateful, and the book just won its 10th award.
Angela Tuell: 19:05
Wow, congratulations, that is fantastic, thank you. I know that you also have published it hasn’t just been the book more than 2000 articles in more than three dozen magazines and journals, including I’ll just name a few National Geographic, Wired, Teen Vogue, HuffPost, popsugar, AARP, Hemispheres Today. I could keep going.
Lisa Niver: 19:31
Yes.
Angela Tuell: 19:32
What is your current focus when it comes to articles?
Lisa Niver: 19:36
So lately I’ve been writing a lot for both Readers Digest and Booking.com. Also I have a March story in print in Pasadena Magazine about Ireland, and then in May for Pasadena Magazine I have a story about Antarctica and also I did a walking safari with the polar bears. That’s actually that’s my second Guinness book attempt. My attempt is that I did a polar plunge in the Arctic and the Antarctic within six months. It’s been an exciting, crazy, busy time.
Lisa Niver: 20:23
Yes, yes, I have written for a lot of different places and one of my focuses is to be able to share the destinations that I’m invited to as widely as possible, so including them on The Jet Set TV with an interview about Antarctica. I also spoke in LA on Spectrum News1 about Antarctica:
Angela Tuell: 20:59
So a lot of our audience are PR professionals, publicists, some other journalists. Do you have any stories about working with PR professionals that are most memorable, either in a positive or negative way that could help us learn?
Lisa Niver: 21:06
I think the relationships I’ve built with PR teams that have been the best have been the ones where it’s not just transactional about can you do something with this press release last minute? I have a few people that I’ve worked with literally since 2014 when I came back from Asia, when I first was getting divorced. At the time I was writing a lot for USA Today in the 10Best section and I met a few people in real life. I think that makes a difference to know the people, especially if they’re local, and we get together and go out for a meal and just talk.
Lisa Niver: 21:53
And over the years, with this one particular person, I remember once he called me and at the time he was working with Doubletree and they made this cookbook of cookies where each country or hotel put in their own recipe. And he called me to say–no one will write about this. I said that’s because it’s not a story. “Is there anything you could do to help me?” And at the time I wrote, for SheKnows
Lisa Niver: 22:26
I wrote for Thrive, I wrote for Huffington Post, they’ve all evolved their community open platforms. I said: I have an idea, I can do it for you for SheKnows, but here’s what I want. He said– I will do anything for you. So we’ve had that over the years where he could lean on me and I could figure something out for him and vice versa. When he did a global fam for not just Doubletree but for Hilton, I went. We did two continents and three cities and it was a crazy trip but it was so fun and he said–you’re the top of my list because you help me.
Lisa Niver: 23:11
I think that’s what people sometimes forget is we’re all here together trying to be kind and nice and answer emails and not just be snappy. It really is all about relationships. Like you said, that word is is in public relations, but that is really what helps us all do our job best.
My book came out and a couple of weeks later the massacre happened October 7th in Israel and it’s been a very hard time to be a Jewish journalist and I so appreciate when people say –how are you doing Everyone has a lot of opinions about the United States politics right now, and with good reason, and so people are impacted by that. It is important to know how that impacts someone’s situation with their home life.
Angela Tuell: 24:14
I think that’s important to treat people like actual people.
When we look at a travel journalist or talking with you, it seems like, oh, you’ve got this dream life, but we know it’s so much work as well. Do you do all of your own filming? I mean, obviously, writing, and that sort of thing but do you do everything yourself? And what are the kind of the give and take that you give up for having such a “dream life?”
Lisa Niver: 24:39
So I basically as many ways as you could imagine that it would work is how I do it. For example, in Antarctica, I filmed almost everything myself, except when I needed help and I could manage it. Someone else filmed me hula hooping on the ice or hula hooping across the circle on deck. But I’ve been doing all the editing for that.
For the Ireland TV segmen, that was a full show that we filmed in Ireland. I had a crew with me. I had three people with me, camera, sound and I was all the logistics, but that was a team and then a separate person did all the edits. So that was a big team for relative to being by myself.
Lisa Niver: 25:31
It’s a lot to manage all the emails and the edits and the schedule and running the schedule for social and the podcast and keeping up with pitching, and following up with the editor for the what feels like the 6,000th time…remember, you said you liked my idea, but in a kind of nice way. And as far as the give and take, it can be hard to be away and miss things and try to figure out — can you make it to that event for your friend, or do you have to say no to the trip. It’s definitely some juggling, but everyone that works has to juggle. How many days can they be off? You might not necessarily get to every bat mitzvah or every family holiday because traveling has gotten very expensive. Flights have gone up, a lot, hotels have gone up. I think a lot of people struggle with that from both sides for PR and the journalist side to send people. It’s very expensive.
Angela Tuell: 26:34
It is. It’s very hard and I know I’ve talked about this with others is we completely understand and know that freelance journalists cannot guarantee coverage. There’s another side to it with the clients that are investing so much money and how do we invest this and then not sure if we get. But it’s our job obviously to choose the journalists who write often and we know will do their best pitching stories. But it’s definitely a balance there.
Lisa Niver: 27:05
I think that is one of the hardest things is that, messiness. And so for myself, I am very cautious about what I agree to take, because I don’t want to be in the position where I can’t deliver, and so one of the things that I have built, we said go travel and it syndicates. I also write for the Jewish Journal –this is my 14th year.
Lisa Niver: 27:29
I can confirm coverage for you know my site, MSN, the Jewish Journal. For Antarctica, I have four episodes that I that I recorded in Antarctica — they’ll be on my podcast. In Ireland we recorded two episodes that are already live on my podcast. So I have the TV segments, plus the podcast, plus the writing, and then for Antarctica, I have a bunch of pitches out. I already confirmed the story for print for Pasadena Magazine, but I have a few other pitches out. For myself, I know you mentioned the videos, so I posted my 51st reel for Antarctica. They are my best performing videos ever. They’re doing great on TikTok.
Amazing interaction on Facebook and really good on YouTube. My YouTube’s over two and a quarter million views now. So there’s a lot happening.
Angela Tuell: 28:36
Your videos –they’re amazing. How do you keep track of it all? You mentioned the podcast that we have to talk about before we go.
Lisa Niver: 28:48
Yes. So I started my podcast: Make your Own Map -when I turned in my book. I wanted to be able to try something different. And Spotify was one of the first, I believe, with a focus on video podcasting. I wrote to a couple of my friends in the media side and I was like I don’t really understand what is this video podcast? How is it different from a movie? It seems like a movie and I’m good at that. I know how to make a video. And my one friend said I don’t see any difference. So I could just put up the video, I could interview someone on zoom and do the video, and that’s a podcast now. And she said I think so.
Lisa Niver: 29:50
That’s basically how it got started, cause I figured, well, if it’s not right, I’ll have to pivot. But I’ve started because it was just a video on Spotify for podcasting. And then YouTube made its own special YouTube for podcasting and because I’d been on YouTube already so long I automatically had the access for the YouTube podcast.
Lisa Niver: 30:45
I’m willing to try almost anything. Someone was asking me last night when we were out to dinner after the book event about TikTok. My agent had this workshop about social media and they gave a challenge to to get on TikTok Every author had an excuse –I’m too old, I’m too ugly, I don’t sound good. Anyway, the challenge was to make five TikTok reels a day for 30 days. Everybody refused to do it. I thought about it and decided to do one day. I said I’ll do one day. That’s how I do everything Small steps. I’ll do one day, I’ll make five.
Lisa Niver: 31:34
I was in Vegas for a scuba convention. I met a couple people during the day that were good at TikTok and they gave me tips after I’d done the workshop. And that night at dinner one of the ladies knew stuff about Instagram bonuses. Everybody helped me and then I had a thousand views the first day. So I said, I’ll do the second day. Anyway, I never gave up. I just kept doing it. Only one day, only one more video. At the end of 30 days I agreed to do another 30 days and at the end of 90 days, that was when I signed the contract with my publisher.
Lisa Niver: 32:09
It’s very hard to keep going sometimes, but I always recommend people start very small and If you can –start for free. People always ask me, should I pay for a logo for my website? Should I buy hosting for my podcast? Should I hire someone? I always recommend start small and for free, just try it. Maybe it’s not for you, maybe you don’t want to post every week, maybe you only want to post once a month, maybe you’re not a podcaster, you’re a TikToker. My website started in 2010. It’s been a long journey for me. I remember when there was no Twitter. And then, all of a sudden, people said–you have to join this thing. It’s called Twitter. Over the years, I’ve added each thing. Remember the cartoon- it says how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Angela Tuell: 33:11
Yes, yes, oh, that’s such great advice. So what is the best way for our listeners to connect with you online? I know there are so many ways.
Lisa Niver: 33:19
You can find me on pretty much any social media platform with my name, Lisa Niver, and I have a website that’s lisanivercom. I have wesaidgotravelcom, and both of those websites have access to my book, my podcast, and I have a class.
Angela Tuell: 33:45
We’ll include all of those links.
Lisa’s podcast: MAKE YOUR OWN MAP
Lisa’s book: Brave-ish
Lisa’s Class: Travel Writer 101
CLICK HERE for comp access to my class
Lisa Niver: 33:47
I’ll give you a code and people can have complimentary access to my class — Travel Writer 101. It’s on a platform called Udemy and people always ask me how could they get started as a travel writer? So I made this class. It’s like an appetizer. It’s just a little taster of the different areas you have to do if you want to be a travel writer, and I link in my course to people that have longer courses about specific things, like Nina from Travel and Leisure has an amazing class, but I don’t necessarily know if you’ve never written for anywhere that you want a huge class like that…my class is just a taster that’s great.
Angela Tuell: 34:34
Thank you so much, lisa. I really appreciate your time.
Lisa: Thank you, angela. This has been so much fun.
Angela: That’s all for this episode of Media in Minutes, a podcast by Communications Redefined. I’m your host, Angela Tuell. Talk to you next time.
