Now this is just a quick episode about learning and trying new things. On Friday last week I was at a conference with a group of entrepreneurs, and one of the group stood up and gave a talk on email marketing, and she'd got a particular spin on how to do it. And I thought that's really interesting, I've never thought about it that way, I will give that a try. So, on Saturday I sat down, I read a sequence of five emails, and I kicked it off to a list of what I thought were people who'd signed up for one of my freebie products, but then were no longer interested in the big product that I got to sell. And the first email went out on Saturday, the second one on Monday and the third one went out today, Wednesday. So far, I've had £10,000, which is what, $13,000 worth of sales, from a list of people that I thought were no longer interested in my products, and it just got me thinking. What's changed, what's different? The only thing that's different is my attitude, my thinking and...

- I was never actually present, I was, just felt completely lost, completely defeated, completely overwhelmed, all the time.

- This is the Great Escape Podcast.

- We are going for liftoff in T minus 30.

- All systems are a go.

- Hit it.

- And on this episode of the Great Escape Podcast, I am talking to Lex Wooldridge who is a mindset and lifestyle coach, and her specialization is for women who are struggling with internal battles. Lex, welcome to the podcast.

- Thank you for having me here.

- You're very welcome. Now, obviously I've looked into your story a little bit, and tell us what life was like before you made changes, 'cause it sounded like it was pretty grim.

- Yeah, I mean, I kind of always struggled with self-confidence and self-esteem issues, kind of my whole life. But it was all made so much worse after I had kids. I struggled for three years to actually become pregnant. It was a, it was something that I really wanted, I really wanted to have kids, but in this struggle to...

- [Stuart] It struck me recently that one of the things that holds a lot of us back from doing anything is we think we can't. There's that saying, you know, if you think you can't, you probably can't. And the reality is that most people who tried to do something were just people who tried to do something. They weren't geniuses, they weren't called to do it, they weren't somebody famous to begin with, they were just them. They had an idea, they went and they did it. And they may well have failed the first couple of times they tried it, or the first three times they tried it. But actually, did they fail, or did they find a way that it didn't work? Or did they find a way that, actually, it could be improved if we do it like this? So all of these things led me to think that the reality is that for most of us, the only thing that's holding us back is our own self-doubt, our own belief that we can't do it, our own belief that we, in some way, aren't up to the job. And the reality...

- [Stuart] This is the Great Escape Podcast. Episode 25.

- [Announcer] We are going for liftoff in T minus 30. All systems are a go. Hit it.

- [Stuart] And on this episode, I'm taking to Eric Sims, who, well basically starts his bio with drug smuggler. So Eric, welcome to the podcast.

- [Eric] Hey, thanks for having me, I appreciate it. Good to be here.

- [Stuart] You're very welcome. So, obviously, with an intro like that, there's gotta be an interesting story behind it. Tell us a bit about your life before you made the changes that got you to where you are.

- [Eric] Yeah, kind of the short version is I grew up in a middle class, you know, white family in Texas. And, you know, it's kind of traditional Southern Baptist Christian kind of upbringing that you get in the area. And I was never one that really took to it real well. Early on in my life, I found out that being, one, I was extremely insecure at a young age. And so I found very quickly that I could, you know, kind of control...

- [Stuart] This is the Great Escape Podcast. My name's Stuart Morris and this is episode number 24. A little escape.
- [Astronaut Over Radio] We are go for lift off in T minus 30. All systems are a go.
- [Male Bass] Hit it.
- [Stuart] One of the things about the Great Escape Podcast is that it's about people who've made a transition, whether it's from a bad relationship to no relationship, a bad relationship to a better relationship either with the same person or with a different person, or from a bad job to a good job, from a bad job to their own career defining what they want to do each day. Whatever the change has been, whatever the escape from some intolerable situation into a life that is more intentional, more thought through and deliberate, it doesn't really matter what that is but one of the key things, certainly for me on my journey, has been to find a life that is dominated by contentment and joy and fun rather than a life that's dominated by the nine-to-five and the commute....

:- [Stuart] This is the Great Escape Podcast, episode 23.
- [Intro Announcer] We are go for liftoff in T minus 30. All systems are go.
- [Stuart] And today on the Great Escape podcast, I am talking to Kenyon Zitzka, who left a factory job and now has his dream job out on the ocean. Kenyon, welcome to the show. And tell us about that escape.
- [Kenyon] Well, thanks for havin' me, first off. And yeah, like you said, I recently, well, couple years ago I, you know, made a leap, moved from upstate New York down to Charleston, South Carolina to get back out to sea. I'm a military veteran, I just retired from the Navy as well. And you know, I was in upstate New York working that, you know, quote unquote American Dream job at a factory, you know, the place where you're supposed to put 20, 30 years in, get that retirement, then sail off into the distance. But, you know, workin' that job I found myself pretty miserable. I was drivin' one hour one way just to get to that job. My wife and I, we...

- [Stuart Morris] This is the Great Escape Podcast. Episode 22.
We are go for lift-off in T-minus ten
All systems are a go
Hit it
- Yesterday was a tough day. For lots of reasons but primarily because we said good-bye to an amazing lady, one of my longest standing friends, Ann Collins. She has been fighting cancer for 10 12 years and kept bouncing back. But the thing that's really stuck with me is how everybody who was at the funeral spoke of how she was always positive, always finding beauty in the world, always trying to sow something of joy, or some uplifting thought. And that reminded me of something that when I'm teaching Celebrants, I think it's the last slide of the course, is to think about our legacy. What is it we want to leave behind? When somebody else is writing our eulogy, what three things would we want them to say about us? And yeah, we're not perfect, we're all human, we're all flawed people, we all have good days and bad days. But overall, what is the sense that...

- [Stuart] This is the Great Escape Podcast, Episode 21.
- [Recorded Voice] We are go for lift off in T minus 30. All systems are a go.
- [Stuart] And on this episode of the Great Escape Podcast, I'm talking to Mike McDonnell, who runs the Business on the Beach podcast, which is a good listen too. And his podcast is all about, well, working from the beach and building a business. So Mike, welcome to the podcast.
- [Mike] Thanks, Stuart. Thanks for having me on.
- [Stuart] You're very welcome. Now, tell us about your life before you decided to run your business from the beach. And I'm very jealous because Mike's in Lanzarote, and I'm guessing it's sunny.
- [Mike] It is funny. Looking out the window now, I don't think there's a cloud. But we did have a storm yesterday, so it was a bit windy, trees were blowing everywhere. I didn't leave the house because I thought I might not make it back. Because it was pretty furious outside, as we're recording this. But some back story is I wanted to...

As you know, one of the things that I do, amongst the many, is I take funerals for people who don't want a church ceremony. And I've had the opportunity, in the last few days, to explore the funeral industry in Melbourne, particularly, in Australia. And it's been a really interesting experience to meet other celebrants and people involved in the industry, to see their perspective on the way a funeral should be taken or prepared, and how the interaction with the family is interestingly different to the way that we do it, and the way we teach in the UK. And that got me thinking, once again, of something that I mentioned in last week's Little Escape, the way our brains get entrained in particular ways of doing things. And I think it's really important that sometimes we step outside our own experience of how something should be done, or our own tradition, if you like, and go and experience the way other people do it. Sometimes, the way other people do things may be really uncomfortable...

- [Stuart] In this episode, I'm talking to Kenny Weiss, who has founded The Greatness Movement, which I have to say, Kenny, is a name I just love. There's no subtlety about that. And your own story mirrors some of mine in a number of ways with struggling with mental health and addiction and various other things. So Kenny, tell us about your life before that process kicked in.
- [Kenny] Sure. First of all, thanks for having me. I'll try and give you the, I guess the CliffNotes, Readers Digest version if they have those out in England, in your part of the world. But ever since I was a kid, I've just always had this weird ability. I could walk in a room and see and feel people's trauma. I've heard people use a lot of different names for it. I don't know what it is, but I don't really care what you name it. It's just something I always had. And what really kinda changed my life is I was 10 years old. I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, opened up the door, and...