This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 141 / How Regular Women Take Risks with Liz Deacle

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

Our topic is about taking risks, but I didn’t want to cover it with one of those “mer-women” (like mermaids, but with independence) who has done it all, unafraid, and made it look effortless. I wanted to talk about it with someone who I know would be REAL.  Real women taking real risks, big and small, with REAL feelings about it. So, without further delay, let me introduce my new friend Liz Deacle.  Liz, is a British expat currently living in New Zealand with her family. Liz and her husband embarked on a year-long backpacking adventure with their teenagers on a budget of just $70 a day. This experience inspired Liz to start a travel blog where she discovered her hidden talent for storytelling and developed a mastery for using Pinterest to build a loyal audience.  Today, Liz and Brian spend long periods traveling, creating content for their two popular websites and running a membership site that helps other people who want to move to New Zealand. Their YouTube channel, “It’s a Drama,” has over a million views, and their comedy podcast also called It’s a Drama, has hundreds of thousands of downloads. She has just published her first book, The Travel Bog Diaries. With risk there comes failure, but failure isn’t permanent. Only regret is. And with risk there also comes success, confidence, and the life you really want. Isn’t that worth the risk? Start small, but start. To learn more about Liz you can visit her website at www.lizdeacle.com  or follow her on IG @itsadrama  To join Nicole’s pod (to get all the inside scoops, free stuff, and the occasional rant), click here

Hi friends, Nicole Kalil here. And I wonder if you see other women doing big things, taking big risks, putting themselves out there in big ways and think that they have something that you don't, that you believe it's somehow easy for them or less scary. I wonder if you compare yourself and tell yourself they're somehow better than you are, that they're special and you are not. I know that feeling because I do it too. Let's face it, we all do. But can I let you in on a little secret? There are more women who are just like you than there are these magical mer-women who sit on their gold rocks of success,

looking perfect and also somehow a little bored with their oceans of adoring fans. Mostly, the women you see are regular people, even if they're living irregular lives. With all the fears, all the doubts, all the imposter syndrome, all the mess fears, all the doubts, all the imposter syndrome, all the messiness, who face challenges, have had their heart broken, scream at their children, lose their shit, care too much about what other people think, and have times where

they question literally everything. I've yet to meet a single woman, no matter how well-known or successful, where that wasn't true. So on today's episode of This is Woman's Work, we're going to talk about how regular women like you and me can begin to do irregular things. Ultimately, it begins and ends with taking risks. Maybe some big risks, but mostly the small everyday ones. Because little risks taken and built up over time make the big risks seem even smaller because we've practiced, we've collected evidence that we can, so we begin to trust ourselves again to take the risks, small and didn't want to cover this topic with one of those mer-women who has done it all and made it look effortless. I wanted to talk about it with someone who I know would be real. Real women taking real risks, big and small, with real feelings about it.

My hope is we begin to rebuild our interpretation, internal narrative, approach, philosophy, expectation, aversion, fear, and relationship with risk. Because everything you want, everything that's important to you, lives on the other side of it. So without further delay, let me introduce my new friend, Liz Diekel, who I only met a couple of months ago, but I instantly loved for two very specific reasons. Actually, three reasons, but the first two are what matter for today's topic. She took a risk and she kept it real. The third reason is she's really funny, but not relevant for our topic today, except that I believe that being able to laugh at yourself and the shit that life brings actually does help when taking risks.

So let me intro her. Liz is a British expat currently living in New Zealand with her family. Liz and her husband embarked on a year-long backpacking adventure with their teenagers on a budget of just $70 a day. This experience inspired Liz to start a travel blog where she discovered her hidden talent for storytelling and developed a mastery of using Pinterest to build a loyal audience. Today, Liz and Brian spend long periods traveling, creating content for their two popular websites and running a membership site that helps other people who also want to move to New Zealand.

Their YouTube channel, It's a Drama, has over a million views and their comedy podcast, also called It's a Drama, where they share down-to-earth intimate conversations about life, relationships, and travel, has hundreds of thousands of downloads. Sounds pretty impressive, right? It is, but as you'll see, Liz is just like us. She's practicing, stepping out of the box, taking risks, and she's all about celebrating the imperfections of women. She has just published her first book, The Travel Bog Diaries, where she candidly shares hilarious, honest, and refreshingly real stories about traveling the world with her phone-addicted teenagers and a husband that suffers from bouts of acid reflux. Traveling the world imperfectly and then creating a business through storytelling and content

and writing a book that's bound to embarrass her kids makes her a phenomenal person to talk about taking risks. Liz, first let's talk about the small risk that you took that led us to having this conversation today because I know so many of us avoid even taking this risk, the risk of reaching out, of asking. Nicole, first of all, can I just say what an introduction and what an absolute honor it is to be on the podcast with you today. Thank you so much. What brought us to this to be able to sit and have a chat together now was me finding you on someone else's podcast. I was walking along the beach. I was just about to release my book. I was scared stiff. And you know how it is when you consume as much as you can to try and make

you feel calm and secure and confident since you look to other people that have already done what you're about to do. Even though you've got this amazing podcast and you're very famous popular podcaster I knew I thought I need to know this lady I need to know this woman I need this woman in my life and I came home and I found all your podcasts and sought you out and and found your email address and I just sat down and wrote to you and said look you know I love you basically I think you're wonderful thank you and said, look, you know, I love you basically. I think you're wonderful. Thank you. And I'd love for us to chat. And lo and behold, you replied and you didn't just reply with like, hi, yeah, thanks. You know, you replied with the most beautiful in-depth, just supportive email. It might sound while you're listening that I asked the question to make me sound like a rock star because Liz, you, did that and I appreciate conversations and she's absolutely crushing

it. She has areas of expertise that I can't even begin to wrap my brain around, like how to build a following on Pinterest and how to do a travel blog and how to pack your family and your children up and move across the country. But Liz, I think you did what so many of us do is we see somebody from the outside and we make them big in our own minds. And then it feels like such a risk

when in the reality is I don't get emails like that all that often. And I certainly don't ever get ones that are that funny. It probably meant at least as much, if not more to me as it did to you. But I think it is a good starting point of our conversation because we each had our individual interpretations of this risk. To me, it didn't seem like a risk at all. You reached out to me and I was so excited to get it. And then to you, it seemed like a big risk that I'd never respond. So all of that to say, why the fuck do we make so much up in our own minds about the

risks that we want to take or that are important to us or that matter? Any thoughts as to why we do that? Yeah, that is such a brilliant point. I don't know, Nicole. I don't know. I totally and utterly agree with you. I don't just do it around relationships and other people. I do it around situations, you know, that I build up thinking that? It's like you say, it's being brave enough to just step over and just think, you know what, what have I got to lose? You know, what have I got to lose? A woman I used to work with would say something to the effect of the answer is always

no, if you don't ask. And that always stuck with me where it was like, okay, I'm not no mathematician, but I know 50% is better than 0%. And if I don't ask, I have a 0% chance of getting what I want. If I don't take that risk, there's let's talk about, at least in my mind, significantly bigger risk that you took. How do you handle the noise that inevitably comes up in your own mind when you decide you want to take a risk or when you have that like moment of, you know, it's now or never. I'm really glad you asked that because I, I, I love telling people about this practice and I'm not sure if you or your listeners would have heard about this, but about 10 years ago, I read a book by Julia Cameron. I think her name is, and it's called the artist's way. So she talks about, it's called the morning pages and it's about sitting down every morning and getting into the practice of handwriting three sides of a four paper where you just spew your thoughts out onto paper. Okay. So it's not a diary. It's not a journal. It's just a mind dump.

And you start, like I say, you write, you handwrite it. You can't, you're not supposed to type it. I never have typed it. I've always handwritten it you can't you're not supposed to type it I never have typed it I've always handwritten it you can't read what it says it's it's illegible you can't it's just a scroll but it is the most if there was one thing that I could say in my life that I could never ever be without it would be doing my morning pages every day um at first it was a it was a hard habit to get into because it's like well where am I going to get 40 minutes every morning to do this and then once you realize the benefits of it it's like meditation or working out or I don't know drinking loads of coffee or something it's just something that makes you feel really good you know once you reap the benefits of it it's almost addictive because it's like sitting down you you know like obviously it's you but you're sitting down with a really best version of you you know just that inner version of you and you're talking and you're just putting down all your fears on the

paper and you answer yourself Nicole I know that sounds really weird and freaky but you do you're like you know you write down I don't you know what if I what if I message Nicole and she says no yeah but Liz what if she doesn't how's that gonna? And it's a kind of a conversation that you have with yourself. And I can honestly say hand on heart that that is that that's my secret. It's just, it's, it's the most wonderful practice I've ever, ever done. And when I don't do it, like the days when I don't do it, obviously things come up, you can't do it. Oh, I miss it. I'm like, I need to sit down with my paper and my pencil and I just need to write. So yeah. One of the things I love about what I've read so far of your book about your podcast, about our conversations is you're taking the authentic

real approach. I think a lot of times when we see people with travel blogs or who travel around the world, we hear about the best bits, right? Like the things that go magical and perfect and the experiences that can't be replicated and all that. You talk about those too, but you are also talking about the challenges, the hard times, the things that don't go at all according to plan are the things that you found out the hard way. My first question is, why are you taking that approach? And then my second question is, what's been the value for you in doing it that way? So I'm taking that approach because that is what I live for. I suck it up I I'm hungry for it I search people out who are real and honest and authentic and tell me things tell it as it is it just fills me up when I get that from other people just like when you talked about that social media post on the on the podcast with Anna when you meet someone who tells you real and authentic and show you I'm vulnerable and shows you and is honest

you it's like two magnets going like this it's just it's beautiful and I can't not do that I can't not give that back to the universe because that's what I want so that's what I'm gonna give you know it's just you need to know how how it is and Nicole it's it's playing out in in I'm not gonna lie it's playing out in two ways I've had I've had a bit of a roller coaster because some people have said it's too much you know it's just you you need to tone it down people don't really want to hear that Liz they don't want to hear that you're wetting your pants on a train and you know that you want to all this stuff happens they they want nice but that's only a tiny fraction but as you said earlier it's that tiny fraction that we tend to

zone in on and and and creates the all the fear but the reason that it the way it's played out for me that has been magnificent and has been worthwhile it's when you get messages from women and men saying, oh, thank you. Thank you so much for telling me how it is. You know, thank you so much for being real. When people take risk, and I have to imagine this happens for men too, but I think especially for women, when we take risk, how quick there is for people to come along and say too much. And I have this quote, I'm looking at it right now. It says, you will be too much for some people. Those aren't your people. And that's just sort of my go-to in those moments is, you know, anytime you do anything worth doing, anytime you do anything big that involves risk, there's going to be people who come out of the

woodwork and have an opinion about it. And I'm not saying just because it's not a good opinion that they should never be listened to. But if the opinion falls into you're too much for me or other people, those are usually the people that I'm like, you know what? You go play small with your small friends and your small people. I'm not interested in your too much. Liz, I think one of the things we as women do, maybe more than our male counterparts when it comes to taking a risk is we think how it will look to other people.

One of my favorite risks that you're taking that really flies in the face of that is the cover of your book. So, you know, if, if you were not willing to take the risk because of how it would look to other people, I know the cover of your book would look wildly different than it does. So tell us all about the, and ladies, as you're listening, you're just going to appreciate this so much. This is a big risk. Tell us about the and ladies as you're listening you're just gonna appreciate this so much this is a big risk tell us about the cover of your book so the name of my book is called the travel bog diaries and the name the word bog in english slang is toilet for toilet i know in america it's

it's it's the the um the muddy like a boggy muddy thing isn, isn't it? So, but yeah, bogging, especially in the North of England is, is, is the toilet. And the reason I called that book, that was because like probably 99.99% of women in this world, we do our best thinking when we're just escaping and sitting on the loo and going, do you know what? Just leave me alone. Just let me have five minutes. Do not come in and do not try that handle so yeah yeah exactly exactly um so the majority of the stories from my book the thoughts you know that I was going to write were all original they all originated from when I was sitting in the toilet so that's why the book is called the travel bog diaries and of course I had it in my mind but right from day dot about the cover and I thought

wouldn't it be wonderful if it just had a woman at first I just thought a woman sitting on the toilet with maybe a map you know and a glass of wine or you just you're just sitting on the toilet and I thought yeah that that that would be great and then I did I started doing like lots of research about travel books and I don't know if you you you read many travel books but they're they're quite similar you usually see a parasol stuck in the sand and a pair of sunglasses and maybe a cocktail and it's all done cartoony and I thought oh the thing is Liz you know you might go and get it wrong and do the wrong cover. If you go and put a woman on the toilet with a mat, why don't you just do what everyone else is doing? So I was battling with this and thinking, you know, do I do what I want to do or do

I do what other people are doing and are obviously far more successful than I am because they are famous authors and I'm not. But it's anyway, so I wrote the book and it came to design in the cover and it was the crunch time and I said to my husband do you know what can you just take a photo of me sitting on the toilet and let me just see what it looks like I'll put it up to canva and I'll have a play around with it and I'll just see what it looks like and he's like yep okay so I sit on the toilet and I start to get undressed he said what you you doing I said I said I said well I'm gonna just sit here in my bar and knickers and he said oh right I said actually I said I

better just pull my knickers down a little bit because you don't sit on the toilet with your knickers up do you and he's his face was just like oh I don't actually believe you're doing this so I said oh come on come on stop stop standing there looking like that just take a picture of me please and I took the photo and he gave the phone back to me he goes there you go what do you think and I looked at the photo and I am sitting there on the toilet with looking like a very very real woman with rolls of flab hanging over the map and my boobs resting on my belly in my bra that doesn't do a very good job of hoisting my boobs up. And yeah, I just looked at it. And the first thing I thought was, oh my gosh, that is brilliant. That is, that is a woman

sitting on the toilet, looking at a map thinking, okay, how do I get myself together and take my kids around the world? So I sent the book cover off to a designer. I was so confident. I don't know what happened because I was so confident. I was like, yeah, this is it. This is brilliant. This is fantastic. And I sent it off to the designer and she loved it. And she played around with it and did all this pretty font. And then when she sent it back to me, you know, like how designers give you like two or three goes to have a, you know, like, oh, then what do you think of this? And then you have another go and another go. She sent it back to me. And I just thought, oh, no, oh, no, no, no, I can't, I can't do that. You know, just all I could see was just this, this, this woman sitting on the toilet in a bar of knickers. And all of a sudden I was awash with fear. And it was something that she did. I sent it back to her and I said, can you just maybe just put something else in the picture? So it isn't just me sitting there in my bra and knickers.

And she put an empty toilet roll holder. She superimposed a toilet roll holder with a little bit of scrappy toilet paper hardly any toilet paper and that changed the way I felt about the whole cover because all of a sudden it was like oh it's not just about me it's about it's a this this is a this is real now this is this just symbolizes everything that that book is about which is just real and budget and humor and everything else so yeah I would like to say to you that I designed that cover and I was like yeah baby you know I'm all lit I can I can handle it but actually Nicole I I struggled with it you know I struggled with that image and that is again something that we would I'd love to talk to you

about maybe another time but going back to body image in my family I grew up to if you weren't my dad told us that if you weren't you know stick thin and perfect then it was bad and all I could see was this image of this woman that wasn't perfect sitting on the toilet, just relaxing her belly and looking normal. But I had this battle in my head going, yeah, but Liz, you're not perfect. You know, that doesn't look good. Hire a model, hire a pretty model with a good body and sit her on the toilet in her stockings and suspenders with her martini and a map. It'll look far better. But but yeah, no, I just kept coming back to that thing of like staying true to myself and being, this is it. This is what this book is about is about being real and authentic. And you have to do this, Liz, you just have to just put it out there and do it.

All of that is a masterclass in taking risks and choosing confidence. Because I think sometimes we have this idea that when we take a risk and we're confident about it, that there is no mind fuck, that there is no going back and forth, that we somehow just know. And that has not been my experience. It's the, this is what I wanna do. And then you start going down that road

and you're like, oh shit, it's getting real, right? And then you're then you're like, maybe I don't want to do that. Or maybe I just want to do it this way. And then it's the, and then, and it's somehow always coming back to that voice within yourself that says, do that. And, and it's all so hard to listen to you sometimes. And you've got to stay true to it. Haven't you've got to stay true to it, haven't you? You've got to stay true because if you don't, how are you going to feel? As you go through a big risk, like writing a book, part of the process is to elicit other people's opinions, other people's knowledge, their expertise. I know, you know, with your blog that you had a hugely popular travel blogger who told you to stop writing your stories. You had mentioned to me that you had somebody read your book that said you should take what you thought were very vital parts out of the book, that they were, again,

too much for people. How do you listen to your inner knowing? How do you go back to that internal voice? How do you choose confidence? How do you continue forward with the risk when those things get in the way? Yeah, I'd like to just say that it's just, I've heard previous guests of yours say the same. It's just like a feeling, but it's just, you know, when you know, don't you, you just, I remember someone saying to me, if you are not terrified about the thing you're about to do then it's not worth doing and I always try and remember that advice it's like if this isn't scaring you Liz if this is

not scaring the shit out of you then don't do it you have to do what is burning inside of you that's frightening you you know ultimately because your experience now like you said we're in our third section of life we're in our third act you know that when you do something that you really want to do even though it's scaring the fuck out of you when you do it you feel so good you feel so proud. And so yes, that is what makes me think, no, you are going to do it. I don't care if you're scared, you're going to do it. You're going to do it because you know what you're going to feel like on the other side. Yeah. Because that's the thing I know now that I didn't know in my thirties, in my twenties, that feeling is worth doing it for, even if nothing else happens, just that pride in self. I feel zero fear about going outside to get my mail from my mailbox. Why?

Because it's not important. It's not a big deal. There's no, but when it comes to anything worth doing anything magical or big or important. Of course, I always feel like I want that combo excitement and fear. When I feel excitement and fear, and maybe not equally at all times, but when I'm vacillating between excitement and fear, that's when I know I'm up to something big. That's when I know I'm doing something worth doing. That's how I felt when I've done anything great in my life. And now I kind of chase that feeling. I'm so glad that you said that Liz, because I agree. It's the pride and self that happens when you do those things that you become almost addicted to it. Right? Like, why can't I just be normal?

Well, we'll be abnormal together, my friend. When you put your podcast out about the social media, were you scared about that? Were you scared about going out and saying, no, fuck social media. I'm not going to do it. You must've been. I think there are a handful of episodes that we've put out that I wasn't sure we were going to put out. And that when we did, I almost like hid. I didn't check my emails. I didn't, you know, look at how the podcast was doing. I didn't, cause I just kind of didn't want to know. I think I was more scared about the decision than I was about communicating the decision. I was more scared of like, what does this mean for my business? Am I screwing everything up?

You know, am I setting myself on fire? And I still have some of those moments. And I know that I know, like you said, and I just am going to keep trusting and walking along with that decision and being thankful that my inner knowing told me to get off of social media. Didn't tell me to get in my bra and underwear on a toilet. So I'm feeling good that my risk feels less risky than yours right now. Just that thing, isn't it? When you know that you're doing something risky and you're going to, there is like, for instance, with you in that social media post,

it was just, even if you just are helping one person by doing that, if one woman looks at that book and thinks, oh, thank God, you know, that's how I sit on the toilet and look at my map, you know, that's how I am or reads my book and thinks, yeah, that's what I feel like when my kids drive me insane. It's that connection. I keep going back to that connection. And that's how I am or reads my book and thinks, yeah, that's what I feel like when my kids drive me insane. It's that connection. I keep going back to that connection. And that's why I love your show so much because you make women connect. You make, we, we, I feel connected to you and there's no more powerful feeling than that. And I think we're at risk of losing it. Aren't we? You know, just that, Oh, just, I just want to connect you.

I just want to connect with you. I just, I want to be close to you. I want to hear your thoughts. I just, it's a wonderful thing that you're doing on your podcast. Absolutely wonderful. And I just think if you can do one thing that's like that with a book and sitting on the toilet, if that can make one woman feel to me, like I feel about you is like, I just feel connected to her then. Fantastic. Fantastic. It was worth my husband's face of looking in horror as I sat there. I'm already a big fan of Brian. So no, it's that's exactly right.

And it feels so good when you know that you have made that connection or have made that impact. It makes it all worth it. And I think we are craving connection, but we're craving real and authentic. And I also think the universe sends us the messages we need and it delivers on our desires. If you think about the timing of when we were connected, I think it was like the week before I released an episode about making new friends as an adult. And, you know, again, the timing of our connection, the only thing I'm disappointed in is how far away you are. So we can't meet for coffee on a regular basis. But, you know, you put it out there and, and I find, you know, you have to trust yourself and the universe or God or whatever it is that you believe in sort of works its magic behind the

scenes to put it in front. And that's sometimes how I know I'm on the right track. Like sometimes I know validation is for parking. I get in, people are like, oh, you don't need validation. I'm like, no, I don't need it to be confident, but it sure does feel good when I get it. And that validation of meeting you when I'm talking about wanting to make new friends or having this conversation about risk, as I'm pondering what my next risk is, I get that feeling that nothing's an accident and it's all working for good and that I can trust, even though I don't know, that I can trust. And I'm so grateful for that. And I'm grateful to you for being one of those people for me. So thank you for your time today and also for your

friendship in such a short period of time. Thank you so much. It's an absolute honor. And thank you for reaching back out and answering my email. You're just so lovely. Thank you. My extreme pleasure. So if you're listening, check out Liz on her website, lizdiegel.com or listen to It's a Drama podcast. It's hysterical, my friends. You got to check it out. And of course, go to Amazon and order her book, The Travel Bog Diaries. You can find it again on Amazon. And Liz, thanks again. And I hope everybody who's listening goes and buys your book. Let's make her an Amazon bestseller, friends.

Liz's risks may not be your risks, but I promise you there is a risk you need to take to get whatever it is that you really want. I know it's scary. I know you're not sure if you can do it. The good news is that nobody ever really is. So you're in excellent company. And a good rule of thumb is the people who judge the risks you take are either not taking risks themselves or might be afraid of how your risk will impact them. Or they could just be assholes. That's also an option. All I know is this. With risk, there does come failure, but failure isn't permanent. Only regret is. And with risk, there also comes success, confidence, and the life you really want. Isn't that worth the risk? Start small, but start risk.

It's a requirement of doing woman's work.