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Episode #159: Lynne Nieman

Founder

Wander Your Way

Episode #159: Lynne Nieman
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Guest Bio

Lynne Nieman is the founder of Wander Your Way, a travel planning company dedicated to helping people experience Europe with authenticity and heart. She’s also the host of the Wander Your Way podcast, where she shares destination insights, planning tips, and stories that inspire listeners to explore Europe independently. With a background in photography and a passion for off-the-beaten-path destinations, Lynne has spent more than a decade crafting personalized European itineraries that emphasize meaningful travel, local connections, and slow exploration. Her journey began with a solo trip to Spain in 2005 and has since taken her across the continent — hiking in the Alps, sipping wine in Tuscany, and diving deep into the cultures of countries like Slovenia, Ireland, and France.

What started as a travel blog evolved into a full-time business rooted in Lynne’s belief that independent travel opens the door to transformation. In addition to custom trip planning and podcasting, she now leads small group tours through Wander Your Way Adventures, inviting others to discover the Europe she knows and loves. Her mission is simple: to help others wander in a way that’s personal, purposeful, and unforgettable.

Show Summary

In this episode of the Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Podcast, host Jason Elkins speaks with Lynne about her path from government employee to full-time travel entrepreneur. She reflects on the solo trip that sparked her love for Europe and shares how that one experience led her to launch Wander Your Way — a company built on the power of independent travel.

Lynne discusses the evolution of her business from blogging to professional planning and podcasting, the role of photography in how she sees the world, and the value of finding a like-minded community when pursuing big dreams. Whether you’re planning your first trip abroad or starting a passion-driven business, Lynne’s story is filled with practical wisdom and inspiring reminders that it’s never too late to rewrite your path.

Key Takeaways

  • ✓ Independent travel can lead to deep, personal transformation
  • ✓ Lynne began her journey with a simple blog and built a thriving travel business
  • ✓ Her love for maps and geography helped fuel her lifelong curiosity
  • ✓ Photography is both a creative outlet and storytelling tool for her adventures
  • ✓ Podcasting allows her to reach and inspire a global community of travelers
  • ✓ Community and mentorship are essential for entrepreneurial growth
  • ✓ Accountability partners can keep you focused and moving forward
  • ✓ Transitioning from a government job to entrepreneurship is possible at any stage of life
  • ✓ Travel can be a powerful way to inspire others to explore new paths
  • ✓ Passion projects often evolve into meaningful, sustainable careers

What You’ll Find on Wander Your Way

  • ✓ Personalized European travel planning with an emphasis on local experiences
  • ✓ Small group adventures to unique, less-touristed destinations
  • ✓ The Wander Your Way podcast, offering travel tips, stories, and destination deep-dives
  • ✓ Photography that captures the spirit of European landscapes and culture
  • ✓ Resources and blog posts to help travelers plan with confidence
  • ✓ A philosophy rooted in slow travel, authenticity, and connection

Learn more about Wander Your Way and connect with Lynne at:

https://wanderyourway.com

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Podcast Transcript

This transcript is auto-generated on recording, and has not been edited by a human. It may contain lots of mistakes, crazy words, and stuff that makes no sense. The host and the guest are not responsible for the accuracy of the transcript.

Jason Elkins (00:01.034)
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the big world made small podcast for the adventure traveler. We’ve got an adventure and a fellow podcaster joining us today. So super excited about that. We’ve got Lynne Neiman. Lynne is the founder of Wander Your Way. And instead of me telling you all the wonderful things that she does with Wander Your Way, I’ll let her do that here in just a moment. But Lynne, welcome to the show. Happy to have you here.

Lynne Nieman (00:24.117)
Thanks, Jason. I’m happy to be here.

Jason Elkins (00:26.72)
Yeah, so we spoke a few weeks ago, had an interesting conversation, spent a lot of time talking about podcasting, how you do yours, how I do mine. That was super, super helpful for me. And I thought, you know, we need to come back and have a conversation that everybody can benefit from. So thank you so much for agreeing to do that. Lynne, we’re gonna, we’re definitely gonna get into Your backstory, kind of figure out how you got from where you are to where you are now. But before we do that, let’s give our listeners kind of that elevator pitch, if you want to call it that, for Wander Your Way.

Lynne Nieman (00:56.334)
Wonderyourway is a business that is focused on all things Europe travel. That’s the shortest version.

Jason Elkins (01:04.489)
Wow, okay. That’s the shortest elevator pitch I’ve ever heard here. But it makes sense. mean, it very clearly defines what you do. I know the podcast is part of it. What are some of the other kind of key parts that someone might want to know before they decide if they’re going to listen to this conversation?

Lynne Nieman (01:22.518)
So I actually also, um, so I started off blogging, um, and probably even before I started wonder Your Way, was blogging and I was blogging about travel, but I’d say mostly Europe travel. Cause that’s where my interests kind of, but that was the, the part of the world that interested me the most. And then I started wonder Your Way. And that is when I started planning people’s trips to Europe. So I kind of decided back in.

some late 2012, early 2013 that travel agents were starting to make a little bit of a comeback. So I decided to go in that, go down that road because I thought, well, it be a better Way to try to like earn a living. can still travel, you know, but cause you know, I wasn’t sure how the blogging would go. And that was probably still kind of maybe before podcasts were getting too, too popular. So

So yeah, so I started to plan people’s trips to Europe and I try to get people kind of off the off the motor coach so that they’re not, you know, traveling with 50 of their so-called best friends and that they get to go and wonder their Way. So that’s kind of really like kind of the impetus behind it, because I felt like there were a lot of people, I think that wanted to go and travel the Way like I was traveling, which was independently and kind of on my own, but it’s like, well, where do you start?

And so that’s where I felt like I could help people. So I always tell people I can help you plan a little of Your trip or all of Your trip. And I have kind of varying levels of travel planning services for people. So if you just kind of need some help kind of ironing out a few details, I can help with that. If you need everything done and there are some people who are like, nope, I don’t have the time, I will pay you to plan everything.

Jason Elkins (03:12.694)
Mm-hmm.

Lynne Nieman (03:13.678)
me where I’m supposed to be, here’s the things I want to do, then I can kind of do what I call full-on customized travel planning. So yeah, so that’s kind of how things started. It kind of went blogged, travel planning, and then I started the podcast in the midst of the pandemic, January of 2021, and that has since grown. So I’m not exactly sure when that’s coming out, but it’s five, it’s…

It’s pretty much five years that I’ve been podcasting and I’m loving it. just helping people travel to Europe.

Jason Elkins (03:44.616)
Yeah, yeah, very cool. I, yeah, and we’re gonna come back and dig into that a little further, because I already have a few questions around that. But I also recognize sometimes I get distracted by those questions. And then we forget the the really important stuff, which is how the heck did you get into this? We’re going to go back before you started the blog, you kind of already touched on that a little bit. But most people don’t just wake up one day and become a travel blogger or a travel agent or a tour operator.

So I don’t know how far back we need to go to kind of understand all this, but what do you think? How far back? Sometimes we go back to birth and sometimes not quite that far.

Lynne Nieman (04:19.726)
Well, yeah, well, I mean, I would say I would go back and I have a big birthday coming up. So it’s good. We don’t have to measure that. We don’t have to measure that. But so we’re going in the Way back machine. you know, when I was, I think when I was a kid, even like, you know, back in the days before the internet, back when there were actual like…

Jason Elkins (04:30.026)
We don’t have to mention numbers. won’t, you don’t mention numbers. I won’t mention numbers.

Jason Elkins (04:46.954)
Hey, said don’t mention, we don’t have to mention numbers. Just kidding.

Lynne Nieman (04:49.614)
That’s okay. I’m okay with it. When we had encyclopedias and I would get out and I would look up places and I was always interested in maps and other places. I liked watching things like any sort of National Geographic thing that would come on TV before the Discovery Channel came around. I just really was always, I think, interested in other places.

Jason Elkins (05:10.198)
Mm-hmm.

Lynne Nieman (05:16.32)
everything from the natural world to how other people lived and things like that. I think there’s always been that part of me that was sort of a, just had that curiosity and a natural born explorer. But my family wasn’t, we just didn’t really travel far and wide. It’s like we went to the beach, I grew up in Ohio. So was like, yeah, where do you want to, my parents would go, where do you want to go on vacation?

Jason Elkins (05:39.636)
Well, the beach is a pretty far. The beach is pretty far from Ohio. it’s

Lynne Nieman (05:43.594)
Yeah, yeah. mean, we were going to places like North Carolina or Florida or something like that and spending time on the beach or whatever. We did a few other things, Smoky Mountains and places like that. But my family wasn’t necessarily probably as adventurous as I am. So it probably was when I was, and I will give my age, when I was 30 and I moved to Colorado that…

Jason Elkins (05:47.308)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (05:56.107)
Mm-hmm.

Lynne Nieman (06:11.414)
I really kind of started to explore more on my own. was really like, loved being in the mountains. That’s where I moved out there. I was a photographer at the time. still am. that’s probably the other thing that I do is, is photography and you know, I just, I just went off exploring, you know, I just hop in my car. You know, I remember getting up a lot of times super early. I was first living in Boulder. So I would like drive up to Rocky Mount national park at like super early to photograph the sunrise and

you know, go for a hike before the park got busy and then I’d leave as everybody else was just hitting the trail. So, I really got into the outdoors, which is kind of one of my favorite places to be, I think, as I travel. So, I think I just kind of explored a lot when I lived out there for 15 years. And so,

It was kind of really during that time that I started to spread my wings a little bit more and get to know some places like out West, you know, cause having grown up in the Midwest, I didn’t probably really get out West very much. so it was like Colorado and Utah and, know, down to new Mexico and, know, did the Grand Canyon and all those kinds of fun places. And, finally also took my first trip during that time.

over to Spain. So I took my first international trip.

Jason Elkins (07:34.602)
Okay. So this, and this is the Europe connection and we’re going to dig much deeper into that, but there’s a few questions that kind of came up as I was listening to that and a few common trends that I’ve seen with our guests. Do you know those word cloud things where you could go online and you could like take a bunch, an essay or like, maybe reviews or whatever, and you could feed them into the system and it would spit out this big design with all the words that come up the most often. Is that something you’ve ever seen or heard of?

Lynne Nieman (07:38.029)
Mm-hmm.

Lynne Nieman (07:42.424)
Okay.

Lynne Nieman (08:04.11)
I think I’ve heard of it, but I’ve actually never done it. It sounds cool.

Jason Elkins (08:05.964)
I don’t know why I’m going off on this tangent, but I was discussing it with my mother the other night, so I guess it’s top of mind. Anyway, if you were to take all the transcripts from all of the episodes that were recorded, the words that you would see show up probably the most common are national geographic, atlases, maps, when we’re talking about the childhood part. When I heard you say that, I’m like, okay, yeah, this is…

Maybe there’s a lot of other people that read National Geographic that didn’t end up in the travel business, but based on the people I’ve had conversations with. So I guess, did you have the actual magazines? Cause you mentioned National Geographic Television or the…

Lynne Nieman (08:47.302)
Mm-mm. Yeah. Yeah, I think it was, maybe it wasn’t, maybe it was that, I don’t remember if it was T, maybe it was like.

Wild Kingdom or something. I don’t know. just, it just seemed like there was Musial of Omaha. Yeah. Wild Kingdom. might’ve been something, but, there might’ve been like some specials that maybe came on every now and again on TV, some national geo, geo specials or something that maybe came on. And so maybe those are the things that I’m thinking of. but they were national geographic like, or they were actual national geographic. No, we did not have the magazines.

Jason Elkins (08:58.302)
yeah. You remember mutual of Omaha.

Jason Elkins (09:07.409)
Yeah. I remember that.

Jason Elkins (09:24.294)
Okay. but you also mentioned, you also mentioned maps, which is always, it’s, it’s one that comes up a lot. Did you have maps on Your wall growing up?

Lynne Nieman (09:25.558)
I don’t remember. don’t think so. Yeah, no.

Lynne Nieman (09:36.544)
I did not. it’s something.

Jason Elkins (09:37.928)
I just and as I’m looking as I’m looking at you right now, because for those listeners that, you know, don’t see the screen, she’s got a world map right behind her on the wall. know what someone else is. I know you’re not at home, but.

Lynne Nieman (09:48.642)
But I’m not, but, but, but I know I’m dog sitting for friends. So, so, so, and, they’re good friends who I’ve traveled with. so yeah, so it’s appropriate. yeah, you know,

Jason Elkins (09:59.296)
Yep. So what kind of stuff, go ahead.

Lynne Nieman (10:04.846)
No, I was just going to say I didn’t have maps on the wall, but I just remember like, I remember in the encyclopedias, like opening up, like, you know, you would go to like, maybe I’d hear something about a place or a country. And so, you know, I’d go and you’d like figure out where it was in the world. I’m sure that we probably had, you know, I know, like we would always like, I remember like talking about like going to Florida, we would get a triptych from AAA and it would, it would give you the route, you know, because it was before GPS and all that kind of stuff.

Jason Elkins (10:15.468)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (10:31.75)
okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Lynne Nieman (10:33.536)
And so they would kind of route out the Way to go from where you live to Your vacation spot. And I would be the one, like, so you would flip it over. You could open it up and look at things that were more detailed and everything. Because they would highlight Your route. And I remember I’d be like, can I have the trip tip? And I would be like, where are we? You’re looking out the window and looking for signs for where you are. So that was me.

Jason Elkins (10:39.179)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (10:50.262)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (10:58.526)
Mm hmm. That’s that’s pretty cool. Did you have siblings as well traveling with you? Yep.

Lynne Nieman (11:03.662)
Yeah, yeah, but they’re much older. So my sister’s almost nine years older than me and my brother’s seven years older. So by the time I was kind of in that adolescent teenage years, my sister got married when I was 12, my brother got married when I was 16. So it was me and my parents kind of in the latter part. Like once I got to be like 13, 14, probably even when I was 12, it was me and my parents taking vacations. So it was kind of like an only child.

Jason Elkins (11:19.453)
Okay, okay.

Jason Elkins (11:33.548)
Do you remember either conversations with them or any, was there any inkling that they were also as interested as you were, or maybe just things that have happened since then? did, was, I guess what I’m saying is, did you get the sense that you being interested in the triptychs and the maps and paying attention to where you’re going, did you ever hear anything about Your siblings being the same Way or were you just the odd duck completely? I shouldn’t call you, I shouldn’t use that term.

Lynne Nieman (11:59.31)
That’s fine. I’m total. I will. I will own that. you know, yeah, you know, I don’t know. you know, interestingly, my sister has been somebody who’s never lived more than a few miles from, from my parents. my parents are now both gone, but, but, know, it’s so, I don’t think she was ever one that, you know, kind of would be that type of person. My brother, maybe a little bit.

Jason Elkins (12:04.908)
Yeah, I do too.

Jason Elkins (12:18.613)
Okay.

Lynne Nieman (12:30.766)
But I definitely just stood out and I’m not really 100 % sure where I got the travel bug. mean, sometimes I feel like my parents both, I think they enjoyed it. When they retired, they kind of took those little like bus trips with all the old people and they’d go, it’d just be a few days, but they did a lot of that just around the States and stuff like that.

I think that they both had a little bit of curiosity. I think maybe my dad a little bit more than my mom, but at the same time, know, yeah, I mean.

Jason Elkins (13:01.91)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (13:05.803)
Do you remember, we shouldn’t talk about them, but do you remember times when you would travel as a family? Did everybody get along pretty well? Because traveling can be pretty stressful when you get in a car and drive from Ohio to Florida with any more than one person.

Lynne Nieman (13:16.206)
Yeah.

Lynne Nieman (13:20.142)
Yes. Yes, yeah, yeah. I’m sure there were times where we were getting on each other’s nerves and things like that. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Once they were kind of in college and then it was just me, it was a lot easier than it was just.

Jason Elkins (13:29.676)
But if you were the only kid in the car, that helps. A lot. As a father, I can say that, yeah.

Lynne Nieman (13:48.94)
my mom and dad and I, so yeah.

Jason Elkins (13:51.182)
yeah, that’s, that’s totally different. Cause then you’re not fighting about he’s on my side of the seat or, know, don’t make me pull this car over those, those things that probably some of us can relate to if you’ve ever traveled with family. what I’m curious, like when you were in school or at that age or wherever you

Lynne Nieman (13:52.622)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Lynne Nieman (14:00.046)
Yeah. Uh huh. Yep.

Jason Elkins (14:13.856)
What did you think you were going to do with Your life? What was Your vid? Did you have a vision of I want to be an accountant or I want to be this or I want to be that? Did that do you remember?

Lynne Nieman (14:23.534)
Yeah, I was gonna be a journalist. In fact, when I went off, I mean, I was on the high school, I was on the high school newspaper. And when I went off to university, I went to Ohio University and they have a really good journalism program and that’s what I started out in. And I think I just kind of lost some confidence in myself to be honest. When I could look back and that, and when you’re 19 or 20 and…

Jason Elkins (14:25.292)
okay.

Lynne Nieman (14:50.548)
I didn’t do very well on my first news reporting class. I actually hated it. It was like writing obituaries and accident reports and things like that. And I was like, my God. Somebody stick a fork in my eye. So I always have this feeling like I was maybe born too soon. I would have done so much better if I could have gone directly into doing something like blogging because it was like,

Jason Elkins (14:57.716)
Yeah.

Lynne Nieman (15:18.824)
know, like I even remember sometimes in high school, you know, it’s like, okay, you got to write this actual, you know, story. And it’s like, nope, you’re putting Your opinion in that. Well, guess what? When it’s Your blog, if you want to put a mix of my opinion and facts, you can write whatever you want. And so, and the same with a podcast, you know, it’s like, can inject my opinions in there. So

Jason Elkins (15:30.816)
You can write whatever you want.

Jason Elkins (15:37.461)
Uh-huh.

Lynne Nieman (15:40.862)
I honestly think that I’ve sort of come back around a little bit to the journalism by all the things, like some of the content creation that I do. So I feel like I’ve kind of come full circle with that. And in fact, I’m kind of hoping to do a little bit more maybe like interviews with people as I travel.

Jason Elkins (15:45.856)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (15:57.013)
So.

Lynne Nieman (16:03.854)
I just kind of bought some of those little lapel travel microphones. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I got some good recommendations and I got that and I thought, so when I take off for travel in 2026, I’ve got a couple of people that I’m going to definitely be meeting up with and I’m like, I wanna do some interviewing. I wanna capture because that’s one of the things I love about travel is like.

Jason Elkins (16:08.513)
the lavalier mics, mics, those. Yeah, yeah, yep.

Lynne Nieman (16:32.424)
of the people that I meet. And sometimes I’m secretly pulling out my phone and putting the voice memo thing on. I mean, I’ve run into people on the trails and stuff like that that just all of a sudden they’re just, we’re like, hi. And it’s like, and the next thing you know, they’re telling me all these stories. And I’m like, I want to share this stuff because it just, yeah.

Jason Elkins (16:52.422)
my gosh. Yeah. Well, I can, I can relate to that. That’s pretty much where my podcast came from was just like, it’s just all these interesting people. And initially I just wanted to have the conversations. I wasn’t really worried about whether people listened or not. just wanted to have the conversations and, and now people are listening and that’s great, but it’s, and it’s

Lynne Nieman (17:05.58)
Right.

Jason Elkins (17:15.692)
But it’s a little different when, you cause I set things up kind of in advance and I reach out to specific people or they reach out to me and we have a kind of a pre-conversation, but it’s those spontaneous conversations that you can run into when you’re traveling that are always the ones I like, wow, I really wish I could figure out how to capture this. But I realized I’m in the back of an Uber talking to this guy and I just met him and I’m like, Hey, can I record this? It’s.

Lynne Nieman (17:38.444)
Yeah.

Yeah

Jason Elkins (17:43.072)
But the conversations with like Uber drivers or people that you meet in restaurants or people, know, tour guides, you know, if you go on, if you, a small group, you get to know the tour guide, you’re like, wow, this guy has a fascinating story. And I’m, I’m the guy in the group that is often, tell me, tell us about Your family. Tell us about this. Tell us about that. And he’s used to people asking, well, how old is that building? And what was the significance of this, this word or whatever? And I was like, I just wanted to kind of hear their story. So I get that.

Lynne Nieman (17:48.578)
Yes. Yep.

Lynne Nieman (18:10.946)
No. Yep, absolutely. I’m the same Way. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (18:12.864)
That’s very, very cool. And then actually I was just speaking with someone the other day that also has done a lot of photography. And we had a conversation about just, you know, the people you see on the streets or just in these places and sometimes they’re kids. And, and he was giving some great advice and suggestions on how you can actually capture those moments without being creepy because as a middle, as a middle age.

Lynne Nieman (18:33.962)
Yeah, that can be difficult. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (18:39.978)
middle-aged white guy. It’s a little harder for me. got, you cause, but I, you know, you see kids, you’re like, my God, that just the, that kid is so cute. And you just want to capture it or that person over here that’s, know, and how do you, how do you do those things? So it’s, but anyway, anyway, but you’re also into photography. So yeah. Do you have you, are you comfortable walking up to strangers and getting photos when you’re traveling?

Lynne Nieman (18:42.848)
Yeah. Yep.

Lynne Nieman (18:56.844)
Yeah. Right.

Lynne Nieman (19:06.478)
I, you know, the interesting thing for me is I’ve always been more drawn because I’m so drawn to nature. So I’m more drawn to, to photographing landscapes or seascapes or whatever. So it’s easier. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, you know, I’ve done a couple, um, you know, where I, I’ve been like, you know, I have asked, I’m like, can I take Your photo? And I had one guy remember in Greece going, no, no, no, no. I’m like, are you sure?

Jason Elkins (19:14.188)
Okay, that’s easier. It’s easier to get permission. It doesn’t feel so creepy.

Jason Elkins (19:32.34)
Hmm.

Lynne Nieman (19:33.198)
Like, really liked the photograph. He had such a great face. And he was like, no. And I’m like, okay. And I respected that, you know, but then I had like, I remember there’s, I was watching the sunset. I was actually on Santorini and I was sitting there and this man kind of popped out of his, his house behind me. And he had kind of had like, he had like, he was kind of had those Popeye arms. looked like he had kind of had like a fisherman’s cap on. And I think he was holding like some beads or something and he had a mustache and everything. just had a great face.

And I turned around and I’m like, I had my camera in my hand. like, can I? And I just kind of motioned to him. And he just kind of went like that. And I just took like two or three pictures. And that was it. I wasn’t going to be like, you know, pose for me or anything. I just took a couple of pictures and that was it. And it’s one of my favorite people, travel photos of people. But I’ve definitely had some people that I’ve met along the Way that, you know, maybe like

Jason Elkins (20:12.044)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (20:21.863)
yeah. Yeah, it’s.

Lynne Nieman (20:29.358)
people that have owned like the B &B or the Agritarismo that I’ve stayed at and you know, I’m like, hey, can I take Your photo? And you know, they’ll be okay. And you know, and then sometimes they do make it into a blog post because I’m like, hey, you know, you want to stay here and here’s the B &B hosts and what they look like. you know, mean, so, you know, they kind of, know, people like that kind of understand that, you know, that that can be part of it and that’s fine.

Jason Elkins (20:44.915)
yeah.

Jason Elkins (20:54.444)
Well, you mentioned something you mentioned B they may be part of a blog post and then it occurred to me, well, you probably have a little bit better reason to ask for people like me. I’m like, what, what are you going to do with it? I don’t know. It’s probably going to sit on my phone forever. It’s just like, just, you just look fascinating. I don’t have a blog. I don’t have, you know, a YouTube channel per se. mean, we do these videos on the YouTube sometimes, but it’s,

Lynne Nieman (21:02.974)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lynne Nieman (21:09.26)
Ha ha ha ha ha!

Lynne Nieman (21:16.631)
Right.

Jason Elkins (21:19.028)
So that’s, guess where I’m like, if I do ask them, can I take Your picture? They’re going to say why I’m going to have a really bad, I don’t really have any reason just because I’m weird, but, interesting, interesting. But then there’s also, I don’t know if you get it too much in Europe, but you’ve spent a lot more time in Europe than I have for sure. and I know like in Asia, sometimes I’ve run into people that they want their picture with me for some reason that I have never figured out, but

Lynne Nieman (21:25.076)
They might, you know, yeah.

You know, yeah.

Lynne Nieman (21:40.302)
it

Jason Elkins (21:48.428)
They will walk up and say, Hey, can we get, you know, can we take a picture with you? And at first I thought, Oh, they must think I must look like somebody from the States that’s on TV or something. I couldn’t figure that out. And then I learned it’s just kind of a little bit more common there to just walk up and ask people for pictures. Do are there places in Europe that you’ve experienced that?

Lynne Nieman (22:03.768)
Yeah.

Lynne Nieman (22:08.802)
Maybe Turkey, that would be the only place, but I always feel like, I feel like Turkey is kind of one of those like less European and kind of just at that crossroads of being like European, Middle Eastern and Asian kind of all at once. maybe there, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been there. So I had a couple of girls, but I don’t know where these girls were from. They might’ve actually been some from somewhere in Asia. They’re like.

Jason Elkins (22:11.281)
yeah.

Jason Elkins (22:16.437)
Yeah.

Lynne Nieman (22:36.83)
know, we want to take a picture with you or take our picture. I can’t remember what they said, but yeah, it was just, you know, young girls being kind of funny, but whatever.

Jason Elkins (22:42.316)
I’ve had it with like grandmother, like, can we take a picture of you with my grandmother? So was standing there next to an 80 year old lady in Thailand or whatever. And it was, it was, it was kind of confusing at first, but then it happened enough that I’ve, know, but there is a, for people that haven’t seen my face, I might look like the guy on that, the pawn shop in Las Vegas, Nevada, pawn stars. There’s the,

Lynne Nieman (22:56.846)
Hmm.

Lynne Nieman (23:10.713)
Jason Elkins (23:12.65)
the bald guy with the beard and always wears the black polo shirts. I actually had someone ask me if I was, if I was him and the mall and I don’t even remember where it was at this point, but then it was like, maybe all these people just think I’m the guy from pond stars or whatever it’s called. anyway, you’re seeing it now, aren’t you? I guess.

Lynne Nieman (23:16.188)
Yeah!

Lynne Nieman (23:29.666)
Maybe that might be it. You’re famous, Jason. You don’t know it. Doppelganger.

Jason Elkins (23:37.228)
I’m pretty sure it’s not because they’re like, Oh, that’s that guy from that podcast, big world, main, small podcast. I want his picture with him. Um, one question I did want to ask before we, before I forget, when you were in journalism school, writing obituaries and, and these announcements and stuff, and you’re thinking, Oh my gosh, what was it you really wanted to be doing? Were you already thinking that maybe some sort of travel writing or what type of journalism did you want to do at that time? Do you remember?

Lynne Nieman (24:07.402)
No, I just started to think, you know, I think the other thing is, it’s like, you kind of had to eventually make a choice between like, because that was still when, you know, newspapers were still around newspapers and magazines. It’s like, well, are you going to go into print journalism or broadcast journalism? And I didn’t know which one I wanted to go into either. And, you know, I started actually, I kind of ended up switching my major to

political science, I was torn between political science and history because I love both. Because I thought I’ll go to law school because I was also kind of interested in maybe doing something like that. It’s still kind of one of those things. Like I kind of wish I had a law degree. I don’t know that I’d be a practicing lawyer. Like I probably would have done something else with it. But I just kind of find it all fascinating. So I went, I went down the political science road and you know, actually enjoyed it.

in retrospect, because I’m such a history buff, I kind of wish I had gone into history now because of the Europe thing. It’s like all the European history. So, you know, I kind of always felt like I had, a strong affinity for the social sciences as well. so I, be honest, I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do. I mean, you know, it was like, you know, I was 20, I was like, I don’t know. So maybe I’ll go to law school. You know, I was just kind of one of those. It really took me a while. I think there was always a part of me that

because I was, I was into photography then, but you know, was like, you know, again, maybe photojournalism would have been the route for me to go. so, but I, you know, I kept thinking I was going to do either more of the writing or, you know, be a newscaster.

Jason Elkins (25:41.867)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (25:52.224)
What did, do you remember or do you have any memories of what Your parents maybe wanted you to do or what they were, how they dealt with you? Well, maybe journalism. Well, maybe poli sci. Well, maybe I’ll be a lawyer. mean, what do you think they would have wanted you to do? Was that clear? Yeah.

Lynne Nieman (26:04.206)
They just wanted me to find one thing and to stick with it because I was, you know, I, I was firmly fall into that multi potential light thing that, that we now have a word for that we didn’t back in the eighties as I date myself. No, no, you don’t know about multi potential lights. Is that not a word you’ve heard of?

Jason Elkins (26:22.89)
Are you talking ADHD? What word is that?

it. I’m guessing I’m I know tell me more tell our I hope I’m maybe I’m the only one but tell it tell me more about that.

Lynne Nieman (26:35.822)
Okay. So these are people that have multiple interests and probably have a hard… Well, maybe. So, you know, I just kept being told like, you just need to settle on something. Well, you know, a lot of us just can’t because we do have a variety of interests and it might be okay for us to have a lot of different interests because maybe we’re not meant to do one thing our whole lives.

Jason Elkins (26:41.866)
That’s why I thought it was ADHD. But okay, I like Your word a lot better. I’m gonna start using that one.

Lynne Nieman (27:05.71)
It’s like, my sister, she was a caretaker. She was a nurse. She always knew she wanted to be a nurse. She was a nurse, retired from being a nurse, has 10 grandchildren. it’s like, that’s who she is. She is a caretaker. She was a great nurse. And that was her track.

Not everybody has that sort of one thing. And I always felt like I had multiple things because I am a creative person. Like I like being creative. So I like the photography. like, you know, maybe some of the writing or now the content creation and things. I like to explore that creative side, but I also can have a very analytical side. You know, like I like looking, delving into things like history. like…

Jason Elkins (27:26.038)
Multi, yeah.

Lynne Nieman (27:52.718)
kind of learning, you know, like the politics. I can be kind of analytical. I was once approached by a professor at Ohio University. I think it was my first term there and I was taking an algebra class. was probably, I needed to take a math and it was easier than what I needed. And I’m like, that’s all right. It’ll be a cakewalk, you know? And he came up to me and goes, you should be a math teacher, you know, because I was just like acing all this algebra stuff. And I’m like, nope.

I’m not going to do that. I could, but I don’t want to. You know, mean, I thought, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, like I got into fitness for a while. In fact, I got my degree in health promotion and education. So I worked kind of as like a fitness instructor and a personal trainer. So, you know, so I’ve done a little bit, like I’ve done a lot of different things. I’ve worked in government, you know, I worked in county government for a while.

Jason Elkins (28:23.02)
Yes, I could, but I won’t. Maybe I’d be good at it if I had any interest in doing it.

Lynne Nieman (28:50.702)
when I lived in Colorado, along with like doing my photography. So I mean, I’ve done all kinds of different things and that’s, know, and, and, and I always felt like, because my parents were like, you just need to settle on one thing, do it. But as I met like some friends, like, like, like one of my really good friends from Colorado, who I actually worked with, when I told her like a lot of my background, when we first met, goes, wow, you’ve done a lot of really cool things. And I was like,

Jason Elkins (29:05.462)
love it.

Lynne Nieman (29:18.9)
my God, somebody is finally appreciating like everything that I’ve done instead of being like, what the hell’s wrong with you? Why can’t you settle on one thing? so yeah. So, I mean, I’ve just always feel like, I mean, yeah, maybe, maybe it’s a little ADD, but it’s just like, do have, I think there are a lot of people that just have a lot of varied interests. You don’t have to have just like one interest or just a couple of interests, you know, it’s like,

Jason Elkins (29:23.065)
instead of what the hell’s the hell’s wrong with you?

Lynne Nieman (29:48.372)
I have a widespread, you know, it’s like I can be, you know, very organized and do all my travel planning. But then there’s that creative side of me that wants to be behind my camera. And then there’s, you know, the part of me that could, you know, learn about, you know, history, you know, throw me into, you know, like a castle and, know, or, you know, walk around a church and, you know, I’m not a religious person, but I love to go into all the churches in Europe because I love to kind of just

look at everything and look at the art and I love photographing them from an architectural photography standpoint as well. So yeah, so I’m somebody that just doesn’t know what I want to be when I grow up.

Jason Elkins (30:27.436)
All right. And the word, I want you to say the word a couple of times. I want to make sure everybody hears it clearly. I heard multi potential light.

Lynne Nieman (30:36.908)
That’s it, multipotential light.

Jason Elkins (30:39.232)
I want to, I’m saying it again so we can make sure that the, automated show notes pull that out. So it ends up in the show notes. Cause I want to refer back to that. It’s what a great word. Did you, and you didn’t come up with that yourself. I’m surprised I’d never heard of it. Yeah.

Lynne Nieman (30:46.67)
Yeah.

Lynne Nieman (30:53.39)
No, no, I had never heard the word. And, and then I think it was part of the location in the indie community is where I first heard it. Um, it’s, it’s a community that doesn’t, well, it doesn’t exist as that anymore. It’s now called the indie life collective. Um, and it’s kind of changed a little bit, but I think somebody in that group, think mentioned it and I was kind of like, what? And

Jason Elkins (31:21.589)
Mm-hmm.

Lynne Nieman (31:22.924)
And then kind of started to delve into it and started to realize that, I mean, there are just, there are those people and, there were definitely people within this community that identified that Way that just felt like, you know, it’s not like you just have, you know, like I said, just kind of one thing and maybe not even one thing you’re supposed to do in life. You know, it’s like, maybe, maybe the beginning of Your life, you’re supposed to, you know, this is the path that you go down, but then, look, there’s a fork in the road.

Jason Elkins (31:43.072)
Mm-hmm.

Lynne Nieman (31:51.734)
I could keep going on the path that I’m on, but wow, this over here sounds really interesting. it’s maybe total, maybe it’s adjacent to what I’m doing currently. Maybe it’s somewhat related. Maybe it’s totally different. So I just feel like that, I think there are a lot of us out there and I think a lot of people, I think a lot of people that are older like.

like me and I think you a little bit, know, would be like, you know, how my parents were with me. It’s like, you need to settle on one thing. And it’s like, well, maybe I’m not meant to, you know?

Jason Elkins (32:17.79)
And be you. That was very nice. I think maybe you Yeah, I’m older.

Jason Elkins (32:31.754)
You literally sound like my mom right now. I can hear my mom in Your voice. I’m 52 and she keeps telling me the same thing. It’s, I think I’ll hold that word in reserve. So the next time someone says to me, and I’ve heard this a few times in my life, Jason, you have so much potential.

Lynne Nieman (32:37.452)
Yeah, I mean, I remember my mom and dancing.

almost 60 for God’s sake and I can still hear my parents saying that to me.

Lynne Nieman (32:56.168)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (32:57.1)
Yeah, I’m a multi potentialite. Of course I have a lot of potential.

Lynne Nieman (33:01.396)
Exactly. So, so sometimes it just, you know, sometimes you do get a little, you can get a little scattered. my friends that I’m actually, my friends that I’m actually dog sitting right now, she’s always like squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. It’s like she gets distracted. I’m like, yeah, I think she just has a lot of interest too. So

Jason Elkins (33:07.936)
feel so much better though.

Jason Elkins (33:13.921)
Yeah.

I’m never, I’m never going to use the word ADD again in reference to myself. I’m not, it’s my ADD. It’s my ADHD. It’s my multi potentialism going on right now. All right. Love it. I’m really happy that came up. Thank you. Thank you, Lynne. All right. Let’s, let’s go back to Your, I think we actually mixed a lot of Your story into that conversation. That was pretty cool. so it’s, so it sounds like you ended up actually graduating with the health and

Lynne Nieman (33:22.604)
Yeah.

Lynne Nieman (33:30.018)
There you go. That’s exactly what it is.

You’re welcome.

Yeah.

Jason Elkins (33:46.86)
Health education, was it?

Lynne Nieman (33:49.44)
Well, I graduated my undergrad. So that was the other thing I kept going back to school because I didn’t know what I wanted to be. So, so, so I got my, my bachelor’s degree in political science thinking, maybe I’ll go to law school, but it wasn’t a hundred percent sure when I, when I graduated. And then, I did go back to school a couple of years later and then, got kind of, because I already had, you know, an undergraduate degree. So I got a master’s degree in health promotion and education. So I kind of went down kind of like working in the fitness industry for a little while.

Jason Elkins (33:52.39)
there’s a few more of these. Tell us all Your degrees.

Jason Elkins (34:00.876)
Mm-hmm.

Lynne Nieman (34:19.534)
and then I went to photo school and got an associate’s degree in commercial photography because I was always, always like, I always was into photography. And I kind of thought about kind of going more into the commercial end of it. So, and that was, went, as soon as I finished up a few months later, that’s when I moved to Colorado. And so I was kind of doing like some photo assisting and things like that. And I was trying to get into stock photography, but it was

mean, it was a tough field. That was about the time when we were starting to go into digital. And so as that happened, it kind of changed like stock photography. So that’s like people that you shoot kind of whatever, and then you send it off. And then this basically big library sells the usage of Your image to.

Jason Elkins (34:53.548)
Mm-hmm.

Lynne Nieman (35:11.2)
magazines or advertisers or whoever’s looking for a picture of you know, a couple with a newborn baby or you know, whatever for life insurance, you know, at or whatever. As that started to change, as we got into digital, it kind of changed stock photography, like there were people out there that could make a good living with stock photography. And I actually assisted for a guy and he was kind of served as a mentor for me. And

it’s just like everybody had, everybody had access. It just made it so much easier for people to be a photographer and to make changes and be a stock photographer. So stock photography kind of got devalued in some ways. So people, so it wasn’t worth as much because you didn’t, everybody was a professional. So.

Jason Elkins (35:54.636)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (36:05.356)
Well, just you’ve got these big databases of images from a variety of people. It becomes less about the, maybe, maybe less about the relationship with the photographer and more just really about the photos. Whereas probably what I’m hearing in my limited experience in it is that maybe

Lynne Nieman (36:11.171)
Yeah.

Lynne Nieman (36:18.425)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (36:25.12)
Before that, you had a photographer that they just used a lot because the person got good images and they might even go to him and say, Hey, do you have this or can you get this or can we send you out an assignment to get this? But if you can go to a website and pull whatever, you know, and search by keywords and pull something out, doesn’t really matter who took it anymore. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Lynne Nieman (36:34.882)
Yeah. Yeah.

Lynne Nieman (36:41.964)
Yep. Right. Right. Yeah. It is getting to be that Way. Now I still submit. mean, I still do. I have a stock agency that I still submit to and still kind of get a few little sales, but not as much. It’s something I want to put more. It’s kind of one of my 2026 resolutions is I want to put a little bit more time into it because it’s kind of a law of averages. Yeah. So after that, then that’s when I moved out to Colorado and I kind of delved in that and worked in

Jason Elkins (36:55.318)
Mm-hmm.

Lynne Nieman (37:10.636)
you know, worked in, kind of took a job in county government a few years after I had moved out there. And then, you know, I started to get more into travel, you know, I mean, travel myself. And so, you know, when I moved back to Ohio, that’s when I really kind of started to decide to build my own business. So I moved back in, thankfully, with my parents who were so kind to let me move back because I want to I’m like, I want to start my own business and

It’s like, I don’t want to have all the overhead. I was living on my own and all that kind of stuff. So they graciously took me back in. And I started to kind of figure out what that was going to be. And that’s how Wonder Your Way eventually was born.

Jason Elkins (37:42.902)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (37:55.948)
All right. Very cool. Which brings us probably pretty close back to the point where, where I paused you for a second when you said I went on my first trip to Europe and it was Spain. So that’s gotta be some point in that timeframe, right?

Lynne Nieman (38:03.598)
Yeah. So that, yeah. So it was, it was when I was still living in Colorado, it was 2005. and I was coming up on a decade, another decade birthday. So I’ll let y’all do the math since I already gave it gave you my number, but, so I, so, so, so there’s me like,

Jason Elkins (38:25.1)
So you were 15.

Lynne Nieman (38:31.808)
you know, not being a young person and going out of the country for the first time, I was, you know, definitely much older and just went over to Spain and, and, you know, I thought, I know a little bit of the language, you know, it’s like, I’ll go to Spain and just had a great time, you know, went by myself, you saw the public transportation, met some fun people and, you know, just had a, had a great time. And I was like, that was it, you know, then it kind of opened up my world to

Jason Elkins (38:49.74)
Mm-hmm.

Lynne Nieman (39:00.238)
mostly Europe travel, you know, I mean, I did end up going to Argentina with a boyfriend that I was dating at the time. Kind of shortly after I actually got back from Spain, but then it was like after that, it was all Europe. You know, I went to Ireland for the first time because I met a woman who was a little bit younger than me. I met her in Spain. We kind of shared, we exchanged our email addresses and, you know, I said, you can come to Colorado anytime. And she said, you can come to Ireland anytime. And so I

Jason Elkins (39:14.463)
So is.

Lynne Nieman (39:30.014)
I kind of, you know, went over to Ireland then in 2007 and yeah, I think from there it just snowballed and just built.

Jason Elkins (39:38.74)
I have a, I have a language question because you’d mentioned that you went to Spain and you had, you knew some Spanish. Is that just because you’re a multi potential light that you knew Spanish? Cause I’m pretty sure you weren’t using that too much in Boulder or Ohio. So how did that come about?

Lynne Nieman (39:49.761)
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, it, it was just like, just, I just started to brush up on it. I had taken it in both high school and college. So I think some of it, like there was still like, I felt like it was like, I’d be able to like maybe read a sentence or know some words and I’d be able to figure things out. Um, of course, of course, when they started talking really fast, I was like deer in the headlights.

Jason Elkins (40:08.054)
How did that work?

Jason Elkins (40:15.096)
That’s why I was curious because I did not take it in school when I was younger, but I’ve been traveling full time for about four years, a little over four years. And I, my first destination was Columbia. And I ended up spending a lot of time in Latin America and just learned along the Way because I had to, because I’m pretty outgoing. I like to talk to people. like to communicate. And sometimes I feel like, after this is after.

you know, four years of learning, I kind of sometimes feel like I know Spanish. And then, you know, I’m in Arizona visiting my mom right now. And I go to the you know, I go to the Starbucks and I hear people speaking Spanish to each other and I still can’t understand them.

Lynne Nieman (40:53.791)
Yeah, I tell you what, learning a language is hard.

Jason Elkins (41:02.334)
It’s, you know, and if, if they know they’re speaking, if they’re speaking to me and they know they need to speak a little slower and a little clearer, I do fine. And that’s, that’s when I fall into this trap of thinking I know Spanish is because I’m around people that I’m communicating with. They look at me and they, they know that they probably need to slow down a little bit or be real clear and everything’s fine. But then when I hear two people speaking to each other, it’s like, man, I don’t know anything.

Lynne Nieman (41:29.548)
Yep. With it. Yeah. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (41:32.074)
Yeah. So, all right. All right. So would you say, so when you went to Spain, maybe you mentioned it, but you had you already kind of thought about getting into travel blogging and that stuff, or was this a pivotal? Do you see this as like a major pivotal moment for you? Did you decide on that trip? You wanted to do it or how did that come about?

Lynne Nieman (41:55.022)
No, I mean, I think that, I think it was a process. think that from going on that first trip to Spain in 2005 and then going to Ireland in like almost exactly two years later in 2007 and then going to Italy and Paris in spring of 2008, that’s, as I, as I traveled more to Europe, I thought,

And I was not happy. mean, I was working in county government. it was like, the job was fine. I it was like, I made decent money. got great holidays because it was a county job, good benefits. I loved the people that I worked with. We had a small group, and we just all got along so great. But it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. And I think that I was really searching for that passion, for that thing that I felt passionate about that I really wanted to do because I always told myself,

even from the time I was younger, that I wanted to enjoy my job. I didn’t want it to feel like a job. so, because it’s like, you grow up and it’s like, I just remember my dad not being, it’s like, I don’t think he had so many jobs that, well, mean, he kind of stuck with one company most of his life, but it’s like, I know he wasn’t, like he didn’t love his job. And I felt like,

you hey, you can find things that are at least 75 % of the time enjoyable. They’re never gonna, there’s never gonna be a perfect job, right? So I think that that was like, for me, I kept thinking, what can I do with travel? What can I do with travel? And, you know, that’s when I started to think about, you know, and plus the photography. So I thought, well, maybe I’m the travel photographer. Maybe I can just, you know, start kind of doing things and I can get into writing. Like, you know, I remember at one point,

This might have been shortly after I got out of college. So from my undergrad and I remember thinking I just want to travel the world photograph and write about it and inspire other people to do the same. I always felt like that was my greater goal in life. know like if I can somehow you know just inspire people to to go off and travel and you know through

Jason Elkins (44:04.256)
Yeah, yeah, love it.

Jason Elkins (44:09.484)
Mm-hmm.

Lynne Nieman (44:16.77)
you know, however it is that I’m telling them through, you know, stories that I’m telling or, you know, information that I’m giving them, photos that I’m sharing, you know, whatever it might be. It’s like, that’s, you know, that’s kind of what I felt like I wanted to do. And, but I never like, you know, like, how do I do this? You know, you know, and especially if you don’t have maybe somebody in Your world and Your, in Your.

Jason Elkins (44:32.523)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (44:36.384)
How did you, I know, I, yeah.

Lynne Nieman (44:43.054)
in Your immediate orbit who maybe you can talk to about it. it’s like, I didn’t have that. My parents weren’t people that were well-traveled or something like that. So sometimes it’s just kind of, for me, I always felt like I was kind of a late bloomer with all of this stuff. So.

Jason Elkins (44:47.02)
Well.

Jason Elkins (45:00.342)
Well, you’ve got, you’ve got two, two things going on there that I heard. One is you mentioned that you wanted to find something that you could be happy doing at least 75 % of the time. And I’m wondering, I know I’ve had people in my life, not mentioning any names and I love everybody in my life. And I’ve had people in my life that I would say, I hate my job. And they’d say, well, it’s you’re supposed to, that’s why it’s called a job. You know, just this, this.

Lynne Nieman (45:12.824)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (45:29.696)
you’re not supposed to be happy with Your job, you just go there and do it and then, you know, go do things on the weekends to be happy or whatever. So there’s a little bit of that resistance. So when you said you didn’t have people around you that were doing it, there’s the travel stuff. But then there’s also just the doing Your own thing stuff that can be a challenge.

Lynne Nieman (45:50.67)
Yeah, like that entrepreneurship, that was not something that I grew up with either. And I mean, that’s definitely a challenge in itself.

Jason Elkins (45:58.836)
I guess, I guess that’s, I guess that’s, I guess that’s what I’m saying is like, if you were an entrepreneur, if you were around entrepreneurs, if that was encouraged as you were growing up and you were an entrepreneur doing something entrepreneurial, and then you decided I want to do travel stuff. Okay. That’s a smaller step than going from growing up around people that are saying it’s a job. You’re not supposed to enjoy it.

Lynne Nieman (46:21.794)
Right.

Jason Elkins (46:27.392)
from, so now you want to not just go from an entrepreneur into the travel business. You’ve to go all the Way to get into the tourism business. And so you need two types of mentors. need entrepreneur type of mentors and then maybe travel mentors and maybe they’re the same. That’s great. But I guess I’m just acknowledging that, it’s, it’s hard to find that sometimes when you’re not around it.

Lynne Nieman (46:34.424)
Yeah.

Lynne Nieman (46:43.011)
Mm-hmm.

Lynne Nieman (46:47.626)
Yeah. Yeah. It definitely, if I can be totally honest here, I always felt like a fish out of water. Like, always knew that, like, something, there was just like, I just knew that there was, like, something different. And it’s like, you know, because almost all my family, and I even look at most of, like, my nieces and nephews, you know, like, I look at my sister’s kids, I look at my brother’s kids, and it’s like, almost all of them, sans one,

is kind of following in like they’ve got their jobs, they’re going to have their 401ks, all that kind of stuff. I’m like, I’m doing my own thing, I may not be making as much money or anything like that. I may not have the house and everything. I don’t care about that. But that’s also what, like that’s not important to me. I think that that’s kind of one thing. It’s like,

Yes, maybe you can have this kind of job and you feel like it’s safer. Although I don’t feel like any jobs are safer. You can very easily be let go of a job or a company could shut down for whatever reason. Whereas the entrepreneur, that path is a little riskier, but you also are depending on you. Exactly. It’s like, know that

Jason Elkins (48:05.702)
Yeah, you’ve got a lot more control over it.

Lynne Nieman (48:11.606)
with all the skills that I have, with all the things that I’ve done, that it’s like, if I need to go have a part-time job, like when I moved back to Ohio, I went back into my fitness world. I got a job at the local community center and I was working in the fitness area. So it was like very easily, I got a part-time job as I was starting my own business. So it’s like, knew, it’s like, have all these things I can fall back on.

Jason Elkins (48:24.342)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (48:28.204)
Hmm?

Lynne Nieman (48:36.79)
So it’s like, if I need to go get a sort of like normal job and, you know, even to balance out my entrepreneurial thing, it’s like, I can do that. So, you know, like the travel part, you know, I always felt like that was going, that had to be part of it. As I, as I started to travel more, it was just like, I need to do something with travel. And it just sort of evolved. Like, you know, I thought it was going to be the photography and the writing and, you know, it kind of.

you know, as I kind of delved into that, was kind of like, man, that’s, you know, you’re not making very much at all. I mean, you know, they just don’t pay for that once upon a time they did. And that’s where I kind of started to realize that travel agents were making a comeback for people who wanted to plan more complex trips or, you know, trips that were, you know, like Americans that were looking to go abroad because it’s a whole different.

Jason Elkins (49:13.014)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (49:27.276)
All

Lynne Nieman (49:34.55)
you know, it’s a whole different thing when you’re traveling over to Europe compared to when you’re when you’re traveling in the US. So I just started to try to build that up. And then, yeah, it was a whole entrepreneurial thing. And I always say I didn’t know what I didn’t know. So there was a lot of learning.

Jason Elkins (49:40.044)
you

Jason Elkins (49:52.342)
Do you, I’m curious, cause sometimes, you know, we have mentors that help us and sometimes, sometimes we just kind of do it ourselves and, and do it, which can be the hard Way. So I’m curious, did you have some mentors that came along or, or were you just what.

Lynne Nieman (50:08.334)
You know, I think what helped me was I joined, like I first joined an online community that was kind of focused upon people building online businesses. And so I learned a lot from that. was called Screw the 9 to 5, Jill and Josh Stanton. And I’m not even sure what they’re doing these days, but they were great as far as like, like I make, you know, I connected with some people and I just kind of like learned a few things through it.

things like, you know, the importance of an email list and you know, there were some things it’s like, I don’t need, I don’t need an email list. I always tell the story because now I’m like, I’d like my email list is like my favorite thing in the whole wide world. I love having my email list and, and feeling like I’m directly connecting with people. Cause I have people that respond back to my emails, know, Hey Lynne.

Jason Elkins (51:00.502)
Yeah, yeah, that’s cool. Yep.

Lynne Nieman (51:02.476)
you know, you know, so, you know, cause I’m very, very open about everything. I’ve been very open. I’ve lost both my parents and I’ve shared that and a lot of that and people have kind of shared their stories with me about maybe going through something similar. So it’s like, you know, I feel like that’s kind of something, you know, those are some of the things I’ve learned. And then I’ve kind of like joined some other kind of communities. I mentioned the location, Indie community, and that was kind of more about

building a lifestyle that may be involved travel where you would also be doing some, you would be working remotely, right before the pandemic hit, now everybody can work remotely. that was sort of kind of why Jason Moore and Travis Sherry started that company was to kind of teach people some of the things that they wish that they had known. So I’ve met some wonderful people through that and…

Yeah, so now I’m part of a community called Wonderful, W-A-N-D-E-R, Beth Santos, who puts on the WITS kind of conference, the Women in Travel Summit. She’s amazing. that’s a great group. Again, a lot of kind of just other people that you can connect with. I think that’s really important if you…

do decide that you’re going to go down that entrepreneurial kind of road is to find people. It doesn’t have to be people in the same realm that you’re in. I know a lot of people that I first met were not into the travel space. Now I kind of have a mix. I’ve got people in the travel space, and I’ve got people that aren’t in the travel space, but are just kind of entrepreneurs. I think it’s important to have that.

Jason Elkins (52:27.242)
Mm-hmm.

Lynne Nieman (52:46.584)
But yeah, I can’t say I had like a mentor per se, but it was just, these groups just really helped me out a lot.

Jason Elkins (52:54.642)
Right. Well, it because I oftentimes like to ask and I was already thinking to ask you what’s the what’s the one piece of advice you give but I just heard what I just heard was kind of honestly surround yourself with people that are doing kind of what you want to do and that surround yourself doesn’t necessarily mean you got to go live with them. But join the communities. Read some books, watch some videos just

But I don’t want to put words in Your mouth. is that the like, if I were to ask you, what’s one piece of advice you’d give to somebody that’s thinking about moving into entrepreneurship, connected to the travel space, what would that advice be?

Lynne Nieman (53:36.736)
Yeah, I would say seek out people. First of all, we always say like seek out people that are also like minded. Like, you we were talking about how, you know, like the family, like, you know, they don’t get it. They they don’t get it. They don’t understand that you’re going to like, live, breathe and work, live and breathe Your work probably as you’re starting up and you’re going to work all kinds of weird hours and everything. They don’t understand. It’s like, it’s the people will always say it’s a weekend. Where are you working? I’m like, I’m an entrepreneur.

Jason Elkins (53:44.673)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (54:00.524)
Mm-hmm.

Lynne Nieman (54:05.294)
I’m the, you know, it’s like, got things to do. It’s gotta get done. I don’t have anybody else to help me. I’m a solopreneur at that.

Jason Elkins (54:09.982)
And then do you find sometimes the response is, well, why the hell do you do that? Why don’t you just get a real job so you can have regular hours and 401k and all that stuff, right? I’m sure you’ve heard that. Yeah.

Lynne Nieman (54:18.286)
Sometimes, you know, but you know, but I’m but I can also take off, you know, it’s like, I go to the gym every Wednesday afternoon, you know, it’s like, like, you know, it’s like, at two o’clock, I’m like, Okay, I’m gonna get ready and 230 I leave, I try to get to the gym by three so that I beat the after work crowd. I can do that because I work for myself. You can’t do that if you’re tied to a desk.

Jason Elkins (54:28.492)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (54:38.668)
And you’re.

And you and I just a little bit ago, you were talking about Your travel plans for 2026 and how you got some little microphones because you want to interview people as you go and all that stuff. And you can’t do that when you’re working nine to five.

Lynne Nieman (54:51.904)
Right. Great.

Right, right. Yeah. So I mean, I think for people starting out, it’s like surround yourself with like-minded people and definitely find a community. And it doesn’t necessarily have to, like I said, it doesn’t, you know, if you want to get into the travel space, as far as like starting a business, it doesn’t have to be, you don’t have to necessarily surround yourself with people who are also in that space. It certainly helps. but it doesn’t, you know, it doesn’t have to be because there are some things that will kind of carry over.

know, to vote, you know, even just as an entrepreneur, just like things like, maybe you need an email list.

Jason Elkins (55:31.04)
What do you, I’m curious if you have any specific thoughts on, cause you’re a multi, multi potential, multi potential, what’s the word? Multi potentialite. I suspect that you’ve given some thought to personality styles or things and I don’t know, maybe not, but I’m curious like, because.

Lynne Nieman (55:41.378)
multi-potential light, multi-potential light.

Jason Elkins (55:57.737)
So there’s some careers tend to attract a certain types of personality styles and maybe, I don’t know, maybe let’s say accounting, something like that, finance jobs. Whereas maybe tourism attracts a different type of personality style. So when you say it doesn’t necessarily need to be people that work in the same space, it doesn’t necessarily need to be people that works in tourism. But there might, but it might not be beneficial to go join a group of

Accounting entrepreneurs. I don’t know. Do you have any thoughts on like personality styles or any of that stuff?

Lynne Nieman (56:37.07)
No, because I feel like some of the people that I’ve met who also are travel advisors like me, I kind of feel like some people are like, some people maybe have the strength of being really like outgoing. Some people maybe are really well organized. know, they could be quieter. I mean, that’s where like my county job that I had for like 10 years, I did a lot of things that were around like

Jason Elkins (56:53.546)
I really organized. Good planners. That’s true.

Jason Elkins (57:05.019)
yeah.

Lynne Nieman (57:06.638)
planning and organizing things. So that’s where like those skills kind of came in to help with being a travel planner. I think to a certain degree, you have to like people. So there will be that because if you’re going to be talking to people, you don’t have to necessarily be super extroverted. it’s like people always think I’m such an extrovert. really kind of.

fall in the middle. kind more of an ambivert. I have my introverted times and I have my extroverted times. I think just, I feel like you’ll know if you’re kind of connecting with some people that you feel like can help you. And there may be some people that may be able to just kind of help you in just sort of setting up Your business, that organize, that kind of legal part or that kind of setting up Your own business kind of thing.

Other people may be able to help you out more with like actually being doing something in the travel in the travel sector itself. So they may be in the travel sector somewhere. So I don’t think there’s a certain type of person. You know, I would just say, you know, as much as I hate to say like go into Facebook groups, but that can be a good place to at least maybe start to like kind of connect with people or see if there’s anything even like

Jason Elkins (58:15.434)
or could be.

Lynne Nieman (58:31.596)
you know, like near you physically.

Jason Elkins (58:34.892)
Do you, so I work as an entrepreneur as well and kind of a one man show, guess. And I think something that, that I would benefit from, and I think probably a lot of people would benefit from would just be some sort of, just an accountability partner, honestly, is where I’m going with this. It’s just, you do.

Lynne Nieman (58:54.926)
I have that. So that’s something that from the online communities that I was in kind of started. In fact, I have a good friend who started off as an accountability partner. Now we’re just friends. And she used to live away. Now she lives close by here to where I live. I actually have what we call mastermind groups. You maybe have heard that term as well. So I have three ladies who are in that.

Jason Elkins (59:17.516)
Mm-hmm.

Lynne Nieman (59:26.502)
They’re all, well, one’s just a few years younger than me, one’s maybe a decade younger than me, and then we have our youngest one who also, who is a very old soul though. And so there’s four of us and we meet like once every couple of weeks typically. I mean, every now and again, like if people are traveling and things like that, we might go a little bit longer, but I say we meet at least once a month and we check in with each other. We have our WhatsApp group. If somebody’s working on something, we check in on each other.

Yeah, the accountability is huge. As a solo printer in particular, if you don’t have anybody, that’s a big thing. So it’s something I highly, highly, highly, highly recommend.

Jason Elkins (01:00:05.194)
Yeah, I thought you probably would. That’s why I wanted to mention it. Cause I, I found myself a few times thinking like, I kind of know what I should be doing. It’s not usually a problem. Me not knowing what I should be doing. It’s it’s instead of doing the fun stuff, you know, instead of, I know I should be doing this, but I’d rather be doing that. And I could probably use an accountability, like one of those.

Lynne Nieman (01:00:14.519)
Right.

Lynne Nieman (01:00:19.328)
It’s just actually getting it done. Yeah.

Lynne Nieman (01:00:26.136)
Right.

Jason Elkins (01:00:29.662)
every morning, like a huddle type of thing. Like at eight o’clock, we all meet on the zoom call and, and say, okay, this is what I’m committed to today. And then at the end of the day, maybe you drop a message into a WhatsApp or something and send the report. Like, that’s probably the level I should have. if anybody listening to this knows of a group like that for, for people that are multi potential lights, I reached

Lynne Nieman (01:00:33.13)
yeah.

Lynne Nieman (01:00:42.433)
Yeah.

Lynne Nieman (01:00:47.406)
Ha ha ha ha!

You there, they’re probably I wouldn’t be surprised. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a group out there that’s that’s like that. I’m usually okay. So that part

Jason Elkins (01:00:59.116)
I made a couple of comments on social media there for a while thinking I’m sure there’s got to be other people, but I don’t think anybody else wanted to admit it. So anyway, so that’s part, that’s part of why do the podcast because I’ve got somebody to chat with at least once a week and I can get ideas and feel inspired, motivated, and you’re definitely inspiring and sharing a lot of great information. We’ve, we’ve actually discussed a lot of things.

Lynne Nieman (01:01:05.818)
Maybe that might be it.

Lynne Nieman (01:01:16.428)
Yep.

Jason Elkins (01:01:23.894)
probably could come back and I mean, you have Your own podcast. So there’s a lot of things you have to talk about. I have, you I think we should do this again. But in the meantime, Len, what do you wish I would have asked you? What do you what do think I maybe forgot to ask you? Or is there anything else you want to make sure our listeners know about you Wander Your Way or just life in general before we wrap up?

Lynne Nieman (01:01:42.604)
Well, I would say too, when it comes to business, like I feel like, like I’m, you know, you’re not static with what you do. So, like one of the things like that, when I started my business, I always knew that I wanted to start small group tours eventually, even though I want people to like really kind of try to travel on their own, but I wanted to have like, be able to bring like a small group of people, like maybe a dozen people together.

that are kind of like-minded and that want to go and, and, know, I’d create some sort of towards some of my favorite places that I could share with them. And so that’s something new that I’ve starting. Now I wanted to start it like years ago, but you know, the pandemic happened and so it got put on hold and then my dad kind of started to go downhill. So, so I had to put all that stuff on hold. So I kind of feel like, you know, it’s kind of one thing, like, you know, if you are somebody

Jason Elkins (01:02:21.43)
Cool.

Jason Elkins (01:02:28.908)
Mm-hmm.

Lynne Nieman (01:02:39.402)
you know, and I know we’re kind of talking to all kinds of people out there, but if you are somebody that is a multi potentialite and, maybe just also like, you know, you have these ideas for Your business, just know that, you know, you just kind of have to really kind of stick with things and that like, like, you know, I had my, had four tours that were out for sale for 2025 and I only had one that actually happened. didn’t get any

Jason Elkins (01:03:06.017)
Mm-hmm.

Lynne Nieman (01:03:06.796)
Well, no, I got two people signed up for another one, but I had to refund their money because it wasn’t going to happen with just two people. I was really disappointed by that. I know that I reached one of my friends actually said, hey, he did something similar. And he told me how bad his numbers were too when he first got started. Because you just got to get that first one to go, and then it will grow.

Jason Elkins (01:03:11.756)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (01:03:34.858)
Yes, yes.

Lynne Nieman (01:03:35.168)
And so, you know, so as, as I’m kind of looking at my 2026 trips, I know I’ve got one that will, that will go. I’ve got three out there for sale. You know, I’m hoping to get all three to go, but I also know that if I just have one again, that that’s okay. And you just have to, I think there has to be a lot of patience, you know, if you do go down this road, and you just have to kind of stick, stick with things. and, and I think that that’s kind of one of the things too, that

Jason Elkins (01:03:50.57)
Yep.

Lynne Nieman (01:04:03.872)
You know, I think the other thing that I would just say, and you didn’t ask me this, but I would just say, it’s never too late to start something either. You know, it’s like, I was no youngster when I started my own business, you know, and I’m just going to keep doing it until, until, you know, it gets to the point where I’m, done and I don’t, I don’t want to work anymore. And hopefully that’s when I’m like 80 because I enjoy what I’m doing. So, and I do that whole like, that’s a job. You’re not supposed to like it. Bullshit.

Jason Elkins (01:04:26.54)
Mm-hmm.

Lynne Nieman (01:04:33.152)
Sorry if I say that, but I just think that I just think that’s the biggest much BS. doesn’t have to be that Way. Sure. They’re, you know, they’re, know, you know, it’s like, you don’t have to, mean, you know, I get that some people are like, you know, maybe they’re kind of like, okay, well, I’m just going to do this because I got to provide for my family or whatever.

Jason Elkins (01:04:33.587)
Hahaha.

I know, right?

Jason Elkins (01:04:43.072)
I hope my ex-wife is listening to this because I kept trying to tell her the same thing.

Lynne Nieman (01:04:58.222)
But you can find those things that you like. There’s no doubt about it. And sometimes it takes us a while. and it’s just, I kind of feel like it’s never too late. can kind of do that. So I don’t know. I can’t think of anything else that you didn’t really ask me. We covered a lot of ground.

Jason Elkins (01:05:07.713)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:05:16.908)
It was, it was so cool. And I really, really hope a lot of people are listening to this because Your messages is spot on life. mean, we’re so fortunate to have so many opportunities. And I realized that sometimes you’re in a tough spot and you feel like there are no opportunities. get that. completely get that. There’s a, you know, the vast majority of the planet doesn’t feel like they’ve got those opportunities. So it might sound easy for you and I to say, oh yeah, well, you can do it. You can do it.

Lynne Nieman (01:05:27.468)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (01:05:44.523)
And it’s not easy, but here’s the thing you mentioned earlier. said, you don’t know what you don’t know. So if you’re sitting on one side thinking, no, I can’t do that. I would say you don’t know what you don’t know. Maybe you can, but you don’t know it until you do it. You mentioned the group trips of, know, feeling like, I failed. didn’t get the group trips. But when I was, you know, I was leading a lot of group trips back in the day and running a travel business. And I mean, I.

Lynne Nieman (01:05:54.956)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:06:10.76)
I, so I know something that maybe some people don’t. And I know that when you start running groups, guess what? The best place to sell a trip is on a trip. And those people now, a lot of those people will go with you. They’ll go back on another group with you. So it does build. So I know, I know I can tell it’s like, okay, see, that’s how it works. But if you don’t know that, if you’re just like, I put three groups out and I, and only one of them, looks like it’s going to go and.

Lynne Nieman (01:06:25.097)
Yeah, I’ve got that happening. Yes.

Jason Elkins (01:06:38.828)
forget this, I’m not going to do this anymore. You’re missing the other side because you don’t know what’s going to happen after that first trip does go out. Because when three or four of those people are sitting at the dinner table with you one night saying, where are we going next? All of a sudden you’re, oh, this is interesting. I didn’t see that coming. So it’s just like that in life. You don’t see things coming. And so sometimes you just have to go do it and then see what happens when it goes. So anyway, thank you so much. I think you dropped a lot of great.

Lynne Nieman (01:06:45.421)
Right.

Lynne Nieman (01:06:59.851)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (01:07:08.576)
vocabulary words into this multi potential light. I love it. Love it. Love it. thank you so much. This was, this was a lot of fun and I knew it would be, and it definitely was. So I, and I trust our listeners listening. If, if anything, Lynne has said, you know, listeners, if anything Lynne has said has been interesting, inspiring. You want to connect with her, whether that’s about photography, travel to Europe, obviously her podcast.

Lynne Nieman (01:07:11.79)
multi potential light.

you

Lynne Nieman (01:07:35.182)
travel.

Jason Elkins (01:07:38.284)
Maybe her mastermind group. don’t know. Um, but the link to her website, be on the show notes, definitely encourage you to reach out to her. And when you do just say, Hey Lynne, I heard John Jason’s podcast. That’d be great. It makes me feel good. Lynne. Thank you so much. I appreciate you.

Lynne Nieman (01:07:50.062)
it’s been great, Jason. Thanks. Appreciate you. Bye.

Jason Elkins (01:07:56.52)
Alright, bye bye.

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