Cracking Creativity Episode 20: Stephen Pirie on Traveling the World, Building Travel Adventures, and Giving Back to the Youths of Fiji

Stephen Pirie is the director of many companies including Nurture Change, Unleash Travel, and Spirit of Sharing. Through these companies, Stephen is creating retreats for business leaders, building a safe travel experience for youths from New Zealand and Australia, and giving back to the youths of Fiji.

Here are three important lessons you can learn from Stephen:

Your Circumstances Don’t Dictate Your Outcome

Stephen dropped out of school to play professional hockey at the age of 16. When things didn’t turn out as he would have liked, he stopped playing at 24. You might think leaving your profession at 24 without a degree would set you up for failure, but that didn’t stop him.

Playing a professional sport taught him many things. He discovered that you must surround yourself with a great team and empower them. He also learned the importance of having a great partner or mentor to help guide you.

These two principles are the foundation of the work he does today.

The Importance of Being Present

Stephen has traveled across the world and has absorbed many of the great treasures the Earth has to offer. The best piece of advice he has for people who travel is to take it all in. Forget your technology and immerse yourself into cultures.
There are so many lessons you might miss if you are glued to your device. Stop looking at your phone and explore the world around you.

In the Western world, most of us have everything we could ever want, yet we are often miserable. One of the things that he noticed in third world countries is how happy they are. Even though they don’t have much, they still smile.

These are the types of things we should take notice of when we travel. Be willing to open yourself up to the world and you may be surprised by what you discover.

Simplicity is Key

One of the wonderful speakers we both got to experience at World Domination Summit is Derek Sivers. Often times we want to devise strategies that are years in advance. We want to plan out in pain-staking details everything that we should and shouldn’t do. What we often forget is the power of simplicity.
Instead of creating business plans that are pages long and inches thick, Stephen creates a simple one pager. It entails the vision of the company, the outcomes they want and how they will get them done, and why they are doing them. This simplicity company objectives clear without the need for all the details.

We need to stop overthinking things, and see what is front of us, instead of looking at the horizon.

Shownotes

started journey young, liked to travel
wanted to start safe journeys for Australian/New Zealand youth
brings them to Fiji to give them a safe place to explore Pacific Island culture
brings 4,000 people over 3 week period, and expanding into Asia/Europe
Spirit of Sharing – provide sports equipment and education to Pacific Islander youth
dropped out of school at 16 to play professional hockey in Europe
- education was learning on the road and learning from people
- sport is a thing that provides support, you can learn lessons from older mentors
- went to Belgium at 18/19, stopped playing at 24
- decided he need to get a real job
find the right team and partners to help you
- surround yourself with great teams and empower/enable them to be great
- his role on the team: bring ideas,concepts, and negotiating skills to the table
- skills of a partner: sales, culture, leadership
Travel:
- traveled with his dad growing up: Asia, Australia, America
- traveled Europe as part of hockey team in Belgium
- traveled conflict areas with his wife
- don’t overthink things or over complicate them
- Travelhacking Cartel email for tips, Tripadvisor
- wants to experience as many countries as he can
People & Society:
- loves to eat new food and find out about local people when he travels
- in Japan, when they heard he spoke English, people wanted to help him and practice

“Open up, turn off your smart phone and get some peripheral vision. Look up and explore, and learn on the road.”

“Sometimes you need to disconnect from your technology and immerse yourself into cultures. Especially in some of these third world countries, there’s a lot of learning to be had. They have not much, but are they happier than us? Probably a lot of the time, they’re always smiling…

Unleash Travel – started his journey with creating travel companies- largest outbound youth travel in New Zealand/Australia
- create oversea experiences for 17-18 yr old graduates – similar to Spring Break
- allows youths to party with others in safe environment
Fiji
- was close by and had many ports
- started with two people, DJs, a couple hundred people, and some spreadsheets
- now 6 islands and 70 crew members
for a lot of people, it is their first time traveling
- they make it easy and safe
- give them activities to do during the day
- do culture exchange with Spirit of Sharing
  - learn about Fijian culture
  - play with kids from the islands and donate equipment
Spirit of Sharing – traveled to Cambodia – saw a lot of poverty, what can we do?
- felt a responsibility to help Fijian Youth
- sought local non-profit
- make sure money was going to the right place
- became a director
- going to Everest to raise funds for Nepal
future of Unleash Travel
- 10k passengers out of Australia/New Zealand
- focus is on Australia/New Zealand and hitting 100k travelers
- many travelers begin to work for them
choosing the next location
- looking into expanding to Europe
- Fiji is an event, Europe is an experience or journey

“That’s what we want to do with Unleashed is enable and empower people to travel and see this flippin awesome globe we live in.”

World Domination Summit – how can we get better as an organization with Nurture Change and Unleash Travel
Nurture Change
- invests in travel, it is 12 hours to get anywhere
- How can we create and enable something that can empower this in our part of the globe?
- met with business power Zac de Silva, how do we turn this into a community/organization
- 60-70 people are going to Fiji for the event

“Everyone I think, on the globe, either wants to change something in their business or change something in their lives. And if we can bring people together to share, inspire, and learn off each other in a pretty cool environment being in Fiji, and we bring in industry leaders, being it top coaches or corporate wellness professionals, to be able to share in an informal format, very much similar to WDS, and then we can create accountability on that as well.”

creating an event
- Ready, Shoot, Aim – how he operates
- formulate shared purchase agreement, making sure the right partners are on board, and a simple one pager (business plan)
- finding the right partners that can share your message

“We just have a clear vision. We want some outcomes and a timeline on how things and why we are doing things as well. How are we going to achieve them and why are we doing them?”

Derek Sivers – don’t overthink things

“I do think we just overthink things a lot and then we got bogged down on I suppose looking down instead of looking at the horizon. It’s like we focus on the little bit, and that takes up time… we don’t have the horizon in sight. So we have to look up and forward instead of looking down to the ground.”

events attended
- Eye for Travel – listen to what other big companies are doing
- New Zealand Marketing Summit
- Anthony Robbins
day to day operations
- sets up in “productivity bunker”
- Sundays- set out key outcomes for the week
- Nurture Change, Unleash Travel, Spirit of Sharing
- 5 key outcomes on Friday afternoon on what he’s achieved
- 5 to 1:
  - 5 focused hours on Monday with 30-15 minute breaks in between, 4 on Tue, 3 on Wed, 2 on Thur, 1 on Friday
- uses Asana and Basecamp
on starting a business
- go with your gut
- share idea with a few close friends, if they buy in, set out the next few steps
- go and make it work, or find a team that can supplement your assets
- don’t think about it too much or you won’t do it

“Just ask and a lot of people will be willing to answer your questions and that’s helped me out immensely.”

not scared to answer questions

[bctt tweet=”When you have something great you’ll know, they’ll be freaking out.”]

Morning Routine:
- Headspace
- Tim Ferriss and meditation
- gets everything done in the morning because he has two young kids under 3
Resources:
- Attitude – Justin Herald
- podcasts: Joe Polish, 10 x 10, Tim Ferriss Show
Someone who is creative: Richard Branson
- models himself off of Virgin strategy
- he has good ideas and teams
- origins of Virgin Air