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025 In today's podcast, we chat with Julie Delucca-Collins on the importance of mindset in young people and the three recommendations to help you improve it as parents or leaders.   We discuss the importance of realising the mindset someone has and how it can impact their motivations and overall wellness. Realise that young people have to push themselves and not be afraid of failing. You need to recognise your beliefs and push through the fear and build confidence and try not to pass them on to your children or the young people you are leading. We empathise that the importance of following the mantra of outdoor learning is important "I do, we do, you do".

Your email list in your business is one of the essential assets you have contributing to your business growth.  If you are not actively collecting the email addresses of your current and prospective customers, then you are missing out on a solid approach to developing and extending your reach and your businessIn this podcast, I discuss why you should have a list and the three focus areas of Collection, Storing and Connecting your email addresses.It is breaking regulatory rules to send emails without permission, but it is easy to manage the correct approach. Listen and connect with me with any questions. 

In this podcast, I discuss the opportunity and the reasons for your business to take on digital change.  Over the last couple of years, people have been forced to take on new digital processes in their everyday life for shopping, booking, entertainment and connecting with their friends and family.  This has resulted in increased confidence in using digital methods and raised expectations of what is an excellent digital experience and what is a poor one.  You as an organisation need to consider this and take the opportunity to use digital to increase connection and revenue.   As an expert in digital change, I worked with companies to introduce real change and have seen them reap the benefits on many occasions. This podcast is an introduction to why it's essential and will be followed by other podcasts looking at actual processes to make digital change count for you.  Enjoy

Great to be back after some time out due skiing accident and today I answer a question that I am asked regularly - how do I get started in my business, especially an outdoor activity-based business?  In this podcast, I introduce six steps I always use when starting a business and I help and coach new and experienced business owners to start or grow their businesses. Helping to encourage and give more people opportunities to be active outdoors is my goal and helping businesses grow and serve more people is the way to help more people. The six steps which I see as essential in starting a business and I summarise in the podcast are:1. Identifying your vision for your company, who is the audience and what is your dream to build and create as your business.  Using vision boards, identify the problem you are solving for people. 2. Viability check is key to ensure your market is practical and not too big or small to enable you to get started. Create your domain to get some momentum and progression. 3. Establish your platform to enable people to see and hear what you are doing. Creating a simple web presence and very importantly start collecting email addresses and connecting with your potential audience. 4. Collect stage is creating a reason for potential clients to leave email addresses so creating a lead magnet which is a useful download for them. This builds confidence and encourages them to leave their email for you. 5. Monetization of your business as early as possible is essential and putting your knowledge online is the way I recommend getting early income to help you build your outdoor business. 6. Promote to your market using your email list and the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system which enable you to connect and with your social media create a strategy to extend the reach.  Connect with me at InspiredandActive on Instagram and the GlobalDigitalAdventure.com website. 

It is an excellent time for everybody to start reflecting and looking at what's ahead of you in your business.There is an essential process that I would advise, reflecting  over years of running companies, that you have to set down in January and I strongly suggest you have these in place. You need to go into the first quarter of the year with the focus. I'm going to discuss six steps that I would advise from my experience. All are worth doing when you start a new year. 1. Reflect 2. Simplify your strategy 3, Play game 4. Set your 90 day targets 5. Measure your success 6. Believe in yourself. Let us all have a successful 2022!

018  BioHacking is a term used today and can mean different things and in this podcast, we introduce the concept of BioHacking and discuss what it means and how we can use BioHacking to improve our general health and wellbeing. Jeff McMahon is an experienced fitness trainer and coach joins me to discuss BioHacking and how we can through some simple practices improve our daily health with long terms gains. Since his mid-twenties, Jeff has worked with thousands of people to help them transform their lives into a well oiled healthy machine. Today, he teaches online entrepreneurs and people all over the world how to leverage their health so they have more energy and more confidence to go out and rule their day. His work has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs dominate their business by having more energy, more confidence, and more stamina to be running multi-million dollar companies. 

#017 Your Full System Fitness is essential for all of us to consider and practice but especially in our children and young people. We often consider fitness is about how far we can run or how long we can cycle before we fell tired.  This is an indicator but it is important we start to consider the whole system which includes our body, mind and everyday environment to really make sure we are the best we can be. I discuss in the podcast Full-System-Fitness which includes:  Physical fitness and the 4 key elements to measure and develop Dynamic Intelligence which is the importance of developing our adaptability and ability to make decisions and problem solve. Self Regulation, the key to looking after ourselves to develop the feel-good factor. It is these three areas combined which provide your Full System Fitness and putting a development schedule together helps us and those we support to develop.I have created the Ignition model to develop this approach of the full system thinking and connect with me at:Ignition.inspiredandactive.com to find out more information and any of the topics discussed.

#016   Do you find when you are out on walks that you see or hear something and you're not sure what it is? It happens to me all the time.   I have used many mobile apps to help inform and help identify the plant, tree or bird call.   In today's podcast,  I discuss the 4 best apps I use after using many.  I share why they are worth using, and I recommend you give them a try next time you are out. In the podcast, I review:PlantSnapiNaturalistiBirdSky Safari with a secondary mention to Star Rover.I use each of these apps and find them all great help in finding, sharing and discussing nature and what is around us. I also mention our trail and event app in the myGeo series, information at mygeoactive.com 

#015 In today's podcast, I discuss Adventure navigation based trail apps we can download to help us on or planning an adventure. In future podcasts, I will review other apps we can download and use when we are on a walk or cycle.  There are mainly three types of app for using on a trek or adventure. 1) navigation helping in you create a route and navigating the trail.2)  game-based apps to be used when on the trail.l3) educational apps to keep informed and to learn as you go.  We will consider each in future. The navigational apps we are reviewing today are: ViewRanger (Viewranger.com) Wikiloc (wikiloc.com) Komoot (Komoot.com) With the mention of Strava and Trail Forks.  Also mention our own myGeoActive apps: myGeoadventure, myGeoScatter.  More information at mygeoactive.comIt is about trying them and to see what suits you, but I use them all for different adventures. 

014 Motivating your family, friends and colleagues to take part in a sport, activity or hobby is something we all have to do. None more so than parents with older children, teenagers, who are in their development phase and simply not as motivated to get out and possibly push themselves. Sean Scott is an experienced sports coach, very successful athlete and has spent over twenty years previously in the armed forces leading and directing teams in all forms of activities and excursions.  Today Sean shares his thoughts on how to keep your family motivated relating to his role as a Dad to his two now older children.  Sean advisees about keeping the activity fun, achievable and rewarding. Listen to the podcast and enjoy the discussion on around the challenge of motivating others. 

013 Having confidence is essential in your own and everyone's health and general wellbeing. Having self-confidence will help in many areas of your life, making you feel better both mentally and physically and let you be more able to meet day to day activity and increase our enjoyment of the outdoors. In this podcast, we consider how we can build and improve your self-confidence, and I suggest five areas and practical steps you can take to help.1. Trust in your ability2. Become a positive optimist3. Accept the challenge and take action4. Use the imagination game to visualise success5. Start the habit of regular exercise as a habit. 

012: Going on an adventure means different things to different people. It could be a trek into the countryside for others it is a high adrenalin downhill mountain bike ride. But for everyone, it is important to have adventures in our lives and the use of adventure to get outdoors, be more active and to connect with your family and friends. In this podcast, I discuss 4 simple aspects to consider when organising an adventure to help make it land well, especially with your older kids.1. Create a purpose and let others know it2. Create anticipation3. Make it engaging 4. Motivate and connect on the adventure. I introduce the concept of GeoAdventures; these are adventures using virtual markers found on the map on the phone create a great easy to create outdoor adventure. Refer to our GeoAdventure products at myGeoActive.com

011 We should be aiming to coach our older children and not come across as a teacher. Our kids will react better and learn more from our coaching approach than to a direct teaching method. In this podcast I discuss how we should be coaching our kids and focusing on three key goals:1. Encourage our children to learn by example and not be afraid to fail  2. Help them grow their identity and build the vision of their best self3. Install self-belief in, them developing the confidence to succeed and reach their vision. This podcast is the first in a series of discussions where we look at methods and approaches built from the 25 years coaching and parenting which I know work.   

010 Today in the podcast, I welcome Mark Hatton, an outdoor lover and self-taught historian,  to share his years of experience in developing a real interest in the layers of history we can find in countryside all around us. Mark advises us to open our eyes and peel back the layers, and we can find a richness of information which can inspire and engage both ourselves and our kids to want to get out and find out more. Although reference to Scotland in the mapping, the approach and advice should let us all build up curiosity in our children and introduce a new approach to getting our families inspired and getting outdoors. See the website and podcast page for some of the pictures Mark shared following the discussion. Link: inspiredandactive.com/podcast

009 Do you get frustrated, worried and stressed, as a parent, with your children's screentime and watching their inactivity impact their general health and as a result your family wellbeing. Today on the short podcast John Campbell introduces the concept of our Natural Balance and considers past learnings and introduces three essential areas to explore in the Inspired&Active framework helping to form our children's natural balance 1) Curiosity 2) Creativity 3) Connectivity.  These will be discussed more in later episodes, but it is vital to start considering the balance and to measure and plan to improve it.  The Balance Quiz is on the Inspiredandactive.com website. Answer the questions to get your Natural Balance score, and in the next episode, John will discuss the score and what we can to improve it. 

008 We continue our discussion around the health impact of extended screentime our children. In this podcast, Sue Watson chats about the science behind screen time and how it affects our children. Sue Watson is a physiotherapist specialing in Craniosacral therapy and focusing on the balance of the nervous systems. Sue considers how we use devices and how the intensity in gaming impacts the nervous system balance. Sue discusses how not all screen time is bad for the children, and it is about the time on the device, which is essential to control.  Key learnings: Aim to be in a regulated position understanding the high and lows due to overstimulation. Invest in time to let your children be your coach, engaging with them. We need to enter your children's world, create the connection. Prioritise getting your children outside to balance the intensity of the screen. Time in the outdoors will allow us to limit the choice, which is essential as one negative aspect of the screen is the impact on attention span and children flitting from one thing to the next.    Curiosity is an essential element in our children's wellbeing.  Consider the sensory aspects when outdoors. Sue Watson works in Central Scotland, north England but also run virtual classes and consultations. Connect with Sue on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/suewatson.cst/

007 Today I, John Campbell, discusses the topic of digital balance and the challenge we are all facing concerning the time our children are spending on their screens. I have worked with Digital technology and related projects for over 25 years and I am currently a Digital Transformation Director for the Scottish Government. I have a passion for the effective and appropriate use of Digital to improve all our lives.  What we are going through is extreme and the resulting change on our use of digital methods has skyrocketed.  It is the same with our children screentime. The majority of us are accepting increased screen time as we work from home but it is all a balance and not a yes/no decision when it comes to our children engaging with their mobile phones, game stations or the TV.  We should manage, monitor and share screentime. I consider the impact, what we can do with some actions and recommended apps, books and ideas to help. This is the start of a series of podcasts where we consider the challenge and impact it has on our health and wellbeing of the family.   

#006 In today's episode, I discuss with a good friend and experienced trail runner, Alan Matthews how important it is to motivate and inspire our children to be active. Throughout our children's younger years, we need to help them engage in outdoor activity and sports to ensure that by the time they are in their late teens they are self-motivated and keeping very health and active lifestyle. Several key takeaways from this discussion for me were: 1) that we should not keep our children from experiencing and having the freedom to explore the outdoors and to be able to take risks. We need to measure the risk against potential benefits, and in many if not most cases, the benefit in general wellbeing outweighs the risk.  Alan quotes that life is full of risks, and we need to manage them and you should not remove them.  2) The inspiration for our children come from who they follow and watch on typically channels such as YouTube. It is all about the digital balance to let our children look up to and be inspired. Without the knowledge of what is achievable, then motivation will be missing. As parents, will not know the possibilities without allowing some digital screentime. Alan is a trail runner and has shared many miles over the hills with his two boys Cameron and Gregor. Two years ago, Alan retired from his Doctors GP practice and to mark it planned an event to share his love of Scotland and an opportunity to enjoy a challenge with his two boys reconnecting with the love of being outdoors sharing experiences. A secondary reason was to raise some money for charitable causes which have been important to Alan during his life as a Doctor.  Alan planned and ran across the width of Scotland over four days taking in some of the most beautiful landscapes and rugged countryside you will find anywhere in the world. The capturing of the challenge, Run Across Scotland, is an inspiring and motivational film by Fluxvideo and we have linked the thirteen-minute film below.  Run across Scotland: https://fluxvideo.uk/run-across-scotland-film/ (filmed by Fluxvideo.uk) If more families could realise the opportunity to share times like this with our children when they are adults I believe it demonstrates that we are focusing on the right things and succeeding to ensure our health and wellbeing of your children.   

005: How can we make our walks entertaining for our family? Are you finding that you are finding you are doing the same walks over and over again and your children are getting frustrated and less interested?In this podcast, John & Jon spend a few minutes discussing some ideas around adding games and fun to the time outside.  Try and make your walks different and try something new. We would love to hear your ideas and thoughts in the Inspired&Active Facebook group, join us there. 

004: Today, in the third podcast in the series of challenges our children are facing, we have a conversation around one of the consequences of our children no longer being active in the outdoors. A term created by Richard Louv is now a proven disorder impacting our children's health, wellbeing and mental strength.  We need to become aware of it and then try and find the opportunity to encourage and help tackle the reasons for the disorder in our local area, schools and groups starting with our families.