We row hard in the bowels of the slave ship, doing lots of stuff we don’t want to, dreaming of the day we can afford to do what we really want. And when that day comes, we wonder why we didn’t wake up to the fact that life is short and that we should have chased our real dreams earlier.
John Ahern, Extract from On the Road…with Kids
John was born in Queensland, Australia and grew up in Redcliffe where he roamed the beaches and played backyard cricket with his mates. His career spanned from mowing lawns and packing groceries, to being the head of real estate for the Flight Centre Travel Group, a global public-listed travel company.
In between serious bouts of work, he has travelled through over 85 countries and been shot at, poisoned, tear-gassed, robbed at gunpoint and locked up in an African jail. He has stowed away in a Columbian cargo plane, ridden across countries on the back of trucks and the roofs of buses, flown in an ultralight over the Zambezi and been a passenger in not one, but two train derailments. You’d think he’d learn by now. Yet John remains a self-professed serial ‘escapist,’ adamant that each time he returns from a wandering, he is revitalized and renewed, thriving with fresh ideas, crazy goals and the energy to execute change.
He now lives with his family in the comparative safety of the Currumbin Valley on Australia’s Gold Coast. He considers it his base camp from where he launches new adventures, travel stories, and inspirational tips on getting away .
His fervent belief that travel represents a tool for life-changing discoveries is illustrated in his entertaining TEDx talk ‘The Rejuvenating Power of Time Out.’ As an accomplished speaker, John has also presented at travel expos, literary festivals, book clubs, corporate conferences, and travel memoir writing workshops. His book and playful travel writing has been featured on radio, TV, print, and podcast media, including the ABC Conversation Hour, BBC Radio Saturday Live, National geographic UK, Sky Business News, The Guardian UK, Channel 9 Mornings and National Geographic. His signature presentations include:
Escape, Revive and Thrive – The Rejuvenating Power of Time Out
In this hilarious and inspiring TEDx talk, John presents a new angle on work/life balance, blending entertaining anecdotes from his adventurous journeys with science-based illustrations of how individuals can deploy ‘time out’ as a high-performance strategy to achieve creativity, innovation, happiness and extraordinary success. For individuals, John’s talk promises to ignite their own personal quests and goals. For companies, The Power of Time Out offers an unconventional but proven idea for supercharging careers, creating growth and increasing productivity and profits.
The Greatest Travel Tips Ever! Save time, money, stress, and have more fun.
After On The Road with Kids won the Queensland People’s Choice Book of the year, John was invited to be a drawcard speaker at Australia’s largest travel expo, detailing his family’s 30-country year-long sojourn. With 10,000 people pouring through the doors, the venue was prepped for numbers. But almost nobody turned up. As humbling as when his feature interview on Channel 9 was cut short for a sponsored dog-food commercial, John quickly decided that no-one comes to a travel expo to hear about other people’s trips. They come for the deals and the discounts for their own. Pivotting, John threw together what is now one of his signature presentations and ongoing passion. His 45-minute talk - The Greatest Travel Tips Ever - filled the 150-seat Expo venue, standing room only. Having worked for a decade in the travel industry, John uniquely combines insider insights with the wants and needs of everyday travellers. In this talk, John uses music and images, blending hilarious travel anecdotes with awesome tips curated from his own experiences as well a network of travellers, industry experts, and media sources. Whether it be independent, family, or corporate journeys, these generic tips are applicable to all, and attendees at John’s #GTTE session will inevitably discover hacks, apps and products to help them save time, money and stress, and have more fun on their journeys. Want to pull more people into your travel event? John’s passionate talk and storytelling helps inspire would-be travellers to have a laugh, talk travel, and action their own wanderlust dreams.
Johns tips were also featured in a regular newspaper column, a now defunct publication, (surely not his fault), as well as a three-part travel segment on ABC Weekend Radio.
Road Tales - Writing Travel Memoirs – An Interactive Workshop
John has presented his interactive Road Tales workshop through the Brisbane Lord Mayor’s Writers-in-Residence library series; on a regional city tour with the Queensland Writers Centre, and at select schools. The sporadic use of colourful language in his book means his stories better align with senior-schoolers. Although, he was once interviewed by a grade-sixer, whose mother later asked if the book was age appropriate. After John replied, ‘Probably better the kid learns swear words from me than you,’ he couldn’t decipher whether the woman’s blush was from anger or embarrassment. Six months later she contacted John, telling him her family had rented their house and bought a motorhome to go travelling for a year. ‘We want to reconnect like you guys did,’ she said.
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