In this episode of Wantdo Stories, we talked to travel blogger Heidi, an adventurer and explorer. She has a family of four, and she loves traveling with her husband and kids. 

 
Heidi's biggest passion is traveling the world. She has been to 32 countries and she is planning to explore more. She also told us numbers are not as important, because she wants to truly experience the local culture of a place she is  visiting. She loves being adventurous in nature (camping, hiking, waterfalls, rivers), because she feels like spending time outdoors feeds her soul! She also wants to explore her "own backyard” more, meaning do things in her country, Jamaica, because there is still so much to see and do. She has a series on her blog called In Mi BackYAAD where she posts travel guides for each selected destination. She plans each destination according to her family’s schedule and how much time they allocate to the trip. She believes it’s important to take her kids along the trip to grow their personalities and connect to the nature. She finds that being away from home and from all the distractions of toys, TV, games, WhatsApp and FaceTime helps her kids to interact more and talk more to each other. 

Aside from traveling the world, Heidi also loves being creative. Over the last few years she has been able to express her creativity with her blog Where Next Heidi and she wants grow her audience. Her blog was launched in March 2020, right before the COVID pandemic. She thinks the outbreak of pandemic actually allowed her to grow her brand in Jamaica because she was not traveling internationally. So she spent more time exploring Jamaica with her kids, and also share more about her home country Jamaica and what it has to offer. Though she has questioned her decision of becoming a travel blogger, since she has limited experience in marketing, media, etc. She also does not have the luxury of traveling that much, because she is a full time human resource consultant. But in the end, she convinced herself that everyone must start somewhere. All the successful bloggers in the industry probably shares some of her doubts, too. Therefore there should not be excuses holding her back. 

Between her work and life, she stresses the importance of having a healthy balance. For Heidi, the week is for working and the weekends are for playing.  She makes an effort to fill her weekends with fun and exciting things to do.  She set s a schedule so that she can work during the day before the kids come back from school and then after that it's helping them with school work, exercising and down time.  The weekends are mostly spent with her husband and kids and she’s pretty big on the importance of friendships. 

In 2022, she would love to grow her Where Next Heidi brand! She loves working with companies that are outdoor adventure focused, like Wantdo, for example.  She definitely wants to travel more with her family and she would love to try my hand at a solo trip somewhere far away from home!