Vlog: Autumn Adventures in 3 Countries
Aaaand here it is: My autumn update, a journey through the last two months with lots of beautifully coloured autumn leaves, walks, sunshine - and three different countries.
I got to spend some time in the town of my alma mater, Frankfurt, followed by several weeks at home in my cottage in Croatia and a one-day trip to Venice in brilliant sunshine (and yes, it was all you might have imagined: decadent, dirty, but also undeniably magical).
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Transcript
Here follows the exact transcript of everything that’s said in the vlog. You can find the same text as subtitles in the video itself, activated by clicking on the symbol on the bottom right.
I know this is not the usual view I start my vlogs with. It's the Frankfurt skyline, where I spent a few weeks in October to do a house sit and look after this pretty older kitty.
I took part in a conference on Hofmannsthal, my favorite poet. They also had an exhibition where I had the chance to look at the incredible critical edition of his collected works.
I'm in the Palmengarten, a botanical garden in Frankfurt focused on exotic plants and butterflies and the like. It's very beautiful.
And I'm back home, with a lovely cup of tea and quite tired, but it was very much worth it - although unfortunately, the Butterfly House is currently closed, its under construction. So that was a bit of a letdown, but otherwise I enjoyed it so much.
It was strangely invigorating to be a tourist in Frankfurt, my old university town. I visited places again like the Paulskirche where the first German National Assembly took place in 1848.
Autumn in Croatia
Back home, it had got truly autumn, and for the most part the weather was absolutely beautiful these past weeks.
On the day of Halloween, I went to my favorite lake, which you might recognize from previous vlogs, for an autumn walk with my friend Miljenka.
To our surprise, the other end of the lake had disappeared!
So we've come to see the lake, and the lake has disappeared. For some reason, there's no lake.
We apparently weren't the only ones surprised by this. Look at these poor folks with their boat!
I always do that when it's autumn.
Hey my dears! Can we talk? It's the end of November as I'm filming this. The weather has gone from good to horrible, and I'm strangely in a bit of a Christmassy mood. I'm saying this because I'm about to go to to Bavaria again, to my housesit there with the two kitties and to look after my auntie a little bit. And last year when I did this, I was there for most of December, and they had a beautifully decorated house and it's-, but for some reason, I wasn't really in a Christmas mood then. This year, I am! And I wonder how long it's going to last but I really feel like this, the German version of Christmas, so not so much the party version with the colorful flashy lights, but more like the quiet snow and white lights like candles, right, cozy, Christmas markets, mulled wine, that kind of Christmas. So let's see how that turns out.
I want to talk to you because it's, like I said, the end of November, and my inbox is beginning to flood with Black Friday offers and then Cyber Monday and then comes, then will come Advent and then holiday sales, and I'm tired just thinking of it. It's just something I've always disliked. It's like every retailer in the world at this time of the year starts to remember that they haven't hit their sales target for the year yet, and then they're doing everything to get customers in the door. And I wonder how to do this differently, and so I usually resist making short-term offers, and I try to get my sales targets, to hit my sales targets without having to do a massive sale by the end of the year and putting even more pressure to spend spend spend on my wild spirits. So I don't do that.
And the reason why I'm telling you this is that, as you see here, I have designed some cups, some merchandise: 'Let your Wild Spirit soar', and there's some shoulder bags with 'Wild Spirit' on them and some other mugs, there's a funny one: 'Night Owl - don't talk to me before 10:00 a.m.', or: 'Morning Lark - don't talk to me after 3 p.m.', and and you know, some funny little products. And people wonder why I have an Etsy store up with no sales or one or two sales or whatever. Having said that you're free to offer-, to order stuff, but they're only there because I was having fun creating them. Like, I love these designs with the birds all around and all these, and I mostly did that so I can send stuff to my customers, to my clients, my coaching clients, right, as gifts, or friends or whatever.
And I do this directly from the print-on-demand store so I don't go through Etsy which is why you don't see any sales there. A lot of, some of my wild spirits also do that through the direct-, the price is the same, by the way, in case you were wondering, you pay the same on Etsy, and there. Like I said, you can feel free to go there, I'll leave a link in the description, but when I opened this Etsy store I got so many messages from promoters who wanted me-, who were offering their marketing services, and I'm just getting so tired just looking at those because I'm not a retailer, I have no interest in making money with these, and I don't anyway because I priced them so they are-, I have a profit of maybe one, two or three EUR per piece, so I'm not going to get rich even if people now bought - if 100 people bought, I would have made 200 EUR, I can't live on that either and I don't want to. I'm not a retailer, I'm a coach.
So this is something that goes directly into my message, and that is to pick your battles and to pick where you focus, where you prioritize, what is worth your time and your energy and your effort. Because the same goes for my social media channels. I'm not on social media much. My YouTube channel has a couple hundred subscribers, and I keep getting offers. "Yeah, I'll get you subscribers, up to 10,000" and whatever, and I'm always thinking: 'No, no.' I've learned marketing, I've studied this stuff, I've learned it, I've done courses and all the rest, so if I wanted to, I could optimize, but my main clients which are women between 40 and 60 are not on YouTube. YouTube is mostly millennials and gen Z - and by the way, I love you guys, you're are amazing and you're absolutely welcome in my channel, but my main clients, my paying clients are of a different generation. And that's why I'm not going to spend effort or money on that.
I'm very very ruthless with my time these days, with deciding exactly where I spend my effort and my energy. I find that so important. My party happens on my website, on wildspiritscoaching.com - that's where my clients find me, and not just the clients but also the subscribers, which are also women between 40 and 60, but there're also men and there are people of all genders, of all ages, of whatever because this community is something so beautiful. So if you, like I said, if you're interested, go there - I'll leave a link in the description to that as well - and sign up for the email newsletter. That's spam-free, one email per week, and that's how I communicate with my people. They can email me at any time and I'll answer, I'm not some guru, I don't need to be put on a pedestal. I'm an expert.
I'm an expert in coaching, I know a lot about my topic, the stuff that I talk about and that I coach people about. I am an expert in that, but everybody is an expert in their work field, right, or in their field of study. I don't need to be treated like some, like I said, like a guru or be put on a pedestal for that. That's just not my thing. I'm a normal human being, and you can talk to me and I'll talk to you. I'd love to. But again, that happens on my website and in my newsletter and not on my social media channels.
Having said that, if you buy something, I'm enough of a child that if somebody buys a mug or a shoulder bag or something, I do a happy dance. If you want to go crazy, have a look and buy something, and you'll make me happy - if not rich.
Venice
On the last of the sunny weekends I went to Venice, the city of water, and indulged in being a tourist just like I had in Frankfurt, for one more day.
The thing with Venice is that in your first half hour, every bridge is so exciting, and you take pictures of the bridge and from the bridge, and half a day later, you hardly look up anymore, it's just another place with more steps to go, the 427th bridge that you cross.
Of course I looked at the usual sights: the Doge's Palace, the Bridge of Sighs...
My resolution not to buy a mask lasted about half an hour.
There's something to be said for a city without cars. But as you can see, even the boats can cause traffic jams.
With this footage of the beautiful full moon over the red mountains, I'd like to say goodbye for today. I hope you enjoyed this vlog, and if you did, like, comment and subscribe, all the good YouTube stuff. I wish you a beautiful month of December and lovely holidays, and I shall talk to you soon. Bye!