Episode 36: Meet Alexa Hohenberg- Professional Snowboarder, Mountain Guide, Award-Winning Content Creator & Founder of StillStoked

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Show Notes

Alexa Hohenberg is all about living free and being one with nature. She is a professional snowboard athlete, mountain guide, explorer and a surfer. She is the founder of Still Stoked, a platform where women get to share their amazing journeys and leave their own legacy to inspire the next generation. Alexa is also a creative storyteller, an award-winning content creator and producer.

Alexa can surely offer so much to the corporate world with her great skills and exceptional talents. But nature bugs sure bites hard and she keeps being pulled back to where her heart belongs. She often jokes that her life is “ruined” in that there’s no escaping its enchanting beauty. One thing is clear: a constrained life just wouldn’t work for this free-spirited woman.

Alexa has lived a very exciting life and she shares these encouraging experiences in this podcast. She takes us back to her first love- the mountains, and the amazing rides it offered. She also tells about her pride and joy, Still Stoked and her visions for this growing platform. Born from her passion to help women share their wonderful life, this stage is set to leap over expectations. Alexa also shares some tips for entrepreneurs to scale their biz into something that goes with their dream life. Life is not about the things that shape you. Rather, it’s how you shape it so that you can live the free life. Alexa did it and you can too!

Episode Highlights:

03:47 One with the Mountains
08:38 Enjoying the Free Rides
10:43 Mountain Guide Qualifications
12:07 The Still Stoked Evolution
16:25 Finding “Home”
20:01 More of Still Stoked
25:21 Must Have’s Before You Start Your Biz
30:10 Towards Vivid Realities

Today, I got to sit down for a chat with Alexa Hohenberg. Alexa is my hero. She is the founder and owner of Still Stoked. It’s a platform on a mission to inspire adventurous women through stories, musings, sport, and travel. And beyond being an amazing storyteller, a writer and a filmmaker, she’s a girl who’s got it all worked out for living life a little differently. Prior to setting up Still Stoked, Alexa was a professional snowboarder, a mountain guide, and spent her life hurtling down the mountains in the most extreme conditions. She was the kind of girl who’d be living in a yurt in the middle of Alaska just to be close to the pristine mountains. Her lifestyle is a true inspiration to many. She’s wild, free, and to top that, she has a wonderful sense of humor. In this story, Alexa walks us through her action-packed life from her snowboarding days to moving to Australia, and then spending three months on a boat crossing the Pacific Ocean. Today, Alexa lives in the Northern beaches of Sydney and she’s become an accomplished surfer and shares the stories of other inspiring females from around the world with her incredible talents and contagious enthusiasm. She successfully created an online platform that has morphed into a real paid job.

“It's so rewarding to build your own life… and shape it how you want.”

I was interested in finding out what it was all about, and in our conversation, Alexa walks us through what it is to run a platform like that. And she also gives us tips that she would have liked to have when she set up shop. And she also shares her wild and free lifestyle that goes with the job. So there’s a bit of a catch in the recording though. Halfway through, I realized that I was speaking into the wrong mic, my bad entirely. So with last week’s conversation in mind, I decided to try out the Pete Gustin method and listen to my faint voice and re-recorded it on a new track. Anyway, it was a bit of a disaster, but what’s important is what Alexa has to say. But you know what, I’ve decided to own it anyway, and presenting my conversation with Alexa.

I hope you enjoy this episode.

Take care, have fun, and enjoy the waves.

Ciao,

Imi

Connect with Alexa:

Resources Links:

Podcast

Diaries of the Wild Ones by Aaron Shanks

YouTube Channel

The Journey Junkie by Allie Van Fossen

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Quotes:

“I think the mountains for me I just just an endless expanse of space… So I find mountains kind of captivating.”

“I think the salty life is in my bones, and once a sailor always a sailor.”

There were definitely moments where you realize just how alone you are.

I highly recommend if anyone ever gets the opportunity to spend time at sea, it gives you the time to take everything out of your brain, put it on the ground, look at it, and then assess what you want to put back in your brain.

“If you don't back yourself in what your dreams are and no one else will.”

“It's so rewarding to build your own life… and shape it how you want.”

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Transcriptions:

Imi Barneaud: Hello everybody and welcome to The Oceanriders Podcast, conversations with creatives, entrepreneurs, thinkers and dreamers who also happen to be surfers. My name’s Imi, and I am your host. If you enjoy my podcast, you can support it in a number of ways. You can rate, review and subscribe to it on your podcast app or on iTunes. You can join me on social media and you can even support the show by joining me for a chat or sponsoring an episode. You’ll find all the details at the end of this episode and in the show notes of your app, so about today’s conversation, today, I got to sit down for a chat with Alexa Hohenberg. Alexa is my hero. She is the founder and owner of Still Stoked. It’s a platform on a mission to inspire adventurous women through stories, musings, sport, and travel. And beyond being an amazing storyteller, a writer and a filmmaker, she’s a girl who’s got it all worked out for living life a little differently. Prior to setting up Still Stoked, Alexa was a professional snowboarder, a mountain guide, and spent her life hurtling down the mountains in the most extreme conditions. She was the kind of girl who’d be living in a yurt in the middle of Alaska just to be close to the pristine mountains. Hello style is a true inspiration to many. She’s wild, free, and to top that she has a wonderful sense of humor. In this story, Alexa walks us through her action packed life from us through boarding days to moving to Australia, and then spending three months on a boat crossing the Pacific ocean. Today, Alexa lives in the Northern beaches of Sydney and she’s become an accomplished surfer and shares the stories of other inspiring females from around the worlds with her incredible talents and contagious enthusiasm. She successfully created an online platform that has morphed into a real paid job. I was interested in finding out what it was all about, and in our conversation, Alexa walks us through what it is to run a platform like that. And she also gives us tips that she would have liked to have when she set up shop. And she also shares her wild and free lifestyle that goes with the job. So there’s a bit of a catch in the recording though. Halfway through I realized that I was speaking into the wrong mike, my bad entirely. So with last week’s conversation in mind, I decided to try out the Pete Gustin method and listen to my faint voice and re-recorded it on a new track. Anyway, it was a bit of a disaster, but what’s important is what Alexa has to say. But you know what, I’ve decided to own it anyway and presenting my conversation with Alexa. Hi Alexa and welcome to The Oceanriders Podcast. How are you today?

Alexa Hohenberg: I’m fine, thank you.

Imi Barneaud: So I guess before we start, do you think you could introduce yourself to the listeners.

Alexa Hohenberg: Absolutely. So my name is Alexa. I am the founder of Still Stoked, which is a platform for women in adventure with a large majority of surfing content. And I also have a background in snowboarding, and mountain guides, and also I’m a surfer.

Imi Barneaud: Wow. This is going to be a really exciting conversation. So I wonder if we could start with where you grew up.

Alexa Hohenberg: Ah, yes. The accent gives it away, although I kind of have a bit of a mongrel accent. I grew up in South London and no mountains or surf around me, but a melting pot of cultures and media, I was exposed from an early age to that sort of culture and that sort of vibe.

Imi Barneaud: Excellent. And so, can we talk a bit about your relationship with the mountains?

Alexa Hohenberg: Yeah. I started snowboarding when I was 11 and it was on a school trip. And I think the proximity to the UK, to the French Alps, you know, like a lot of schools get to go on a week’s holiday. And I was lucky enough to be one of those and I absolutely adored just being in the mountains. And my parents would take me, and my mother’s Croatian, so we would drive through the Alps and Germany on the way home when I was younger. So we spend a lot of time walking in the mountains. But I think the mountains for me, I just, just an endless expanse of space.

“I think the mountains for me I just just an endless expanse of space… So I find mountains kind of captivating.”

Imi Barneaud: Hmm.

Alexa Hohenberg: And there’s just, it’s nice, I like looking at mountains thinking no one’s ever been in that little nickel, that crummy will have they, or what happened, what stories have been told on these mountains? Or what have they seen? So I find mountains kind of captivating.

Imi Barneaud: That’s beautiful. So you actually became a snow park shaper in the French Alps. Can you tell us about that? The whole story of this?

Alexa Hohenberg: Yeah. I spend a lot of time in ledges out, and ledges out pass a glacier in the summer. And I was coaching on some camps, some freestyle camps, teaching people how to ride rails and hit jumps. And then when that was finished, I needed to buy a lift pass. And I figured out that if I volunteered as a slow park shape then I got a free lift pass for the next day. So my son has kind of tend into snowboarding all day, and then picking up a shovel and shaping the jumps or salting them which we did back in the day, I’m not sure if they do that anymore for environmental reasons. But yeah, shaping the jumps, taking the banners down from the wind, packing the deck chairs, having a barbecue and then going down before the storms hit in the afternoon and we couldn’t take the gondola. So yeah, that was kind of fun, I got to learn, it was nice to learn the mechanics of the jumps that we were hitting and kind of learn from some good shapers as well. Cause I was throwing myself off those jumps and rails every day. So it was kind of cool to spend a little bit of time knowing what went into building them.

Imi Barneaud: Hmm. And when did that actually transitioning you to become a professional snowboarder?

Alexa Hohenberg: Later on, I managed to get a few sponsors and decided that I was going to try and push that. I made one of the first women’s snowboard movies in 2005 as a response to the lack of any media for women in snowboarding available at all.

Imi Barneaud: Is that snowboarding?

Alexa Hohenberg: Yeah, that was kind of, it was cool. it SnowBalls, yeah. We want to call it chicks with decks, but DJ rap the drum and poles DJ BS to it, so I called it Snow Balls, and yeah, I kinda did a lot of camps in the UK. We have these indoor snow domes, which are essentially fridge’s. Some of them scrape the ice rink, the snow off the ice rink, and then they throw that on concrete, and then you go and hit rails, and jumps, and fall on the concrete. And there was a hole like British tall through the snow domes and the dry slopes. And I moved to Canada when I was 18, and got amongst some of the camps there. So yeah, I kind of just dabbled, dabbled in that. But my thing went down the photography, and storytelling route, and snowboarding.

Imi Barneaud: Right, right. So how did that kind of nomadic lifestyle going with the season, how did it affect your lifestyle in general?

Alexa Hohenberg: Well, I worked pretty hard when I was at school just to raise as much money as I could. So in the holidays I could do my passion. I’m 18, I left by myself, I was like, I’m out, and I moved to Canada and I didn’t come back until I was about 21, 22, and it was only for an injury that I had to come back. And then that injury forced me to slow down, and then I went to university. So I kind of went to university late. And I think that was actually a really good thing cause I had a lot of life experience. I wasn’t just coming out of school and wanting to like get drunk and get involved in all the partying. Instead, I kind of had to do that first year where it doesn’t count for anything, but you still have to go to the classes. So it kind of felt a little bit futile and pointless. So I had the time to make that snowboard film, which was good. So I guess some good came of it.

Imi Barneaud: I’ve seen footage of you on YouTube and you are amazing radical free rider. How did you transition from jumping on concrete ramps to actually free riding? The scenery is incredible and the slopes are really, really scary. How did this happen?

Alexa Hohenberg: Thank you so much. I guess later, the transition a lot of snowboarders have is from kind of freestyle, and you know, treating your body like a bouncy ball and hoping it can recover to wanting to go deeper into the mountains and learn about the snow and into the backcountry. And then with the arrival of splitboard and ski touring, the last sort of five years of my life has been more about human pallets, exploration in the mountains, and helicopters. I spent a lot of time in Alaska and playing in helicopters, and that’s just been like straight to the vein. Highly recommend it. It will ruin your life if you ever, ever try heli-skiing.

Imi Barneaud: What do you mean by that?

Alexa Hohenberg: Well, I know Alaska is the final frontier and the mountains are so big and once you’ve been on one of those big faces and had an amazing ride there’s, nothing is comparable ever again. So sometimes hard to go to ski resorts, and kind of, for a period there I was just saving all my pennies for helifuel and trips to Alaska and living in wood tents, and I lived in a wood tent, in a tree house, and a bus, and yet on the side of the highway and Thompson bus bodies just to be there. So yeah, it does ruin your life. I ended up quitting my career actually and retraining as a Heli-Guides in Alaska, the mountain guide just because I got the bug so bad and that was kind of all I wanted to do, and I did that at like maybe age 30, 31.

Imi Barneaud: Wow. When you are a mountain guide, is there a certificate enables you to practices of surf guide, or as a mountain guide all around the world?

Alexa Hohenberg: There is, so the highest qualification that you can get is called an IFMGA, and that is the purest form of mountain guide, and I don’t have that. That is you do rock climbing, ice climbing, all of the elements that are involved in walking through the mountains and then you can work anywhere in the world. The qualification I have is a Mechanized Guiding Qualification, and then as an avalanche professional as well. So that’s sort of guiding idea is less glaciers, and rock and climb, and more machines, helicopters, and snowcat, and ski touring.

Imi Barneaud: Have you ever had to avoid an avalanche? Or gone through tricky situations? And have you been lucky enough to avoid any?

Alexa Hohenberg: Yeah, not be in that situation? Yeah, I think, I work in avalanche terrain and my job is to assess the safety of the snow and make their decisions, and where we’re going to ski that day, and how we’re going to ski it. And fortunately I’ve made the right decisions up to this point, so I haven’t been in that sort of situation, but I have definitely had a hypothesis that the snow wasn’t good, and gone out there, and tested it, and seen reactions from it, and then back down and turn home, yeah.

Imi Barneaud: Amazing. Let’s talk about what sparked your mind to actually start Still Stoked.

Alexa Hohenberg: Still Stoked, I guess was the natural evolution of making that snowboard film back in the day. So when I was younger it was hard to be what I couldn’t see, and there wasn’t that many women to look up to in the roles that I wanted to be in those alternative lifestyles. So I wanted to create a place where women could tell their stories in the hope that the younger generation would have access to those stories and be able to read them and be like, what I’m feeling right now other people have also felt, and what I want to do with my life, I have physical proof that other women have been able to successfully do, so it makes it more achievable for me. Now I can see it so I can be it. So I basically started as a passion project of telling my story and the stories of the women around me. Fortunately through the sports that I did and the level that I was at, I had the most amazing access to athletes and inspirational heroes and idols and I was able to put in the spotlight and ask questions of. So I was creating all of the content that I know that I wanted to know because I knew that there were some women out there that also would benefit from access to that sort of information. And it’s kind of grown, and grown from that. And it’s now at a point where it’s got so big that it’s bigger than one person, and I’m at that critical precipice right now where I have to make the decision that, you know, to start hiring people and opening it up and getting help. And I recently just went full time on it as well. So I’m fully all in just seeing where it can go, so exciting.

Imi Barneaud: Yeah. Cause you also moved to Australia. Was that for a job? Or was that for the lifestyle in Australia?

Alexa Hohenberg: Yeah. I never thought I would end up in Australia. I spent a lot of time in Whistler when I was younger, and I met so many Australians there and I was like, I never, I don’t want to go there because the Whistler partying Australian scene isn’t exactly representative of how wonderful this country is. But I was in New Zealand, I tore my knee again and my old boss had moved to Australia and she kept on saying: “Alexa, what are you doing?” I said: “Snowboarding, go away.” And then she called just like: “Alexa, what are you doing?” I was like: “Oh, I’ve blown my knee. What have you got?” And so she asked me to move over for an amazing job in advertising to start the digital content department for a big agency called Media Column. So I moved over here and my brother was fortunately already over here. And I’ve been here now 9 or 10 years in Sydney’s Northern Beaches, and I absolutely love it. It’s the best place to call home.

Imi Barneaud: Absolutely. And did you transition to surfing in Australia? Was that the first time you had to go?

Alexa Hohenberg: With snowboarding, it was really hard to find the time to surf. So I kind of went on a couple of trips to Cornwall and Devon, and then the UK, but I never really would have called myself a surfer. And then it was such a big goal of mine. I was like, I really, really want to surf, and I consistently surf when I moved to Manly Beach. And every morning, I would try and go with my girl friends, and hold each other accountable, and I’d get out there, and I mean nothing about how the wind affects the snow. So my fondest memories, sorry, how the wind affects the wave. So my fondest memories are, you know, going out in crazy onshore storms being like, WE MUST LEARN TO SURF with my girlfriend Sarah. And yeah, it’s been, surfing for 10 years I think, it’s only now in that 8 to 10 year period of doing it consistently. I mean, maybe I’m just really slow at the uptake on it, but it’s only now that I’m really starting to think that I can figure it out and I know how to sit and I can, you know when, what other sport is turning a maneuver, like, so turnings a trick, I can turn now and it took, it took 10 years.

Imi Barneaud: So what’s the most challenging thing about moving to the other side of the world? Or from Whistler, or from the UK, or from Europe?

Alexa Hohenberg: It’s definitely challenging in the sense that you have to make some group of friends and find yourself in a community, and the Northern beaches can be quite cliquey. Everyone kind of grew up here and it’s so beautiful that they never want to leave. So breaking into that, those cliques was kind of hard. But having surfing was where I made all of my friends, like going up and paddling up to girls and guys in the ocean, and started chatting, and then seeing them around town. That’s kind of how I found my own little community here. But yet it’s a great, it’s a great place to call home.

Imi Barneaud: And there’s also a pottery story which really amazing. How did you end up living for three months on a boat? What’s the story behind that?

Alexa Hohenberg: Yeah, I just south across the Pacific from Panama to Tahiti on the boat Finding Avalon, which is a popular YouTube channel, but I’m always one that says yes to opportunities and snowboard season had finished for me in Japan, I just finished guiding a cat ski operation, and I wasn’t going to Alaska this year, I was taking a year off and my girlfriend messaged me and said: “Hey, we need help crossing the Pacific. We’re leaving in April, we are heading to Galapagos and then we’re going all the way to Tahiti. You want to come?” And I was, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. So I jumped at it and said yes, and yeah, it was amazing. I’m actually just going to go to Tonga in a months time and get back on a boat and help some other friends that I met on that adventure, sail to New Zealand. So, I think the salty life is in my bones, and once a sailor always a sailor.

“I think the salty life is in my bones, and once a sailor always a sailor.”

Imi Barneaud: Absolutely. Were you ever afraid of getting stuck in storms, or shit wreck, or did that ever cross your mind?

Alexa Hohenberg: It definitely did. There’s one point in the Pacific where you are so far away that no one could come and get you, no helicopters, or it depending on what Naval ships are around you. We had a pretty serious accident. Well we had a competition to see who could catch the biggest fish with a homemade lewer, made out of a Coca-Cola can. And we caught this ginormous Wahoo, and as we were pulling it in, it was flashing on the back of the boat and the lewer slice through the captain’s leg, a pretty deep gash. And we were 1,100 miles from land. And luckily my training as a mountain guide kind of kicked in there and I had a lot of my equipment on board. So I steristrips his leg up, super glued the steristrips in place, bandaged it up, made a knee brace out of coat hanger, ski strap and the SAM splint, got him on some antibiotics that I had cause I was anticipating many a skull dragging along the reef once I got to Tahiti. And yeah, he, we put him down in the shade cause he couldn’t be in the sun and [inaudible] and I double handed the boat for a few days and everything was fine. So yeah, there were definitely moments where you realize just how alone you are. But that’s kind of why I did it. It’s beautiful. It’s a credible experience.

“There were definitely moments where you realize just how alone you are.”

Imi Barneaud: Yeah. You must grow so much with these sorts of experiences.

Alexa Hohenberg: I highly recommend if anyone ever gets the opportunity to spend time at sea, it gives you the time to take everything out of your brain, put it on the ground, look at it, and then assess what you want to put back in your brain. And it’s, I think the only other place you could possibly do that is that at ashram for a long period of time, it’s amazing.

“I highly recommend if anyone ever gets the opportunity to spend time at sea, it gives you the time to take everything out of your brain, put it on the ground, look at it, and then assess what you want to put back in your brain.”

Imi Barneaud: Absolutely. So let’s talk about Still Stoked. What kind of articles do you do on Still Stoked?

Alexa Hohenberg: So we cover the whole plethora of things. So there’s a lot of personal writing as well for myself and Melanie, who’s my right hand woman, and then any other women that would like to share their stories. We do a lot of interviews with top athletes, speak to breath coaches, or wellness coaches, just anything really. The main thing we put it through the lens of is this inspiring and wanting someone to do better. But we also do a few investigative pieces and review surf camps around the world. We write surf guides of destinations that we get to go surfing, and basically just trying to create the content that we want to read. More recently, we’re a lot of videos, so on the YouTube channel we’re sitting down and doing a thing called Still Stoked Chats, where we have a chat about things that we wish we knew when we first started surfing, or what in my back country pack, or just interviews with people that are living freedom-based lifestyles where they’re not tied to a desk and they’re living out their dreams basically.

Imi Barneaud: Brilliant. You were saying any that you’ll finally dropped the other jobs and living off Still Stoked. What is the business model of that kind of an online publication

Alexa Hohenberg: Now that is a great question. My thoughts when I started it was just create great content and build a community, and so that’s what I did. And I have this wonderful community of women all around the world that the content is inspiring and helping. And then now I’m at the point where I am looking at it as a business and I’m thinking, right, well the current business model has been advertising, display ads, and making some revenue from the traffic, and then also reviewing things and affiliate links. So every time that we review something that we really stand behind, we’ll see if we can negotiate a deal with that brand to give us a referral fee. But what I’m learning is that the margins are so small, you know, things like surf bikinis, and travel insurance, and surf camps, or whatever that is, we need to really think of something that we need to sell. You know, we’ve got a really strong brand, and well, I’m at the point now where we’re thinking, you know, what can I create that can help people? So what are the pain points that I have as a female surfer? Or I have as a woman that’s wanting to get into backcountry skiing? So I’m looking at creating online courses that can help people to, you know, read the ocean, know where to sit, how to paddle. Cause I think a lot of women want to ask these questions but they’re also kind of scared to look silly, and they don’t have other women to ask these questions of. And that content doesn’t exist, but all over the web on a different range of quality. So I’d like to bring that all into the fold in really good quality with experts and bring that to our audience. And I just very scarily this week announced our first ever Still Stoked experience. We booked a hundred foot boat in the Mentawai, and two high performance surf coaches to do a 12 nights all inclusive surf hunting mission with progression in the hall of it in next October. So I’m kind of gone all in, and I think if you don’t back yourself in what your dreams are and no one else will. So I’m kind of on that page at the moment.

“If you don't back yourself in what your dreams are and no one else will.”

Imi Barneaud: And have you had to ask for support from banks, or crowdfunding, or things like that to actually get this off the ground? Or is it all been self sufficient?

Alexa Hohenberg: It’s all been self funded, yeah. So yeah, I’ve kind of put my money where my mouth is, and just kind of going after it, and decided to, you know, put all the money that’s Still Stoked makes a month back into the business. Whereas before when I was traveling it would kind of pay for my food, and my rent, and everything. But now it’s like how do I reinvest it into the product and into our audience. And yeah, mostly it’s my time at the moment and a bit of money here and there. And obviously the boat wasn’t exactly cheap.

Imi Barneaud: Yes. Because, how many people do you need to fill the boat up for your next trip?

Alexa Hohenberg: We need 11 people. So I’ve got two coaches on board as well. So it can sleep 11, it’s a hundred feet, so it’s massive.

Imi Barneaud: Yeah. Yeah. It’s amazing.

Alexa Hohenberg: Yeah, it’s going to be so great. And my staff coach is one of us staff. We’re both for myself coaches are Gee Cormack who owns Chix Surf School here in the Northern Beaches, and then Twiggy, Peter Van Ryan, who’s a coach in Bali, and he’s also been a surf guide on that boat for about eight years. So we’re in incredible hands.

Imi Barneaud: Yeah, he knows the spots perfectly, knows where to go and everything.

Alexa Hohenberg: He knows the spot.

Imi Barneaud: So just before we sort of conclude the chapter on actually having an online publication and the community, what would be the best advice you’d give somebody starting out? Would it be to sort of build the community first and then think about content later, or content focus? Do you have any advice?

Alexa Hohenberg: I wish I knew when I first started out to start collecting email addresses from a really early stage. Now I didn’t do that because I didn’t, stupidly I didn’t see the value in it. I put a lot of my attention on social media and then what I’ve learned, you know, which I should’ve known as a marketer, is you don’t actually own your Facebook platform or your Instagram. And when they change those algorithms, you lose that opportunity to talk with your audience. Whereas people that sign up to your email, they have opted in to have a direct conversation and relationship with you. So I never really put those signup forms at the forefront of the website, and people had to dig to find them and I’m so grateful that they did. So now I’ve made it a lot easier for people to sign up to our, what I’m calling the Still Stoked Tribe. So that’s definitely something that I would say to myself when I first started. And also just to get the plumbing well on a website, I kind of think of it as the plumbing and the structure of it well so you can scale because we have great content. If you’re producing great content, you will want to scale quickly, and just structuring it well, and having everything set up well from the start. It sets you in good stead for your future growth.

Imi Barneaud: Mmm, brilliant. That’s excellent advice. So could you walk us through a day in your life right now?

Alexa Hohenberg: Right now on Sydney’s Northern beaches, it’s just tended to spring. So this morning we were in the water at a quarter to six, 6:00 AM in the girls, and sunrise, sunrise set for two hours, and then coffee at home, sit in the sunshine, and then open up the laptop and kind of get stuck in and thinking of what am I goals that I want to accomplish today? Am I editing videos? Am I writing? Am I reaching out to partners? Try and do some yoga? Midday work all afternoon? And then yeah, weekends we get to go away a lot. So this weekend I’m putting all my snowboard gear in the car and driving six hours South with snow camping on the peaks in Australia, if you didn’t know, we have had a fun mountains there, so I get to surf and snowball or do all in a week.

Imi Barneaud: That’s amazing. That’s fantastic. Oh, that’s so inspiring. And, so yeah, definitely it is doable. But I guess it’s a lot of hard work as well.

Alexa Hohenberg: It is. And I have moments where I wake up and I’m terrified, and I think it would be so much easier just to go back to work in advertising, and work for somebody else. But then I think if you’re working, you’re building someone else’s dream if you’re not working on your own projects, and you’ll know that as well from your decision to go into working freelance and doing the podcast is that, it’s so rewarding to build your own life, how you want it and shape it how you want. And my motivation was very much not wanting to be on someone else’s time as well, whereas I’m missing, you know, I have to be at work at nine and the waves are going to be really good at 10 like I don’t understand why I can’t just go to work at 11 and then stay later, you know? So I kind of wanted to choose my own hours. And what I love is that thought of having a freedom based lifestyle where I can work from anywhere in the world rather than being stuck in one location.

“It's so rewarding to build your own life… and shape it how you want.”

Imi Barneaud: Yeah. And would you recommend any podcasts or books for the listeners to actually sort of get extra inspiration for this kind of a lifestyle?

Alexa Hohenberg: I have been listening to Diaries of the Wild Ones, which is a wonderful podcast by Aaron Shanks and it’s kind of just crazy stories of people adventurous with stories. So that’s been really inspiring. And then my friend Allie who runs The Journey Junkie, which is an online yoga business, she has the boat that I will be sailing from Tonga to New Zealand, and she is or has been a real catalyst for me about how she’s built her online business, she gave me some great advice. So she is living on her boat with her husband, sailing around the world. She has a wonderful yoga community, a fledgling YouTube channel running retreats around the world, and has an online subscription model, and she’s just a real beacon of inspiration. Someone that’s really figured it out and is adding a lot of value to people’s lives through an online product. So I’d say, yeah, check her out, and check Diaries of the Wild Ones out.

Imi Barneaud: Okay. Well we’ll put the links to it in the show notes of the episode and it’ll be on the podcast app. I guess we sort of got to the end of this wonderful conversation and it’s been so inspiring, and extra it’s just been incredible. I was just wondering what the next steps for you are with Still Stoked?

Alexa Hohenberg: Yeah. I am desperate to try and bring more stories of women in video. I find, like, when you look at the amount of content that’s out there, and surfing, and mountaineering, and snowboarding, or climbing, it’s so male focused and they seem to get all of the budgets that go into content creation from, you know, the clothing brands or the hardware brands, and a lot of the stories that are out there from women, they’re all self funded. So my big dream is for Still Stoked to be a production platform and be the catalyst to go out there and hunt those stories down and bring them to the world in video. And as you said earlier, like one of the reasons that you started the podcast is there so many incredible stories out there to tell. And it kind of pains me that those female strong focused ones aren’t being told just because that platform doesn’t exist or the funding doesn’t exist. So I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to do that yet. So if any listeners have got any great ideas, but yeah, that’s wanting to marry my skills in production and storytelling with my passion for supporting women in the outdoors and inspiring the next generation.

Imi Barneaud: Oh, that’s wonderful. Well, thank you Alexa. This has been amazing. I just have four last questions inspired by the surf careers website. So four questions, which was given amazing answers. So the first question is, I love?

Alexa Hohenberg: I love tacos. What do you, what comes to mind.

Imi Barneaud: I miss?

Alexa Hohenberg: I miss my friends in the UK after leaving for so long. I definitely miss those friendships that you’ve had your entire life and people that have known you from your drum and bass days in London that nobody in Australia seems to understand.

Imi Barneaud: I wish?

Alexa Hohenberg: I wish that I could come out of barrels.

Imi Barneaud: And I want?

Alexa Hohenberg: I want to see more women in content, and that content available to more people around the world.

Imi Barneaud: Lovely. Beautiful. Well thank you ever so much Alexa, for being my guests today. How do you feel?

Alexa Hohenberg: Yeah, it was great. It was so nice chatting with you. Yeah, I love your podcast, and I love that you bring people with alternative lives and choices to the forefront and some great people, and I’m really honored to be one of them, so thank you so much.

Imi Barneaud: Thank you again. Take care. Have a great time on the Northern beaches. Take away from me tomorrow, and I’ll see you soon. Bye. Bye.

Alexa Hohenberg: I will, bye.

Imi Barneaud: That was an awesome conversation. To get hold of Alexa, you can skip over to her website and join her tribe on www.stillstoked.com. You can follow her on social media @still_stoked on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest, and all the links to these accounts will be on your podcast app in the show notes. The Oceanriders Podcast is a passion project and if you like it you can support it in a number of ways. Number one, head over to iTunes and give it a few stars or a review. In fact, you can even subscribe and that would make my day. Anything in this direction increases my ranking and lets more people hear about my fascinating guests. Number two, you can comment and join the conversation on social media. You’ll find links to my social media accounts on theoceanriderspodcast.com, and you can also connect with me on Instagram @theoceanriderspodcast on Instagram, @theoceanriderspodcast on Facebook, and there’s also The Oceanriders community which is a Facebook group, and finally on Twitter @ImiPodcast. Number three, join me for an episode or sponsor an episode. Just send me an email, the addresses @hello@theoceanriderspodcast.com and I’ll take care of the rest. Anyway, that’s the housekeeping out of the way. Thank you, Alexa for being such an inspiring guest and for showing us that it’s possible to live a wild and free lifestyle and also earn a bit of money. Anyway, thank you guys for listening. Until next week, take care. Have fun and enjoy the waves. Ciao.

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