Johnny Ward has traveled the world and blogged about it for almost a decade. He firmly believes that you can do whatever you want.
According to him, everybody can follow their passions. And his actions absolutely reflect this way of thinking. "If you want to travel the world, then travel the world," he said. And he did it!
Johnny has spent the last ten years doing what many of us only dream us: he visited every country in the world and made a fortune doing it. Johnny spoke to Dave Fanning at the end of his decade-long journey as he reached Norway, the final country on his tour of the world. But why Norway?
“I wanted a big celebration. My second last country was Yemen. It wouldn’t have been much of a party to celebrate there. So Norway was a better choice.”
If you’re wondering how Johnny managed to afford it all, the answer lies with his significant online following. He has made more than €1 million by blogging about his travels and now owns a digital media company.
He’s somewhat dismayed by the focus on his income, saying it takes away from the point of the blog.
“My whole message is that you can do what you want, you can follow your passions. I was blogging long before that money came along.”
Johnny admitted he received a lot of negative reaction to the media coverage of his travels.
“It’s 50 per cent nice and 50 per cent negative. It really hurts but you get used to it.
But every time Irish media picks my story up it’s ridiculously positive. It’s really refreshing and it makes me want to come back to Ireland and potentially live there.”
As for settling down with a nine to five job, that’s unlikely. Johnny has set up a charity to build playgrounds for impoverished schools and he will continue to travel. You can check out his adventures at onestep4ward.com.
This interview was first broadcast on Thursday 16th March on The Ryan Tubridy Show. You can listen in full by clicking here.
