the Adventure Lifestyle magazine

Holly Morris herself, talks on the subjects of travel , business & the spirit of Adventure ... How did you come up with the idea & inspiration to conceptuolize your own television show? I've long known that I reach mL,J best, most effective self on the rood. I learn from people and through movement. For me, travel rouses the innocent and brings clarity. As my 30th birthday bore down with the force of a loaded IS-wheeler, I couldn't shake the notion that years of office-bound predictability had dampened my original spirit. So I grabbed my dusty backpack from the basement and took a month long trip to Sumatra, Indonesia. Little did I know that that journey would set off a chain of events that is still unfolding. I came back knowing that I was to be the architect of my own life. and play can be one and the same. I became determined to get out of the office and onto the road. To take my locus of ideas to a medium with exponential possibil ities for impact: television. Why the Divas? I wanted to celebrate fascinating women worldwide-artists, activists, politicians, singers, adventurers: women leading effective and thoroughly realized lives. These women are not infallible heroines, but they are icons with substance. They engage in possibil ity thinking. They do good, they are not martyrs. They don't get derailed by the grit of life, they season their universe with it. And invariably, they reveal a fabulous sense of humor. Starting a new media venture is never an easy task. What were some of the challenges you faced? Well, I think its always hard to get financing for an ethic, as opposed to a more traditional business project. Ultimately, the most important visceral support came from our audience itself - those who responded to the idea, who we came into contact with through the website and word-of-mouth. Then there was my own challenge of having been grounded in the printed word, in book publishing. With television, you need to work more with sound and picture and less with words. Working in new dimensions was a ,good experience.The hardest part was having the confidence in myself to identify what my dream was. Five years ago, I wouldn't have been ready. I couldn't have withstood the possibil ity of failure, so I avoided the risk. You have to take a leap of faith and trust your instincts. It's hard to turn something that is actually a pretty big idea into a reality, knowing that a dream can crash and burn. There have been many dark moments. A big project takes a lot of time to execute and the most important thing for me has been to try to stay true to original instincts and vision. I decided that work Can you describe the distinction between Adventure Divas the television show, and the company/organization Adventure Divas you've created? Adventure Divas is an endeavor with a television series at its center, but with creative and production arms that will extend into book and on-line publishing. On our up days we like to call it a girl-driven media empire. On our down days we drink a lot of coffee and ... try to channel the imperial spirit of the day before. Do you feel Adventure Divas is a new type of business model? Adventure Divas speaks to the synergistic relationship between media in contemporary American culture and the eclectic combo­ platter of ways we, as individuals, are gathering information in a borderless world. It also bows to a sensibil ity that is entering our media, our consciousness, our businesses. A sensibil itL,J that we can do good work. and have fun. A belief we can defL,J convention-even be political-and still end up in the block. It's interesting that you acknowledge "adventure" as a lifestyle. What are your thoughts about this? Our culture's relationship to adventure is changing. Adventure is no longer a weekend theme: it is a philosophy. Adventure is about hurling yourself at the unexpected. It's how you walk to the corner store and how you walk the Australian outback. Adventure can un-opiate the masses. It seems to me that you're going to outfit the philosophy that will rule the future-a lucrative and exciting prospect. •

• Cover