We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Christine Lozada. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Christine below.

Christine, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

My life was perfect on paper. I had the million dollar condo in San Francisco, I was rising in my corporate career, I was recently married, and I was surrounded by dozens of friends that I could hike, bike, and explore the city nightlife with.

But it wasn’t perfect. I felt trapped by doing the same things every day, and having a clear path of exactly what my life would look like five, 10, even 20 years from now felt crushingly boring.

My life lacked adventure and I was curious about other places in the world.

I had already taken a jump in quitting my job working for well-known organizations [Walmart and Amazon] to pursue a career with a company that allowed me to travel full-time.

It was 2013 and I felt like one of the first true “remote employees” or “digital nomads”. The more I traveled the more people asked me about the places I traveled and I got an itch to creatively capture it.

At the time I kept my travel mostly domestic, but as I wanted to explore further, my then husband started to pull back on his desire to travel with me. He wanted to settle down and didn’t want to explore the way we used to.

I was ready to take a risk and quit my “perfect on paper” life. I started a Youtube channel about my travels, got a divorce, sold the condo and went full time travel and adventure.

Except I did it a few months before the pandemic started.

I took a second risk and doubled down on what I was doing. If the pandemic was going to shake up the world, why not come out on the other side doing something totally different. I left my cushy corporate career in 2020 to be a “travel creator”. I started flying drones and teaching others how to do it.

3 years later I’ve reached nearly 4 million people on Youtube. When I travel, strangers come up to tell me they’ve seen my videos and traveled to a place because of me. I speak at travel conferences helping others to fly drones and explore the world from the sky. I’ve helped thousands of people to take flight. I’ve had opportunities to work on projects that had me living on a yacht in the Maldives to help researchers find manta rays with my drone. Or even silly things like being dressed as a mermaid doing underwater photography in Tulum.

But life is exactly the adventure I wanted, but it required taking a huge risk to get to where I’m at now.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m Christine Lozada, an award winning creator, podcast host and traveling pickleball player helping people to fly drones, travel smarter, and be just 1% more badass today than yesterday.

I help people to travel smarter and I help people to realize how easy it is to fly a drone.

I create the travel youtube video I WISH I GOT TO SEE before I traveled to a place. I spend a LOT of time researching my travel and I take everything I learned PLUS everything I experienced and I create an insanely helpful, visually engaging video that is a LOT of fun. I’m notorious for encouraging people to take the trip because I’ve made it SO easy for them to plan it.

I’m obsessed with flying drones. I love exploring the world via the land, in the sea by scuba and from the sky with my drone.

It’s my passion to help other people get into flying drones. It’s SO fun and SO EASY. I want to take the complication out of flying drones and help to simplify it via youtube videos, blog posts and online drone courses.

A lot of people ask me how I’m so fearless. I always respond with “I’m not… I just choose to do it anyway”. It motivated me to start my podcast (Everyday Badassery) which interviews the badass people I meet when I travel to share their inspirational story.

You can find me @christinelozada on every social platform.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I wanted to fly drones because it was the best way to serve my audience with STRONG story telling. A drone can give an establishing shot that is otherwise difficult to capture. It can also capture the beauty of a destination or place that is stunning.

When I first started flying a drone I was shocked by how few women fly drones. Less than 8% of drone pilots are female and I quickly learned one of the top things holding women back was fear.

I started OPENLY flying drones, showing me hand launching and hand catching my drone, and sharing tips on how to easily get into drones.

Two things happened…

First, it was amazing to see how many women were inspired and started flying drones as well. I would get messages from women crying, telling me they had no idea how beautiful a place was until they could see it from a drone and they were overwhelmed they were able to overcome their fear.

Second, I was inundated with hate. I didn’t realize how many men were out there that didn’t want to see women taking flight. I was playing in a man’s space and many wanted to keep it that way. The awful messages didn’t hold me back though – nor did the amount of male drone pilots trying to “catch me doing something illegal” so they could publicly blast me for it on social media… instead it was fuel for the fire and not only do I help women to fly drones via virtual platforms, I also speak at conferences.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

It took at least a year for me to shake the “corporate wet blanket” off of me. The environment that tells you to “do it like everyone else” and “nah, that likely won’t work, someone else has tried it before”.

Being a creative means truly leaning into YOU and who YOU are. The only thing that differentiates me from every other travel creator and drone pilot out there is that it’s uniquely Christine Lozada – and no one can be me… except me.

The further I got away from the corporate world, the more I could lean in to being the quirky, weird, super loud, wildly neon, open-mouthed laughing, champagne-drinking, fearful-but-doing-it-anyway ME.

You can’t do that between the four crushing walls of your cubicle.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.christinelozada.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/christinelozada
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/christinelozada
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinelozada/
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/christinelozada
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/christinelozada
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=hrWnftKtSg5kOlMkMUW0cQ&utm_source=ishare
• Other: https://www.christinelozada.com/everyday-badassery www.youtube.com/dronewithcl www.instagram.com/badasserypodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@heychristinelozada

Image Credits
Christine Lozada