John O’Sullivan, who grew up in Mankato, MN and went to St. John’s University, shares his personal and professional journey. He embarked on a 12-year overseas journey of self-discovery. During that time, he became a tour guide on a Euro Bus. During a six-week training period he got to visit many countries and learn to be a great tour guide and storyteller. To hear the entire conversation check out So Much More Ep. 82: John O’Sullivan One Minute Tours.
Presented by Bloomington Minnesota Travel and Tourism the official destination marketing organization for the city of Bloomington, Minn.
[00:00:00] You're a Minnesota kid, tell us your background, how you grew up here and kind of your journey. Yeah, so I grew up in Mankato, just an hour southwest of here. I went to St. John's University, graduated in the middle of the financial crisis, which was not an ideal time to graduate. And so after losing two jobs in one year, I decided to go overseas to go on a journey of self-discovery. And that one year turned into 12 years. Wow. That's a journey.
[00:00:25] All over the place, yes. I lived in Ireland and Wales and England, and I met two women who changed my life while I was over there. One was my wife and the mother of my children, who I live with here in Minneapolis now. And the other was a tour guide who told me about this job that you can have with a microphone on a bus going to countries around Europe. What was day one like? So there was a six-week unpaid training trip that they sent us on. And it was the best experience in my life. Everyone in my life advised me against doing this.
[00:00:55] Because not only was it unpaid, they made us pay a deposit to go on it. And the reason is like, it's kind of a dream job. And they were taking us on six weeks of travel around Europe, all accommodation paid for, all transport paid for. And so, yeah, they say, give us 500 pounds for the deposit is what it was. So I did. And I went on this boot camp-style training trip where throughout the day, they would test us on the bus. We'd have big binders of research.
[00:01:19] And we'd be learning about Italian language or Czech cuisine. And then on the bus ride, the long, long bus ride from, say, Munich to Paris, they would say, all right, Marty, get up there on the microphone and give us an Italian language spiel. After Marty finishes, John, you're going to get up there and give us the history of the Third Reich. And then, Amelia, I want you to tell us about the best food recommendations in Croatia. Wow.
[00:01:43] And so we got up there and all of us had to just spin our wheels. None of us were allowed to sleep because we were supposed to be taking in this information. Yeah. And yet, they were keeping us up until two in the morning, waking us up at six in the morning. Wow. It was insane. Wow. And if you started to nod off on the bus, they'd hit you up the back of the head and then they'd give you a punishment. You had to wake up earlier and clean the bus. That is like military training camp almost, right? Well, there's a reason. They had 10 coaches across Europe at any given time, plus a handful of other adventure trips that didn't have coaches involved.
[00:02:13] Basically, all of us were running our own little business in different parts of Europe. And we were the sole person of responsibility in those situations. And so when someone slipped and fell down the stairs in Sorrento, I didn't have a boss to call and say, can you come help me with this? I had to be able to think on my feet and problem solve. And what they were doing is they were intentionally trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. They were trying to get the people who were not the right fit out. They intentionally overbooked the training trip so they would lose maybe 10% of the people.
[00:02:42] And those who had gotten through, we worked too hard to quit. Absolutely. What was the final day like of your training? It was like a graduation day. Exhilaration. All of us were in Paris and then one bus came out and one of us were picked to be that guy on the first day. We all watched this guy and we waved goodbye. And then we all separated across the continent. It was crazy. Like we just landed in these cities and we went to meet the bus and they did hop on, hop off bus trips in Europe.
[00:03:08] And so rather than what you think about, like if you go to London or New York with a hop on, hop off bus where it's during the day, this would be like a three month pass. And you take the bus from Amsterdam to Berlin. You'd hop off, stay in Berlin as many nights as you choose. And a bus came every two days. And then you'd come in and hop the bus onto Prague and then Vienna and then Venice and Rome. I'm actually remembering the map as I say it to you right now. So as the tour guide on those buses, obviously you had ever-changing clientele, right? Because they're hopping on and off at their own leisure.
[00:03:36] Did you do all of your tour guide messaging and storytelling on the bus or did you actually get off and do stuff in the cities? The unique thing about this is that once they got to the cities, I didn't see them anymore because it was hop on, hop off. And so they would get off in Berlin. I would continue on to Prague and I would lap them around Europe. I'd come back four days, five days later, see the same group again, but they would have gone one city further. And so I'd be able to create this community and get relationships with people that maybe I wouldn't see for a few weeks and then catch up with, did you take my advice on going to this museum?
[00:04:06] Or did you go on this bar crawl that I sold you? Because I'd sold tickets on the bus. So I had a captive audience on that bus, but I also had a medium that was always moving, which was a coach. Whenever that coach bus had a green light, it was going to go whether or not my story about the Soviet memorial in Berlin was finished. When that coach was finished. Thank you.