Henry Brydon on why optimism is a strategy

Written by Daylight - February 23, 2026

Henry Brydon is a firm believer in delusional optimism. It’s the quality that saw him swap out corporate life for a 38,000km bike ride across the globe, and it remains the heartbeat of everything he’s built since. A journey that laid the foundation for We are Explorers, now Australia’s leading outdoor platform. 

What began as a personal blog has now evolved into a vibrant community and content studio rooted in genuine connection. For this latest edition of Decoded, Henry shares why championing a human-first approach to storytelling is the best way to cut through the noise. Read the full interview here. 

What were the key moments that nudged you away from a traditional career path and toward building a platform centred on adventure and storytelling? 

At 25, I found myself living in a sandpit (AKA Dubai), recruiting private bankers during a global financial crisis. It was grim on multiple levels. Sensible on paper, soul-destroying in practice.

I’d had an idea bubbling away to ride a bicycle a really long way. After meeting someone with the same mix of curiosity and delusional optimism, I said “screw it”, bought a second-hand bike on eBay, and pointed it east.

What followed was a 38,000km ride through 30 countries from my hometown in England to Sydney. A textbook quarter-life crisis, only without the money or the safety net. Life-changing, humbling, and full of bad decisions that turned out to be good ones.

When I eventually settled in Australia, I started a blog called We Are Explorers to celebrate adventures big but (more importantly) small. The kind that fit around real life. Powered by a network of contributors, it has grown into a digital publication and content studio and is now the largest outdoor platform in the country and a B Corp.

Your work is rooted in curiosity and connection with the outdoors - where do you think that instinct first began for you? 

One trip really lodged itself in my brain. When I was 11, we did a family road trip in the US, driving through South Dakota and Wyoming. I remember those landscapes completely blowing my tiny mind. Endless space. Big skies. It was like being on another planet.

Looking back, I think that was the first time I experienced genuine awe, and once you feel that properly, it rewires you a bit.

I reckon every adventure I’ve done since then has been some version of chasing that feeling again. Not the adrenaline, but the perspective shift. The outdoors has a funny way of reminding you how small you are, which, frankly, is really quite useful.

Was there a decision you made early on that felt risky at the time but ended up becoming the foundation to who you are as a leader?

It would’ve been far easier to build We Are Explorers around myself; to control the voice, make faster calls, keep everything tightly held. Instead, I handed the keys to a growing network of contributors and staff, trusting that their collective intelligence and creativity would be more interesting and impactful than anything I could create alone.

At the time, that felt risky, because less control usually is. But it forced me to become a better leader: less ego, knowing when to step in, and just as importantly, when to step back.

I’d say that decision shaped everything that followed. My role became setting the vision and the conditions for others to contribute to and bring it to life. That mindset still underpins how we operate today, though I’ll admit I do enjoy throwing a few very loose ideas onto the campfire.

You’ve created a community that feels genuinely engaged. What are your non-negotiables when it comes to crafting content that truly draws people in?  

Human-first, every time. We publish original, experience-led stories free from borrowed wisdom. If we can’t smell that sunrise coffee brewing or feel the smack of gale-force winds in our faces, we’re not interested. Content needs to feel alive and lived; the gear tested firsthand, the reflections shared and when things go wrong? That’s the juicy bit that our audience loves.

This honesty is how we’ve earned trust, and in a murky world drowning in AI slop and algorithm-chasing content, trust is the only currency that actually matters. We protect it fiercely. 

As the industry shifts with new technologies and new generations of explorers, what are you prioritising to future-proof We Are Explorers?

We’re very deliberate about how we think about new technology. We use it where it helps us work smarter, move faster, and remove friction (e.g. an AI script that uploads content directly into our CMS has brought a big smile to the editorial team), but we’re not interested in automating the soul out of what we do.

I’m pretty bullish on long-form storytelling and in-person events. There’s a sense that endless snackable content is wearing people down, and we’re seeing a real appetite for depth, nuance, and genuine connection.

So while platforms and technologies will keep changing, we’re sticking to our guns on the things that don’t: original storytelling, strong editorial judgement, and work that still has clear human fingerprints all over it. I think that carries for the long haul.

In a world saturated with content, what do you think makes a story resonate now more than ever? How do you ensure We Are Explorers stays above the noise? 

Stories resonate when readers can see themselves in them, not an idealised version, but something familiar and true.

We work with a deliberately diverse group of creators from different walks of life: younger adrenaline seekers, mums reclaiming time outdoors, LGBTQ+ explorers, and people who’ve historically felt on the margins of the adventure space. Different voices resonate with different readers, and it’s our job to keep that diversity front and centre, rather than defaulting to one narrow antiquated idea of what “adventure” is supposed to look like. That breadth is what keeps the stories relevant and the community genuinely engaged.