Ep 184 w/ Adventures Matt and Nat (Part 2) – Building A Community, Amassing 126k YouTube Subscribers + Authenticity

I think our first member was my cousin who is still, she's our longest, longest continued member from the start. ⁓ But I think it comes down to authenticity, always treating people as relationships, never, never going into building a relationship with the idea of being able to leverage it into anything other than a friendship. That's what the goal of creating a friendship is, is friendship. Beyond that, you know, if there's benefit that come from it.

cool, but that should never be the root or the focus of why you're building that relationship. So I think again, just comes down to authenticity, truly wanting to connect with people and truly letting people be seen and heard. Letting people feel like they're not just feel like they're being seen and heard because they are being seen and heard, you know. I think that goes a long way with people.

Yeah, I think in the beginning when obviously our numbers aren't what they are now, it was giving value again. So it was postcards from every single state. That was something for me to be like, okay, if somebody wants all of the 50 postcards, you had to sign up early. And I think just being able to give value and having something else, you know, in the mail was something that was enticing to people, right?

On a more broad, maybe cliche kind of sounding thing, I would say, you know, what pushed us to do a lot of things that are out of our comfort zone and me personally anyway, even my move to Nashville was kind of based on this whole idea of never go to the grave wondering what if. Don't take a what if to the grave with you. Know the answer behind it. If it was, man, what if I had taken that month that I had between jobs to actually go travel? What would my life look like? Rather than taking that to the grave, like just go out and do it. Like you're never going to regret.

travel. Yeah, there might be some headaches and bumps and you know things along the way that might be headaches. The overarching idea is like you're never gonna regret it because it's gonna just broaden your your mind and your your heart's gonna open up and just it's just such an

Yeah,

from the inside out for sure.

Welcome to the Winging It Travel Podcast, your weekly ticket to the world, dropping every Monday and hosted by me, James Hammond, proudly part of the Boy Escape Network. This is a travel podcast that throws out the itinerary and dove straight into the raw, real and unpredictable essence of global exploration, chasing moments over milestones, those spontaneous encounters, immersive sounds and unforgettable stories. Whether I'm hiking up volcanoes in Guatemala,

or camping under the stars in British Columbia.

met incredible people, seen breath taking places and collected unforgettable stories. I now get to share them with you, alongside some of the most diverse and well travelled guests from around the world. Expect engaging conversations that bring fresh perspectives and inspiring travel tales. There are also raw, reflective solo episodes where I share personal insights, practical tips and honest stories from the road. This is a podcast for travellers, streamers, backpackers and anyone who's ever thought, what if I just went for it and travelled. If you're looking for stories to tell, tips to share,

and experiences to inspire, then you're in the right place. There's so much travel content coming your way, it might just spark that trip you've been dreaming about for years. You can find Winging It, and more fantastic travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. The link is in the show notes. Let's go and explore the world. Hello guys, and welcome to episode 184, part two, with my friends Matt and Nat from the adventures of Matt and Nat on YouTube.

In this episode, we delve into more travels from those guys and we're going to go more into the creator side. So how to get started on YouTube, how to build an audience to over 126,000 subscribers currently as what they have, how to build a community. They have a fantastic and loyal community on Patreon, on YouTube and on social media, which was demonstrated as I released the episode last week and shared it across all the channels. So they're the masters at that. And I learned a lot from those guys from doing the video creation stuff.

how to build a community and how to make an income from being travel content creators. And of course we finished the episode with a of quick fire travel questions to get the juices flowing. A great way to end this bumper episode. If you actually want to see the full episode on video, you can go to my YouTube channel, Winging It Travel Podcast, and it's there for you to watch. Thanks for tuning in. Make sure you give the podcast a five-star rating and review on your podcast app, specifically Spotify and Apple podcasts. That really helps. And if you want to support the podcast,

You can buy me a coffee for $5. All the links are in the show notes. And thanks to Matt and Nat for coming on. A great chat, lots of laughs, lots of nuggets. Love those guys and I'm going to see them very, very soon in real life. So that can be pretty exciting too. Thanks, Julian. I'll catch you next time. Let's go to part two of Matt and Nat. Okay. And do you have like the one last place you want to leave till last or is that too risky?

No, you know what's so funny is, I think your last guest, armchair, Aaron, from TravelCon that we got to meet. He was the first person to ever ask me that. And I was like, I haven't even thought that far ahead. But we used to have a decide. Honestly, I need to read the entire book. Because there's a lot of times where it's like, okay, where's the best flight deal? Is it in the book? We're like, yeah.

Yeah, we haven't decided.

Do you know what I did? Yeah, yeah.

Cool. And then here are these places near it, et cetera. So that's kind of how we've been using it.

Yeah, like our trip that we tacked on like five days in Belgium on the back end of the Greece trip. And that was mostly a positioning flight purpose because we were flying standby on the way home. So it was like, all right, what's kind of in the flight path from Athens to New York? Cause that's who we flying, or the North. It's an Yeah, yeah. So like there's a lot there. It was like, all right, we need to get kind of towards A. We need to get Western Europe. And we were like,

Yeah, loose one, yeah.

Western Europe.

towards a major airport and that's where we landed on Belgium. We were like, was anything in the book in Belgium? That was our brilliant thinking behind going to Belgium on this trip, which we loved. It had a great time, but there was no master mind behind it really. was just...

So...

Very planned.

A lot of happy accidents happen with us.

That's the truth.

Yeah, and you mentioned standby. was going ask about this actually, but I forgot. So I'm asking now. Standby. Is that how you travel normally or is that only for certain trips of the year? I can imagine if you're, I may be wrong here, if you're doing a tour and hosting a tour, would you risk doing standby? Which I think you did last time.

You would think that somebody would be smart enough to just pay for a flight. And we just kept thinking, there's going to be a deal that comes up. There'll be a deal that comes up. And there was never a deal that came up.

And you know what's sad is we have tons of credit card points right now, but we've been hoarding them until she leaves her job. Because once she leaves her job, we'll be coming out of pocket, you know, or whenever that happens. We don't know when, but once she does, we'll be, you know, on the hook. We'll have to be buying flights. So we've been kind of hoarding our airline, you know, points for that or credit card points for that. But yeah, so to answer your question, like 95 % of the time we're flying standby.

When you look at the loads, like for JFK to Athens, right? There was, I think it was 20 open seats in business class and another, I don't know, like 10 in economy. And I was like, sweet, we're the only standbys? Obviously we're going to business class. So yeah, we'll fly standby. And it was so much cheaper. It was less than $200 for both of us to fly to Athens from JFK.

Yeah, this is class.

Yeah, and given it was more of an, it was an upgraded premium economy because it was on like North Air, which is kind of more of a, more of a budget airline, but it was great, wider seats. They reclined further than regular ones with the leg rest. Like honestly, I had a great experience, yeah, was like, that said, we were also flying in six days ahead of the group trip happening.

The premium economy,

Yeah.

or $200.

Okay, very wise.

So it wasn't like, if we don't get on this, the group's going to be without their hosts. So we don't risk it. Like when we have brand deals, like we worked with Norwegian Cruise Line back in August last year. We paid for those flights. We bought flights for that because it's like, we can't risk not getting to there for a brand deal kind of thing. So anytime there's something like that that's like high risk or high level things, we always buy flights. But a lot of our travels, I'd say,

We still do a lot of our travels on our own, like not brand deals, because it's kind of nice not having the pressures of brand deals sometimes. we'll do brand deals after the fact, know, like sponsorship, know, ad integrations kind of thing. But a lot of our trips are still on us, so that allows us to be able to fly standby without the pressures of worrying about getting there or not.

How was your recent trip to Greece? I know we touched on it briefly at the start, it looked a great trip. Athens, Naples, Peloponnese, a group trip as well. looked like also the perfect trip because you love the group and they seem to have a great time.

Yeah, Athens, like I said, we got there five or six days early for content travel. So we actually ended up taking two days pretty much off where we just in the city. to explore. Got to explore the city without having to think about a schedule or what story we're telling. But on two of the days, we filmed pretty much all day. One of them was like a one day in Athens video where we put 25,000 steps in that day and did it.

16 hours.

Yeah,

filmed for 16 hours from start to finish. So yeah, but did all the things from obviously the Acropolis. ⁓

Just the amount of history there is overwhelming. Yeah, it is. We were there and she would talk about mythology and then also talk about history and we were just like, my gosh, this is a lot. I should have studied more before.

It's the first trip. It's probably, it's not the first place, but one of the most extreme places I've been where I've felt so overwhelmed with the amount of information. It's like drinking from a fire hydrant, you know, just trying to like take in just a little bit of what I'm being, you know, learning here. And antiquity there, like the history and mythology almost blend together at times. And it's like, wait a second, which part of this is mythology? Which part of this is actual history?

And then, know, it like, it was in ruins at one point and then somebody else came and built upon it. And then I was in ruins and then somebody else built upon it. And it's like, my gosh, this is a lot. But it was really beautiful. The group was amazing, which was awesome. We didn't know six people.

Yeah, out of the 14, I think six were new travelers with us and the others had traveled with us before.

And it was just wonderful.

But yeah, so was great. We, like I said, we filmed some kind of, we filmed a food tour video, then the group showed up and we did a week with them.

And this was our first group trip at the end where we were like, my gosh, that, you know, it flew by.

It flew by and it was just a really easy trip. The more we do them, the easier it gets, but also the more we do them, the more times you're having to return travelers with you. So like we said, we knew eight of the 14 people. Exactly. It was just like friends getting back together and traveling. So there were jokes being cut right from the get go. So it was just really easy. The group was amazing. Everybody got along.

had no hiccups whatsoever, which was really amazing.

We got home from this trip and we're like, literally everything went right. Like there wasn't a thing that, and that, you know, with travel just in general. Yeah, that's a hard thing to say. And then when you make group travel in it, you know, there's a lot of personalities and dynamics that was coming to factor and a lot of logistics, literally there was, it was just an incredible time.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah, I think one of the people that she follows me, it's called Geo. Geo. Geo. Beth. Yes, that's it. Yeah. Yeah. Beth George. I also follow her as well because she knows you guys, right? So, she's watching it through her lens as well.

Yes

Amazing. I'm obsessed with her.

Yeah, she's wonderful. She travels with us on pretty much all of our trips.

And she was just saying that it was such a great, it is a great community. All of the people that travel with us, we've been so blessed and so grateful that every single person is cool, which you never know. Of course, yeah. And with Beth, she was like, this is, cause she would do group trips before, but you know, every time you do a group trip, you might not know people if you're a solo traveler. And so she was like, thank you guys so much for doing this because I know these people.

They went and did six days by themselves. It was a group of six of them that did all of the islands after we left. So after that, it's like, okay, this is way bigger than even us. Like it's the community of people that just loves to travel.

Yeah, she was on the islands. Yeah, I saw that. ⁓

I think the difference, we've never done group travel, we've done little group tours and stuff, but we've never done a group trip where we were just travelers on it. But from, we've talked to multiple of our travelers that have, and I think the dynamic difference is that it's a community rather than just a group of people that are wanting to go travel and see these places. Because most of the time we've heard that there ends up being cliques and little groups formed that break off. And we just, our whole group is just.

there to hang out together. And obviously, everybody's welcome to go during the free times, go do what they want and that kind of thing. And some people do. Some people are wanting to go shop. Some people are wanting to go eat. Whatever it is, that's

Like, we had family dinners every night, even though it was free time and people didn't have to. It was just, it's incredible. It was really, really special. And even it's amazing now because you see people on Facebook and everybody's posting, you know, home photos, just regular life. And you see all of the people that went on that group trip are commenting. And it's just, it gives me goosebumps. Like, it's just such a cool thing to be a part of.

Wow. Yeah.

think for you guys also having those regulars come back, they're almost like a third guide of you, aren't they? In a sense that you probably trust them a little bit if something does go really wrong here in anything part of travel, they might help you out with certain things, right? Could be dynamics, could be transport issues, whatever it is. I think it's nice to have, think, for sure.

I mean,

like one of the nights even in Greece, like we were just, as you know, you're just so busy as you are all the time, like just trying to keep up with life and keep your businesses rolling, your YouTube channel, all the things rolling. So up until like a week or two before, we didn't have some of our itinerary stuff even planned, like for us, for like free time stuff. but one of the other ladies who's traveled with us before is a good friend of ours now. She was, she had posted in the group was like,

Hey, I have reservations for dinner for at this place with great views of the Acropolis for this time. Anybody that wants to join, let me know and I can adjust the reservation. So it was later the week before I was like, Hey, you think you can add us to that reservation?

Exactly, So yeah, to your point, like, yeah, they kind of like almost act as, yeah, for sure.

was a really cool thing that we learned about them the first, our first group trip in Ireland was some people who do group travel, they're just expecting the tour guide to know everything and do everything. But our people are travelers. Like the reason why they love our videos is because they like to do see and eat as much as they possibly can. They research a place, they get excited about the place. Like they have their own food recommendations and Beth, for instance, she'll come to our Christmas markets. She has a list of food that she wants to try.

from all these different places. like they're travelers.

We aside, like to the point that our first group trip, welcome meeting our guide, lovely, lovely lady and we did an excellent job for the trip. But she had, she stated something. I didn't. Oh, no, no.

got a little sassy.

One of our travelers was fact correcting her on something she said because what she said wasn't correct about the destination. that's the travelers that are with us. They've done their research before. They know you can't BS them.

Before you're, as we're here, the tour groups, do you try and incorporate, I guess, a mix of go, go, but also free time, and then also enough time for you guys to take it all in, because I can imagine the temptation is to do one thing after the other, right? Well, we've got to do this, we've got to do that, but you've got to have an awareness of the dynamic that maybe some people just want to casually check out for an afternoon, not like tick three things off, right?

Yep. So I think for our Greece group trip, we'll talk about that one, and even our Christmas markets. Christmas markets had a little bit more free time. Ireland was a lot of driving, right? So we would just, everybody would kind of check out, sleep, nap in between all of the places that we were driving. What we like to do is during the free time, we're going to have an itinerary kind of set for what we're going to go do. Okay. And people are welcome to join, but they don't have to. Got Like our feelings will not be hurt if you don't

free time.

want to come, if you want to just like hang out and nap in the hotel, that's totally fine. And I think the more that we get repeat people, that's happening more.

Where everybody's coming together for that free time, they're getting together and just hanging out to do whatever we're doing. But I think by doing that, allows, we can do one thing after another, bam, bam, bam, but people are welcome to join on as little or as much of it as they want. And I think it gives value where they don't have to feel like, there's free time, let me figure out what I want to do. And that already have a plan together, like we're just going to go join them.

And what I love to do as well is, like I was saying, the more people travel with us, the more comfortable they are with us. So there was one day where a lot of people were like, well, we're going to go do these shops. I said, that's fine. I'll update you where we go. So every time we're moving to a different place, I'll let you guys know. Because I don't want it to feel like, well, they just left us and we never heard from them again. It's like, no, no, no. I'll let you know every step of the way where we're at, what we're doing. Just message me and I'll tell you where we're at.

We just want people to feel comfortable. It's their vacation. And that's something that we really want.

And we try to remind them like, Hey, none of this is required. Like you can do with it, whatever you want.

guys

paid to be here. This is your vacation. This is your PTO time. What do you want to do? Do that. And we'll make those dreams come true, pretty much.

Amazing. And this might be a weird question, but transport, do you always have like a driver that drives a group around if you're going from one big location to another?

It depends. You know, we work with a couple of different tour providers as far as like on the boots on the ground companies and some companies really love to lean into more of the public transportation like train travel, which I love. Honestly, our people we found love it too because of our travelers are Americans. And so that's not, not something that's easily accessible in the U S is train travel.

And it can be also intimidating for people to do if they're doing it by themselves for the first time.

Yeah. So, so we've done like in Ireland, we had a driver for, from Dublin all the way over to Galway, but then from Galway back to Dublin, we got on the train and for Greece, was.

markets was a really great one because we did all three. We did train, private transfer, and then I think just taxis or something.

Yeah, I think we did some taxis as well, but then we used local transportation around the cities as well. And then Greece, was mostly private. With that kind of trip, you kind of have to have a driver going from Athens to Nafplio, but yeah, we had a driver for that.

And what you include in the tours, is there like specifics that have to be in? Like, is it like a good food tour? Is it maybe walk around some old towns? Like how do you divide up like different activities?

So it really just depends on the location, destinations, and what they're known for. Like the Christmas markets, obviously we're doing Christmas market tours and different things.

But also like you know some of these Christmas market cities are you know they have beautiful palaces in them so we'll you know like with Dresden for instance there's the palace there that is now it's now an art museum but so we you know we did that as part of the tour. Vienna we're doing that this year for Christmas markets you know we'll be doing some of the palace stuff.

In

we did a winery, because they're known for their wine in that area. So we did a winery tasting and a lunch there. Ireland, we did a pub crawl. yeah, classic. We also did, yeah. So it just depends on the location.

Ireland we did also went surfing in Ireland which was a complete... We were supposed to go kayaking and it was too windy to go kayaking but apparently it wasn't too windy to go surfing.

Is that a

Makes sense, I think.

Even in Greece, like we had a kayaking and a lot of people probably pushed them outside of their comfort zone to do that activity. But at the end of the day, it was one of their favorites because again, it's something that you probably wouldn't have done by yourself.

Yes, so we

Yeah, we kayaked in Greece and we had like an hour at a beach that was, we literally had it to ourselves. It was just our group and we kayaked to this beach and the tour company had fresh fruit for us to snack on while we were there, gave us all snorkeling gear and yes, it was a good time. But yeah, then in Italy...

Obviously we're doing a cooking class. so you get wine included doing that. in Venice, instead of, know, when you think of Venice, you think of gondolas. Well, you can't fit 20 people on a gondola. Exactly. So instead we're doing like a sunset catamaran cruise in Venice with everybody and drinks are included. so it just really depends on, you know, what the place is known for and that thing.

You'd be sinking, wouldn't you?

What you got coming up this year for group tours? Any spots left for any groups?

So we have three group trips coming up for this year and next year.

We still plan to at least put one more on the calendar for next year. Maybe two, but at least one. But this year we have Italy in October. We have two spots left for it currently. That's October... What's it We can't even keep up with it, James. But... October...

Third through the...

I'm so excited about it. This itinerary, can't believe it hasn't sold out yet. The fourth through the 11th. Because we're starting in Venice, then heading over to the Italian Riviera, like Cinque Terre. And then we're going to be doing Florence and then Rome. And it's just like, it's the highlights of Italy. And if it's something that is a bucket list thing for people, I'm just ecstatic. I can't wait.

reports of the eleven

And then we have the Christmas market, second week of December. And that one just sold out this past week, actually. yeah, will be Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna.

Yeah, we're Munich.

Uh-huh. Yeah. We might tag on some Budapest. don't know.

Yeah, that'll be add-ons for us if we do it. But we may go to Budapest.

We always have time for another Christmas market, don't we?

If you need a recommendation for a food tour in Florence, I do have one. If you're looking to do that. She's been a guest on the podcast and she does weirdly Dublin and Florence because her parents are Italian. She's from Canada, moved to Dublin, loved Florence. She speaks Italian, right? So she does like food tours in Dublin and Florence.

Yes.

Yes, sending our way because with our Italy trip, we've purposefully put a lot of free time in the schedule because with cities, especially with a city like Florence, it's one of those. There's just a lot to do. And if somebody's not necessarily into art as much, they're not going to want to go to the Uffizi Gallery. Or maybe somebody does want to go climb to the top of the Duomo, but other people may be not be physically able to do that. we kind of just were like, you know what, we'll put like we

said we'll put our itinerary together so a food tour might be a good I would love to do a food tour in Florence I mean I love the food in Florence so yes send it our way for sure.

She's very like local food, not like the big obvious place to go. So I'll send her your way. She's so funny. Amazing. Okay. I think people will shout at me like get to YouTube. So I'm going get to YouTube. I'm sorry guys, that travel was the main thing. YouTube's a beast, isn't it? But you've got 115,000 followers today. I think last time I saw you, you just crossed a hundred thousand. So that's amazing. In what, two months? You just got that. I don't know where to start with this. To begin with.

Yeah, that'd be awesome.

How did you start it? Like, why did you start it and how? Like, was it just the 50 states? We'll do that. We'll record it. Let's see how that goes. Is that kind of where you started?

So I've always loved documenting stuff. Matt's really always been into photography and I've always loved taking videos and documenting. I'm literally a digital hoarder. I have so much stuff on my phones, on my old computers and stuff like that. I think documenting our travels was always a dream and goal of ours. We went, when we first got married, that's when we kind of started traveling a little bit more, obviously internationally. Our first big one was to Canada, to Quebec, and Matt took amazing photos. That's the first time that we bought a camera.

and then bought another camera for me.

2020 happened and.

If not, this is the time to change. Like this is the hard reset button that life is giving me right now. Do I want to take it?

We were both out of work for a little while, so it allowed us to actually have time to learn new skills. So I took courses on how to edit, like how to even film. Like what is, I didn't know what frame rate or shutter or any of that stuff was. I didn't know how to edit videos.

our COVID relief money from the government and went and bought a point and shoot Sony camera ⁓ on Facebook marketplace. that was our investment into the YouTube channel. And at the time, it was like $900 I think we paid for it. it was like, that was a big investment for us. Like we were really betting on ourselves at that moment.

button.

Well spent.

Yeah. would have been a million at that point.

And

we use that camera throughout all of these states.

Up to probably 50 or 60 thousand subscribers we use that point and shoot camera to get us there.

Oh yeah. What camera is that? I have interest.

That's a Sony RX100 Mark VII. A little point and shoot. Great little camera.

I thought it was so heavy at the time. I hated lugging that thing around. And now obviously I have a really bigger one and it's like a whole thing. But it's just funny how you grow and...

Yeah, but to answer more of your question, like, the 50 states in a year and see where it was, we were kind of crazy, to be honest. I look back on it and I was like, why did we think this was going to work? We just went in head first. I blame it on naive optimism because you don't know what you don't know. just went in with the idea of like, you know what, let's just give this thing a try. And we've literally treated it like our full-time jobs from day one.

There's the idea, I always say, there, I think just with anything in life, I don't think there's the opportunity to find success with just dipping your toe in and testing the waters. You just kind of have to dive in, sink or swim, and that's how you find success or figure out how to find success if you did sink the first time. Then it's like, all right, get out and jump in again.

Yeah, you just learn from your failures. And I think being in the music industry definitely has helped us too. ⁓ We learned a lot of hard lessons that way that we brought into this business and we're like, okay, these were all the mistakes that we made in the music industry. How can we fix those and put them into this? And obviously when you work on something together rather than just separate, know, it makes it a lot easier.

Yeah, for sure.

Was there a video that maybe kicked it all off properly? Because I know when I speak to Chris and Sarah, they said they'd done like early door van life.

theirs like popped off right when they started, which I don't know if I would have recommended.

I've told them I feel sorry for them the that their first video went viral.

Still

figuring it out, like being known for that one thing, that's gotta be hard.

You

know, what was funny is our first video that in our minds popped off and it and it for the channel, you know, there's viral for your channel and then there's viral in the grand scheme thing. And for the channel, I we had a hundred subscribers and we had our first ever. How was our first video? Second video.

Second video.

Seattle was our first. Well, had another. It was? Okay.

Las Vegas was the first.

So we did a 36 hours in Las Vegas video. We literally flew in, landed.

Right when Vegas reopened.

Yeah, was right when it had reopened for visitors. We landed at 9 a.m., started filming immediately, and flew out the next afternoon. And we just filmed the whole time we were there. Put it out, like I said, for our channel, I think it got 20,000 views in the first like two months or month and a half, something like that. And we had 100 subscribers, so we were like, oh my gosh, like this is massive, you know, in our minds. But we've been a channel that's kind of been the steady.

steady growth kind of channel. We only have one video that I would say is like really popped off and it was a cruise video that it was like a negative kind of a review video almost of a cruise line.

was negative.

of our other videos are negative so it really did

People

love negativity. But you know, it's our biggest feed video like, but just to put it in perspective, you know, our biggest food video, I don't even think it has 600,000 views yet. And I don't mean that in like, it doesn't even have that. You look at many other channels that have the same subscriber count as us, and they're going to have multiple million view videos. So we've kind of just been the channel that's consistently just slow and steady kind of growth really.

Yeah

Yeah. And for people listening, I'm in, Matt and that's very early stage. I think I'm at 3.7 thousand subscribers. So I'm in that sort of range between 500 and a thousand is good for my channel per video, right? That's where I'm at. It's all relative, but it's slow and steady. But it's weird how a few things do sort of go off without you maybe predicting it. Like I don't know. I wouldn't say it's a crappy one. I've like a basic one for Paris. I'm like, why is that the most watched? I don't really know.

Maybe we drink coffee is what people want to see. I have no idea.

You know, it's the videos, like, you we have a video that we were like, people are going to love this video. We stayed in the Ice Hotel in Quebec City. And it was much fun. And we, you know, that was not a sponsored video. We came out of pocket, paid for the Ice Hotel room. I think it was like $750 or $800 for one night, you know, and you know, it's like, all right, this is, this is going to perform well. It's one of the worst performing videos we've had on our channel.

Thank much.

Always the way, innit?

And then we put one out and we were like, people are watching that? That's awesome. But I didn't think that that was the one they're going to watch, you know? You just never know. And we still have videos on our desktop of our first getting, how many views was it? I think 100 views in a week or a thousand views in a week. we were just like, across all of our videos, we were just like, this is amazing.

⁓ You really don't know

Yeah,

you got to celebrate those wins because it is all relative, like you said. Those wins are worth celebrating. For sure.

So that goes into the next question. If you're starting now, someone new, maybe three things that are things that you've learned that maybe are crucial for someone starting out right now.

think good audio is one, a big one. Audio is really important because people will watch bad quality video as long as the audio is still good. But people will definitely click off if the audio is bad.

Yeah, definitely, you know, focus your efforts, audio over video if you have to pick, know, if you're at a place where it's like, okay, I'm having to start with my phone, get an external mic for your phone set up. You film with your phone and, you know, get audio with an external mic that's

Clean

your lens.

Cling your lips, big one. Yeah. ⁓

But on bigger, higher level stuff, would say finding your voice. And I mean that in the sense of being genuinely you on camera. People see through inauthenticity pretty quickly. just being authentically you because you have to realize, yes, you're putting out videos, but your videos are just what you're doing. You are actually the product when you're the face of the channel.

That's why the hate comments and the negative comments hurt a lot worse when doing this compared to when I was like creating music or whatever people, they didn't like a song, they didn't like the song. They don't like what we're doing now. They're hating on me personally, usually, or her, you know, that kind of thing. So it's a much more personal attack. So realizing that you are the product and at the end of the day, you're selling yourself. And I don't mean that in any kind of salesy gimmicky way. the brand. I'm just.

It's just you're the brand. Yeah.

to

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Yeah, and I think we learned that in the music industry. think another thing is always just going back to what value are you bringing to people? Because when you're first starting out, why would anyone care? Why does anyone care about us? But our value has always been to help people travel, right? We were gonna show you how to do see and eat as much as you possibly could in this given amount of time, right? We're not just gonna like... And of course, we're always in the back of our mind, how can we bring more value? How can we help other people? How can we...

And I think just you realizing that and not just doing it to become famous or become rich or like really knowing your why on what it is you're trying to do.

Yeah,

entertainment is value, but even your favorite sitcoms get canceled. Even the most popular TV shows in the world end because they aren't getting the reviews they had. it's like, entertainment's only going to keep people coming back for so long. You have to start bringing, providing something a little more beyond that. Now, obviously you want to provide multiple levels of value. You've got to be entertaining within your education or information, at least in what we're doing and the style of content.

ourselves and you're doing James. But yeah, that would say, like Natalie said, piggybacking on what she said is really just knowing your why and sticking to that.

also think, too, something like TravelCon, where is where we met James, is super important for new creators, especially being surrounded with like-minded people. Like, we moved to Nashville because that's where all the musicians are. know I mean? Like, having community in whatever you're doing is really important, especially when you're starting out, because it is weird, it's different, and you learn from the people that you're surrounded by. And having that kind of community where you're like, my gosh, you deal with that, too.

It's just really awesome. Like you get to make friends and community, I always will go back to community, but community is just so important in whatever you're doing. So I think that's something. And as an editor, I would also like to say, be very subjective. point. Because I think I'm funny, right? Who doesn't? But everybody thinks that about themselves. know what I mean? I'm like, I think I'm funny, but then I'll be editing and be like...

people won't think that's funny. you what I mean? Like you just have to think in your mind, you're like, maybe it's a cute moment between us. Well, I'll cut it and keep it for myself, but maybe other people don't need to see that or they don't care. So having that subjective thing in your mind where is it entertaining? Is it bringing value? And just really being subjective. Cause I watch some vlogs and I'm like, what was the purpose of that? Like, did you think that was funny or do you think that was?

In the editing room, in songwriting world, we would always say having your northern star. And that's usually the title of the song or the meat of the song. And every lyric needs to point to that northern star within the lyric. And in the editing room, it's like, all right, what's the title of your video or what's the theme of this video? And then editing the video to that same thing. Editing, making sure every clip points to that northern star. And Natalie does a really, she's been great at it from the beginning about being subjective.

about saying, know, we might have rambled on for three to five minutes about something. And in the moment, we thought it was great. But then you get in the editing room, it's like, this is...

Dully,

dully. You know what I mean? It's us.

And

I think that's something many YouTubers, you know, I watch occasionally and I'll be like, man, they should have like really moved this thing along. Like it was a little bit slow moving here. Um, but yeah, but you have to be subjective. And like I said, Natalie does a really great job at that.

think it's probably because I have like ADHD or something and diagnosed and I'm just like, let's move on. ⁓

Okay, I'm coming to community in a minute. I've got one more question about tech. This would be a bit boring for people listening, but I'm hooking them with the question over here. Basic set up. Now this might be really basic. You mentioned earlier in that about not shaking the camera, which is actually quite big when you think about it. How many YouTube episodes you watch and they're just shaking it. So what do you use to not shake the camera for a start?

guy right here.

Well, don't watch our early videos because even now I'm like appalled. I'm like, I put that in there. I think just learning, right? If you go back from our first videos to our ones now, you'll notice a big change, right? We do the ninja walk, but we don't use a gimbal. Like we're very run and gun. No, we're very run and gun.

stable. ⁓

So we know we just use the in-camera stabilization depending on the shot if it's a walking shot we'll make sure the active stabilization is on because we're on all Sony stuff. ⁓

Yes.

In

Ristoni, there's catalyst brows, so that's like a post-production thing that I can put in and it smooths it out a little bit more. ⁓

digital stabilization, know, it crops it in a touch, but ⁓ we've toyed with doing the gimbal thing, especially early on, but it's just so cumbersome at times and gets to

only if we really need it.

It

draws a lot of attention. Like I said, we're run and gun. We're going, our whole goal is to do see and eat as much as we possibly can. It's not to get the most beautiful cinematic shot. We're just here to give value for people's itineraries. And so that's something that else we have to remind ourselves. Like usually if we're there and we say we're there for 48 hours, we're there for 48 hours, maybe 56. But you know, like that little end.

If

our video said 24 hours in this place, we were probably there for 24 hours.

Yeah, and so we can't, you know, we're running to the next thing and we're usually running late. It's like, so when I have all that gear.

So the more streamlined we can make our process and like, dummy proof we can make it, the better it is. So like even, I know a lot of people, they all shoot full manual mode or whatever. We shoot shutter priority just to, cause it's like, it just removes all of the mistakes out of, most of them, the mistakes I should say, out of the backend of things. Even as a color grading point, rather than.

more time than necessary, like we don't shoot in log, because it's just not worth the effort in our opinion, know, we shoot, you know, we shoot in

We're not filming Martin Scorsese films here. It's a vlog that goes out, you know what mean? To help people travel.

It's

funny, you know, getting on, I won't go too deep because I know it'll bore the listeners for sure talking about this too long. Even though I love talking about this stuff. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But with like color grading and that whole thing, we went back and forth like, should we film and log? Which for listeners that might not know, log is like the flattest profile that allows the most flexibility on the backend for editing colors.

Yeah yeah, bone it.

means a lot more time on the back end to edit.

but it does take a lot more time because it gives you that flexibility. Or you can shoot like what your camera would, your phone camera would do, which is, you know, a color profile essentially. Once I heard that Casey Neistat didn't shoot in log ever because he said it wasn't worth his time. I said, if it's good enough for Casey Neistat, it's good enough for us. Shooting the cinetone or whatever it is.

We're we're just.

I think it's got to do whatever's best, right? I think that's the key point. For me, I'm just not very good at holding my Sony camera as I go. just shake it a bit and I... No strap.

I'm getting bogged down in it.

Do you have a strap for it?

So that would be a big thing for me is having the three points, right? Is that what they call it?

you

that third point of contact so you got your hands and then you can put it around your neck.

And then

you just like, you create your own little thing. Interesting. I recommend doing like three different takes, three different goes. Yeah. And then pick the best one.

So I use my new iPhone that I have. That's my on the go footage, 4K. And then I just use my Sony camera for me speaking in it. That's my rule. I don't know that works for anyone else, but I just think, well, in the camera, whilst walking and speaking is okay. Cause I think you're just trying to, it feels like you're on the go a little bit, the still shots of like maybe showing a waterfront for me, it's like the phone. Cause I'm just like the most stillest when I got my.

Yeah, we're on the stabilization within the...

was going phones,

Yeah.

Yeah. So I guess don't be afraid to use your phone. I think it's what I'm saying there. Especially these days, right? They've got 4K and all that sort of stuff. Shutters speeds and all that. Okay. Community, you are the experts at this, right? I have never met content creators in real life who have managed to create and sustain a community like you guys. I think it's unbelievable. So to give you, listen to some context, they have a patron, which is, I don't know how many patrons you have, but I know it's a fair, a fair whack, a fair few. And obviously you have

Not at all.

I'd imagine paid memberships on YouTube. So that's a community as well. how, not how, but why do you think you guys have got such a strong community? it because you offer authentic travel tips? You give a bit of you to them so they get to know you a little bit. Is that the key to community and getting people to part their money and join you on the journey?

So I think for us, community has always been super important. It's something that we always wanted to do from the beginning, right? We wanted it to be part of our DNA. We love people. We love talking with people. We love just people in general, right? Just in our everyday lives. And I think we started our Patreon before we even launched our 50 States in a year, which is so crazy.

Before we had 200 subscribers on YouTube, we launched our Patreon. Yeah. Yeah. And I think our first member was one of my, was my cousin who is still, she's our longest, longest continued member from the start. But I think it comes down to authenticity. ⁓ know, I learned in the music, like Natalie said earlier, mentioned, you know, we learned a lot of hard lessons in the music industry.

Bye, teacher.

And one of the things you really learned there was always treating people as relationships and not resources. know, never going into building a relationship with the idea of being able to leverage it into anything other than a friendship. That's what the goal of creating a friendship is, is friendship. Beyond that, you know, if there's benefit that come from it, cool, but that should never be the, you know, the root or the focus of why you're building that relationship.

So I think again, just comes down to authenticity, truly wanting to connect with people. And then truly letting people be seen and heard. Letting people feel like they're, not just feel like they're being seen and heard, because they are being seen and heard, you ⁓ I think that goes a long way with people.

Yeah, I think in the beginning when obviously our numbers aren't what they are now, it was giving value again, right? So it was postcards from every single state. So that was something. Yeah, and so, you know, that was something for me to be like, okay, if somebody wants all of the 50 postcards, you to sign up early. And I think just being able to give value and having something else, you know, in the mail was something that was enticing to people, right? And then...

I think now the best part about our community is the community. It's not even something that we do. We maybe facilitate it, but just having the amazing group of people in there.

Yeah, the community sells itself now kind of, which is kind of crazy to think.

Yeah.

They're so kind, so welcoming. It's just, it's amazing to see and be a part of.

Before we got on with you for this talk, we had one of our ⁓ Patreon members and community members messaging us trying to get another one of the Patreon members signed up to the Facebook page because they couldn't figure out how to do it. And we were messaging, she's like, I'm just trying to get all the stragglers rounded up, you know, kind of thing. It's like, and that's the kind of people we have, like they're not leaving anybody behind.

No, it's all like everybody's welcome at the table. It's really amazing to see. love seeing how many people are just messaging back and forth. They're meeting up without us, right? So they know that somebody's there in town, they're going to have dinner and then they'll take a picture and share it on our Facebook group for our patron members.

They actually started a sub chat on our Facebook Patreon, because we have an exclusive Patreon Facebook group for all of our patrons. The Patreon page is not a great place for the community to get to you. So we have a Facebook page for that and they've now created a sub chat that was called Matt's mishaps. And it's just, they're sharing, they're trips, that they took, all my bad photos that I've taken, like they've taken of me.

get together and interact.

All of Matt Tr-

Things I've done that was dumb, don't know, but it's hilarious.

No.

So anyways, yeah, so people ⁓ drove, right, or flew in, spent their time, their money to come and hang out with us here in Nashville. And it was just, you know, there was no entrance fees or anything like that. Obviously their patrons were there to meet you. And it was one of the coolest experiences. Like we got to meet Rich and Abigail through that. ⁓ And it was just an amazing weekend and the community has just gotten even better and more amazing since.

We're doing another Patreon meetup, exclusive meetup, in-person meetup in July this year. And we've already got 25 people like committed to come from... Yeah. it's just, it's kind of wild to think, to be honest, like...

to probably grow from here.

And they're all just so excited talking to each other, like, you're going, you're going, okay, cool. And then they're even excited to have new people. So, you know, new people are like, hey, I'm a lurker here, but I'm excited to meet you guys.

That's the other great thing is like, you know, it could you feel like it could get exclusive real fast like ⁓ yeah, you could get really clicky, but it's There's just such such wonderful people. They always welcome every single person with open arms and It's it's just a really rewarding thing to experience

And we have our own little community from TravelCon last year, which is like on a little Discord, but you guys are meeting up in America, which I can't unfortunately attend, which I'm pretty devastated about. ⁓ Yeah, maybe join that way. Yeah, that'd pretty cool. Just because of citizenship admin, which is a of a nightmare. ⁓ yeah, so we met up for the first time a years ago, and I've met you since this year. But from the first meet up at TravelCon, I was there.

We're just going to have FaceTime you.

2024. There's like a few of us right we're just like exchanging details, had a good laugh, some drinks, some food and then that grew into a little community right and now we've got this like 10, 12, 14 people creative community that we kind of have kept going. I know we're all busy with our stuff and then this year we're all meeting up. Well, half of me.

You know, obviously with schedules naturally, it's, it'll be a challenge.

Especially

travel creators too, that's always a hard part. People are usually traveling like Chris and Sarah.

But

I love that we're doing it even just to get the ball off the ground to make it part of the community. And then from here, from after the first one, it's like, we've done this. Like now we'll do it again and it'll only grow from there. Perfect. I also think we, like there's a couple other travel con people that were at this past travel con that I feel like could be added in our travel con group, but I'm going to have to talk to our, you know.

Yeah, Yeah, don't worry.

We'll just go to Canada.

See?

Our leaders of the devil's group. Our administrators to see if that's...

have have a presentation and we'll have their photo and we're like, these are the pros and we all vote them in.

delegate

a secret society. I spoke to him a few weeks ago because he came on the podcast for an interview and I think what he learned from you guys and other people at TravelCon this year was he thought he was an entrepreneur and he said, I bloody am not compared to these guys. Like you've got your seven streams of income. These guys are monetizing this and he's like, holy cow, I've learned so much. I think he would benefit definitely from the

Yeah, okay. I'm liking... Exactly.

create a side of it. Even though his podcast is full time, he does it like amazing, amazing content. Like he even benefited from that. So that shows how strong that is. Yeah.

that he'd be a good addition.

Absolutely.

And he's based in Denver as well, so he's in the US.

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, it's a good group though.

Yeah.

And that's one thing that I love about TravelCon is the community part. I feel like other conventions, right? Conferences. Conferences, that's the word I was thinking of. They don't have They're not as community focused, yeah. You know I mean? Yeah. That's why, yeah.

I mean, their whole motto is, know, community over competition. And I feel like they really strive to live that out and try to exemplify that and make that part of the DNA of the culture of TravelCon. So yeah, it's been a really neat thing and excited for where it's headed.

Yeah, I think for that, if you're a creator or want to be a creator, it's great because for me and for you guys as well, we're creators, but it's just good to go and get those side discussions going and like, oh, how's that going? Or what's that been like? You do learn a lot. I think I went for breakfast with you literally on the last morning before I had to go back for like an hour and a half and I asked a few questions I had to get asked and like, yeah, that's what I need to ask. So yeah, I think it does get those. It kind of inspires me, I think is what I'm trying to say. I think.

you can easily go solo with your creator thing and go, do you know what I'm doing right? But I think it's important to go and see other creators and just keep on your toes a little bit, ask for advice and be humble about it.

We leave every travel con feeling exactly that. It's so inspired. Like we come home with like a new fire in our bellies to just pursue this thing. I mean I probably spent a week at least after getting back and still to this day like constantly brainstorming after listening to Finn's presentation on the physical product stuff. It was like, that was just one of the...

the presentations or talks and then there's all the conversations that happen unofficially, know, that are just so ins...

off.

And I think for me too, meeting people in real life, makes me a fan of you as a person. So now I will support anything that you do. If you're a good person, then I'm like rooting for you in your corner. I'm definitely engaging with any of your things that you're posting. Because, you know, when you meet some people or you just see them, you're like, well, I don't really know them. I don't know. But when you meet somebody, you're like, cool. I'm commenting now on all the things or, you know, supporting people.

Yeah. That was

the funny thing about Aaron, right? Cause I thought I told you this, I know. I actually added him and sent him message. Must've been about two and a three years ago and he blanked me on Instagram. I even think he followed me and unfollowed me. I said, hi Aaron, I'm James from Wing and he's like, oh shit. I was like, yes. He goes that I'm really bad with social media. was like, well, okay, that's fine.

Did you call him out at our community dinner that we all did? At the of the table? Oh, it was before it.

No, because before... You

know the bit where at the end when they had some like dancers going on in the hallway and drinks, was then I sort of really got to speak to him and I was like, he's like, yeah, James, I'm so sorry. He's like, no, it's all right. You just have to come on the podcast and yeah. But no, that's great. humble about it, it's fine. But then, yeah, I just think it's good to meet people in person, get that sort of real life connection. And you're so true. I do support everyone I've met through that conference and the first one that I met you guys at. So yeah.

Yeah,

because when you meet great people, you're like, this is easy. OK, cool.

Yeah, you make that, yeah, it's a personal connection then. Like Natalie said, then you're a fan of whatever they do.

I'm saving stuff to watch later, know, just things like that.

And that kind of goes back to like what you were saying earlier, you know, asking about new creators and that the faster that you can get people to know you as a person, that's why being authentic goes such a long way. Like then they're fan of you and they're gonna support whatever you're doing. ⁓ And you know, that feeds into the whole idea of, know, we talked about it in different conversations before. yeah, he didn't come to our ⁓ talk.

Well, James never went to our town.

Come during speaking.

thought I was getting away with it.

Yeah, well, you know.

time that I can give you a hard time about it, I'm gonna do it.

So

Yeah, yeah.

Unfortunately, the first time I think I had a side conversation with another podcaster, little exclusive group. So we had a little chat and I think you're doing the talk and I was gutted to miss that. I was like, right, next time I'm going to watch those guys chat. And unfortunately, travel comp on at the same time, podcast chat.

guess they do it again next year, just so can keep giving you a hard time every single year. You would have known.

But if you'd been in our talk,

you would have heard us mention the whole idea of the 100 true fans, you know, and realizing that, you know, if you can make that personal connection with a hundred people, that's more valuable than a surface level connection with a thousand, 10,000 or even beyond.

Yeah, agreed. So you're not gonna like my sort of final question about YouTube is how important is the stuff like thumbnails, a hook, tags, titles, show notes. These seem a bit admin-y and a bit arbitrary, but are they quite important for people getting to see your video and at get a taste of what's gonna be coming on in the video?

For sure, because it's your promise to people, right? It's their first impression of you, your video, and what is it even of, right? So when we're saying, you know, this is the best things to do in Nashville, we're going to tell you the best things to do in Nashville, A, because we want you to watch the whole video and we want to give you value. So it's really just giving people what they're expecting, right? When you're buying something, you know, when I order a pink thing, I want it to be pink. So when I...

It's the same idea, it's just packaging it differently.

Your thumbnail, your title, your tags, all of those things, those aren't for your true fans. Those aren't for your, you know, your loyal fans. We could put up just a screen grab without editing it, whatever, and throw up a random title, you know, that's, you know, a day in Nashville or whatever. And our true fans are going to watch it because they already know what to expect from us. But all of those other things are your calling card, your business card for new viewers.

you know, or people that maybe view you more casually and they aren't going to watch all your content. So yeah, they are very important. I do think that with the live playing that happens, you know, on mobile with YouTube now, when you scroll through videos automatically play, or if you highlight on them, even on the TV, they automatically play. I think those have made the thumbnails less important and they make the first 10 to

30 seconds of your video that much more important because people are kind of previewing your video at that point. The thumbnail might get them to scroll over to it and actually highlight on it on the TV or whatever. So you do need that. But if your first 10 to 30 seconds don't hook them, they're moving on pretty quick. So yeah, I think all of those things are very important. And I think that first bit of your video is lumped in with those as well. know, there's debate of

the tags are actually doing anything on YouTube anymore these days. You know, some people say they are, so I don't know. I always say it can't hurt to have the tags on videos. you know, but I do think the thumbnail title...

in your content, whatever is in your video.

The video is obviously the most important, but yeah, to your point, I do think they are important. again, remembering those are to get new people in. Your diehards are going to watch, you know, whatever you put out pretty much.

And I think too, just looking at your analytics from time to time, not being so obsessed with it, but seeing what works, what doesn't, what are some spikes, what aren't, and going from there and learning just from your mistakes. Or how you could do things better.

Where can people find you? On Patreon, YouTube, websites, social medias.

So it's Adventures of Matt and Nat. And that's on all of good ad? Oh, you want to do that again? Adventures of Matt. There you go.

And Nat. And

you gotta look at the camera. You need to do that. Okay, ready? One more time. And Nat. Yeah, I hope you keep all three in.

Adventures of Matt. There we go. Third time's a charm.

Yeah, of course.

I mean, that's on all the platforms.

TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Patreon.

YouTube's our main platform. Instagram's kind of where we are able to communicate more easily with people. But then we also have our website with travel guides and all that stuff and Patreon, of course, as well. But yeah, that's it.

I'll put links in the show notes so it makes it easy for people. And I'm going to finish the episode with my little feature. It's a quick fire travel question, so no deliberating, no discussing it. You've got to first thing to mind. I normally give three answers, so can have one each. That's fine. ⁓

terrible at these by the way.

No,

Matt is so bad. He loves to think everything through.

So one each and then one together. That's what we're going with, right? Okay. Yep.

question.

One for each.

One for each question though.

Yeah, each question, one answer each, one combined, if you can. Because normally you just have one person saying three things. Okay, so let's do... It's travel question time. Your top three favourite countries that you've been to. Yeah, you're not going like them.

Alright, you're gonna go first.

Fucking hell.

Okay, if you ask me tomorrow this could change but I'm just gonna quick fire it because this is this very moment this is what I'm feeling. Alright, I'm gonna go with my home country of the US. not allowed. Okay, spoiler alert.

No

You didn't say that. Okay. in US, Yeah. Okay.

No home countries and these questions are allowed.

Well,

now we got the ground rules out of the way, James.

You

All right. I'll just go off the cuff then here. I'm going to go Japan. It's fine. You can, you can have the same things. I'm going to go Japan. I'm going to go Portugal and I'm going to go Vietnam.

That was a.

Interesting. was going to go with the US, but that's not allowed. Japan was on mine. I love Germany. I really do. Germany, my home people.

Does

that allow James she did live there?

That's a tough one,

Okay, I'll

take it out, I'll take it out, I'll take it out. This is hard. I know. I don't wanna just copy you. Where have I been? Ireland? I don't know.

Pick something.

third place.

I don't want to say Portugal. Yeah, Greece is pretty amazing. I'll go with Greece. There you go. That's so hard. Sorry.

I was mad.

That's great start, okay.

Is it a gate easier?

Three countries you've not traveled to, that's next on your hit list.

I got mine. Go for it. South Africa, Egypt, and Switzerland. I probably went as a kid, but that doesn't count. Yeah, so I don't know. I have to call my mom.

Which she doesn't know she went as a kid.

So

New Zealand, I had the other two the same. don't know if that matters. Okay, South Africa and Switzerland because we talked about those next.

also Carisha. Anyways, it's fine.

Okay. This is actually only one answer each. If you could live somewhere tomorrow for a year, that's not your home country or Germany, where are you going to live?

Can I guess Matt? No. No. A year. dang. Okay. A year.

Yeah, tomorrow.

think I would do... is it just a country, city, country, or just whatever? Okay, I would probably say Japan, just because it's so cold.

Country, yeah.

different. I'm DeFrance. Okay.

Great choice. Okay. Top three favourite cuisines or foods.

Italian. Yes. Greek. And Japanese.

I'm gonna go, I'm gonna probably try to go more specific with things that really stand out from my travels, like more specific dishes. Just because that's easier for me, like then then like a general kind of you know, cuisine. Okay fine. Alright so I'm gonna go with, you gotta have Japanese food in there, so I'm gonna go with sushi in Japan. It's just next level. The katsu is great as well.

Zoom in on that.

Okay. Fine.

I can't do that, but...

It's my favorite.

I'm going to go with Portugal was one I really enjoyed the food there. We're only in Lisbon, the, I'm going to say Portuguese, like Pachado and not as the fish and stuff as well. And then final, I'm going to go with, I'm going to go with pizza and pasta in Italy. mean, I don't know if it gets more, more.

No, too good. What about top three favorite cities?

so hard.

I'm gonna go... ⁓

Florence is one of mine. Athens is pretty cool. I have to do my third one right now. You do another one.

Cities, I would go with ⁓ Hanoi, Vietnam.

Oh, I'm going go to Tokyo.

Okay, you got Togian? I have a great choice. Yeah, Hanoi, Vietnam, Florence, Italy is definitely on there for me. But then I just, I mean, I want to go back and spend more time here because we didn't have a ton of time there, but Edinburgh, Scotland, ⁓ just a beautiful, beautiful place.

yeah.

Okay, both of you, one answer question here. Are you sunrise or sunset? No one says sunrise in that question. I'm trying to get someone to say sunrise.

They're really beautiful when I wake up, but if I have

When I'm up for them, they are great.

My

theory is Travers are up early, they're at it, but no, they seem to be doing sunsets.

Okay, this is an inside scoop. So we were in Ghent and we had to take an Instagram photo, right? We'd only gotten maybe three hours of sleep the night before, maybe two. And we had to get up. We had to take an Instagram photo on our last day before we flew out, right? And so we had to get up for sunrise. It was stunning. Absolutely. And in those moments, I go, why do I not wake up for more sunrises? But I never do.

Yeah, we always, we never regret getting up for sunrises because once you're up for them, it's spectacular. We don't make it up for them as often as we probably should.

Actually, you're a musician so you would tend to wake up later so that's fine. What about a favourite landmark each? be nature or man-made?

Mine's super basic touristy, but I think it's because it was my first landmark I probably saw. Yeah, first landmark I saw abroad and it was the Eiffel Tower. yeah. I came out of the metro and looked up and there it was. It was just like this whole.

Yeah, that was a pinch me moment.

super basic. That's me though.

I don't think that. I would say Glacier National Park is probably one of my favorites for just like landmarks, maybe Logan Pass. It's so beautiful.

Yeah, Logan Pass.

Okay,

what about, this might not be three places, but maybe a place you haven't liked or wouldn't go back to.

You have a place after.

I mean, it's the only one that I ever say. It's not really great though. It's Indiana or Indianapolis, but I would give it another go.

Yeah, that's

Yeah, I think for us, really, as you know, as James, we're really positive people. we almost can always like, we're almost always going to find something to enjoy about anywhere.

What?

Berlin was one that we just did not have a great time there. had our

We just talked about your story, didn't we? Yeah.

Yeah, Berlin's one that was like... I mean, it's not the prettiest city anyway, it's kind of...

So.

You're little nerdy.

Grungy, yeah.

Yeah, so there's certain places that I think more than like, like you said, not hated, but maybe didn't live up to what we would have wanted them to. And that for sure, Berlin was one of those, would say. Given it's a little bit skewed because of our experience there with having, you know, $12,000, $13,000 worth of gear stolen the first night, but...

And we looked at each other, were like, we're okay if we never come back here, it's fine.

Just to say on that, the footage is unbelievable, isn't it? I don't want to go over it because it's a bit traumatic thing, but people listening probably think what happened? Well, you checked into a hotel, right? And you literally put your stuff down for one second and they'd scooped in, it and took the whole bag and went, right? And you said, think Matt, you said to me at TravelCon that you're the type of guy that was always, you know, just watch the stuff and it's literally a seconds moment.

Mm-hmm. We we were safe. You know, we thought we were safe-ish in the hotel lobby.

happened so fast and did real.

Yeah.

Yeah,

in the hotel lobby, so. Yeah, so just reminder, always keep your eye on your things and pour your hands on your things.

Which goes into the next question actually. Top three things you always have when you travel. Or take with you, should I say.

always take my turtle travel pillow. I don't sleep without it on planes at least or trains or automobiles. Another one would be obviously our gear, but that doesn't really count. A sleep mask for me. ⁓ yeah. And probably noise canceling headphones or AirPods or something like that. Those are the...

Yes. I was about to say for me, would be my AirPods. If I had the luxury to travel with over your headphones, you know, if I had space in my bags, I would probably do that. But next best thing is noise canceling, AirPod Pro.

These

wired ones are really nice too.

Yep. That we usually, if it's a long haul flight, it's different, but yeah, I'm going to say a blanket. We always have like some kind of blanket because it can double as like a picnic blanket. can double as, know, something like that that you can travel with that can be multi-purpose. And then the third for me would be, gosh, trying to think. Most of my entire backpack is all gear. So I'm trying to think of something that's not like professional gear purposed.

Earplugs are important though too.

earplugs because hotels can get really noisy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I feel like more so abroad than in the US for the most part. So yeah, having a good set of earplugs is for sure must for not a jet lag on those early days of travel.

Get a good sleep.

Okay, and ⁓ penultimate question is going to be a creator based one. What about three creators that you would give a shout out to to check out? Could be YouTubers, could be bloggers, could be podcasters, whatever you want.

my gosh, just three?

Isn't that hard, James? That's a hard-

It's a hard one, but no favourites here, just three that might help people in certain aspects of creativity for travel space.

Yep. So I'm going to jump in then. I'll say.

Do you get three, I get three? Yeah. Now, okay.

You can divide up.

I'll go off the right out of the gate with our friend Josh with Through My Lens. He's got Through My Lens and California Through My Lens are his two channels, both really successful. His content's really informational heavy and really great for people wanting to learn about a place.

And he's a great person, which makes it even better. ⁓

difference.

You want to do one, you want to go back and forth? Yeah.

Yeah, I can. There's too many. I feel on the spot with this one. Who else do we... Some people don't need shout outs, you know what mean? They're so big. Do I do that? Do I do... You know what I mean? Truth, and point. I don't know. This is a lot of pressure. What if I don't say somebody that I should have said?

She's really evaluating it all now.

No, I know. Well, I'll say another one. It's some of our friends that you've actually had on here before, James, is our friends Chris and Ellen, which they are super inspiring right now. They're killing it with their Appair travel gear company. ⁓ Yeah, shout out to that. They don't realize the bombardment of questions and brain picking I'm going to be doing when we're with them. Because their product is great and I've been like, it's like just

Yeah, shout out to that.

Blink it was awesome.

Like I told you said earlier, after TravelCon came back inspired. but yeah, they've been really inspiring in that sense. And it's different from obviously, they still do the YouTube and creator stuff, but they've gone the physical product route, which I think is going to be really, really beneficial.

I think Ellie Smalls is one that I really enjoyed meeting at TravelCon. yes. different content, like very informational. And as an airline employee, I really appreciate it because she's educating the people on what to bring, how to pack and carry on, all of those things that we really don't talk about too much. Yeah. And just a great person. Her and her husband, yeah.

They were really great. So you've got one.

Rats. I could just name off a bunch.

Where do you want me

I'm gonna go with my final one and it was again we could sit here and name off dozens upon dozens but some more recent friends which is Tourist to Local. I believe you met at TravelCon as well James but just really great people. Kind, genuine. We talk back and forth with them very regularly to this day. They're just really kind people and they hit a hundred thousand right after TravelCon on So yeah, really happy to see them succeeding.

I'm looking on to get their actual, because she's more on Instagram. Amanda Monique Brown. yeah. Her and her husband were so fun. A completely different thing from you two, but one of the most genuine people literally obsessed with her and her husband. They're so fun. So sweet.

love so much.

Yeah,

big shout out actually from me for them. Yeah. Cause I met them at TravelCon. They're such funny people. That weird photo of me in action talking to Austin, right? And I was like doing like a dinosaur bear thing. have no idea what I was talking about. Absolutely no idea. And I said to Amanda's like, this seems quite funny. I have no idea what I'm saying. Like Austin's sort of laughing. Just thought I'd share it with you. Yeah. Just made me laugh. Yeah. We still keep in contact me and Amanda. She just done a...

my gosh.

bit of content on Galapagos

Doesn't it? And she's just the sweetest person. Yeah. It's, again, that's the best part about TravelCon. So I'm going to shout out Walters World and Yellow Productions because we've been fans of theirs for a really long time. But when you meet them in real life and you realize they're even cooler and even better than you imagined, because, you know, people say don't meet your heroes, but it's like when you meet people like that, that you've literally been watching for years and years, it's like, OK, thank you for living up to the hype. Like, we really appreciate it. So those are just two other ones that.

They're just as kind and nice, so I'll always continue to watch their stuff.

Yeah, What Was World is on the podcast, so you can take a listen if you're listening. Yeah, by the time this goes out, he would have been released. So yeah, people can listen back to the episode. That's pretty cool. Very funny episode. That one, had some funny stories. ⁓

So cool.

Only

imagine. He's a great one.

Okay, last question. I know we've been rambling for a while. If someone's listening right now and they're not sure about traveling, especially to somewhere outside their comfort zone, what one or two senses each could you give to really inspire them to maybe take that gamble, take the leap and go and do that experience that maybe they're a little bit scared of?

say possibly, like this is like real world info, is possibly looking into doing a group trip. Especially if this is something outside of your comfort zone that you don't really feel like you can do by yourself. We were not huge fans of group travel beforehand because we'd never done it before. But we realized that obviously there's comfort in doing things as a group. I don't know, especially if you're a solo female, we have some that...

travel with us and they were like we would have never done this location, we would have never done this experience without doing it in a group setting. So I definitely recommend trying that out if that's something that you are interested in.

Yeah. On a more broad, maybe cliche kind of sounding thing, I would say, you know, what pushed us to do a lot of things that are out of our comfort zone and me personally anyway, even my move to Nashville was kind of based on this whole idea of never go to the grave wondering what if. know, don't take a what if to the grave with you. Like know the answer behind it if it was, man, what if I had sp-

What if I had taken that month that I had between jobs to actually go travel? What would my life look like? know, so like rather than taking those, taking that to the grave, like just, just go out and do it. Like you're, you're never going to regret travel. Yeah, there might be some headaches and bumps and you know, things along the way that might be headaches, but the overall, ⁓ the overarching idea is like, you're never going to regret it because it's going to just broaden your, ⁓ your mind and your.

your heart's going to open up and just it's just such an

going to change you from the inside out for sure.

Yeah, that's amazing. Thanks guys coming on. I'm going to clip that. think that's quite nice. I think I need to do all my episodes. I asked the same question. I need to clip everyone's answer. That'd be pretty cool episode, right? Here's an hour and a half of the last 20, 30 seconds of each episode where they answer that question. If you need inspiration to travel, I think that'd be a pretty cool episode. yeah, thanks for coming on. That'd be great to clip that up and get it out there. But also thanks for all the content you shared, all the tips and tricks, the funny stories. It's been a great episode. Loved it.

That's awesome.

Keep on killing it.

Yeah, thanks for having us. feel like we probably could have talked another hour and and bored your listeners even more, but we would have had a good time.

100 %

love

James so much.

I think there's lots of content we could have gone down the rabbit hole with, hey, maybe we come back on. Why not?

yeah.

We're just gonna have to come to Nashville and we'll do a podcast here.

Indeed, and I'll have to watch you talk one day as well.

You come to Nashville, we can do an in-person.

While

you're eating hot chicken. wow.

Okay, that'd be an interesting experience.

We'll ask you questions and the chicken will just get hotter and hotter. So you'll be like sweating while you're answering. the hot ones but with hot chicken.

Okay, I'm up for that. Let's do that. So next time you see us together is that. it. Love it. See you there.

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