A few years ago, I featured Damon Dominique and Jo Franco, buddies from college who had won 440,000 subscribers on their YouTube journey channel “Shut Up and Go.” They grew because they provided a novel idea: Not To paint journey existence but to stay on the journey. By crossing borders and studying languages, they have been encouraging the young people of the sector to move around and meet. And as active as they were, entertainment was regarded as secondary to the mission of coaching the way to satisfy millennial wanderlust.
I recently caught up with Jo Franco through email because the project has hit some primary milestones. Their YouTube channel exceeded the 1 million subscriber mark, and, perhaps more importantly, in the closing month, they formally released a digital guide, additionally referred to as Shut Up and Go. The venture is identical to: “We inspire people to live the lives they’ve constantly desired because, in the long run, the simplest person conserving you back is yourself.” A jogging count on the website online partly marks its increase and makes the point that those who need to look at the sector do. So, the numbers are spectacular: 10 members have published 475 articles from more than 25 destinations.
In this email interview, Franco discusses how the internet site became a reality, how lifestyles are distinct now that humans answer to them, and why YouTube works as a teaching platform.
How did the concept for shutupandgo? Travel begins, and how did it evolve?
Damon and I began the YouTube channel lower back in 2013, and we were the handiest people in our university friend institution who were inclined to Shut Up and Go. We did not care. We had been broke and in college. For example, when we discovered we couldn’t afford an attractive beach in Mexico, we decided to go to Montreal’s less expensive but frigid tundra for Spring Break. We’d rough it because we knew we might benefit from the testimonies and relationships we made along with the manner. It’s almost been ten years, but that experience sparked the Shut Up and Go motto.
We first began showing our adventures on YouTube to pitch it as a TV display. When conventional TV pros informed us that the younger tour wasn’t promoted, we started dedicating our time to the channel. What we noticed encouraged us: we weren’t the best ones who desired more out of life than the traditional, college, nine-five, married, retirement, and perhaps journey post-retirement lifestyle. After years of consistently importing at the channel (with all of our fully self-funded trips to crappy atypical jobs on top of paying crappy and overpriced NYC leases), we had created a network of folks who linked to one another because of our motion pictures. By 2015, we started receiving splendid emails from approximate humans, having located the loves of their lives or exceptional pals within our videos and Instagram account comments. We decided to make a bigger emblem encompassing all testimonies of human beings residing in international life. Shut Up and Go changed into Born, and the destination has become shutupandgo.Travel.
We officially launched the platform a month ago after working with a web design corporation to create the sleek platform we might’ve loved to have discovered while we just started our travels. To populate the website with the maximum on-emblem articles, we contacted our audience, asking individuals to submit their testimonies. We now work closely with our content supervisor for the platform, a crew of 10 international writers, and four network moderators who daily engage the Shut Up and Go network. It’s turned out to be a big operation because we’re growing an area that in no way existed earlier than a platform for people who see the tour as a lifestyle, now not luxurious.
We’re no longer your fashionable business enterprise even though, very fittingly, we’re a lifestyle commercial enterprise. We permit our employees to paint wherever they feel most inspired. With this approach, we are a hundred far away; however, the furthest issue is eliminated. Weekly calls, Google doctors, messages, emails, and work trips a year keep us engaged with the team, notwithstanding time region differences. We train sessions in worldwide co-operating spaces to present our target audience with daily pleasing articles, social media content material, and resources like discounts, occasions, and merchandise to help them along with the manner.
