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 called “Shut Up and Go.” They grew because they provided a novel idea: To not really painting journey existence, however, to stay 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 regarded secondary to the mission of coaching the way to satisfy millennial wanderlust.
I recently caught up with Jo Franco thru email because the project has hit some primary milestones. Their YouTube channel exceeded the 1 million subscriber mark, and, perhaps more importantly, the closing month, they formally released a digital guide, additionally referred to as Shut Up and Go. The venture is identical too: “We inspire people to live the lives they’ve constantly desired due to the fact, in the long run, the simplest person conserving you back is yourself.” There’s a jogging count on the website online that partly marks its increase and makes the point that those who really need to look at the sector do. So ways 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 platform to teach.
How did the concept for shutupandgo?Travel begins, and the way did it evolve?
Damon and I began the YouTube channel lower back in 2013 while we have been the handiest people in our university friend institution who have been inclined to Shut Up and Go. We did not care. We had been broke and in college. For example, while we found out we couldn’t afford to go to an attractive beach in Mexico, we determined 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 10 years, but that experience sparked the Shut Up and Go motto.
We began showing our adventures on YouTube first to pitch it as a TV display. When conventional TV pros informed us that the younger tour doesn’t promote, we started out dedicating our time to the channel. What we noticed stored us encouraged: we weren’t the best ones who desired more out of life than the traditional, college, nine-five, married, retirement, then 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 lease), 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 we had 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 have been just getting started in our travels. To populate the website with the maximum on-emblem articles, we reached out to our audience, asking individuals to submit their testimonies. We now paintings closely with our content supervisor for the platform, a crew of 10 international writers, and 4 network moderators who paintings day by day on engaging the Shut Up and Go network. It’s turn out to be a big operation because we’re growing an area that is 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 paintings wherever they feel maximum inspired. This approach, we are a hundred% faraway, however the furthest issue from eliminated. Weekly calls, Google doctors, messages, emails, and some work trips a yr maintain us engaged with the team, notwithstanding time region differences. We train sessions of worldwide co-operating spaces to present our target audience daily pleasing articles, social media content material, and resources like discounts, occasions, and merchandise to help them along with the manner.
