What's up with our 2 hour long videos?

Our videos keep getting longer and longer - what's up with that?

What is Travel Support Thursday?

All your travel questions, answered every Thursday.

Okay, travel support Thursday back again. Yes travel Thursday. Oh, come on. No, no song no song

The people are rioting. Yeah, I can feel them out there. How dare you?

So today we're answering one question one question only

What's up with all these one to two hour long videos you guys are making?

We definitely get a lot of that from you. It's not a travel question, but we'll take it

Yeah, and we get all sort the feedback is all over the place. It's like we love this longer stuff

Please make more videos less

More often but make them way shorter. Please make them longer. Please don't make videos ever again

We get we get comments kind of all over. I'm not allowed to look at the comments anymore

And I think it's time to talk about like I don't know kind of how we think about this strategy

where we moved from this like 10 to 15 minute video

Forward to where we are now. We're basically every single video that we're making is somewhere between one and two hours

Right, but I promise you this is not going to be one to two hour video explaining that. Yes, maybe maybe

Well, one of the first answers I can give you why we make one to two hour long videos

We're not good at being concise. No, not even a little bit not. I mean, yeah, it's uh

See, I think there's a famous quote of like, um

I wrote you a long letter

Oh, no

Oh god, look it up. You bail me out here bail me out. What is it? It's something like

Uh, I didn't have enough time to write you a short letter. So I wrote you a long letter instead

Mark twain. I didn't have time to write a short letter

So I wrote a long one instead. Yes, and I think previously in the you know in previous

lives back a year ago or whatever two years ago

Uh, that's exactly what we were doing. We just we felt like we didn't have time to really craft

The thing that we were making into something really concise and nice

So we were just like getting stuff like 60 of the way done

And then just like shipping that sucker because we needed to put out another video two days later

So one of my favorite one of my favorite quotes are not quotes. Actually, it's a comment that I saw before I was banned from

Reading youtube comments. Yes, not not good for your mental health. Those youtube comments are there's some mean people out there

Um, one of my favorite comments was when someone said can't you can't you just like split these up into four to five episodes?

And then I thought can't you

split this up into four to five episodes? You can just hit pause walk away come back whenever you want watch it however

Yeah, and it's just fine. It just goes against like

The entire thing that we're trying to do and I think there were a lot of reasons that we ended up

Making videos in the in the way that we're making them now and I think here they are first and foremost

Is that we just wanted to provide a complete product. We wanted to provide a complete

Thing from start to finish. Yeah, I think we constantly felt like we wanted to add more depth

However, you wanted to find depth but we wanted to add more depth of what it felt like

What a place felt like what it felt like to meet new people in a certain place

And we wanted to be able to tell stories about a place and it's really hard to do that when you're basically telling the story of

yourself or myself in a place

And that was the other videos were pointing just at us

But in reality what we wanted to make and what we always wanted to make but we just we didn't have the confidence to do it

was

Showing way more about the world about the place that we were at showing as much as we could trying to make it feel like an immersive

Experience for the person watching feeling like they're actually there

Instead of pointing the camera at our faces like we're doing right now

Yeah, I think we we started to focus more on the place and let the

The story be about how we traveled through that place. The second reason is that

We're we're making a lot of videos for a very long time

That just didn't feel right that we're just chasing trends that we're just I don't know

I'm sure we'll talk about that more in a bit, but I think that's a really big second reason

And I think part of the reason is also just like and this goes along with what you were talking about pacing

pacing matters a ton

In the youtube world the youtube algorithm for traveling and also for us

I think when we were making the 12 to 15 minute long episodes three times a week

It was it's a really hard pace to follow

And and props to people who are still doing it props to the creators who are still

Managing with all of this for us. It just felt like we couldn't keep up sustainably

And we weren't making things that we necessarily felt like we were excited about just to keep up with the pace

So I think it was like a a point in our youtube journey that we decided

We're going to say no to that pace no to that schedule and figure out what pace works for us

So many other reasons. I think we need to like go back in time a little bit

So quick history lesson of how we got here. So we started off

Megan weird pancake flipping montages as our first video and then Megan like diy

Jim's out of wood at the beginning. We were just making whatever we went to every single cheese curd factory in all of Wisconsin

I think that was our first travel vlog that we ever made was doing that travel in air clothes, man

Then we switched over to van life again because we saw channels like even in back and a ton of other van life creators just like

Going really big on youtube and also we were really interested in making a van

and it was like a way to travel at the time when travel was a little bit more difficult and

Uh, we had a blast building the van. It was so much fun building a van

We were van life creators for all of like four months

Not even I think

We were van life builders for like a month and then van lifers for like

At best yep, so then van broke down totally exploded on the highway and then we went over to Mexico

And then this was our first like real

Travel vlog, I guess. Yeah, first real like international travel blog where we started

Putting these like 10 to 12 minute care and a direct copy videos onto the internet and

We were learning we were learning just how to make videos just literally like how to use editing software

Hey, what kind of music should we put in there? And the answer is always tropical house. Yes

24-7 it must be tropical house

And this entire process of us learning how to just go from zero to having a movie exist

Probably took us a hundred of these of these like videos back-to-back until we really

Yeah, until we felt like we could consistently make something that

Was even remotely watchable was even kind of enjoyable by a stranger

And it was a hard process and I think had we known how hard it was at the beginning

We would have just never started. Yeah, we just never even opened up shop

But i'm really glad we did when I think about those beginning times

I think about them fondly like some of them are really embarrassing to look back at most of them

but

I also look at that time and I think well that we were just trying things and we were just having a good time and

honestly, it was what kept us

happy and motivated and

Positive during a time where we were all locked down and couldn't do anything

It kept us focused on something anything a new hobby

And then when we were traveling it was a way for us to document our travels keep in touch with our family and friends

And also hone in on our skills or lack thereof

And and just keep like it was really nice. I remember when we were traveling whenever I'd get homesick

I could just like open my laptop and edit a little bit and that kept me

preoccupied kept me like with purpose, but there was somewhere right around

The one year mark was when we really started to have like traction

Yeah, and we started treating it. I think a bit like a business. Yeah a little bit less like a hobby and

I think that moment was both a blessing and a curse for us because we started spending

All of our waking moments, and I think we're still in this mode of just thinking about youtube. Yeah, and it shifted away from like

travel being priority number one to all of a sudden youtube was priority number one by a huge margin and

I think we kind of like lost track

of who we were

as people

Yeah, we came back from our one year what was supposed to be our one-year honeymoon super lost super confused. We like

Did this thing we came home. We were like, what now do we go back to our jobs?

We're starting to make some money on this thing. Do we keep going?

But like how and so we kept I remember that was when we went to longerbin

And that's when we did all these like other things in between to try and figure it out

Um, but it wasn't until like we reached the point where we were like

This can't keep going at this pace and this way that we needed to make a change

And financially we were just blowing all of our money longer than was just

Like the journey to longerbin was so fun and one of those dreams like I'm so happy that we went

but it was

Not an ROI positive and we were doing it for the wrong reasons

We were doing it for the wrong reasons and I think we did a lot of stuff during that

Period for the wrong reasons like we were searching for a format and we knew in our minds

We knew in our minds from the beginning that we wanted to be useful. Yeah wanted to be helpful

We wanted to provide information. We wanted to

Show people how to do this life of travel and be realistic about it, but also not too serious about it

Yeah, exactly show that it's fun

But also attainable for almost, you know, not almost anyone but for way more people than probably think it is

Yeah, and we kept like diverging away from that

And I know that we've told the story before but I think our furthest away moment was

I saw on the internet that there were videos about ice cream rolls like, uh, you know

They're like freeze a plate and then they take a scraper and they make these

Kind of ice cream rolls and they were like doing like like 10 million views on these ice cream rolls and in my head

I'm like sweet. We're an ice cream roll channel now

This is what we do is we make so we went to the nearest place in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Went to and just like got all this like buttery slow motion b-roll up close of this ice cream roll

making it explaining the whole process and

I felt so

Dirty the whole time we were making it like I knew

I knew that it was a stupid idea

but also in the back of our minds was a little bit of like excitement like

This could be it like, you know the little two-shoulder one devil one one angel like the devil's like

This could be it. All right. I'm so good. This could be the reason why you become a

millionaire on youtube and you're like really?

You feel like this? This is a stupid ice cream roll video and I'm so glad that that didn't happen

I think that would have been a massive curse on us had a video like that or something

In that same vein had that gone viral or gone big

I think we would have done the stupidest thing and shifted so far away from our principles

That we would have like become unrecognizable from what we are now

We'd have been like, yeah ice cream roll and the next time we're going to show they make dumplings and then after that

We're going to show and those are cool videos. Those are cool. It's just not not that's not what we want to make

And why we're making it is that's I think that was really the shift for us

Well, I don't think we completely fully realized it took us a while maybe a year after that, but

The why has always been really important for us like when we started this thing

It was during the pandemic. We didn't really have much to do but we decided let's try and make youtube videos

And maybe this will be a thing that we do when we travel

But the only way that the only way that we would do this is if our videos were actually helpful to people

We never wanted to be the people that was like

Traveling so that you could just watch us travel. We wanted to be the people that

Showed you that you could travel so that way when you watched us, you're like, okay, I'm going to stop watching and go travel now

I didn't want we didn't want to like and and it probably still happens

We can't change that but we didn't want to be the people that perpetuated this feeling of

Just envy or like living vicariously through us

So I think like after that was when we

I think that was the Camino documentary

Yeah, and that was our first real big swing at something completely different but felt totally us

Our plus long video about something really

Really important to us, but also really challenging travel related had heart had some soul but also some pieces of

Laughter, you know, yeah after all of that

We had a really had a bunch of really low moments for us. We felt super lost in this whole process for a really long time

Trying to figure out this like balance. We didn't have a home really for a very long time. We were

Directionless the videos that we were making just made us both feel sad inside a lot of the time

We're just tired tired. We were exhausted and we eventually landed on this format that we're on now

This three days in format and most importantly this idea of seasons

Of having times when we're out filming and having times when we're back

Here at this home that we now have and being able to have some delineation between

Going out there all the time filming day after day after day after day making these like constant little small videos

That just didn't feel right to us and finally cutting those things off

And making something bigger takes longer to come out. I'm sure it's annoying for you guys to have to wait for these videos to come out

Trust me. We feel it too

less often but still will maintaining our sanity and will making something that's like

Useful to someone. That's a complete package. That's that's real

Yeah, I definitely think that it was hard for us to make this decision

I think there's this there's this idea that the one way to make it on youtube is

One way to make it on youtube is this way and for travelers and travel creators. It's

Full-time travel quit your job first quit your job travel the world

Full-time and make videos. I mean we even made videos about that very topic

That that's the only way to do it the only way you can succeed on youtube

That's what we thought when we started that was the only path

Just literally bring a camera around with you and just show you the five or six interesting things

We do in a day of travel and we put this out a couple of times a week

We thought that that was the only way to make it on youtube

And in reality, there's a ton of ways to make it on youtube

Infinite infinite numbers a way to make it on youtube

But for sure the most effective way to not make it on youtube is just to copy somebody else's format

Which is what we were doing. It's a very very long time

But I think about that time and I think like we had to go through all of that to get to where we are

We had to and I'm grateful because

Without Karen Nate without the other travel vlog couple like people that travel full-time

We never would have known how to even kick this thing off. Yeah, where do you even start?

It took a long time for us to get to this point

But I'm so glad that we we went through all of that to realize

This is how we enjoy

this job

This travel this life and hopefully we get to make stuff that people

Enjoy as well. And I don't know I

I look back at all the things that we made and I don't feel regret

I mean, there are some things where I'm like led to shouldn't live on the internet anymore

But those are all part of the things that brought us to this point

I I think the thing that I keep thinking about the word that resonates with me the most in this season that we're in

Is intentionality, you know, we're trying to be intentional about the places that we go what we're filming what we're making

um

And how we're living our lives because I think for a while we were just so reactionary to trends to youtube algorithm to stat

The world to how we were feeling the weather to like anything that we could be reactionary to we were just like

Yep, time to shift the whole strategy towards that one thing. And this feels just a lot more

Grounded we know

Generally what we want to do and how we want to do things

asterisks sometimes

We mess up like with Dubai. We we miss the mark there

Um, but that's part of the process. I think I think that for us

That's been kind of the magic of this like longer one to two hours that we're making all these videos

Is that

As these videos get longer and as we get better at turning

Bigger ideas or an entire place into one consistent documentary. Yeah

um, we actually also

have

Significantly more fun

Well traveling throughout the entire time that we're doing it

We just have a lot more fun and hopefully you guys out there also

Think that it's awesome. And I think it's made all the world of difference for us in our like physical and our mental health

But also in just our joy for film making and our joy for travel like I love now

After being at home working on various things

Packing our backpack again and going back out into the world again. It feels like it used to feel. Yeah

Yeah, it feels exciting. It feels great. It feels like we can actually

Make things that we're proud of I think we're just much more interested in making movies now than we are in making travel vlogs

And I would describe the thing that we make is like maybe a vlogumentary or something like it's like a mixture between the two things and

Oh, man

So at the end of the day these longer formats that we're making now where we're able to provide this like really

complete version of something and

be able to provide useful information

And being able to do it in a way and at a pace that allows us to put out like actual feature length

Movie documentaries whatever the heck we're making now

Consistently over and over at a quality that we're both proud of yeah is

I mean, I think it I think it saved this youtube channel

I do genuinely think that we would have quit a year a year and a half ago now

Had we not found something that felt as right as this did because

I think the focus at the beginning was so much on just chasing trends on just seeing like okay that did well on youtube

Let's go and do that and then just doing that over and over and over again, and we were just like

Jerbels running a little gerbil wheel just waiting for another little nugget to be dropped down

So we could keep running and that little nugget was like oh ice cream roll videos. We're an ice cream roll channel now

Oh cruise videos. Let's go out of cruise like sometimes. I still feel like I'm in a gerbil

and these these moments

along the way of

Seeing like the dissidents between what

Like this image that we had in our mind of the thing that we wanted to make and feeling so

Unconfident that it was going to do well. So therefore we didn't even bother trying yeah and doing that over and over and over again

Just eventually drove us crazy

Because we kept going back to the same idea over and over of like we need to make this complete package

That's probably going to be kind of long

But it's going to explain everything about a destination very little about us and a lot more about like what's most useful

What's the most useful thing that we can provide to the user to write to the person who's watching this and

We kept having this same idea and ignoring it because we didn't see it doing well on youtube

And that right there that thing this idea that we didn't see reflected on youtube was actually a hint

That that would be the most valuable thing to do and not something to be afraid of but we just didn't have the confidence

Or the really the skill to make it at the time

What oh no, what happened?

I was just thinking about how we started this thing

How we're not

Yeah, like an hour ago remember that one time when we were like, oh, yeah, we're not it's like

Sturbles probably aren't very concise

The thought that I had about an hour ago was

We don't we don't want it to come across like we're knocking other styles and other ways of doing it

In fact, we had to go through this process to find what works for us and truly

I I wish like

This weren't the answer

Because I think we've tried the answer of copying people or seeing trends and and looking at what was working

But the answer truly is within yourself, you know, like we knew this from like two weeks into doing youtube

We had this idea then and we just ignored it because we're like nobody'll watch that our friends

Friends the one-pack wonders tian chaveo

When we were all kind of newbies at this I remember we were talking about this concept of like

Being unique and different standing out on youtube and and I think they were saying, you know

But like really truly

The only way to be unique is to be yourself right because there is no copy of josh

There is no copy of me and make something that nobody else is making people that look like us. Yeah, like patrick wilson

um

But there's nobody else that can be as concise as we can be

Nobody else it can be as to the point as we have been today just right on straight line exactly

To finish no riffraff around there at all

For any travel creator out there

new or just starting or well seasoned

I think this is just like to say that we appreciate all of you

We appreciate how much you have to go through to get to where you are

And we understand the struggle

That is making it on youtube

um

And we heart you yeah, and I feel like you know, we're obviously

Not in any position to give any advice

We are small to medium-sized fish in a big big

inconceivably large pond right but if I had to do one thing differently in this whole youtube channel is

Just to listen to those initial ideas that we had when we were starting it into like hold

Tight to those yeah for as long as we possibly could and to not ignore those little hints in your head

That the whole time we're telling us hey make these videos longer. Hey talk more about budget travel

Hey, like be more honest about how this entire process feels

Hey, put more focus on the people out there instead of on the people

People hear less about us more about the viewer and more about their experience and more about helping them do the thing that they want to do and we

Those hints kept coming to us and varied like subtle ways every single time we'd make one of these videos

And then finally

Oh, no. Oh, no

I'm having a serious talk here

I'm having a serious conversation

But for the ninth time

I thought about the same thing

Oh my gosh

I'm sorry

This is an important man

I'm just like waiting for your mom

I'm thinking if you could have just added a line there about like pet more kids

Come on

Pet more cats in my country that you're visiting

Who you just want me to throw that line in about youtube strategy that's our whole youtube strategy is a pet more cat

I saw a comment the other day on our channel that said

Seize a cat

Oh this place is so magical

That is our entire strategy honestly

Honestly a cat makes everything better for us

Okay, so anyway

I'm sorry you should finish

I think I would have just paid a lot more attention to those signs that were obvious way earlier than we were even willing to accept them because we were afraid that they weren't going to work and I would have just done them

I would have done them even if our skill wasn't there even if we felt like the whole youtube channel was going to die

Because honestly it drove us crazy over time to have all these ideas and to have this like clear path forward but just not be able to follow it because we were just afraid to do it

So anyway, that's enough for this video

We're losing it

Okay, thank you so much for watching

We will see you in the next one

No, we've done it differently

No, I think all of that's

I'm going to do it

That's all very true

That's all very beautiful and very true

The only thing that I might add to that is

Pet more cats

Bye!