Opening Up: The Truth About Where We Are

Opening Up: The Truth About Where We Are. When we began our travels over a year ago, we started this account as so many others do… to show our family and friends back home what we got up to on the road.

About 5 months in, we hit a crazy momentum and saw this account grow in ways we would have never imagined. With it, brought opportunity, community, and sparked a sense of creativity within us. 

We took on photography as a hobby and found that capturing these picture-perfect moments actually pushed us to do more with our travels. We found that we were waking up earlier, seizing the day and exploring MORE places than ever before.

Our original plan was to keep travelling. We had plans to do an entire South America tour and a Summer Euro trip. So what changed? 

While we still plan to continue to travel throughout the year, we got hit with a hard reality. You see… making a sustainable living from social media isn’t a walk in the park. We were under this ‘false’ impression that people like us on this platform were making a sustainable income to fund their travels when this is simply not the case.

We tell you this not to discourage you from going after your dreams, but to inform you because it is something we only recently learned ourselves. Generating an income online requires you to work hard. Your revenue streams will come from a number of different things; collaborations, content creation, affiliate links, blog posts, presets, ebooks, etc. Some have good months, others fall short and trust us, it’s not a walk in the park. 

A press trip isn’t a free holiday, it’s actually a lot of work. While we do feel like we are living the dream being paid to review a hotel or travel to new exotic places, in many ways, there is a lot more work that goes on behind the scenes that many people are unaware of.

Some creators continue to work full time and prioritize large trips throughout the year to sustain their adventures. Others may have already had 5+ years of work savings in the bank to keep their travels going. Some are even relying on what little amount they make and free ‘trades’ to keep their dreams alive. Everyone has a different story and there is really no RIGHT or WRONG way of doing things! We have so much respect for other creators like ourselves out there and know that they have chosen the path that works best for them and their personal needs.

Nevertheless, we came to the conclusion that we needed to decide what worked best for us. What we felt the most comfortable with. By no means do we want to ‘give up’ on American and the Brit, and quite frankly we don’t plan to. We are fully planning on continuing our blog, travelling around the world, and improving our photography skills over the years. Truthfully, we have fallen in love with calling this our ‘job’ and we will continue to work on it until one day it can become our FULL source of income. 

That being said, we decided to really sit down and discuss OUR dreams and OUR goals.

(Note the following paragraph is in relation to how we view OUR lives as a couple. It by no means is our opinion on how YOU should live YOUR life. We fully understand that everyone is entitled to their own opinion.)

They say that a natural shift happens when you turn 26 and finally reach those upper years in your 20’s. Now, I am speaking for George who has expressed this to me…(as I myself am only 25 and personally haven’t felt this way yet), but according to him, he began to take a hard look at his life and the direction it was going. In his case, he had been travelling non-stop for the better part of 3 years and realized that the time had come to settle down a bit. Although I wasn’t quite ready to slow down myself, I realized that being in a relationship requires sacrifice. At the end of the day, I love George and we ultimately do have the same dreams for our future. We both have dreams of buying a home and raising a family together one day as a couple. 

It was hard for us to face the reality that ultimately, we would NOT be able to fully fund these dreams of ours solely from American and the Brit (at least not yet). While we think we could eventually get there, we were unsure about the timing of it all. In many ways, it is a gamble. 

Therefore, we decided to take the remaining half of our travel fund that we had leftover from our original trip to do the following:

• Invest in smaller shorter trips throughout the year- because we are still super passionate about travel and enjoy sharing our adventures.

• Invest in a future home – because in about 5 years we would like to have a place to call home.

• Invest in a new company venture we are passionate about – because we ultimately needed a more steady stream of income.

• Invest in life- because we are from different countries, laws make it expensive and hard for us to be together, there are fees attached to living the life we do

This year, in 2020, we have decided to simply shift our priorities. It doesn’t mean we are finished with travel, our blog, or American and the Brit. It simply means we are choosing to focus on our new company, Journey PR. We are working hard to get this company started with hopes that it can bring us a more steady, reliable source of income. Which in turn, could eventually continue to sustain our travels throughout the years. 

We decided to create a company based off of skills we know we are good at and ones we are well versed on. A company that can allow us to work remotely and together in the same country. This is what works for us.

We hope that moving forward, creators in the space will be more open to sharing the struggles, hardships and realities that come with being an ‘influencer.’ If you are somebody who watches from the sidelines and compares your life to somebody else’s’, stop. We promise you they are going through the same everyday struggles you are. In many ways, we are all just lost souls trying to find a direction and taking a gamble. 

While we don’t know what the future holds, there are two things we know for sure. We love to travel and create and we are proud of the platform we have started. American and the Brit will always be our dream and one we will continue to pursue full time. Secondly, we want a home, family and life together. We can’t wait for what is to come and we thank you for being along for the ride.

For blog posts on where we have been and our travels