These Young Travel Influencers Have Taken the World by Storm

By
Rose B
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With more than 1 million subscribers on YouTube, travel influencers Damon Dominique and Joanna (Jo) Franco have taken the world by storm— both figuratively and literally. And in a time when we are reminded of the importance of living in the here and now and the fragility of everyday life, their motto “it’s time to shut up and go” seems to hit home.

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I SWEAR TO YOU THAT SOME OF OUR FAVORITE TIMES IN OUR LIVES WERE WHEN WE WERE BROKE AF. 💵 I remember this specific photo, we had woken up in a 12-bed hostel dorm and took the public bus to freaking MTV for a general meeting we set up after hours of stalking on LinkedIn and figuring out how the company structures their emails 🤣 Right before we went in, I spilled chocolate milk all over my shirt. They wanted to know how many subscribers we had, but we felt like we had more to offer than just a number representing how viral our videos could be. Nothing came of that meeting, so we walked to the Hollywood Sign, made yet another goofy a$$ video, and took this pic. 💵 You may be broke AF or think life would be better with more money – and like, it IS better…but only on a material level. ONLY 👏🏼 ON 👏🏾 A 👏🏼 MATERIAL 👏🏾 LEVEL 👏🏼 👏🏾 Of course, it’s nice to now be able to afford avocado toast, get TSA Pre-Check, or like, invest in a shirt that costs more than $9.99, but those aren’t the things that make life fun, or *actually* make you happy. 💵 I think we always kind of knew this, but now we definitely know this: it’s such a silly little game – when you don’t have much money, you think that having money will make you so much happier, and then when you get money, you’re just *gradually begins shouting* woRRIED abOUT LOSING IT. WORRIED ABOUT YOUR BANK ACCOUNT DIPPING BELOW A CERTAIN NUMBER…A CERTAIN NUMBER THAT HAS NOW BECOME YOUR NEW ZERO. IT’S RIDICULOUS. 💵 You know what, in the words of Notorious B.I.G., MO MONEY MO PROBLEMS. We can confirm that one too. LIVE YOUR LIFE. AND NEVER LET IT BE ABOUT THE MONEY.

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The self proclaimed “international badasses” practice what they preach, having set out to create a travel space that’s tailored to young travelers. This idea came to them after noticing that a lot of their friends wanted to travel but really just didn’t know how—or were too busy or too scared.

“We started making videos mainly because we found it was fun,” they admitted in an interview with CelebMix. “Nobody really watched them at first besides our friends and family (who we would force to watch), but we enjoyed watching everything we squeezed into our trips—cool, cheap, or free places to go that we thought people should know about. We didn’t see anything like it on television or on YouTube, and that’s when the journey began.”

Through a let of trial and error and some hard work, they slowly build up their audience to where it is today, cultivating a community of nearly 2M+ in total social media subscribers. They might just inspire you to shut up and go.