We had the good fortune of connecting with Jen Jarnot & Ryan Martin | WalkAboutCouple and we’ve shared our conversation below.
Hi Jen Jarnot & Ryan Martin | WalkAboutCouple, what is the most important factor behind your success?
During the beginning of COVID lockdowns we decided to purchase a camera and to start taking road trips to as many National Parks as we could fit in on any given weekend. Up until that point our brand was really a positive message with a lot of selfie photos all around the world. To be honest, it really wasn’t much of a brand at all. Over the past 20 months we have been professionals in photography and experts on visiting National Parks. The most important factor to our success has been a commitment to excellence and creating authentic relationships through our Instagram platform. Narrowing down our niche to weekend warriors who have full time jobs and were able to visit 20+ National Parks in one year was the most impactful development for our business. We are now able to really focus on partnering with brands that fit well with our niche.
Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Our art is photography and videography on the Instagram platform. With over 1.4B followers on Instagram there is a niche for anyone that would like to create a business on the platform. Instagram is an advertising platform and to set yourself apart you must do a few things better than the average content creator like consistency, quality content and adaptability to new features on the platform. We are most proud of the evolution of our photography. We’ve worked really hard at improving the quality of what we share with our audience. We want them to feel like they are a part of the photo and destination. This has not been an easy area to grow in content creation. Ryan is in finance and Jen runs a successful dance studio and we have applied our successes to this business, but there was a huge learning curve in learning a completely new business. The goal was always to be able to travel and to get paid for it. We don’t have any aspirations of doing this full time, but it is pretty cool to say that our next trips are paid for.
Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We would take them on a road trip through California starting in Death Valley NP. Then camp out in Sequioa NP/Kings Canyon NP before heading to Yosemite NP for a couple of days of the most beautiful area on earth. We would take them through the surprisingly beautiful Pinnacles NP on our way to Big Sur. We would camp out in Big Sur and drive the coast all the way to our favorite beach, Malibu in Los Angeles. Our trip would end with a surreal and spiritual visit to Joshua Tree NP. Why so many locations in such a short time? Well, that’s what you do when you road trip. When you road trip you take in all of the area surrounding your destination and it starts to call you back as you drive away. There is always the feeling that we will be back. We let our hearts get attached to an area and look for routes that will take us back someday.
Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
A lot of our success comes from being influenced and inspired by other content creators. We were first inspired by Brendin Kelly, a photographer and content creator on Instagram (@brendinkelly). He had several YouTube videos on how he edits his photography and it was a game changer for us. Next, we became obsessed with the account @eyeofshe and her photography of epic locations. Along the way we have made great friendships on the platform that have invested in our success.
Website: www.walkaboutcouple.com
Instagram: @walkaboutcouple
Facebook: facebook.com/walkaboutcouple
Image Credits
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