Episode 124: The Creator Couple Who Grew 150K Followers in 6 Months

You're listening to the Creator Passport Podcast. On today's episode, we're sitting down with Melanie and Enzo from Travel Light Mel, who have had an absolutely insane year of growth. After joining the Creator Passport, they won our 30-day Instagram Growth Challenge and grew over 40,000 followers in just one month. And now, have grown over 150,000 followers since joining. But what I love most about this conversation is that they're success did not come from doing anything overly complicated. In this episode, we talk about how they found their niche and hut to hut hiking, how they sell digital hiking guides through their content, how they use trial reels to reach new audiences, how they pitch brands, and what it really looks like to build a creator business as a couple while traveling internationally for months at a time. With that, let's dive into the episode. Hi, we're just on Stephen and in just over five years, we have grown our business to over 1.8 million followers across platforms and over in seven figures as content creators and digital entrepreneurs. This is a podcast that shows you success isn't just about algorithms and trends, but how strategy, creativity, and mindset will help you grow and scale your own personal brand beyond your wildest dreams. This is The Creator Passport Podcast. We'll welcome to the podcast you guys. You've had so much success and are such an inspiration to so many people and you're changing so many people's lives. I feel like G and I have talked about some of the things that you guys are doing and definitely want to do them in the future. So you're even inspiring us, but we're super excited to have you. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. We're so excited to be here. Thanks for having us. Yeah. So, for anyone that does not already know you guys, why don't you give us a quick little brief, who are you guys, where are you located, what's your niche, how long have you been doing content creation? Because I know there's a few of the biggest questions that we get whenever we have guests on. So, we are Melanie and Enzo and our account is called Travel Light Mel. And even though we're a couple, it kind of started with me because I've been traveling since I was 15. I just fell in love with it and have spent pretty much my entire life just focused on mostly international travel. So right now we're based in Missouri, but we travel four to six months internationally. Oh my gosh. You guys are as much as I love it. We travel a ton. We are in Italy right now in Lake Garda. Oh. Oh. Lake Garda is so beautiful. It's amazing. It's amazing. We just got here yesterday and we're just so obsessed already. It's so beautiful. But so we create on Instagram and YouTube, those are our main platforms. Yeah. And we started to let you talk. No. So we started the content creation journey. Well, Melanie's always been posting on Instagram, but she always just posted like photo dumps when she traveled because she'd been traveling forever. And then when we started dating, I'm like, hey, you should do some reels. And then she started doing some reels. And then I got into the wild hair of like, we're traveling this much. We're doing all of these group trips. We should maybe start doing some YouTube stuff. And we took YouTube stuff pretty seriously. Like two years ago we gained like, maybe like 15,000 subscribers in one year. And then we saw all that growth on YouTube. And they were like, well, maybe we should start taking Instagram a little more seriously. And then so we started doing YouTube. I handled all the YouTube. She handled all the Instagram. And then kind of just like did parallel work in the content creation space. And we were doing okay. We were doing pretty well. But we just knew the potential what this had. And we knew how far away we were from it. And that's when we found you guys, I mean, Melanie's been following you guys for years. But then we found out about the TCP. And I remember you showing me like, you guys did like a video about before the sign up. And we were like at a Chick-fil-A drive-through. And she was like, she was like, should we do this? Is like, we debated for weeks. And I mean, probably like 30 minutes before sign up clothes were like, all right, let's do it. And then we were like, yeah, it's awesome. So like drive-through. Yeah. And we signed up and then after we joined the TCP program, then it's like, okay, this is a business. Now it's a business. So that's kind of where we are now. And if you guys are listening, you didn't know they actually won our 30 day Instagram growth challenge. Every single cohort we do like 30 days of prep for it. And then we say, okay, you guys have 30 days. You have to post every single day and the person that wins gets all these prizes. And I forget exactly how much you grew. But I remember it was insane. Do you guys remember 40,000 or something? 40 something thousand. Yeah. That's insane. In one month. So that I feel like you guys absolutely crushed it. So I don't want to talk about that a little bit because I know Melanie said that you've been posting for a while. And I think when you joined TCP, did you already have around 20,000 followers or something like that, right? So I feel like the insane jump, what do you think were like a few things that were the catalyst to that? What did you start doing? A different style. Did you start a different trend? Like what, what was it just because you were super consistent? Finally, like what do you think were a few of the things that led to that insane growth in a 30 day period? We really leaned into our voiceover reels and storytelling through voiceovers. And that was something that ends up helping me out with a ton because he does most of our editing now. I would never figure out how to match the audio, to record the voiceover and match it with it. No, no, no. I was very, very basic with content creation and with reels. And he figures out all the techy stuff. So in this partnership, I'm like, there's a problem and he's like, let me fix it. I'm kind of like, I love that. That's kind of how we work. So he's the rocket on the fuel. Yeah. And a little shit. Yeah. So really voiceover reels took off. And I think through TC, we learned so much just through going through the modules because we had never had any training before. We were just totally winging it. And once we started getting in the modules and started realizing, I think a big thing was realizing how important the text hooks are and audio hooks to and a visual hook, like having everything in the beginning. I realized the importance of that and we took that to the voiceover reels and those just started gaining so much traction. And that plus compound interest. I mean, it's just like it would be posts for 30 days. And if you're doing the right things and posting for 30 days, it's impossible not to grow. Like it. Yeah. You just build so much momentum. Yeah. And one of them pops off. But they are just like, okay, here we go. That's amazing. So were you guys doing voiceover reels and stuff like that before? Because we've definitely seen a huge switch from like 2020 when we first started like reels, we're even a thing. And then they came out and it was like, okay, the seven second reels, the thing. And then it's pivoted again to became like the list of cool and like montages. And then I feel like we've definitely started to transition our own content to a lot more of this like authentic storytelling voiceover. Like a minute, minute plus. Yeah. And I think it's really interesting because there's so many people who are resistant to starting voiceovers, even with like you can literally hear them say how important it was in their growth strategy. But everyone doesn't like the sound of their own voice. And it takes like a second to get over. I'm curious for did you ever have that when you were starting out recording those videos where you're like, oh, this is so not my forte or were you just like game? Let's let's try it. I think that because of our our experience in the beginning with YouTube, I kind of got over that. I had to get over a lot of fears when we were doing YouTube. I had never recorded myself before. Oh my gosh, if you guys would have met me three, four years ago, I was like, no way. So we come from a real estate background. And I remember a time a couple of years ago where somebody wanted to like film us for like at one of our rental properties for a real estate. Yeah, there was a real estate platform that wanted to use this as an example because we were having all the success using their platform. And it was our business. But Melanie was like, I cannot be in this video. I was like, I will not be in a camera. I'm not talking to anybody. Yeah, nothing. And that was like three, four years ago. And now she's, I mean, she's selfie talking while she's walking on the beach and it's like, yeah, it takes, it takes, it took her a big hurdle. Yeah. But I think. Yeah. And reps, definitely just doing it over and over again in trials help. Tries helped a lot because then it's like, all my friends or my family isn't going to see it. And then it's just kind of those practices and then you kind of like, oh, that was a really good real. So then you put maybe post it to your own. Instagram page that people that you know do see it. So it just takes some consistency and some practice to get over that hurdle. Yeah. I love that. And I love what you said about trials. I cannot tell you how much I am. I think that's one of the best things Instagram has done, especially for new creators that were even people that are trying a new style, but are a little nervous to get into it. So I'd love to hear your experience or how you've been using it. Or do you post them every day? Do you put everything to trial reels? Would love to know what you guys are doing? Because it sounds like you guys are using them, which is awesome. Yeah, we don't start everything in trial reels. We probably aren't even using it as much as we should. The way that we've used trials more recently is taking the reels that are super successful and then like on our main feed and then putting them in trials and testing out some different hooks. Like we had a real one of our reels that went really viral. It got around seven million views on our main page and we have like two or three trials that have several million views as well. So it just like kept exploding and trying to be. We posted that trial maybe a total of like that real into trials, maybe a total of like 13 times. And at least five of them had millions of views and other a couple hundred thousand. So we had a lot of growth come from there. And I mean, if it's, I mean, if it ain't broke, don't fix. I love that. I feel like, yeah. I feel like so many people have this. Reenact the work. Where they're like, I posted this video. I can't do it again. Or they're so nervous to try it multiple times. So for you guys, did you ever have that fear? How did you get past that? Oh my gosh, our audience or the algorithm is going to get sick of this video because we do the exact same thing. And I think that repurposing that content is the best way to like, why would you work harder to try and create something new and get it to go viral again when you have something that works? Just keep running with it, you know? You think about it. Like at any given point, there's only so many people online watching that one video that you posted. Like, there's so many millions of people using the app that probably never even saw that original iteration of it. So yeah, and honestly, like, whatever. Yeah. And it's showing it. It should be showing it to new people all the time. So because it's not our follower. So it's just kind of like another net of trying to catch that person who already seen it maybe to catch them as a follower. But something that really helped us kind of get over posting that trial bunch is it was directly tied to one of the digital products that we sell. So the sales just are racking up. We're like, dude, we just got to keep posted this. I mean, this is great. That is such a smart strategy. So can you give everyone who's listening kind of a breakdown of what your digital products are? And yeah, exactly like what kind of sales you can expect when you're promoting it consistently. Because I think one of the biggest mistakes a lot of creators do when they start like a digital product, let's say like a travel guide on Rex B, they're like, okay, I'm launching this tomorrow. Okay, it's live. And then they post about it once and then they never promote it ever again. And they're like, why am I not making sales? So yeah, yeah. So we create hiking guides. Those are our digital guides. They're all focused on hikes. So we have them for mostly hot to hunt hikes. So the tour to Mount Blanc, the Altevia one, Camino de Santiago, the Cotswolds way. And the reason why we do these itineraries is because of her group travels. So she runs group trips. So we're going on these trips. She's literally creating this itinerary from scratch. And we're like, well, not everyone's going to join our group trips. Why not see if anybody wants to do it on their own. They could just buy this guide and do it on their own. So we just wanted to find another way to help people that aren't coming in the group trips. So she created this really in debt itinerary for the group trips that we've created. And we made YouTube videos and reels specifically to promote the the the itineraries. I love that. A ton of a ton of content around that is around those itineraries. So every piece of content that we post from the tour to Mount Blanc or the Altevia one is selling that digital product. And it's not like the real is not, oh, hey, we made a digital product. It's about this isn't that it was it. It's a real talking about the Altevia one. And in the captions were like, if you want to know more about this hike, comment, blank, and we'll send you the link to our guide. And it's just we're just informing people about the hike and at the end, given them the options to take it a step further. I think that's great. I think I get questions about this all the time because I kind of run this area of our business with the digital products and all the many chat funnels and all that kind of stuff. And I think a lot of people get in their own way. They're like, wait, I need a freebie first. Wait, I need to do this in this in this in this first and then they just like get stuck and just having a soft call to action like that anytime you're posting about anything relevant. Like for us, we're just migrating our guides over from our old platform over to our new platform. So we have like an Iceland guide, a Switzerland guide. What else do we have? I think maybe like a New Zealand guide. Like call. Yeah. And so I think a lot of people are like, oh, I need to make like super, super specific. Like here's everything that's in my guide kind of content. But in reality, if you're just providing value, even if it's just like one tiny part of your entire guide or itinerary and then putting just like the smallest call to action in the caption, you'd be so surprised by how many sales you can get, especially if one video goes viral. I think that's the coolest thing because when we were heavily promoting our guides back in the day, trial rails were a thing yet. And so I think that is definitely you guys are doing it really smart with constantly hitting new new audiences with stuff that you know is working to drive those sales. And I think a lot of people just underestimate how much volume you can actually get with a viral video. So yeah, I'm kudos to you guys. Yeah, that's awesome. And do you, would you say that out of the two platforms, you YouTube that sounds like you guys have been able to grow pretty frequently as well? And you have Instagram, which one do you think you've had more success with selling this guide or more sales come through? Are you doing it on both them? I think Instagram Instagram for sure. Really? Wow. Well, we have more content around it on Instagram because I mean, as you guys know, creating YouTube videos is a lot. It's a beast. It's a lot of work. And yeah, it's a lot. We could just put out more content about the topic on Instagram. So definitely on Instagram and on Instagram, we do many chats. So YouTube, I'd make sure that you're on YouTube. One day YouTube shorts will catch up one day. Especially because when we're repurposing, when we're proposing these reels on YouTube shorts and it's the same call to action, we have to manually go in there and be like, send them to links. Here's the catch. Dude, we, we use repurpose Iota, just repurpose all of our content on YouTube shorts and we don't do anything with, we just leave it there. I feel bad. I know. I feel like it's like three days later. It's like, or maybe three weeks later, it's like, oh, sorry, maybe you're so interested. Yeah. But you know what? I did see a notification now that like DMs or whatever on YouTuber coming. And so I think this is all in preparation for being able to do link automation over there. That's just my guess. I don't know how fast that will happen, but I think maybe by the end of 2026 we'll be able to do that. Yeah, we'll see. It'll be really. It would love it for TikTok too. Like they're like businesses do it, but they don't let creators do it. But you can make it so silly. Yeah. Well, I love to, I love to see that you guys had so much success with growth and with that with your digital products. I'd love to talk about you guys as a couple and how you've kind of put together this business partnership because it sounds like Melanie. You were the one that kind of was like already doing it. And so you came in and you guys sound like you work so well. You know your roles in the business and we get so much feedback from other people saying like how could you ever work together with your spouse? Like that would destroy a relationship. And I'm like, this is the best thing ever. Like I get to hang out with my best friend all day. So I'd love to hear on your guys and like, what are some of your responsibilities? How did you figure those out? Because I know in the beginning it was probably a lot different than how it is with you guys now. Yeah. Yeah. So we started, we actually started our first business together in like 2021 or so with real estate. So we learned how to work together in the real estate business. And then once we started doing content creation, it was kind of like almost starting over because yeah, we had to learn what our strengths were. We had to learn what each of our responsibilities would be. And I think that is the most important thing. It's something that we are still figuring out because we really only started treating this as a business in anywhere. But you're saying, because you guys are crushing it. Yeah, almost a 200k digital product sales flying in like, I can't wait to see where you guys like next year. It's going to be crazy. I know. It's really exciting. But yeah, to me at this point, we have to decide like, there is, there has to be a balance of deciding which lane you are in and then pick that lane and commit to that lane because they could get a little overbearing when we don't have these specified roles because then she's telling me what to do. I'm telling her what to do and then that's not like. Yeah, it's like, hey, can you do this instead of it being like, this is our process. Here's how we do things. Yeah. Yeah. So then, because then, you know, when you start telling each other what to do, then it's just, it could get just like, people could drop the ball and then that's where complications come in. And then it feels more like a Boston employee type of relationship if someone's like telling you like, okay, we are actively navigating this. Yeah. Like, this is an active thing that we are figuring out and I know that we'll get there. So I don't want to sugarcoat it and be like, it's so easy. Because, yeah. Not, it takes some work. Yeah. It takes some work. It takes really getting those processes together and a sauna has helped us a ton and seeing how you guys work together has helped us a ton. Dude, the, the, the, the, a sauna CRM has been the only reason we've gotten brand deals. Because I love that. I love that. I think through the cracks, like we're touching up on them because we're used to CRMs in real estate, but we could never find anything in that same realm for content creation. So how you created it through a sauna, how you guys created it through a sauna and you show it us. Yeah, it's free. Yeah, and it's free. We are able to treat that part of the business like, like any other follow up, like any other, you know, reach out business, which we've done really well in real estate. So it was even easier to kind of transition with the content creation, brand out reach. Because these are businesses that they wanted to work with us after they saw who we were. But that's a thing. No, people don't know who we are. So you, it was a really good format to reach out to people. I love it. Now, often are you guys pitching yourselves? I feel like in the beginning, it's definitely more of a grind. Because like you said, people don't know who you are yet. So you're constantly, if you want to be successful monetizing, in my opinion, I do think in 2026, you do have to be pitching yourself pretty frequently. If you're under 100,000 followers, just to get your name out there. So I'm curious like how often you guys are you guys doing like X per week. You're just doing it based on your trips coming up. What's kind of your process for that? Can I take this? Sure. Yeah. Since you created the CRM. Yeah. Let's geek out over our pitching trackers. So we knew that we had this trip coming up. We started with Guatemala though. Yeah. Our first pitches. We started Guatemala. Because we had a trip. So we're basically doing it based on trips. Okay. Oh, yeah. We've got them all. Yeah. Yeah. We used to use bento. You guys heard it. Okay. What was your experience on that? So many people have tried it, but I've never heard like their actual feedback on the platform. Okay. So it reaches out tremendously to a wide variety of companies. So it is like shooting. It's like playing darts in the dark. Like you might hit the board and it'd be great. And we actually crazy stories. We used bento and it got us connected to hydrolyte. Like one of the companies that we worked with. And we, when you guys first told us like when we're reaching out to companies is like just get your foot in the door, you know, you don't have any experience. You don't have a portfolio. It's going to be a little bit of a grind in the beginning. And then we got just like this small contract with this company. And we made a real that it's our most viral real that we have done on our page. And it was with one of our brand collaborations. And then we reached out again, again for this trip. And we like just reach out to them. And it's like, of course, we'll work with you guys again. And then now we're just like working with them over and over again. But so back to your point with bento, we were able to secure three out of, yeah, we were secure three brand collaborations with bento, but like which were on brand. But then we would see the emails and it was just like a generic email. Yeah, it sends the same email to every single company. So it has to be simple. But sometimes we check our inbox and it's just like a gun company was like, hey, I don't think you guys are aligned with our merchandise is like, yeah, totally understand. So many of the company. But then sometimes it hit like one of the one of the companies that we worked with. But so it's it's very generic. So if you really don't have like any basis of how to do it, that'd be a great place to start. But for us, most of the success, all 90% of our success has come in when curated. Okay. Specialized pitches. Yeah. Arrogated, specialized emails to these brands. And we find these brands on Instagram and we reached out to them via DM, try to get an email, send them an email, start a communication with them. And. So we sent out a ton of pitches before this trip. Because we're in Italy for about three weeks. Yeah, we posted 100. Yeah, 100 pitches in like a 45 day span. And obviously that's not it's hard to keep that up. But we wanted to just hit it hard for this trip. But now we're probably going to be around anywhere from like 10 to 15 pitches a week. Okay. That's what we feel like we typically recommend it much more sustainable, especially if you're doing a more curated, like you said, their actual partners that you would love to bring to your audience or that you use or you would love to collaborate with. Yeah. Cool. And having a VA helps like totally having a VA helps with the brand outreach. Yeah, I think once again, as soon as you start to see some success, I think we talked with that. That's like one of the first things I recommend outsourcing is get a VA or someone to help you. I feel like at every level like zero to 50k, your priorities are a little different 50 to 100 k switches, 100 to 300 k, which is exactly because you guys are closing in on 200k right now, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's so awesome. We'll reach 200k by the end of the summer. Oh, I think you guys totally will. I think you're going to surpass that. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's the the VA conversation. I'm glad that you guys already have one. Did you already know to do that because you already have another business together? Because I feel like there's usually a lot of resistance when we tell people you need to outsource and everyone who's a creative on Instagram is like, no, it's my baby. I cannot give up my passwords or anything. And so like usually we do find people who scale really quickly and make a lot of money are typically having someone help them, whether it's a VA or an editor or something. Yeah, we did use a VA in our real estate business a couple different times. And then when we just when we started more with content creation, there were there were just so many things we wanted to do. The to do list was just like, it felt like there were things we would never get to. And it was like, well, the only way we're going to get to these things is if we hire somebody else to help. And yeah, so that it was a big step for us. And I do understand not wanting to let that part of your business go, but I think that once you get someone who's helping you, it's just such a game changer. It literally, it's like the extension of yourself as long as you train them well, obviously. Yeah, yeah, because people think, oh, I'll get a VA and they'll start doing the work. It's like, well, you need to know how the work goes. Like you need to have a process. Yeah, but it sounds like you guys are super on top of it with like SOPs and your CRM and all that. It makes me I now I love having these conversations because it kind of pulls the curtain behind your business. And I can tell you guys are super like, you've got the business mindset, you've got the systems, at least you're building the systems. And so I can always tell if someone's going to be extremely successful because when you peel open the back end, is it chaos or is there something there for there's like actual foundations? It's a mix. Well, organized chaos, right? That frustration like and not like, you know, like not to be like a plug in what you guys have, but that frustration happened so much that's why we joined the TCP program because like we wanted to have a business and we know how successful business work if you have SOPs, we just didn't know. We didn't know what we did. That even looked like for creation. We had no idea. And then when we joined a few guys, it's like you're immediately like, here's how we run our entire business. And we were like, okay, that's what we're doing too. That's not good. Yeah. I love that. I think that a lot of creators just kind of run by the sea to their pants. No, and not even think we know we surveyed like 500 people when we were coming up with the system originally just to kind of like see what everyone's pain points are and how they're running their business and what they need help with. And everyone was like, I'm just running off of vibes vibes and caffeine. That was like, it was crazy. We sometimes some days were like, what we got to do something today, we just do something. And sometimes we get out of our systems and that's what like, that's what the chaos happens. Yeah, that happens though. definitely like a. especially for traveling four to six months of the year, 100% will have, like Stephen and I have been on a stint. This is our two days at home we have after three back to back trips, and then we leave for another trip tomorrow, and then a group trip, and then we're literally gonna be gone for the next month after this. So we've had two days at home after another month gone. So it does happen when you're traveling that frequently where sometimes you are out of your systems and you kinda just gotta go with it. And, but that's the thing. It's like if you let yourself spiral when things are not going according to your regular routines, I think that's when it becomes an issue. But if you just accept, it's kinda like when you get bucked off the horse and you get back on, when things are just kinda chaotic, you just gotta kinda keep going and get back on track instead of letting, oh, like yesterday I broke my LTK streak, which I'm so sad because I posted for like a month and a half every day 'cause I'm trying to grow my affiliates over there and shop my, I was like, no, I forgot, I've been so busy, but you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna post again today. I'm gonna get right on it. But. - Yeah, I'd love to talk about the mindset a little bit behind all of that with what you guys are doing being gone and traveling, coming back, being out of service, maybe doing like the ultra-vio one and stuff. We get a lot of questions from other travelers saying, what if I go on a hike? What if I go on a backpack in Tripura? - Thank you. - Go on a guide and just balancing the content creation with getting posts up and running the business. So yeah, would love to know a little bit about how you guys have managed that or what does it look like? 'Cause right now like you said, you're in the middle of Italy taking a call to and a podcast, thank you so much. But would love to see like outside of that, how are you guys managing all of this? - Once again, it's very much a work in progress. I cannot be precise enough how much we're just like just taking it as we go. Because again, it feels brand new. Like it's June now. We started taking it more seriously in January. That's not that long of a time. - It's still a baby. - Yeah. - Yeah, so since then, I mean we had one group trip to Guatemala that we hosted in March. And the 30-day challenge helped us so much with that because-- - I ought to pop that. - Yeah, our group trip fell over the same time period as the 30-day challenge. - Oh, no way. - Yeah, and we had people with us for like six days in Guatemala, a group of 10 people. And so ends up kept being like, we gotta do this 30-day challenge. And I was like, no, we're doing a group trip. We can't possibly do that. It's impossible. - And dude, I'm sorry, that's a good y'all. On like day 25 or 26, we were like, we're winning this challenge. So we can come with one-on-one and tell Steven how much this sucked. (laughing) This was awful. But it was crazy. - It was hard. - But we learned a lot. We learned-- - Schedule. - Okay, this is crazy. We had never scheduled anything before. - Never. - The challenge. - Okay. - We learned how to schedule. How to schedule reels. - How to schedule our systems to be like, okay, we're gonna record on this day. We're gonna end it on this day. And then we're gonna post them all on these days. - And then we learned how to trend forecast. - Yeah, yeah. - We learned a lot through that. - It was, that was, that 30-day challenge was probably one of the biggest gross birds that we had. - Yeah. - With our Instagram and our mentality. Because that was like the moment where like, oh, we can do this. We can literally turn our dreams into a reality. If we just stay consistent and keep our eye on the price. - It's literally, we, we toss everyone into the deep ends with that. Usually, in previous cohorts, we may then do it like, like two weeks after, right? - Like the same week. - Like okay, we're like joined on, we closed doors on Friday and then on Monday, we announced the, - Not soon, but like after we, like okay guys, we're doing the thing. But yeah, we gave you guys an extra month to get prepared this time around. I think that was the way to do it. But I think it's like a, it's a communal bonding experience for everyone kind of hates it at first because it shows you where you're lacking in your business and what is going to break first. Like it shows you, okay, I don't have a system for scheduling yet. I don't have a system for if I'm out of office, like maybe my VA can post for me. I don't have a system for like editing if I'm on an airplane or like going backpacking, I forgot my computer. Like it literally shows it's like a big flashlight on where you need to focus after the challenge is all done. But then also I think one of the most common wins we hear after that challenge is like proving to yourself that you can do it and it is possible. And then that's like how Stevens, Stevens coming up on five years of posting every single day. So like it's definitely possible, but it's just like priorities and systems and backend and making sure you're like, it's just as routine as your daily cup of coffee, you know. That's insane. Five years is I've never done anything that long. (laughing) Not literally say, honestly. I think that's why G said like the cup of coffee thing 'cause I think it even goes down to like, pitching or let's say DMing or responding to comments or going to the gym. I think that I just shared a video from Casey and I sat in the community. I don't know if you guys saw it, but he basically, he broke down consistency and he's ran every single day for the past four years, like no matter if it's snowing. Yeah, and I thought his mind, I think a big part of it is mindset and how he explained it is you don't have a choice 'cause every day, right? You have what do they say? Like the average person makes upwards of 12 to 1300 choices per day or decisions like you wake up. Am I gonna stay in bed or am I gonna go? Okay, I'm gonna go. Am I gonna wear the white shirt or the black shirt? Oh, I'm gonna wear the black shirt and your brain's constantly making decisions to wear. By the end of the day, you get so tired 'cause you're just fatigued of making decisions. So every day, I don't have to make a decision on, oh, am I gonna record a video or edit or post today? There's no decision there. It's just, yeah, it's just made up. Whether the post flops or whether it goes super viral, it's just part of the everyday routine. So I think as long as you can have a few of those, depending on what your goals are, like people that only are trying to make money and with UGC and don't care about growing, do they need to post everyday? No, but should they pitch everyday? Absolutely. Like that's their thing that without whether you get a yes or a no, their mindset should be, this is just what I'm doing every single day. So it just kind of-- - Filiates, it's like an affiliates as your main thing. The girls that are making multiple six figures from affiliates every year, they're like non-negotiable. Even if they didn't post on Instagram every day, it's they're posting five to 10 times on LTK or shot my every single day. - Yeah, it's not a decision. - Yeah, it's, you choose your priority, you choose the task that is going to help you get there, that's gonna move the needle the most. And then that's just a non-negotiable. - Yeah. Would love to zoom back a little bit. And you said you started most of this in January. If you went back to past Melanie and Enzo and said, okay, January, what would you tell yourself that you feel like you guys know now that you might have not known back then? - And Jared? - Like what would we have told ourselves, are January selves? - Yeah. - Are you guys, the previous years, before you guys locked in, and now you're seeing all the success, what is something you wish you knew back then, you know now that you think would have really helped you guys kind of start getting that growth spurt back then? - For me, I would say sharing things that I'm really passionate about, because once I started doing that, I had so much more growth. Like I'm passionate about travel, but once I started sharing Hutt to Hiking, which has just been like my favorite thing in the whole world, which if, for anyone-- - The passion shows up. - Yes, it comes through. Yeah, and that for anyone who's listening who doesn't know what that is, it's literally just hiking from one mountain hut to the next. And there's like these iconic trails all over the world that I've been doing for a really long time, and Enzo has started doing with me, even though he has knee pain. He's just the best partner and he comes out and he's going crazy long hikes with me. And he just wears his knee braces and he's such a trooper. But once I started sharing those, and it was like, I didn't realize how much other people would be interested in them. So I didn't really share about it that much, but then, I don't know, I just kind of-- once we got into the voiceovers, it was like, well, I can make a voiceover about the Tour de Mont Blanc. And I shared it and people just happened to be super interested, and also I'm super passionate. So when I shared those voiceover reels, it was just so easy to tell the story and to share some really helpful facts, 'cause I researched the heck out of these trips. So I'm able to, I'm very detailed. So I tell everyone, here's exactly how you can plan this trip if you want to do it yourself. And that kind of stuff, when people started seeing it on Instagram, which is really like exploded. So what I would tell myself, my prior self, is to just share the things that excite you, because people notice that, and they want to be a part of it. - I love that. - I love that. - I think a lot of people will kind of just-- kind of go with whatever's trending instead of whatever excites them. And I do think that the longer you prolong figuring out what your passion is and what your unique value proposition is and all that kind of stuff, the more you're going to blend in. And the second you start actually sharing like the things that excite you and make you different in your passions and stuff, that's kind of where you're going to start seeing your authentic self translate through and then also really get that target audience that you're going for because you're finally speaking to someone that's super specific instead of just to everybody being a broad nut. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. And you know, for me, it's a little different because and I'm sure whoever's listening to this who's working with their partner and maybe it's their partner staying and not necessarily their thing. Of course, I mean, who doesn't love travel, who doesn't love being in beautiful places and traveling six months out of the year, but you know, I have my own passions that are different to Melanie's. So I had to find a way to mentally commit to this and see this as like, okay, where do I fit in in this puzzle piece? Because again, we're going to these most beautiful places, but like my thing, I mean, I'm my passion to stand up comedy. So I needed to find a way and also being an entrepreneur. I love being an entrepreneur. So I needed to find a way to fit myself into this puzzle and one of the things that I've been doing is like, okay, she wants to do travel stuff is like, well, okay, how can I have some comedic spin to it? And if she wants to start treating this like a business, how can I help this business grow? And so those are my passions. And that's I think why we are going to work really well together just like for years to come because like I said, she's the rocket on the fuel. We need to find a way to make that work. And I think again, it's very new, but we're finding it that it's like, okay, we we can do this. We can do this if we commit. I love that. And the real, the real that went super viral, the sponsor real that we did and so created the skit for it. It was a skit style real. I thought of it in the shower. The best I thought they're always showering. Here's what we're going to do. And then we filmed it and it went so viral and it was funny. It was like a funny skit. Yeah, I remember seeing it. It was so good. It was so good. I had no idea that you were into stand up. Oh, you got to see their sponsor. It's so good. I was so hungry guys. It's like, can be extra, but I didn't realize you like actually had a full background in. That's so cool. I've been doing stand up for five years. So fun. Yeah, it's it's it's the best. And you know, it's hard to when you're traveling all this time, it's hard to get up on stage. So I need to find a different creative outlet to do this. And this is a perfect outlet for it. Yeah. Do you follow Alex and John on TikTok? Yeah. Yeah. I was like, they have the funniest ads. They they literally have or at least when we had conversations with them like a couple of years ago, they literally said they had comedians help them right there. Right there. So there you go. That's like a yeah, I mean, they they're hilarious. So I'm so successful. Yeah. Yeah. That's so great. Bringing it to the travel space now. There you go. Yeah. Speak I'm so curious. What is your favorite comedian then if I'm I'm always curious because I feel like comedians look at other comedians and hear their jokes in different ways rather than just thinking like, Oh, the Chris Rock and the Kevin Hart and like the typical ones. Do you have any favorites? I would have to say my top Joe list is up there. If you've never heard from him, Joe list is one of my favorite comedians. Dan Soder. Of course, Shane Dillis is really, really funny and Nate Bargazzi. Okay. I haven't heard of two of them. So I'll have to go look them up. We watched a lot of probably specials. I mean, I love them all for very different reason. But yeah, if you haven't heard of Joe list, Joe list is I mean, I just love the way he tells jokes. So he's a he's a good listen. That's great. I'll have to go and check it out. Honestly, comedians are like the top storyteller. So it makes sense that you guys have great storytelling content too. I love telling stories. Yep. Awesome. I love it. Another thing I'd love to know about just because I think we briefly talked about in the beginning is voiceovers. I feel like for a lot of people are so challenging. They think it's going to take them three or four hours to edit. They don't even know how to script something. I know that you guys sound like you have a lot of different things where and do your comedian. It sounds like Melanie. You just are super passionate about it and are very detailed. So if you were, if let's say you just got back from a hike in Italy, since you're there and you were going to post a reel in it, what's like the first three things you do that maybe someone that's never posted a voiceover could hear and say like, wow, that makes it sound so much easier. Like what are some simple tips that you would give them for a voiceover? So the first thing that I would do, well, while I'm on the trip, I'm looking for unique things to share that somebody might be like, what? Like I need to see, I need to see what that is or I need to know more about that or like, because I find that like really unique things are just, they're just such a great hook. It just captures people's attention. Like some famous donut that I ate in like a mountain hut or like just something like that. So I'm always looking for those little details and I just make sure to get a lot of videos while I'm doing everything. Yeah, I'm, I'm documenting literally everything, just taking videos of everything. You should see her notes time, like anything. Anything actually goes on a trip. She documents every single thing. Yeah, a lot of notes. A lot of notes and she records a lot. Her phone's always out. My type bass sister. Yeah, but I think our process with the voiceover, do you mind if I take this? Go ahead. I have more to say, but we okay, no, go for it. Okay, and then you go. Oh, yeah. Because you work with your work. You're a big part of the voiceover process, but I start it. Yeah, I know. Okay, step one, step one. Yeah, so I'm taking a ton of videos because the more videos you have, the more you can share and it's a it's a combination of like selfie videos of like me out hiking, not when I'm talking, but just videos of me hiking and then any little detail of where I'm staying, where I'm sleeping, what the bathrooms are like, because people, especially when I'm creating content around these hikes, people want to see like, what is this going to be like, is this something that I want to do myself? Like, is the hut actually going to be nice or is it going to be like, you know, yeah. I don't know about the toilets. So bad. They really do. That's so funny. What is the bathroom like? What is the bathroom situation? It's like a crazy, I don't know, for one other story, but okay, so I'm documenting a ton. I would say that's the first thing to do. And then when I get home, I'm, I just start with like a list in my head. I'm like, what do I want to share about this hike? So then I come up with a list of details of like, well, where does it start and finish? Where is it located? How long is it? Just kind of like little logistics details like that so people can really get a feel for it. And I just make a list. I make a list of all the cool things that you can do. Like on the TMB, like, oh, there's a spa day. Like in the right in the middle of this hike, you can take a full day out of spa and get a massage and Italy. Like that is cool. And like people are so interested in that. So I think about those types of things. And then I kind of like script it out and just make like kind of a rough script. And then I put it in chat. And I'm like, you know, put this in an order that kind of makes sense. And chat kind of helps me like really write out the script fully after I give it all the details. And then I record it. Yeah. Then she goes into our basement and the closet. The court that's where we get the best audio. And we use these little DJI mics. Which you don't need. But we we we had them from YouTube. So you might as well if you have them. Yeah, we have them. So then she records it and then she uploads it to iCloud. And then I grab the the voice recording of it. And then she also creates a photo album of all the best shots of that trip as well as the pinpoints that she talks about in that script. And then she uploads them all into a folder and then I pick them out. And then I just make the real from what she puts into that folder. And then we're pretty on the same page of like which ones should be like the hook which ones. You know, where each clip goes where. And then I put it together then we review it and then we post it. I love it. It's such a simple such a simple process. And for you guys, I feel like a big thing that we get asked every single day is how long should my voice over be? Does it need to be 47 seconds? Does it need to be one minute? And I feel like you guys have kind of said, you know, it's screw it. We're going to make our reels as informative as possible. I don't care if it's a minute, two minutes long. And I love that when I was looking through your profile, some of your top performing videos are like 90 second plus reels. So when you guys are going through one thing that I think helps an editor stand out from a lot of other ones is deciding what to keep in versus what to cut out and like usually when we record a voiceover it'll be like three minutes and I'm like okay how can I trim this down to like a digestible video. So when you guys are going through it do you ever care about the voiceover length you just kind of make sure it has everything in it. I feel like that's another big thing that if someone has not done any voiceovers before they're probably wondering right now. How do you cut out the fluff? For me when I'm editing it I'm literally watching it in the moment I like lose my focus on it and it's like okay something happened. It's like something happened that needs to be cut out and then we review it together and it's like do we really need this. That's very good self-aware tip. Yes. I lose my focus. I'm like oh what like I start thinking about something like okay I just lost focus on something that I created like I need to do. Yeah and then we delete the fluff with also like having to make sure that we have the you know the point that we're trying to get across in there but the link I don't think we worry too much about the length. We just worry about like they can be they can be three minutes. So we've never done one this three minutes but 90 seconds seems to work really well for us. Yeah we do like 90 seconds because I think the platform I mean sure you want good engagement but like if you catch the right audience I think Instagram is going to reward you for keeping someone on the totally. Well and looking at like a hot hot hike it's so hard to get a lot of information across in one minute let alone 30 seconds. Yeah by the time you say this is the all to via one it's like 10 seconds. Yeah so it goes by so much faster than you think it would and I think something that I a tip for other creators because something I see all the time when voiceovers is that people talk pretty slow. Yeah. And like I talk slow normally but when I'm recording a voiceover I try to go fast and keep it really upbeat and then Enzo cuts out all the silences. So I see people record voiceovers and they're like it's my first day in Italy and I'm like oh my god. I'm so faster. Get out of here. I think I'm slower voiceovers work if you're like doing something cinematic and it's a little bit different but when you're trying to disseminate a lot of information at once like you got to you got to keep the pace and going and I think the difference though is because I know I get questions on this too is like do I have to be so peppy and upbeat if I am not like that and the answer is no but you still have to talk quickly even if you're monotone. Yeah. Yeah. Like people's attention stands are so short these days which TikTok and Instagram definitely have influence I think but that's why a really good hook is really important and then just maintaining a quick speed and if you don't talk fast you can always like increase your speed and yeah it's like 5.1 or 2 without sounding like a hamster. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right I have three kind of rapid fire questions to finish off. So G and I just got back from the Dolomites and for the first time we were sitting there and every time we saw these huts we were like dang we should really do one of these huts the hikes out of all the four. Yeah so out of all the ones you've done do you have a favorite to wear them on block. Yeah for sure. Really? Okay. It's been on my list for years by the way and I on my personal page your videos were popping up for me and I was like Stephen this is our side we must do it. I'm thinking next year next year. It is awesome. I mean we we do um we try to do them at least every year right. I mean we have one already scheduled for this year and next year we're gonna be running the two of them up block and all to be a one but yeah I would say if we had to pick just one and if somebody could go on only one it would be the two of them up block because it goes through three countries France, Italy and Switzerland it's 105 miles long depending on how fast you walk you could do it. I would say nine to 12 days and it has that opportunity to have the rest day at a spa which it's like that's so nice. The coolest five ever been to and then so you hike for like four or five days spend a whole day at a spa and then keep hiking. Yeah so I would say and do that one. The food is great on the TNB like the refusials they give out good food everybody has some wine at the end of the night and it's it's just the yeah it's so fun. And you guys you have a guide for this you said? Yeah we do it's one of our digital guides so okay perfect. The thing about these tricks is that they're so hard to plan and I'm not just saying that because I have guides like no we've been when we were doing Dolomites we were like dude there's so many options and so many trails going every which way it's insane. There's a lot of different ways to do it so yeah there's there's a lot of you don't need a guide but you will need a lot of time to research every little piece to find out exactly what you need to do to get this TNB planned and executed and that's it that's literally the purpose of what why Melanie created a guide is to be like hey see your plan. There's thousands of that. And you know what we don't have we don't have time so I will be looking at your guide and if you guys are doing if you're doing any of these through hikes we'll go ahead and link all of Melanie's guides down below because I've heard so many good things they're incredible. All right next rapid fire question out of all the group trips you guys are doing later this year which one are you most excited about? Oh my gosh there are so many. I'll see you have one. I'll say one we're going back to Guatemala. Okay I'm really excited about that because my mom's coming on it. Oh my gosh. So full. Yeah and she loves to hike and she's never done anything like this so I'm really actually eager to see how well she does. And I mean we hiked the volcano in Guatemala so that was really cool. That kicked my butt. Guatemala is probably it's one of the underrated. Out of all we visited like 53 or 54 countries now and I still think Guatemala is the most underrated country. I think that's my favorite in all of central America. It's unreal. Yeah but that volcano hike really and that was like when we were pretty peak shape like we were we were training for a marathon and it still kicked my ass. It's a freedom. It's tough. It's hard. Yeah. Okay so I'm most excited probably about Patagonia because I just love it. I just love it there so much and we're doing two trips there in February and March of 2027. Are you doing WTRAC? Oh track what are you guys doing? We're doing the O-TRAC for one of them and then for another one we're doing it's more of like a highlights trips. We're going to both Chile and Argentina and hitting like the top hikes in each country. I want to come. Oh cool. It's awesome. If you guys want to go and check out any of their group trips. It sounds like there's plenty. Now you know their favorite so go check them out there. I'll link all those down below as well and we got to finish off with my favorite question. This is my first question I ever asked Jezelle when we first started dating is what is the most exciting thing you guys have ever done because everyone has a different version of exciting so I would love to know what what what what would you guys say? For me I mean just doing stand up. I love that. Yeah it's still exciting to stay because I've only been doing it for a few years but I've done the couple shows for like 3-400 people and that was and it went well so that was really exciting. So yeah that's probably my answer. Are you on YouTube Anzo? Can anyone go watch this 3-400 person show? I have to come to St. Louis. That's okay. I won't practice what I preach on her. Everything I said is on my face. Like I don't post anything which is a problem for me but yeah. One business at a time. Yeah one business at a time. Yeah okay for me the most exciting thing I've ever done is starting a group travel business because it was something that I dreamed about for a really long time and I started following like other people on Instagram who had group travel companies and I kind of like idolize these people because I'm like wow they're so amazing like they're doing something so incredible and then it kind of crossed my mind like I could do this too but I just did not I did not have the confidence to be honest I didn't have the confidence to just take the leap and do it. So in 2023 I finally led my first group trip and I just loved it so much and then it's just kind of snowballed and I've just done more and more each year since then so that would be the most exciting thing I've ever done because it I had to overcome some really significant hurdles in my life to get to that point so I'm really proud of it. That's so cool. I know. I appreciate it. Well thank you so much for coming on the podcast you guys. I feel like you gave so many good tactical stuff, so much good stuff for couples mindset things. Why don't you tell everyone where they can go and find you. You can find us on Instagram and YouTube at travel lightmail travel L-I-G-H-T-E-M-E-L. You can come to St. Louis to see Enzo, comedy, live and person and you can find our group trips at travel like you. adventurous.com. Perfect. And I'll make sure to link all of that down below. But once again, thank you for coming on. We've loved having you in the TCP family. Congrats on winning our 30-day challenge. And like you said, this is just the beginning. So six months. Literally, if you guys made it to the end, like just can you imagine just taking six months of your life to commit to the goal that you want to do and seeing this amount of success? Like it really, if you lock in now in June of 2026, you could be doing the same thing as these guys by the end of the year, by December. So like just keep that in mind. And all it takes is six months. Yeah, that's crazy. We grew 150,000 followers in six months. Wow. I love it. Congratulations, you guys. And we're just getting started. All right. Well, thank you so much. We'll chat with you guys soon. Make sure to go send them a DM with your favorite part of the episode. If you enjoyed this and don't forget to leave us a five star review. We're coming up on 200,000 listens. I'm in downloads on Spotify because of you guys. So keep leaving us those five store reviews. And with that, we'll see you next Friday with another episode of the creator passport podcast. If you enjoyed this episode of the creator passport podcast, make sure to leave us a five star review on Spotify or Apple podcasts. And if you want to be the first to know when we open doors to our next cohort for our full signature coaching program, the creator passport. Make sure to head down below and join our VIP priority wait list. As soon as you join our wait list, you will get two completely free lessons from our free coaching program. So head down below to join the VIP wait list. And with that, we will see you next Friday with another episode of the creator passport podcast.