One Year Podcasting: From Dream to Reality

One Year Podcasting: From Dream to Reality

It’s been one whole year of podcasting, and honestly… we can’t believe it either. In this episode, we’re looking back on the journey, from daydreaming about this podcast to actually hitting the road full-time and recording from our RV.

We’re sharing what it’s really been like to leave behind our old jobs, sell our house, trade “normal life” and a whole lot of learning on the fly.

You’ll hear the highs, the struggles, and everything in between, from figuring out mics and to finding those little-known gems that make this life so worth it.

We also talk about what’s next for us, how we’re hoping to grow, and why staying real with you all is still our top priority.

Thanks for being part of this crazy ride. We’re just getting started.

Transcript

  we're the Essary family and we're exploring America one destination at a time. This is our one year anniversary episode, and we are super excited to share with you guys where we've been and where we're going.

Let's chat.

Well welcome and thank you for joining us on this episode as we talk about our one year anniversary. This is something that is super exciting. This is something that, to be quite honest, I did not know if we were gonna make it to this point or not because it's so interesting. If you go back and you look at all the, different podcasts and you do all the, research about the people that start a podcast and

where they get to or if they continue it, or if it's just something that is, here for a couple episodes and then they're gone. I mean, you would be surprised to learn how many people just drop out. Yeah, majority of the podcasts do not get past their third episode, so I'm super, that's crazy.

Super proud of us because we don't quite have 52 weeks worth because I think there's three weeks that we did not have episodes. There's a couple where life just got, um, a little crazy, but. One year of pretty much every single week. That's pretty amazing. Yeah. Especially for those of you who have been following us and you know how crazy our life has been this past year.

Yes. I mean, whether you're on, uh, any of our social media platforms or if you're a part of our Patreon page, you would definitely know how Our year has gone. Yeah. With the bonus episodes that you get there. But for those that you know, this may be their first episode that they're listening to, we just wanna tell you kind of where we've been.

What we're doing and where we're going. And I am looking forward to where we're going. Yes. But first we have to talk about where we've been. But I really wanna talk about where we're going. We'll get there, we'll get there, we'll get there. 'cause that is the exciting part. But I mean. Let's talk about this past year and we, this past crazy year when we sat down in May, we sat down in May of 2024 and we were like.

I actually, I came to you and I was like, I have this crazy idea. What if we did this, this, this, and this and this? And you were like, well, it sounds nice in theory. Yeah. But who's gonna do it? No, I mean, that's absolutely so true because our life was already busy. Mm-hmm. Before you came up with. The whole travel Ry, social media platforms, YouTube, um, podcast.

And then you're like, Hey, let's just do this because we know what we want to do in the future. And I'm like, um, I mean at that time we had so much going on now, a newborn baby, or he was a few months old, a few months old. We had, um, we still had the youth group at that time.

Mm-hmm. We, I was still doing my eight to five job. All the church stuff, all the extracurricular activity things, just pure, pure mayhem and to add this into the mix and to, oh, I still had my clothing company Yes. At that time too, that that was true. Yes. Yeah. I actually quit that so I could work on this full time.

Yeah. To spend more time , on this and man, I mean, , it's crazy to look back at how. Nuts. , Our life was, yeah. And so look at it now. It's not quite as nutty. Oh my gosh. It's so much calmer now. But there are definitely still very, very busy times Yeah. In our lives.

And, but we, we made a list for ourselves of things that we had to happen in order for us to do what we want to do this upcoming year. Oh yeah. To get us to the point we are now. Right. I mean, even to get here. Like we had to like almost detail a list out. Mm-hmm. And then what you had to do for me is you had to put a timestamp on it.

Mm-hmm. And be like, okay, this has gotta happen. How made you put a timestamp? Yeah. This has gotta happen by this point in time. Yes. I gave you deadline. We're not gonna be able to do that. Right. So deadlines, I work on deadlines. It's just one of those things. And. I was looking at the deadlines as an, an overall picture and I was like, okay, yeah, that's fine.

You know, we might have to postpone one or two things, you know, it'll eventually happen. That's not a big deal. But you were so super adamant about No, I was, I want this, I made us stay on top of it. I want a podcast, I want a social media. I want to document our, our life. Pretty much. I want to. Tell people out there that there's more to do than just going to , your basic traveling destinations.

Just like there's so many hidden gyms, and not just that, that traveling can be. So much more enjoyable than what most people, like People enjoy their travel. Yes. Or they wouldn't travel, but do you know how often I hear people that come back from vacation, they're like, oh, we just had a terrible time. Like it was awful vacation.

Or they complain about the credit card, they maxed out. And I'm like, man, we've never. Done those on our vacations, and yet we have wonderful trips and Yeah, and times and I wanna share with people like how we do those. And so yeah, , that was my main thing. But, and that was the main thing, because we want people to know, and we want y'all to know that there's, there's different ways of traveling.

, We have those people that they're all about the destination, so they wanna get there as fast as possible, and that's cool. But then there's people like us that we enjoy. The traveling to the place. Yeah. We like the journey. We travel the traveling. We like the journey more than we like the destination on most of our vacations.

Mm-hmm. There's a few that we've already talked about, you know. Uh, South Carolina, Florida. We definitely loved the destination. Yeah, we enjoyed , the journey, but the destination was definitely right, what we were looking forward to. But there's other vacations that we've gone to that it was all about the journey.

You know, we had maybe a day at the destination, but it was really about the journey and just spending time with family and that's one thing that we've definitely kind of focused on. Mm-hmm. In this first year of, that's what it's all about. And what we're getting ready to do, and we'll talk about it here in a little bit, is.

Even more focused on that. Yeah. After a couple of years of so many friends and family coming to me and like asking me to help them, you know, book their vacations and plan their vacations and like, I wanna do it like you guys do, and I'm like, okay, you know what? Let's just make this available to everybody because then I don't have to do the same thing over and over and over.

I can just do one thing and make it available to everybody and then I can direct them to that episode or that, um, you know, YouTube video or that Facebook. Page or like, Hey, just go follow our account. And I promise you'll get all that information that I use to plan our vacations. And it's been so great, , and we're not huge by any means, but I will tell you, not yet, not yet.

We're crossing our fingers over here. We're, we're claiming it, but, um. You know, it's definitely taken off more than I thought it was going to. This first year, I didn't have super high expectations this first year. Um, what we're gonna be doing this upcoming year. I expected it to take off then, but it's actually starting to take off quite a bit before then.

At least the, the podcast has, our social media is still doing that slow organic growth, which is fine. But, um, we're so grateful for every single podcast listener, because you guys are spreading the word, because we are getting more and more listeners, and every now and then we get an episode that just kind of like, it'll have, three or four times amount of , the downloads that it did on the week that

it was aired on one weekend, like, it'll be like, boom, there's, you know, 50 downloads for this episode that just came out of the blue, and I'm like, wow, that's pretty amazing. Yeah. And if you look at, you know, like the Joe Rogans and some of those other really, really big podcast people, you know, the super popular people that were popular before they even started podcasting.

Mm-hmm. You know, 50 doesn't seem like a big number to them, but to us, you know, 50 for one episode. I mean, that's 48 hours. That's awesome. I mean, that, that's, I'll take it. That's, that's something that we definitely look forward to, and like Misty said. Even if we didn't get those 50, it wouldn't stop us from still putting out content.

Right. 'cause even if we help one person mm-hmm. It's worth it at that point in time. Right. And I've gotten some really great feedback of people, they're like, Hey, I took your advice on this and this, and I went and did that. Or , I get private messages all the time of, I saw your Facebook posts about this restaurant.

I went and tried it and it was amazing. And those, I'm like, that's why we do this. Like, that's why we do that. Yeah. Because I mean, if not, especially the places that we really like to go and we like to highlight. 'cause , we're gonna highlight your destination places. We've already talked about several of those.

Mm-hmm. But we're gonna highlight those places that are the diamond in the rough because, oh wait, we're getting into future stuff. We're getting into future stuff. You're getting antsy because that's what it's all about. I mean, to find something like even if you come to where we live, you know, central Texas type area.

If you don't know really where to go and what to do, it would seem very boring. Boring. Yeah. There would be nothing to do, but you're nothing but cows. Yeah. You would come and you look at Longhorns, but , there's so much to do. There's so much good food. And every place I believe is like that. I believe that no matter where you go, there's always something to do and there's always an amazing food place.

And listen, if there's not, we will let you know. Oh yes, . Were not shy. We will keep it raw. We will keep it real of going. Yeah, don't visit this place. We had a friend that we met up with this weekend that just got back from Kansas, so I'm like. Don't go to Kansas. I'm like, well, we're gonna go to Kansas and we're gonna experience it for ourselves.

Yeah, go check it out. But listen, if we don't like it, we'll let you know. And that's where y'all come into play? Yeah. If the locals in that area will tell us, Hey, no, this is a really great spot. You need to try it. Guess what?

We will definitely try it while we're there. Yeah. Let us know. Give us some options. Give us some, some feedback. We're always telling. It's like, Hey, where's the best eating place? Hey, where's a good hike? Hey, what can we do? Mm-hmm. You know, for a family , of five, , how can we maneuver around in that area?

And we do get some really good feedback. And then people are always asking us like, Hey, um, I'm going to this place. Mm-hmm. You know, we get a lot of people that are coming to Texas and they're like, Hey, we're coming here. How can we see Dallas, Austin, and Houston in a day? And we're like, uh, it's impossible.

You can't. So yeah. I have had several people from Australia that have asked questions like that, like, if I rent a car, will I be able to see this city, this city and this city in a week period. And I'm like, well. You're gonna be spending about eight hours a day in the car just driving. So Not really. Yeah.

But I'm definitely looking forward to going to some kind of remote areas because

there's some beautiful places out there that we don't even know yet, but we're, we're starting to get into a little bit future. We need to go back. You're getting ahead of ourselves. We need go back just a little bit. So we set out with a goal, a list of things that we wanted to accomplish up until this point.

Yes. For this first year and somehow miraculously. Every single one of those have been accomplished. Oh yeah. By the grace of God, somehow we have made it through the process. Yes, because there was some processes that were like, ah, it's not worth it. We're done. And we had some frustrations and big frustrations, even some minor setbacks.

And then we had things that took off a lot faster than we thought they would. So way faster it, it all evened out. But our number one goal was to. Figure out this podcasting thing and get it started. That was our first main goal, and I remember, like I said, I had the clothing business at that time and trying to run both at the same time on top of all the other things we had during that time of our lives.

It was almost impossible. Well, not to mention we had a brand new grandson. Mm-hmm. Who I was babysitting during the day and a 10 month old baby ourself. So it was way too much on my plate and I ended up being like, you know what? The travel RY is where our future is, and that's what I'm going to put a lot of my effort into.

And so I stopped doing the clothing business, although it was taking off pretty good. I was like, I'm going to. Have faith that I'm making the right decision, that this is something for the entire family. This is an entire family project, not just a me thing. So that was important. And you know, we figured it out.

We have, you know, our first couple of episodes, the sound quality is not the best. , We may stutter a lot more, our flow's not so great. Yes. Going back and listening to those first ones were. You know, we didn't have the setup that we have now. Mm-hmm. And so everything was a little bit different trying , to read each other , on topics that we were well versed in, but in topics that we really haven't had, like a communication where we're talking to not only amongst ourselves, but a.

Third party to people that are listening to try to explain a little bit more. Well, yeah. Especially because, you know, I plan a lot of our trips, right? We don't plan a lot together, but you obviously have the experience of me planning it. And so sitting down and actually discussing those situations together, some of it was a first for us.

I've actually been like, yeah, I've actually talking through like the process of what happened, like Jeremy's learning my process of doing things and I'm learning his view of that. So, well I've always known your process, but I haven't, like the detailed steps that you take. Mm-hmm. You know, in those processes was a little bit of an eyeopening.

And then your take on the way that I view it from. The driver getting from destination. Mm-hmm. Making sure everything's happening, you know, , on your schedule or how things are supposed to be played out. , Just learning those different ins and outs of each others in those first couple episodes was just something that was a little bit rough around the edges.

Yeah. I would say, I mean, , sometimes it was like, no, we're redoing that whole thing. Yeah. Or we're like, Hey, we're just cutting this whole section out because we just stuttered over each other and didn't make any sense. Mm-hmm. I actually remember. If you remember this, um, our first like three episodes.

Jasper, our baby, he was not having it. He wanted in our laps and he was crying. , He wanted our attention and we sat on the floor of his nursery with our microphones so that one person could talk while the other person played with the baby. And we went back and forth just so we could podcast. And so we had that distraction and it was just, yeah.

And so it didn't flow because , our. Focus was somewhere else and somewhere where it needed to be. Mm-hmm. So, I mean, we're not complaining about that at all. Yeah. Right now he's just running around making noise and we're just totally ignoring him. Yeah. He's, uh, we've learned that half the time his noises do not, , come up in the episode, and when they do, people think it's cute.

So if you hear him talking, you hear him talking. Yeah. And he's, he's. Playing right now, so, you know, it's not really bothering us. We can see everything's perfectly fine. Yeah, we're still very real people. We do not have a professional set up by any means. Um, we are at our table right now and 11 every minute of it.

And so another thing that we had to , accomplish a hurdle we had to get over, uh, was selling our house. Yes. And before we could sell the house, we had to empty the house. Had to empty the house. There was a few things that oh, we had to fix on it for , the mortgage company and some other things.

Paperwork, timeframe. Mm-hmm. The whole nine yards. , if you want to hear more details about that whole debacle and everything that happened there, um, go to our Patreon page, check it out. Now we do have, um, a bonus episode that we do every month, specifically on our Patreon page. So they get a, a bit more information of the ins and outs that we don't share here because we know not everyone is interested in that kind of detail.

So we wanna save it for the ones just who are interested. Yeah. So we end up selling the house and. Right after that, the next goal was to get an rv and to get a vehicle to pull the rv. Well, you had to get a truck. We're gonna give you a very small timeframe of kind of how it all went out.

Mm-hmm. Sold the house. Two days later, truck was delivered. Next day he went and picked the trailer up. That's how fast that had happened. Within a week we sold and was. Already set up to live in a rv. Yeah. Which was absolutely nuts. Mm-hmm. Because of all the different steps that happened before then. We didn't know if.

We didn't know when we were gonna sell. We didn't know if we were gonna be able to get the truck that we wanted. Yeah, we didn't know if we were gonna get the rv. And there was a lot of stress factors that happened. Goodness. And all of that. Oh my goodness, so much. A lot of unknowns, a lot of prayers. Like, okay, we're just hoping this all works out in the timeframe that it's supposed to, because if not, you know, we're gonna lose money.

We're gonna have to start different processes over. And , it did. It all worked out. Everything worked out and we have. In my opinion, a wonderful truck. Mm-hmm. Oh, I love the truck. These are not brand new. No. But they're paid for. But they're paid for. Yes. In really good conditions. And we are not keeping up with the Jones' type of people.

No, we are not. And so everything fits our needs. Maybe not our wants we've scaled back our wants quite a bit. I think we've done really well. There's still a lot of empty space in this rv. There is. We've done some really good finagling of our space to try to make everything work into it as much as possible.

Um, and we will show you a video on our YouTube, I believe. Yes. I'm working on one right now

but, you know, fortunately everything's working out right now. Yeah. And we'll just see how that goes. We'll keep you updated. Um, but we got , the truck. Fully equipped, ready to rock and roll with an RV that we got. So we didn't have a bunch of extra expenses on top of that in order , to travel.

. Um, we brought it back to our, I guess, our base camp and everything is set up and we've been rocking and rolling for what, a month and a half, two month almost. , Yeah. Right at two months. Two months tomorrow. , So all that's been going on. , We've been blessed. And then we had for Jeremy, the last and final step, , his most daunting step. But I knew, I knew it was gonna be fine, but, , that was for, you know, the job situation to work out that we have been working on for a while.

Oh, it's still daunting. That will enable us to. You know, pursue our future goals for the next year. And all of that is working out as well too. , We're not gonna talk about his job too much on the podcast because I'm pretty sure we cover that extensively on our Patreon and pretty soon on our YouTube too.

So. Uh, if you want to check out more about what's going on behind the scenes in that area, that is enabling us to do so, then yes, check out our YouTube and our Patreon. But , that was our final and main, you know, finances is kind of important, our main step, and that is accomplished now. And so Jeremy was able to put in his, resignation at work and we have, , that deadline set and we have a timeframe of.

When everything is gonna be happening this upcoming year. And so now we are setting those goals for this next year. Yes. What the next year is going to look? As of right now, everything is looking on , the bright side. We don't have any gray clouds that are hanging around us. Um, there's still , some things that we've gotta work out.

On the back end of some finite details that we just gotta iron out. , But everything looks good for what we're gonna do up till 2026. 'cause I, I don't want to reveal 2026 yet. I think we're gonna save that to another podcast. Okay. So as of right now, it looks like the beginning of October, we are actually going to travel.

Yeah, we're gonna be on the road. We're gonna be on the road in, at the very end of 2025.

But our goals for the podcast for this next year is obviously to keep podcasting and to keep growing and to expand our horizons and yours too as we grow,

because we wanna share our experiences. We want to share , our thoughts and our process through all the trip making that we do to all the places that we go. That there is so much now. Besides like the destination places that we've kind of talked about. Mm-hmm. A lot of our information has been kind of geared towards Texas.

Right. Which Texas is very large. It's got five different places. Yeah. Our whole first season was revolved around Texas. Yes. And we totally understand. Texas is not the staple of America. We get that. Or is it? No, I mean, we are very hardcore, you know, pro Texas people. We love our state. We got that Texas pride going.

But on the flip side of that, there's things that we have seen. Little glimpses of, and that's the part that we're really excited about. The places that we've stopped for, you know, such as food or the little pit stops that we take to just to get the baby out so he can play, have just been. Amazing places, and I know there's so much more to those states and those areas and we want to share those experiences and how to get to them, have a good time, have. An inexpensive trip. Because we're all about saving the money, but experiencing as much as possible. Yeah. We've only briefly been able to go to other places, you know where vacationers, you never get to spend any more than a week or two in a place, or you're going through a place very briefly.

We are very excited to do more of extended stays in different areas and get to know that area and their activities so yes, we are definitely looking forward to that.

I have an entire year's worth of stops and itineraries and, uh, those will be available on our Patreon After we go to each stop, , I'm gonna do a complete entire breakdown. Of where we stayed, how long we stayed there, and like what we did while we were there as far as unique restaurants, you know, entertainment activities and how much they cost.

But that is only gonna be for our Patreon members. , And I don't want to, man, I'm trying so hard not to spoil 2026 because I'm so excited about it. Mm. Um, some other things, all I can say is you definitely want to stay tuned to travel Ry.

Yes. Some other things that we are getting ready to do is, , and this is kind of the whole reason of kind of going out and, and traveling some more is we're gonna do more podcasts that are gonna have. Interviews. Mm-hmm. We're gonna talk to people as far as like getting 'em on the podcast, right.

And just getting their perspective of either them living there for so long or different activities or kind of what they do in that community. But even people that travel,, a little bit different way than what we do, right? We wanna give different perspectives. We wanna make sure that everyone understands all the different options that are out there, depending on how your life is.

That option might be the best option for you. It may not be always the travel esry way, which is always an amazing way. I like the travel Esry way. I'm a bit partial to it, but just some different aspects. Some different people that have a different way or trick that they use on their vacations that would help people in general

so, of course, one of our goals is to stay in a place longer and share more information, especially about the larger metropolitan areas. , We definitely wanna share because they have a ton of to do, and then we wanna hit up the smaller rural areas that are around those large metropolitan areas because there are things to do in those areas as well.

And so we want to focus on all of the above and be able to share a more extensive itinerary and journey and look into those areas. And we can't do that. Without meeting people. I'm so looking forward to just meeting people. , We've talked about this on a previous podcast episode, but I cannot remember for the life of me, which one it was about, you know, sitting down and talking with the locals and seeing. Their area and their towns and their communities through their eyes.

And that enables us to appreciate it more and gives us, you know, ideas of what to do while we're there and to find those hidden gems that, the locals can desp spawn at. And we'll keep it honest with you. I mean, we're not going to sugarcoat anything. I know there's been several times where we've gone to restaurants and. We've unfortunately had to , be like, this was a bad experience. Yeah. Do not go here. I think on one of our YouTube videos, our oldest daughter called me out on it.

She was watching it and she was like, oh my gosh, you just called out that restaurant for their bad food. I was like, I didn't say anything bad about it. I just said it definitely was not our favorite. , I'm not gonna promote something to the world out there that I didn't have a good experience at. Right. We just wanna be honest. Honest. I'm not gonna send you somewhere with our experiences. Yeah. Because you watch this YouTube person and they're like, that's the best thing ever. And then they go to the next restaurant and everything. The best thing. That's the best thing ever. And it's like, wait a minute. So you have no bad experiences at a restaurant? I've never seen that. I mean, that's almost impossible.

Yeah. Unless you're telling people that you're coming and they're giving you like the five star treatment. Mm-hmm. Now if that's happening, then you know you got more power than. Most of other people, and we just wanna keep it as normal and as real as possible. Yeah. We wanna, we wanna gain the trust of all of our listeners and all of our followers.

So , we don't wanna steer you wrong, we don't wanna send you somewhere that just Absolutely, we had a not so great experience at and we may say, Hey, go try it for yourself and you figure it out. But this is what happened with us. I don't necessarily like bashing places either. I'm not into that.

I'm not into like, just raving with negative reviews and things like that. But yeah, I mean, we're not gonna be just tearing them down, but we will be like . That was not a good experience. , We're just gonna let you know the facts and keep it real from our eyes, from our perspective.

Mm-hmm. We've done that in several podcasts. I mean, especially about , the Pickle festival, we kept it real. Yeah. But you know, I, I totally want to be like, Hey, maybe, you know, maybe they're having an off day or, this is what they're working on as an improvement since then.

I don't ever want to be the reason like a business bombs or something like that. Right. Of course. One, our followers is not that great right now. Maybe in the future, um, if that happens. Remember, you are an og. You were here before we blew up, so take pride in this.

Yeah, but I don't want to just be like. Um, you, you know, I've seen those people that are on the flip side of everything is so great. They're like, don't eat here and ban this business and boycott it. And, and I don't wanna be that either. I do believe in second chances and sometimes they're just off days.

But I am going to be absolutely honest with my experience and we totally believe in constructive criticism. We believe that, you know, you can take a good thought, you can take a good idea, and it may not work out the way that. You envisioned it, but if you were to just change a few things or,, mod a few things, then everything will work out.

And as human beings, that's the way that we should be living our lives is to improve every single day.

And so we definitely don't wanna be like, this is the end all. You've gotta stop going here because I don't believe any place should ever be considered like that. I. Yeah, but I definitely don't ever want to take sponsorships or affiliates to something that I myself would not use or promote or even want to experience.

So if we are, you know, promoting something, and I promise you 95% of the time we are not getting paid for it. But if we are like, raving about somewhere or a certain experience, then I, it's because we. Really enjoyed that experience or we really enjoyed that product, or we really enjoyed that city, or those people or something like that.

I mean, that's just kind of how we are.

I want us to be true to ourselves I want to have the trust of our listeners, and if I'm not true to who we are, then I feel like I don't deserve their trust. That's so, so important to me.

Yeah. I mean, ever since we first picked up a mic to now. And our goal for in the future is to never be false. Right?, Never portray something that we aren't, hopefully, , people find this interesting and , they get good tips and tricks out of it, and they can have a good experience in their vacations,

 so stay with us. We have way more information coming out. , As we travel more, we're gonna have so many more new tips and tricks that we hadn't even come across until. You know, until we come across them. Yeah. Until we experience them. But new places to come, new, exciting information. I'm so excited. Yeah. We're thinking nothing but positive and so positive is gonna come out, and by doing that, we're gonna have more experiences that we can share with y'all. And as we get ready for our life on the road, because we are so very close to that happening now, just a few short weeks away, we want to be relevant in our lives and what we're doing. So next week we'll be talking about staying connected while you're on the road and working remote. So make sure that you join us for that episode because I know a lot of people always are asking the question about staying connected and working remotely.

So we'll answer those questions for you next week.