“Excuse me, are you Sven?” It’s a normal question but this time I was caught off guard. I wasn’t in Starbucks. Nope, I woke up that morning and booked a train from Munich to Salzburg. After 1,5 years in lockdown, it was time to test if I’m still excited about creating travel content for my Instagram channel @travelling.dutchman. It’s a hobby that started 5 years ago and got a bit out of hand when it peaked to 20.000 followers with sponsorships in Italian palaces and Colombian jungle lodges. That was all before we went into lockdown.
My time as a traveling creator was short-lived and while I was making my way through Salzburg’s main sights, I doubted if I should pick it up again. Isn’t it a waste of time? Will there be a balance between effort and payoffs? And that’s when I got stopped over by a stranger asking me: “Are you Sven?”. I mumbled something like “ehh.. yeah I guess?”. Her name was Nofi, she is also an expat in Germany. Nofi told me that she started to follow the adventures of @travelling.dutchman when I moved back to Munich. We took this selfie, had a talk and made our ways. I immediately called some friends: “Holy ,sh**, I just got recognized in public! What are the odds on a random day In Salzburg?!”. I told the story to a fellow air uppie later that day. And while I was driving back to Munich I realized, these are friendships I made through being a content creator, and I partly got the job as influencer marketeer @air up because I was on the other side of influencer marketing as a blogger. These are the payoffs that I couldn’t have imagined before. Lesson learned: do what excites you because you can’t foresee all the potential upsides of your current actions. I don’t believe in random coincidences like this, thanks for pointing me in a direction Nofi! I’ll keep creating. 😀
