330: How to Pick Your Travel Niche, Find Your Voice, Get Your First 250K Followers, and Land Brand Deals with Nicole Phillip

330: How to Pick Your Travel Niche, Find Your Voice, Get Your First 250K Followers, and Land Brand Deals with Nicole Phillip

Author: Matt Bowles: Full-Time World Traveler Since 2013 March 31, 2025 Duration: 48:01
Learn how to build your personal brand, be unique and authentic, grow your followers, and monetize your travel content. ============================ Get the Monday Minute my weekly email with 3 personal recs for travel, culture, and living beyond borders you can read in 60 seconds. ============================ ON THIS EPISODE In Part 2 of this interview Nicole Phillip takes us on her professional journey through the world of journalism, including her experiences working at the New York Times on the 1619 Project and as the Social Media Manager for the Daily Beast. She then talks about her transition out of legacy media into becoming an independent travel content creator. Nicole describes her process of finding her voice, stepping into her authentic self, building her personal brand, getting her first 250K followers on social media, and landing brand deals. She then opens up about how she separates ‘having’ vs.‘documenting’ her travel experiences, and how all of this travel has impacted her as a person. Nicole also shares her tips for Black travelers, teases her upcoming talk at the WITS travel creator summit, and reflects on what travel means to her today. And finally, Nicole names her Top 5 Hip Hop MCs of all time! ⁠ ⁠ → Full show notes with direct links to everything discussed are available here. ============================ FREE RESOURCES FOR YOU: See my Top 10 Apps For Digital Nomads See my Top 10 Books For Digital Nomads See my 7 Keys For Building A Remote Business (Even in a space that’s not traditionally virtual) Watch my Video Training on Stylish Minimalist Packing so you can join #TeamCarryOn See the Travel Gear I Use and Recommend See How I Produce The Maverick Show Podcast (The equipment, services & vendors I use) ============================ ENJOYING THE SHOW? Follow The Maverick Show on Instagram and DM Matt to continue the conversation Please leave a rating and review — it really helps the show and I read each one personally You can buy me a coffee — espressos help me produce significantly better podcast episodes! :)

There’s a certain texture to life lived in motion, a collection of stories that emerge not from postcards but from the messy, beautiful reality of planting roots in foreign soil. The Maverick Show: Global Travel Stories & Life Beyond Borders captures that essence through long-form conversations hosted by Matt Bowles, who has been navigating the world full-time since 2013. This isn't a guidebook podcast; it’s a series of intimate dialogues, often unfolding casually over a shared bottle of wine, where the destination is understanding. You’ll hear from a diverse range of voices-expats, digital nomads, women forging paths abroad, and diaspora storytellers-each sharing the raw, unfiltered nuances of what happens when you cross borders for good. The focus is on the human narrative beneath the itinerary: the cultural misunderstandings that become breakthroughs, the loneliness and liberation, and the profound ways a global life reshapes identity. Listening feels like pulling up a chair at a cafe somewhere in the world, eavesdropping on a conversation that’s equally about internal discovery as it is about geographic change. Matt’s own experience as a long-term traveler informs these discussions, steering them toward the substantive lessons learned far from home. If you’ve ever wondered about the true weight and wonder of building a life between cultures, this podcast offers a genuine, thoughtful window into that journey.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

The Maverick Show: Global Travel Stories & Life Beyond Borders
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