NOTE - this is reposted from my email/newsletter on January 13. If you would like these delivered to your inbox, please sign-up here!
Welcome to the Travel with a Wiseguy email update!
(That’s not a very catchy title, so I’ll have to work on it – open to suggestions :)
As an introduction to this first email, I’m assuming that you’re at least a fan of the YouTube channel ranging from “kind of interested” to “waiting at 7am for the video to go live each Thursday and Sunday”
I’m thankful for wherever you fall into the above spectrum and want to make these emails something a little different. This is going to be more of a “behind-the-scenes” kind of thing that will hopefully take on a life of it’s own. It’ll also be the first place I announce certain things that are new to the channel (upcoming videos, new merchandise, etc).
I plan to do these emails about twice a month. Previously I have done a monthly blog, and I may change that to a “once every two months” blog if this email thing goes well (still taking suggestions on the name haha). I just don’t want to duplicate a lot of things from one to the other.
ALSO, I’d like for you to send me questions you might have about anything (how I do videos, track and field, relationship advice haha, etc), and I’ll answer them here in these emails. Kind of a big group chat so to speak. Just email me directly jwise@goshockers.com. If there are a lot of questions, I might not be able to list all of them, but I’ll do my best – let’s have some fun!
And now on to our regularly scheduled email (for the first time) …
The first two weeks of 2024 have been interesting. I’m pretty much leading a double-life these days. I’m a full-time track and field coach at Wichita State, as well as keeping up the YouTube channel with two videos per week. I also launched the merchandise store and started this email list in the first week of the year.
On New Year’s Day, I drove back to Wichita, Kansas, from Florida after spending two weeks driving through Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, and Florida, all the way down to Key West. I filmed about 20 different videos during that time that I’ll be posting between now and the middle of March.
So far in 2024 I’ve released three videos (with #4 being released tomorrow). Here are some thoughts on each one:
(record player screech sound effect)
Actually let me back up. I wanted to speak briefly about the video I posted on New Year’s Eve about the Top Ghost Towns of 2023. I was walking down a beach during the intro of that video – for those of you who were wondering it was Bellaire Beach, Florida. I was there filming one of the 10 Smallest Towns in Florida (Bellaire Shore – population 73).
(ok back to easy going background country music)
The first video of the year (released on January 4, filmed on January 2 in my office) was announcing some of the places I’m going in 2024 and the merchandise store. It was fun to get a lot of positive feedback on the Alaska and Hawaii trips and thank you to everyone who bought something! This is just a “soft launch”. There will be many more items in the merch store by this summer. I just wanted to get it started and see what issues there might be before I have a whole bunch of things in there.
My next video (Jan 7) was about spending Christmas in Key West exploring a bunch of historical places with my family. Originally, I wasn’t going to do a video in Key West, but with my family’s encouragement we filmed what you saw. We were there four days (Dec 22-25), and that video was bits and pieces of all four days. I can safely say I don’t totally understand how the YouTube algorithm works, but I usually have an idea if a video will be popular or not. I don’t make videos TRYING for them to get clicks and knew this one was likely to not be as popular – and I was right. But that doesn't mean I wish I hadn’t done it. Quite to the contrary – now I have a great video memory of a holiday with my family, and much of the core audience seemed to like it as well!
My third video (Jan 11) was about some ghost towns in western Kentucky. I filmed this on December 17 on my way to Florida. As I was talking about the YouTube algorithm above, I had a feeling this one would do pretty well – and it has. A lot of the success of my videos have to do with what geographical location they are from. Anything from Texas does really well. Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma all do well. Then it’s hit and miss with other places, but Kentucky is one that always gets a surprising number of views. If you stuck around for the outtakes of this video, you’ll know what the ghost town of Blandville and Forrest Gump have in common!
(this is a long email; I promise they won’t all be this long – just kidding they might be)
I don’t want to do a lot of spoilers for upcoming videos, but I have one funny tidbit about tomorrow’s video driving through Tennessee. I stopped in Hurricane Mills, which was bought in the 1960’s by Loretta Lynn and her family. It’s a significant part of the video and a wonderful place to explore. I was the only person in the “town” because all the touristy things were closed. A white SUV pulled up and a lady who looked a lot like Loretta Lynn got out and waved at me. I was thinking “Are me and Loretta Lynn the only two people here right now?” I didn’t realize she passed away a little over a year ago – didn’t feel like much of a Wise Guy at that moment :) Does she have a sister or relative that looks like her and runs the place now? Anyways … I hope you enjoy that video, it was a fun day of exploring!
(getting close to the end now)
I did a little traveling this week as I went with our track and field team to Lawrence, Kansas, Thursday and Friday for our first meet of 2024. It went well and we’ll be back on the road to Lincoln, Nebraska next weekend. I didn’t film anything except lots of WSU athletes running races!
Like I said earlier, I’m thinking of doing this a couple times a month, so next time I’ll be talking more about this Tennessee video, unusual towns I found in Alabama, the oldest road in Missouri, and a “small town, USA” from Texas.
If you know anyone who might be interested being on this list, send them the link to sign-up!
Thanks for listening to me babble – send me questions for next time!
Safe travels!
John Wise
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