The Vagabond Monkey – Episode 3

After reuniting with a friend in July of 2017 and deciding to venture together in something related to photography and travels (both our passions), the “Audrey & John want to create something together” project was born.

In the second episode, we ironed out our vision and started to throw a few numbers on paper. In The Vagabond Monkey episode three, we are looking at competition. We’re fine-tuning our idea and we’re starting to think about branding.

From idea to project

Around the end of October, I found a few competitive offers simply by typing “photography trips” on Google. First, I realized that I was way off in my financial forecast. Similar destinations as the ones John and I have in mind go for twice what we had imagined. Second, most of the proposed destinations are “exotic” (Asia, Africa…). We might have a differentiating factor with US-based destinations (to be verified). Finally, most of the proposed trips feel very “professional”, put together by travel agencies. It is not what we have in mind. We also need to test putting the emphasis on the “non-organized” aspect of our trips.

After brainstorming with John, we came to the conclusion that today, you have to either be “super adventurous” and build your trip by yourself. It takes time and energy and you’re afraid that the people traveling with you will hold you responsible if something goes wrong. Or you go the safe route and get at tour with a travel agency… but there’s no fun in that.

We want to offer something in between: sufficiently prepared to remove the pain but sufficiently unprepared to keep the sense of adventure.

Plus we’re bringing to the table our advice and experience when it comes to capturing memories with photography, words, video…
Plus they get to travel with two super cool people!

Our baseline could be: “we guarantee that something might go wrong!”

That brainstorming session also brought a strong contender on the name: vagabond monkey!

Next week, John and I are reuniting in Portland for the World Domination Summit and following with a road trip along the Pacific Northwest. What happened between then and now… Find out in the next Vagabond Monkey episode!