Tell us your name and a little about yourself.
Our names are Johannes Richter and Vivian Velle and we travel the world as a travel influencer couple on Instagram under the name JoVi_Travel, work as content creators and do social media management for other companies. We are on the move for more than two years now, traveling to places we have always dreamed of and won’t stop any time soon!
What exactly does your company do?
On the one hand, we are entertainers and inspiration for our thousands of followers creating content for our own Instagram account JoVi_Travel every day. On the other hand, we are content creators for other companies and have our own social media agency where we advise other companies on their social media channels, manage social media accounts and organize influencer campaigns.
What were the biggest challenges you have faced and how did you overcome them?
When we started with Instagram a little more than two years ago, we had no previous experience with photography, photo editing or social media in general. Although we had seen a lot of YouTube tutorials and read related articles on the internet for half a year before we started traveling, in practice the whole thing is something else. The change from the world of banking/law to full-time traveling was, of course, intense at first and in the beginning, a lot of things didn’t go as we expected. If you then compare the quality of your content with that of other photographers who have been in business for years, we sometimes had doubts if this was the right decision. In the end, we just didn’t get discouraged, moved on and worked on ourselves. Success in the field of social media usually doesn’t come overnight, but can take several years, even if it is often not perceived as such by the public. Most of the big Instagrammers or Youtubers have worked hard for a long time before they have built up a relevant enough reach to live from it. That’s how it was with us in the end too.
What piece of advice do you wish someone had given you at the start of your career?
The one thing we’d do differently if there was a next time is to start earlier! There’s no need to postpone anything if you want to do something do it if you want to travel do it if you want to be a photographer do it and if there’s anything else you’d love to do in life – simply do it!
We both went to university for quite some time to study something we weren’t really interested in but what we did because we thought this would be a great entry to a financially promising career or just didn’t know what else to study back then. Now that we realized that life isn’t about having secure and well-paid job and a lot of fancy things but about being happy and about doing something that you love, that fascinates and inspires you we’d either skip the whole university part – not everyone has to study to be successful – or study something we’re really interested in no matter the job opportunities.
Who are your biggest influences and people you admire and why?
In general, the people who influence us the most are those that are the closest to us. We both have rather small families but we really don’t think it’s about a certain amount of people having an influence on you as long as it’s the right one.
It’s our families that were always there for us from when we were born until now. They made us the people who we are today, they taught us what matters most in life, they told us to be kind and friendly to others, always made us believe that you can achieve anything you want in life as long as you work hard enough for it and most of all throughout the big changes in our life the past few years after we decided to quit our jobs, to leave our financial security behind to do something that makes us happy but didn’t seem very promising in the beginning to them, they were always supportive and believed in us.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?
Well, there isn’t one particular person that helped us all along but when we gave up our well-paid jobs as a consultant in banking and lawyer in M&A, a little more than two years ago our families and friends were extremely supportive in our plans to start a completely new life on the road. This has made it so much easier for us to leave the safe harbor of our 9-5 jobs and venture into the unknown.
What do you see as your greatest success in life?
Our greatest success personally and together as a team was to break through the social constraints and to find the courage to give up our predetermined career in consulting/corporate and to start something completely new. After investing many years in our education this was not an easy step and many colleagues in our environment could hardly understand the decision. Today we don’t regret the decision to give up a secure and well-paid job for one that makes us really happy and despite a few minor things, it is a lot of fun.
How can people follow your journey? Please list your social media URLs
www.instagram.com/jovi_travel
www.twitter.com/jovi_travel
www.facebook.com/jovitravell
www.jovi-travel.com
