Today we’d like to introduce you to Scott & Melissa Barronton
Hi Scott & Melissa , we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
We have always loved to travel. Scott grew up as the child of a Delta employee and they would say, where can we go and hop on a plane. As a child of teachers, Melissa grew up taking road trips and camping all over the southeast and up the east coast one summer.
When our kids were little we would pack up and camp as much as we could. Scott started taking trips to places all over the world for work and as our kids got older we started taking them to places like Hawaii and to Europe, traveling one summer to London, Madrid, Paris and Germany. We started posting pictures and stories on Facebook and people would make comments that they wished they could travel like we did or just that they enjoyed traveling vicarously through our travels.
In 2023 we decided to take telling our travel stories to the next level and start our own travel podcast. We had several trips planned for the near future, places like Quito, Ecuador & the Galapagos Islands, London, Slovakia, St. John & Puerto Rico and it was a perfect time to start a new adventure and tell our stories, talk about destinations, tips, and our packing lists on a podcast. Scott came up with the name, Sunshine Travelers since we had recently moved to the Sunshine State of Florida & because we typically have unusually sunny weather when we travel (even to places like the UK and Scotland) and it was available and so the Sunshine Travelers and the Sunshine Travelers Podcast was born.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
We had no idea how to start a podcast so we had to learn how to do it. What equipment to use, what platforms to use, how to get it onto Podcast platforms, how to promote it, etc. We took a podcast course from Jenna Kutcher who has her own successful podcast and googled our way to getting it started and produced.
I think the biggest thing that helped us was to set a goal that we would start by a certain date, April 11th, 2023 and that we would release an episode each week specifically Tuesdays. These dates/day had no specific significance other than it would give us a date that we would release the 1st episode and that it would keep us consistently posting new content.
Besides posting it on our own social media where we had already been sharing our travels over the years we also decided to start social media platforms for the podcast to help spread the word about or content and grow a new audience as well. So we started that from zero. Our first few episodes had a handful of listeners and it seemed to take us forever to get to 200 downloads and we were so excited when we got there. The great thing about a podcast is that those episodes are out there and easily searchable so now when people are looking for information about traveling to St. John, Aruba, Alaska or one of the many episodes we have put out there, people are able find it easily and listen months later. Our social media for the podcast specifically started very slowly, reading only a few hundred people for many months. We had a couple of reels go viral and get a lot of eyes on our content that way as well. We try to post as many places as we can just so that our content is out there and is seen.
We also don’t always agree on how to approach an episode or the angle that we should take and we have to work through those. I think each time it makes the episode better and it makes up better podcasters and content creators. We’ve also had a couple of times where the episode didn’t record right or the audio was messed up or something else happened and we have had to record entire episodes a 2nd time. Not fun at first but we’ve had always said, well that turned out better the 2nd time anyway. Now we try and remember to test and test again and make sure everything is working right but always keeping in mind you learn best when there’s a mistake and that’s ok.
What we really love and I think this is a goal of our is when people think of taking a trip or planning a trip to a certain destination that they will think of us and go to the podcast or message us and ask if we have an episode, a recommendation, or what would our advice be about a certain travel related question they have.
So we would say that if you choose something you love and enjoy creating content around and helping people it doesn’t become a chore to do it even if you don’t have a massive following or listener base at first. We look at successful people, podcasts, businesses, etc around us and see them after they have been at it for a long time but you have to realize that the only way to get there is to keep going and doing something you really love and also that it helps people along the way travel more is better makes it easy to keep going.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Scott’s full-time job is as Chief Information Security Officer for a global company. Melissa has a background in Engineering and Education but has been an Entrepreneur since 2012, when she started her first business staging and re-designing homes in the Atlanta, GA, area. Melissa has started and run several businesses, including, Sunshine Travelers.
The podcast is a way for Scott to de-stress from a demanding job in Cybersecurity, and we both work together to write, produce, and promote it.
Our main goal of the podcast is to Help People Travel More & Better. While we don’t limit our content exclusively to couples travel, most of it falls into that category because of the stage of life we are in and the type of travel that we do. Still, because we have had children, and now have grandchildren, and have traveled with Scott’s parents, we occasionally talk about traveling with children or seniors on the podcast. We also host guests on the podcast as well mostly as a way for us to discover either destinations or ways of traveling that we are unfamiliar with. For example, before a recent trip to Aruba, we hosted a long-time colleague and friend of Scott’s because she had been a dozen times to help us prepare for the trip. We have also hosted a couple that are friends of ours who travel the world as slow travelers and a fellow travel podcast family that had done the same and now makes content specifically for traveling with kids. We have hosted a travel book author and the creator of a platform that helps people learn and feel comfortable driving in a foreign country.
We also ensure that we tell our travel stories along with the tips and tricks, destinations, itineraries, and packing lists. While those things are important when traveling, what lasts from a trip comes down to the experiences you have and the memories you make with the people you meet and the people you are traveling with. We said that even if no one ever listens to a single episode, these stories are recorded, in our own words, for our kids and grandkids. No one can ever have the same stories that we have. Other people can talk about Aruba, the Maldives, Alaska, or any other destination in the world. Other people can give you the tips and trick and hacks but no one will have our stories. The important thing to remember in anything that you do is that YOU are the difference that sets you apart from others because even if 100 other people are doing the same thing, no one can do it like you do.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
With anything you do success eventually comes when you are consistent and you don’t quit. You’ll want to keep going and be consistent when you have a passion for what you do and find a way for it to help other people more than it helps you.
Pricing:
- Episodes are free to listen to on all podcast platforms such as Apple, Spotify, You Tube or pretty much anywhere you can listen.
- We only talk about and share travel services and products we use and love and we link to those in our content as affiliate links, meaning that if you use a link to buy or book something we talk about, we make a small commission.
- We share some of our travel itineraries as links in our podcast and on our website for a nominal fee.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sunshinetravelers.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sunshinetravelerspodcast/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sunshinetravelerspodcast/
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/sunshinetrvlrs
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@sunshinetravelerspodcast
- Other: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sunshine-travelers-podcast/id1683937797
