How to Land More than 500 Headlines & Blogzines with Jessica Blotter of Kind Traveler – Podcast Transcript

Episode 55 – How to Land More than 500 Headlines & Blogzines with Jessica Blotter of Kind Traveler – Podcast Transcript

Speakers: Lexie Smith, Jessica Blotter

Lexie Smith 

 Okay, so I always find it funny how I can’t remember where I put something five minutes ago, but the brain holds on to other memories in crystal clarity, such as song lyrics you learned in kindergarten. In regards to our guests today, I remember vividly the moment I met Jessica, it was back in, I was looking at trying to look it up 2014 2015 ish. We were at a rooftop media event in Hollywood. And I ended up posting a photo from that night to my personal Instagram feed, and recently had to deep like deep stock myself to find where that photo was. Anywhere. We found it. We just went there and we were smiling. Here we are seven plus years later, we’re going to talk about all the Jessica has been up to in that time. Jessica, welcome to the show. I always love to kick things off with something a little personal. And that is where my home base is. And what do you like to do outside of work for fun?

Jessica Blotter 

Oh sure, well thanks so much for having me, Lexie. Super excited to be here with you today. So I’m here in Palm Springs, and I was in LA for 12 years prior. And as far as something to do for fun. Well, I have eight animals actually. And they are a lot of fun. I have a pet Turkey and a bunch of them. And six cats, and they are tons of fun and keep me busy. Like pretty much all day.

 Lexie Smith 

It’s okay, I heard I heard Turkey and cats. I missed the middle one. 

Jessica Blotter 

Chicken

 Lexie Smith 

Okay, so are these like in your home? turkeys and chickens? We have a coop, what do we get?

Jessica Blotter 

Yeah so, when we moved out here, part of the reason that we did is my partner and I found a home on half an acre and it’s completely enclosed. And we actually had these animals living in LA when we had a little tiny cottage in Manhattan Beach with a little yard. But we knew we wanted to give them lots of space to roam around. So when we found this place, it was just a perfect little, we call it a micro sanctuary for them. So it’s completely enclosed. And they sort of roam around the whole day. And I’m a big advocate for animals and animal welfare. So being able to you know, they’re all rescues that kind of came from different times, I was volunteering with animal rescues and sort of collected them along the way. I’m the failed Foster, would you say where anytime I would foster it would turn into an adoption so don’t give me any animals to foster because I will keep them

 Lexie Smith 

I don’t blame you. I have so many questions personality wise between a chicken and a turkey. Like I What are they domesticated at this point? Talk me through. Are they similar? Is one really independent? Or?

 Jessica Blotter 

Yeah, so they’re best friends. They are pretty much connected to the hip. I mean, they walk around together like in a little pod all day long. The turkeys are definitely more outgoing, but you know, they’re both friendly, but the turkey will actually just let you pick her up, hold her, cuddle her pet her. In fact, there was an audition that came across my desk where the Drew Barrymore show was actually looking for people with like unique pets and I applied and I actually interviewed for that show and actually, like did this interview with Dr. Evan antigen. And um, Richard Sandler was like producing it on Zoom, but it never needed on the show. But it was like literally me holding a drumstick in my arms or name’s drumstick, but I was like, Oh my gosh, you know, we’re gonna be on the Drew Barrymore show but the clip didn’t make it, but we were like fully on her VirtuAl Show. So we’ll have to audition again and see where we can take drumsticks and let people know how amazing this special creature is. She lays an egg every day. They’re excellent food recyclers. So there’s sort of like the sustainability piece here as well, which makes it pretty unique.

 Lexie Smith 

Okay, I could literally go on and probably ask you 50 More questions and I’m going to have to after this podcast because I have so many more. Last one and we’ll move on. What’s the chicken’s name? Because drumstick the turkey?

 Jessica Blotter 

Um, yeah, well, I mean, I wish you know, shouldn’t enter nuggets to kind of be in the theme of that, but we actually named her Bootsy because she has these feathery boots that are just so adorable, like her feathers go all the way down to her foot and they just sort of sprinkle out over her foot. And so every time I look at her I just think it’s cool.

 Lexie Smith 

Bootsy and drumstick, absolutely epic. So Best fun fact today is that I absolutely love it. Okay, we’re going to transition, everyone’s going to have more questions. Sorry, guys, we are going to transition over. So what we’re going to do today is we’re going to rewind time a bit. I want to hear about your career before you travel. We’ll talk about all things kind travelers, but walk us through what led up to the inception of your company.

Jessica Blotter 

Yes, of course. Um, so I started my career actually, as an earth science teacher, I got my master’s in education. I taught at a school called the preschool, which is under the umbrella of UCSD and San Diego. And it’s a school where underserved students are able to go and if they complete their program, they sort of have a footstep into the UC school system. And I was a pretty young teacher at the time, teaching earth science to about 130 students every day. And it was really this experience that one solidified my love for actually what I was teaching earth science, and a huge part of that was about wildlife conservation, and, you know, caring for the planet, and what that looks like. But then I also like working side by side with the students who came from very diverse backgrounds, and who, you know, really deserve the sort of equal access to a really powerful school and education system. So, um, that experience, you know, routed me and sort of my love that I had for it, but I had this longing to expand outside of the four walls of the classroom. I mean, every day, you know, I was like, say, 2425, at the time. And every day, I was, you know, talking with students and parents, students and parents, and that was it. And I had this longing to do something more to spread my wings a bit, knowing that, you know, teaching isn’t going to go anywhere, I can always go back to this if I really want to. So it turns out that as I sort of put that intention out there, some of my friends that I went to college with, had started a lifestyle magazine and San Diego actually started in Phoenix, and then San Diego was their first market. It ended up expanding into 10 different markets, but it was a city specific magazine, that was lifestyle, focus, everything going on in a city fashion travel, where to eat, where to go entertainment. And they asked me if I want to be one of the first employees and work in advertising. And I had this as a complete career transition. I had no idea. I didn’t know anything about the media world. But I said yes. And I worked alongside the founders, and a true startup atmosphere, and an office and the gas lamps and of San Diego. And, you know, as a startup, you live in a very different environment, where there is no certainty. There’s often you’re learning things on the fly. There’s a lot of risk. There’s no guarantee for success. And I eventually worked my way up to become the associate publisher of this magazine, moved to Los Angeles, helped to you know, be involved with the launch of the LA market. We had an office on Sunset Boulevard. And it was sort of the place to be. We had Lady Gaga perform in our office one time before Yeah, before anybody knew she was Lady Gaga. Like it was literally one of our first performances. And we were like, who’s Lady Gaga? And my office was like her changing room. And I mean, we were just in love, the heat of everything, you know, celebrity entertainment, fashion, lifestyle, travel. And during that time, I sold about $20 million in advertising sales. And I had a team and uh, you know, we were working really long, hard hours every day day in day out weekend’s events at night. I mean, just full on burnout. And I eventually became burned out. But I also had this longing for deeper purpose in my life. And I had tapped into my passion for travel with the magazine because I dabbled in it. I dabbled in the editorial side of the magazine through a few press trips that I went on. And I wrote my first sort of stories with that magazine as a writer, but I was not a trained writer. But I had tapped into something that I loved and I was passionate about. So once I left that world, I went back to school at UCLA and I just started taking classes and everything that was calling me so journalism, you know, specifically travel writing, social media PR, and then also philanthropy because I started volunteering at that time. In a search to find my purpose, I started volunteering and animal rescue. And every single weekend, literally for what ended up being 10 years, I was working at adoption events all over LA helping to find homeless dogs and cats homes. And when I was volunteering, it was really, when I was involved in those sort of experiences where my heart felt really full and happy and balanced. And I thought, you know, I was, you know, I had my whole life ahead of me. And I didn’t want to just jump into another career, I started thinking about, you know, how to follow my passions, and what I was going to really sink my teeth, and my heart into, because I knew that I wanted to dedicate my life to something bigger, that was going to be a movement, and, and not just sort of creating marketing campaign after marketing campaign, but I wanted to do something and I had that intention, I just didn’t know what it was going to be. So um, I like I said, I started going where my heart was, after I took a few classes. I started pitching myself as a travel writer. And the next thing you know, I had a column with CBS, Los Angeles, and I was freelancing as a contributor, contributing writer for Fast Company, darling magazine, one green planet, a couple other publications. And, um, and I, you know, I love space travel. And I really felt like I wanted to do something more. And a lot of the times that I was doing these stories, I was talking to hotel years, in fact, I did a white paper for the boutique Lodging Association, and she asked me to go out and interview 10 CEOs in the hotel space, and asked me a series of questions. And when we would talk about sustainability and philanthropy and community impact, there seemed to be a lot of passion around that space, but also some missing links there on like, how to get travelers involved with that. And so, but writing was definitely a part of the journey of how I, you know, eventually got to be a kind traveler, which I know we’ll talk about later in the show. Um, but you know, it was it was it was sort of these building blocks of, you know, these different writing gigs, I was doing a lot of consulting at the time, I launched a little consultancy called probably loved at the time. And I was working with some clients, I worked with Marriott for a little bit. And I was just like, building up, you know, this toward towards this bigger movement of which would be kind traveler, but I was really taking the time doing the work and learning as much as possible. It’s like a little sponge during that time. And I just, you know, I look back. And, you know, there was a few experiences after that point that led to controllers, specifically, but I’m gonna take a pause, because I’ve been talking for a long time.

 Lexie Smith 

I think you teed it up perfectly for the moment to now address what kind of traveler?

 Jessica Blotter 

Yeah, so kind traveler is the world’s first socially conscious give and get hotel booking platform that empowers travelers to positively impact the communities that they visit through giving back specifically. And the way that that works is through our given get model, travelers will unlock exclusive hotel rates and perks from curated kind hotels, when they give a minimum of a $10 donation to a locally vetted charity that’s in the destination that they’re traveling to. And then through that model, 100% of donations go to charity. And all of the charities, there’s 100, on the platform now are aligned with the UN Global Goals, which are largely centered around driving community impact, advancing environmental sustainability. And yeah, so So we launched this platform, it took actually four years to build this platform before it launched. And there’s a whole story on how the idea came to be. If you’d like me to go into that specific story of love, how did the idea begin? I can, but it has been quite a journey. Lexie, I’ll just tell you that.

 Lexie Smith 

Before you hopped on here I was telling Ceili about when I met you, and I was trying to position in my mind. I’m like, I can’t remember if this light had launched or if it was an idea, but it definitely knew it wasn’t what it was today, back in 2015.

 Jessica Blotter 

We hadn’t launched Yeah, we launched it in 20. Like late 2016 is, yeah, so we were definitely probably like, in development with it. Yeah, because we were in development for a long time with it. But it was really when you know, my partner Sean and I came together. He was also in a place where he wanted to dedicate his life to bigger movements, something that was a force for good in the world. And he’s an Air Force veteran, like a three time entrepreneur and so on. I always say, you know, where my skills ended, his began because he was really focused on web development, product development, but I was able to lean into my experience and communications, you know, working in the magazine world, you know, all of that sort of working in the entrepreneur space, we were both able to bring something very completely different to to our work, which I feel like made it possible to then grow it.

 Lexie Smith 

You’re the perfect storyteller. Because you keep teasing me up perfectly for my next question, which I want to go in, you shared, you have this breadth of experience in everywhere from advertising, to PR, to marketing to communications and journalism. I’d love to know, right, you launched a kind traveler? What were some of the internal efforts you guys made from a PR and marketing standpoint, to grow the brand and to grow the platform?

 Jessica Blotter 

Yeah, of course. Um, so we did several different things. So one of the reasons that kind of traveler, you know, continues to get a lot of eyeballs in the media space, when we have, we’ve actually been featured in over 550 news articles at this stage. But part of that reason is because we’ve created something that did not exist before, never had a hotel booking engine, facilitated donations to local charities that are very important to the health and well being of those destinations. Never has that been done before. So there are some booking platforms out there that donate a percentage of their revenue to sort of a global charity and things like that. But in the true model of sustainable tourism, it’s really about supporting host destinations, and making sure that the equity, the financial equity, is going back into those destinations to make them resilient. And to, you know, I have this quote that I always say that came to me one day, and it says that the love of travel cannot be separated from the state of the world. And that’s so true. So we, you know, empower travelers to do something that makes it easy to give back because 72% of travelers want to make a positive impact. However, a third find it confusing, and half don’t know how. So we solve this big problem, right? And so we started with this story, you know, of solving something that had not been solved before, which made it very easy to talk to the media about, you know, we weren’t fabricating something this is authentic, this is real, and it’s powerful. And it can create a lot of good in the world when travelers, you know, opt to make conscious travel decisions. And we’re at, you know, we’re at a pivotal time in the world where we need all hands on deck and a continual fuel of inspiration to address things like the climate crisis, the fact that a million species are at risk of extinct extinction, the fact that COVID-19 Put 60 million people in extreme poverty in a race all three years of poverty alleviation efforts from international aid groups. And so you know, there’s a reality and there’s an awakening. So I just say that because it’s not like, you know, I feel like when you think about marketing, PR, you have to really narrow in on the heart of your brand, and why it matters to the world on why of solving an important problem and, and how that’s really tapping into also, you know, a need that your customers might have. So for us, the need was easy. Like we were making it easy for travelers to give back for hotels, we were making it easy for them to mobilize the giving campaign, but also tap into the conscious travel community, which is something that’s very important to hotels. So we got very clear on what our DNA was. And once we like, knew what our DNA of our brand was, and why that was important for the world, it was easy to storytel but I feel like if you don’t if you don’t do that first, then it think that it can be fragmented effort. But you know, once we got clear on that, and which by the way, you know, when we were like yes, let’s be kind of travelers it was because we actually went on a vacation to Belize, to see the Mayan ruins and go caving. But instead we saw extreme poverty, and we saw dogs everywhere and being Animal Rescue volunteers I could not turn a blind eye. So I decided to feed the dogs unintentionally inspiring other toddlers to get involved and when we went back on the bus, that feeling of giving back and seeing how the entire mood had shifted From this helpless feeling to hope, full feeling, I, Shawn and I started asking ourselves like, how can we mobilize that feeling? Like how can we just create an easy pathway for travelers to give back because the need isn’t the only country that travelers are going to, you know, witness extreme poverty or may see the dogs? How do we satisfy this longing? So it was actually through travel that we came up with this idea. And that story became a big part of like, everybody wants to know how to kind of travel or begin and it’s like, yeah, there are all these things that happen along the way to get there. That was part of me, you know, and Shawn, like finding our skill stuff, that’s fine tuning them, but it was really this trap that, like, hit us on the head with this vision. So I think that any brand, when you’re talking with founders, you need to be clear on like, how did this idea really begin? You know, for me, it’s in Bally’s and all these other things, there’s just timing and preparation, and then having that strong intention that I want to commit myself to a greater movement in the world.

 Jessica Blotter 

Um, but you know, when once we were very clear, by the way, I took a class at UCLA that helped me get very clear on that vision, too. It was called a branding class. And it was by one of my favorite professors, Nan’s Rosen, she has a branding agency in LA. And she helped me actually get very clear on that one, on the emphasis on, you know how I was going to communicate that, and that is the heart and then everything sort of spirals out from there. So, you know, we did hire a publicist for our launch. Within a few weeks, we had a dedicated story on a kind traveler in the New York Times in print. And then a couple days after that, it was travel and leisure. And, you know, Conde Nast Traveler, and then we started with these, like, huge hits, and then it just sort of all trickled down. But I literally could not have imagined a better launch. I mean, this, those stories were pivotal to our our brand awareness to our validation, we could then you know, we only launched with 20, hotel partners and 20 charities, not, that’s not very many, but um, you know, we were able then to go out and pitch other hotels and tell this story very easily, with some great credentials behind us with a really strong story, really strong visual branding.

 Jessica Blotter 

And then we also empowered our partners, both the hotels and the charities to also tell that story. So we used a lot of cross marketing in our contracts that, you know, made it very clear that we also expected them to promote this opportunity to give back. So that was also very important.

 Lexie Smith 

Okay, so I have to give you major credit, because those big headlines being landed during launch, were to your point, a few different things, right? One, you were creating something new, you were solving a real problem, you were very clear on your DNA. These are some of the notes I was taking down your purpose, the heart of your brand, the story you were telling was clear. It was new, and it was newsworthy. So I’m not surprised to hear you landed press right, because those are the type of stories that that press wants to tell. And thank you for also mentioning the cross promotion of getting your partners involved. I think that’s a really, really powerful way of tapping into their established reach as well, when you’re someone who’s a little bit newer. The other kind of element of your business, I do want to make sure we get a chance to talk on is your blog’s zine, which I can assume what that means. But do you want to tell us what kind of traveler blogzine is?

 Jessica Blotter 

Yeah, of course. I mean, it’s just a name that we came up with that we feel like, it’s a little bit of a mix between a magazine and a blog. So coming from the magazine space. I feel like you know, when you’re in the digital world, that every blog has an opportunity to be more of a blog zine. And not just sort of a passive blog that is just, you know, meant for SEO. Like, there are those kinds of blogs. And then there’s like a magazine style blog, right and coming from that space. I felt like there was an opportunity to treat it like that and to and and to leverage it and to leverage the editorial side of it and to work with influencers and contributors to contribute meaningful stories to that. So because I come from that background I do See it more like that now I feel like it has a huge opportunity to grow even more and that and it can even be more than it is currently. But we definitely treat those stories, we go out and do all sorts of interviews, interview charity partners or hotels, different people in the community that are doing amazing things. And, you know, it’s much more than just a passive blog that’s just sort of sitting buried in the website, like this is something that we really try to bring forward and make it front and center as, and also as a way to educate. We’re very passionate about educating people about why sustainable tourism is so important, and why these charities are so meaningful to the communities that they live in. And so this helps, this is a great tool for us to do that.

 Lexie Smith 

Yeah, you know, it’s refreshing. It’s been a while since I’ve heard someone say the purpose of their blog is for anything, but really SEO to be honest. So thank you for pointing that out. And kind of the marriage, or the combination of marrying the blog, the magazine that you’ve created, you said you work with influencers and contributors. So are you guys open to accepting pitches from contributing writers? Or what’s that process look like?

 Jessica Blotter 

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we’re very much open to working with contributors. If a contributor has a story, they’d like to pitch us you can add, you know, hello, a kind traveler comm will actually work, it goes right to my email. But yeah, you know, we’re always working with different contributors, and certainly welcome them to share their stories with us. We love sharing the voice of other people. We distribute our blogs and our newsletter, which actually happens to be one of the biggest drivers of traffic to our site. We started building it years before we launched, we had a splash page up, it was like a coming soon kind of thing. We were collecting email addresses for years. And so because we got an early start, but also because we’re now five years old, we have 200,000 subscribers on our newsletter. So that’s been a really powerful tool to communicate what we’re doing onboard new partners, and share those new partners and share blog stories in our newsletter. So yeah, I just wanted to mention that it is also a very powerful tool for us that goes hand in hand with the blog.

 Lexie Smith 

Yeah. Wow. 200,000. Good on you for getting such an early start. That’s huge. What do you think was driving people? You know, you said you were at a splash page? Was it organically? People getting drawn to it? Or how are they finding that splash page?

 Jessica Blotter 

Yeah, you know, it’s so funny. Um, I feel like, you know, because we’ve been in development for so long. You know, it’s like, sometimes I feel like we acted like we were a fully launched company when we weren’t like we were, we had like booths at the travel. And why am I blanking on it? The LA travel show, the Travel and Adventure show. We had booths for two different years, like we weren’t even alive yet. And we were what our hotel partners were. And what we did actually is we would do giveaways. So we would do vacation giveaways. And we would drive a lot of signups at these events. We would be hyping up crying toddlers for literally years. And then even to this day, something that we do every single month is we do a giveaway. And our giveaways also give back $100 from one of our sponsors goes directly to the local charity. And then we seek to partner with conscious brands like in the destination that might be able to offer unique experiences beyond the hotel stage. And every giveaway will bring between two to 5 million impressions. And we will collect between 10 and usually between 10,020 1000 subscribers. When we first did it, we were getting closer to 40,000 subscribers per campaign. But that was years ago. And I think there’s so many brands doing giveaways now that the market has become a bit saturated, but it’s still a good tool for us to create new, you know, to build our community.

 Lexie Smith 

Absolutely. So what type of stories are real quick for anyone listening who wants to pitch whether they be a writer or someone in the travel space? What type of content are you most interested in? 

Jessica Blotter 

Yeah, um, you know, I just had a writer from a vegan blog that pitched a story on how to, you know, pack a sustainable beauty bag. You know when you travel and I thought that was interesting. We have a big up definitely a big focus on plant based travel and lifestyle. If there is A story that has a conscious, responsible sustainable tourism slant in a particular destination. Something that you did that was connected to the environment or the community that was focused on stewardship types of efforts on those kinds of stories are always really great. You know, a unique experience that you had, again, connected to a stewardship principle, I think those kinds of stories resonate. Um, I mean, let’s see, like we, we did a story recently just on like, women owned hotels, and that was a great story. How, I don’t know if I also had to plan a vegan trip. That was a great story. So yeah, I mean, we’re open but if you look at the blog, you can kind of get a sense of like, the type of stories that are there interviews with celebrities and or like into, you know, unique people that are creating movements. The social goods space is also very interesting. We love interviews. So those are just some ideas,

Lexie Smith 

lots of ideas. So everyone I taught back, write those down if you’re interested and do your own research, as well go click around on their blog scene and see what type of content they’re publishing. We’re gonna talk about where everyone can go in a second, but I have to ask the quintessential pitching and sipping question, which is now that we’ve talked Pichon, what can we find you sippin so what is your favorite beverage? Either non alcoholic or alcoholic?

Jessica Blotter 

Well, that’s so funny because um, Sean in a former life was a mixologist. Oh, yeah. And, and so she makes some really incredible handcrafted Margarita. So my favorite one is a pomegranate. So fresh squeezed pomegranate, with mezcal, and a little bit of simple syrup and a little bit of lime and some mashed jalapenos because I like a little spice in that. So that is like, if I could just sit out in the sunshine and read a book and sip on a pomegranate Margarita, I’d be like in heaven.

Lexie Smith 

So spicy margaritas are my favorite cocktail on this planet, something I’ve been missing. Very much so in the past seven months of this pregnancy so far, but for everyone listening, I wish you could see the setting that Jessica is sitting in right now because she has this fabulous tropical plant kind of scape wallpaper. She’s bright and sunny. And I’m just imagining you right now in Palm Springs with what I’m seeing in a margarita and you’re making me want to go on vacation.

 Jessica Blotter 

 Yes, vacation vibes.

Lexie Smith 

Vacation vibes, which are very fitting with kind travelers. So where can people go to learn more about all things kind travelers?

Jessica Blotter 

Course Yeah. So they can come over to our website and travelers can also find us on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. You can sign up for our newsletter and you can just email me directly if you have a question or want to learn more Hello, a traveler calm, like I said before it goes directly to me. So any inquiries are welcome. And yeah, I think that that would be it.

Lexie Smith 

Well include all of those in the show notes. And I just want to say congratulations. First and foremost on everything you have accomplished. Since we first crossed paths, what you’re doing is absolutely incredible. I know we barely even scratched the surface. Sometimes I feel like I need a much longer podcast. But congratulations and thank you so much for taking the time to come pitch and sip with us today.

Jessica Blotter 

Ah, thank you so much Lexie, I really appreciate your interest in what we’re doing and the opportunity to talk with you and connect with your audience and be a part of your show. So congratulations to you as well on what you’ve created. It’s quite amazing and I’m looking forward to getting involved!