Jessica Nabongo (00:00):

Many people know me as the first black woman to visit every country in the world.

Ross Borden (00:05):

What’s sort of your advice to people getting started and wondering? I want to make a career out of this too.

Jessica Nabongo (00:11):

I think you really have to ask yourself what is your why? You have to pick something that you are truly passionate about in something that is authentic to you. You know, have something that happens in your life and you’re like, this is in perfect alignment with who I am. I was supposed to do this.

Ross Borden (00:29):

This is creator, the podcast for Matador Network. I’m your host, Ross Borden, and I believe creators are the future of all global advertising. So join me as I sit down with top creators to hear about how they got started, the challenges they’ve overcome, and the tips you need to become a full-time creator. We are back with another episode of Creator the podcast. Today we have very special guest, Jessica Na Bongo. Super excited to dive into your career as a creator and all the different things you have going on. Jessica, please for the audience tell us who you are, introduce yourself, and also tell us where you’re calling in from today.

Jessica Nabongo (01:10):

As you said, I’m Jessica, I bongo. Many people know me as a first black woman to visit every country in the world. I say I’m a writer, I’m a photographer, I’m a live and lover of life, and I’ve become a travel expert in recent years, and I am calling in from Detroit.

Ross Borden (01:29):

Nice. Where’s home for you, Jessica? Are you in Detroit? Is that your home base?

Jessica Nabongo (01:34):

Yeah, I live in Detroit, but I bought a flight to Jamaica, so I’m leaving in the morning.

Ross Borden (01:39):

Nice. Where are you going in Jamaica? Nri. Okay, awesome. Love Jamaica. So yeah, I’m really excited to have you on. I don’t think we’ve ever met before or worked together, but I’ve followed your content for a very long time. And obviously as you said, a lot of people know you as the first black woman to visit every single country. An incredible accomplishment. Before you crossed over 200 something countries, how did you get started? Tell us your origin story as a person, as a creator, where’d you grow up and then how’d you get started creating content?

Jessica Nabongo (02:15):

Okay. You don’t want the villain origin story anyway,

Ross Borden (02:18):

I’ll take the villain origin story too.

Jessica Nabongo (02:21):

So I’m from Detroit. I was born and raised here by my Ugandan parents. They settled here in the late 1960s permanently, I think I’ve always been a curious person. And so I started traveling with my family when I was four years old. I’m in Michigan, so Detroit, I can literally see Canada from my window, not like Sarah Palin, but I can see it legitimately from my window. And so that was the first country that I went to. And because we’re from Uganda, by the time I was six, we did our first trip to Uganda and stopped in London on the way. So growing up, my parents just took us on vacation. So whether it was Mexico, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, whatever, we sort of always we vacationed, even if it was domestic camping, road trips, whatever it was. Every summer we vacationed somewhere. I was just a thing for my parents. So I grew up in Detroit. I went to undergrad in New York. After undergrad, I moved back to Michigan and I worked for a pharmaceutical company for two years. And I was like, is this all there is? And so ultimately I quit my job, I cut my hair and I moved to Japan. And Japan was my 10th country I’d visited. I moved there when I was 23. I had never been to Asia, so that was a wild ride, just even the plane.

Ross Borden (03:43):

How did you make that decision? So you’re like, I’m quitting my job and I’m moving to Japan, just like you always wanted to go there, but you’d never been there before and you just moved?

Jessica Nabongo (03:53):

I had a friend. I mean these ideas are not thought all the way through, by the way, but I had a friend who was living in Japan and I had a bad day at work one day, and I just was like, I just Googled teaching jobs in Japan. And so I’ve always kind of been interested in Japanese culture, not like manga and everything, but more like the language, the fashion, things like that. And also linguistically, there’s some similarities to lag Gundo, which is my parents’ native language. So I’ve always had a curiosity and so interesting. I kind of looked it up and my friend was there and I was like, okay, I’m going to go to Japan. I don’t think I thought it through for that long.

Ross Borden (04:36):

Where in Japan did you settle?

Jessica Nabongo (04:38):

So I was in Kusatsu, but in Kansai, because there’s another Kusatsu, so I was like 19 minutes from Kyoto Station.

Ross Borden (04:46):

Okay, which great. So near Kyoto for those of us who have bad Japan geography. And was that the same town your friend was living in?

Jessica Nabongo (04:55):

No, my friend left the country before I got there because the company he was working for ended up shutting down, and so they all had to leave the country. It was so crazy.

Ross Borden (05:06):

You’re like, thanks for the inspiration, but I’m staying so this is my new reality. Was that hard? I feel like Japan sometimes when I’ve been there, it’s a place where it’s access is kind of tough if you don’t speak Japanese, which most people don’t. I have a really good friend who has made an entire life there and he speaks perfect Japanese and it’s so key to have him with me in any situation. But was that tough living there as a brand new expat? Never been there. And I assume you don’t speak Japanese.

Jessica Nabongo (05:38):

So I actually got Rosetta Stone before I left, which was super helpful. It did give me, obviously I didn’t understand a lot, but it gave me a sort of foundation. It was super hard because number one, Japan is so homogenous now I’m seeing their tourism numbers are off the charts, but Japan is a very homogenous country, and I wasn’t living in a big city, so I didn’t even see other foreigners. I had one coworker who was a foreigner, he’s Korean, so he could kind of blend in. And so it was just like me. So that was kind of crazy. But what I decided to do a couple months in was I decided to put my head down and study Japanese. So I ended up doing really well in passing the language exam for I think the beginner level, the second beginner level. And so yeah, by the time I left I could have conversations with taxi drivers and I could kind of engage in some higher level conversations with friends, but it was really cool.

Ross Borden (06:39):

That’s impressive. So what year was this?

Jessica Nabongo (06:42):

So that’s oh 8, 0 9.

Ross Borden (06:44):

Alright, so oh 8, 0 9, you’re living in Japan. You’ve now been to, you said 10 countries, then what happens?

Jessica Nabongo (06:50):

So then I leave and I don’t want to work, not a fan of working. And so before that I applied for grad school. So now I know I’m moving to London in the fall, so I know that. So I was like, I don’t want to work. I’ve saved money. I’m going to just travel. And so actually that’s when my blog, the Catch Me, if You Can started. So I had a blog. Apple used to have blogs, so I had a blog through Apple when I was living in Japan. And then I moved it over to, what was it, blog spot, if y’all remember that?

Ross Borden (07:29):

Yep, throwback. Yep.

Jessica Nabongo (07:30):

Yeah. So I started the Catch Me if you can blogspot.com, which became the Catch Me if you can.com, because everyone was always like, where are you? That was always the question, and this is oh nine. So that’s why I would be like, oh, you got to catch me if you can. And so that’s how that started. So I just traveled that whole summer and I did my first solo trip, which was to Costa Rica, and I went to Fiji Australia, all types of places. And so that’s where I really got that feeling of, oh, I can just travel. I can take a 30 hour journey by myself and not feel uncomfortable. So then I moved to London. When I was in London, I of course traveled a lot of Europe. I was willing to fly Ryan Air at the time. And so after that, so then I couldn’t get a job. So I graduated. My boyfriend at the time, this Italian guy got a job in Benin in West Africa, and I was like, I’m going with you. I have nothing to do. So I moved to Benin with him. And again, I didn’t think it through because my friends are like, you’re moving to Benin with this man. I was like, I don’t have anything else to do. And so I moved with him. You were

Ross Borden (08:44):

Really just going where life took you

Jessica Nabongo (08:47):

Because I’m like, awesome. You can always go home, I think. And I love my mom and the loving home that she’s created. My father passed a while ago, but I know that I can always go home. So I don’t have a fear of being out. I know I have a credit card that can afford any plane ticket to come home. So I think that’s sort of the safety net that I have.

Ross Borden (09:10):

And at what point were you, I bet I could go to every single country on earth. When did that realization or that self challenge solidify?

Jessica Nabongo (09:22):

Yeah, so after that I went back to Rome and then I moved to DC my first time living in the US in seven years. Culture shock was crazy, the reverse culture shock. And so I decided I had only been there for a year and I was like, I’m out. I had no plan. I had some savings. This was 2015, I started a travel agency. I started a luxury travel agency. And so I had been traveling, traveling and traveling. And then February, 2017, I was in Bali and I had read about Cassie Depe Cole when she first finished visiting every country in the world. And I was like, people care. I’d always said on my blog before I read about that, that I planned to go to every country and I was filling in my map every year, but I thought I would finish by the time I was 40 or 50.

(10:16):

It wasn’t like a race, I was just like, I’m consciously filling in this entire map. But then after I read about her, I was like, oh, this is interesting. Then I fell into a rabbit hole learning about country counting and all these, and it’s like a whole world I did not know about. And then I did a ton of research and no black woman had done it. There’s one black man who’s done it, SLA Maori, he’s half Polish, half Kenyan. We finally met in 2021, but he’s been to every country in the world almost three times. He’ll be the first person to do it three times, which is

Ross Borden (10:50):

Every country three different times.

Jessica Nabongo (10:53):

I’m like, I’ll never, that’s insane. I don’t even know if I’ll do it all twice.

Ross Borden (10:59):

You said there’s a whole thing about counting countries and tell us about that. I don’t know.

Jessica Nabongo (11:04):

Oh, it’s, it’s a whole nother universe that you never know existed. So now people call it publications now, call it extreme travelers. I think the community, they call themselves country counters, but there’s just a whole thing. Nomad Mania is the biggest group that tracks people and builds a community of people who are on this mission. And so once I understood that, I was like, okay, well, I’m going to be the first black woman to visit every country in the world at this point. I’d been in 60 countries and I’m going to do it by my 35th birthday, which was in two and a half years, or it was like,

Ross Borden (11:44):

Wow. So the race was definitely on then,

Jessica Nabongo (11:47):

Right? Right. But I mean, I was competing against myself. I had some girlfriends who had been to a hundred countries and I was like, do you want to go to every country? And they were like, no. And I was like, okay. But I didn’t mention it to them because they were substantially in front of me, but they were like, that’s just not a goal of mine. And I was like, okay. And so I was just kind of creeping up, creeping up, and then I went.

Ross Borden (12:10):

So was there a strategy, at least for saving money and doing it efficiently? Did you put out the world map and okay, these 60 are already checked, what’s left? How can I go to a region and do a whole bunch all at once? And how long did you spend in each one? Tell us about once you said, alright, this is the challenge, I’m going for it. What happened then?

Jessica Nabongo (12:35):

Yeah, so the thing that sucked is I’m playing a game of pickup. So 60 countries all on six continents, which is not great because for example, to get to Nauru or Kiba or tla, you have to go through Fiji. I had already been to Fiji, and Fiji is very far away, you know what I mean? So I’m like strategy, if you want to go to every country, start continent by continent in advance. So yeah, I mean definitely I grouped things and then because my un experience, my travel experience, I understood, okay, if I’m going to go to Portuguese speaking African countries, I have to go through Lisbon. If I’m going to French speaking African countries, I’m going through France and then figuring it out. The thing that’s challenging once you get down to countries that are not visited very often is it’s like you can go for 10 days or you can go for two days. And so that would kind of suck. I’m not prepared to spend 10 days in Mauritania, but after I was there for three days, I’m like, dang, I wish I had more time. Maybe not 10 days, but maybe two more days. But the flights were so far and few between. Once you get to the South Pacific, there’s not flights every day. Right.

Ross Borden (13:51):

It’s like weekly flights and stuff like that.

Jessica Nabongo (13:53):

Yeah, yeah. It’s crazy. And people are playing soccer on the tarmac. So I mean, as far as, so that was the logistics of it. I had a Google doc and it was, I had somebody who was sort of helping me figure it all out. I was using credit card points and airline miles, and so there was a lot of tracking. As far as average time, there’s not really an average. I did not spend the night in 11 countries of 1 95. So those are micro states, like San Marino, stuff like that. And then I’ve lived in five countries, including the us. I’ve been to 60 countries more than once. I’ve spent significant time in many, many places.

Ross Borden (14:38):

And tell me about, so when did you, first of all, what was the last country that you went to where you’re like, I did it, and then what happened next? What was the reaction from your audience, from the world, from the media? What was it like?

Jessica Nabongo (14:52):

Yeah, so my last country was the Sey shells. I finished on my

Ross Borden (14:57):

Dad’s party. Oh, good one to end on,

Jessica Nabongo (14:58):

Right? Oh, it was well-planned. 55 of my friends and family came. We had a huge party. My friends called it my Wedding. We had formal dinners and events, and it was incredible. As far as the media, there was a huge media blitz. BBC interviewed me in the Say shows. There was a journalist that traveled there for Outside magazine. So yeah, it was a pretty big deal. And then afterwards, I did a Ted Talk, I think a month later, which they called me when I was in Sey shell’s and asked me to do it, and I declined. And they were like, you really, really should. I was like, no, I want to rest my brain. But they convinced me to do it. So I did that and I was really more or less, I was chilling. I think in December I had a big December, we went to London, then Dakar, then Lagos, and then across. So it was like this really fun December, and I think we broke the world, all the people that were in Ghana in December, 2019, we caused the Covid pandemic. I’m pretty convinced of that. So then Covid came

Ross Borden (16:11):

Back. Wait, what do you mean?

Jessica Nabongo (16:13):

The parties were partying? It was just the

Ross Borden (16:15):

Parties were partying. Okay.

Jessica Nabongo (16:16):

It was, yeah, because Ghana, the Ghanaian president had called 2019 the year of the return. So it was basically saying to all of the people, all the people in the African diaspora come home and come home. We did. So it was so much fun. And so I remember after that January, I did GMA, and then I had been talking about a book. People had been reaching out to me to do a book, hadn’t really settled on anything. And then it was the Pandemic.

Ross Borden (16:47):

And then you did a book at some point with Nat Geo, right? Tell us about that.

Jessica Nabongo (16:51):

Yeah, so in the Pandemic, it was August, 2020, my editor at Nat Geo reached out on the Contact Us Forum. It was like, do you want to write a book for Nat Geo? I’m like, yes, email. I did. Right, exactly. And so I had talked to all the major publishers by that point, and I just hadn’t met anything that was a good fit. I never planned to write a book. That’s what you should know. I didn’t go into this journey like, oh, I’m going to have a book and a TV show. And that never even crossed my mind. I went into this, I really like travel. I’m a photographer. I’m a really great storyteller. I’m going to just do this journey and share it and do it, because it’s just something I’m curious about. How does the entire world look? What do people live like in every country in the world? So getting all of this on the backend, I didn’t realize, and okay, now since we’re talking about being a creator, I dropped the ball really. I should have taken more advantage of that journey. I could have been creating more content. I could have got partnerships and all that. I didn’t do that because my brain wasn’t in that head space. So I’ve seen how people are doing it now, and I’m like, oh yeah, they’re getting money for their journey, because I think they just looked at the journey in a different way than I did.

Ross Borden (18:23):

Yeah, I was going to ask you that actually. So before you hit 1 95 or whatever, every country in the world, I assume you got tons of offers from Nat Geo for a book, brands, this and that. But before then, between the time you were living in Japan and the time you hit every single country, how were you funding your travels? Were you doing brand deals? Were you doing any other sort of monetization at all for your journey as a creator?

Jessica Nabongo (18:54):

No, I was working, I lived abroad, so I was living abroad for seven years. So granted, I was certainly traveling, but also I was just outside of the us. And because I had jobs, which were all pretty good and very well paid, I wasn’t thinking I would blog, but it wasn’t like, oh, I need to blog every week, or, oh, I need to, social media didn’t exist until I was in Italy for over a year, or not social media, but Instagram. Instagram came out when I was living in Italy. So for me, I just didn’t think about traveling that way. Before I had Instagram, I had been to over 30 countries, so I didn’t know about monetizing the blog, stupid me.

Ross Borden (19:40):

Well, hard to do as well. It’s probably better to have a well paying job than being scrounging for advertising on your blog for years and years. So the prevalence of monetized content and creators and brands, really to your point, hadn’t even happened yet. So I think it would’ve been harder to accomplish that goal if you were trying to live off partnerships rather than just having a great job and the freedom to travel, right?

Jessica Nabongo (20:06):

Yeah, exactly. So the first trip I remember doing, I’ve only had in that journey. Now it’s different in that journey. I had one free trip. The South African Tourism Board flew me out to South Africa and Mozambique, that’s the only free plane ticket that I had in the entire journey to every country in the world. Wow, that’s

Ross Borden (20:29):

Crazy.

Jessica Nabongo (20:30):

Insane. And so here’s what I will say, and Google Pixel, there was a point where I stopped traveling. I had no more money, and someone from Google Pixel, I guess had been watching it. So they did come on board and we did a deal. So they paid me, but then obviously I had to create content for them. So that was great, but that was the only thing.

Ross Borden (20:51):

I guess I want to dive in here about the Nat Geo book a little bit. What was that experience like? They matched you with someone on their publishing team, and then you were like, this is the book I want to write, and they approved it, or tell us what it’s like to write a book for Nat Geo.

Jessica Nabongo (21:06):

Yeah, so first you have something that happens in your life and you’re like, I’m supposed to be doing this. This is in perfect alignment with who I am. I think the journey to every country in the world, certainly because I’ve never had food poisoning. I have two passports, so I only needed to apply for 17 visas out of 1 95, which is crazy. But because I have an African and a US passport, Ugandan and us, that burden was brought down for me. I have friends all over the world and a lot of countries that people say are unsafe. So I’m just like, I was supposed to do this. And so when it came to Nat Geo, they reached out to me. I did not have an agent, and they were the first publisher that wanted to help me write a book that I wanted to write, and that’s why I ended up signing with them. And it was a crazy journey. Books have a long runway. Mine had a really short runway.

Ross Borden (22:10):

How long was the runway?

Jessica Nabongo (22:12):

So from the first time I talked to my editor, which means nothing, right? You have no contract, you have nothing. From the first time I talked to her to when my manuscript was due was less than one year. To put it in perspective, I have already signed my second book deal. My book will not come out for at least two years. So just to put that in perspective, because the book came out less than two years after our initial conversation. It was on shelves, so it was rushed. It was crazy. Writing a book is not easy. I definitely have PTSD, but it’s like having a kid, once you have it in your hands, you’re like, this is so amazing. I can’t imagine my life without you. I have to. But I imagine that’s what it’s like.

Ross Borden (23:00):

What did the Nat Geo editor, what was her input when you first got started was like, we’re thinking you should write this book about this. What do you think about that? Or was it just like, we want you to be an author with us, tell us it’s all, you have a hundred percent creative control. What was the content of the book itself? Was that up to you, up to them? Was it shared creative control?

Jessica Nabongo (23:22):

Yeah. So Nat Geo has this series of books like The 100 Camping Places of a Lifetime, 100 Trips of a Lifetime, 100 Hotels of a Lifetime. So initially we sort of saw it as part of that. I guess the idea was initially my favorite 100 countries, so 100 countries of a lifetime by me, based on my experience, it kind of morphed. That kind of didn’t make sense in terms of how I was writing and how I was picking the countries I wanted to represent. So it just came to be, it was only 100 of the 1 95, but it basically just came to be these little vignettes on countries that I wanted to put in. So I picked the countries based on places where I wanted to tell a story about. Also, based on the photography I had, that was another thing. I didn’t make it a point in every country to make sure I was getting really great pictures. I wasn’t thinking about the potential. So that limited me with some countries.

(24:27):

So I wanted to, I’m like, this is an amazing opportunity. This is National Geographic. This is the canon of travel, the travel literature at the very least. So I’m like, all right. I want to tell a beautiful story about Yemen and put a picture of a beach in Yemen. I want to tell a beautiful story about the Central African Republic with gorgeous photos of people there. I wanted to take these ideas people had in their head about Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan, South Sudan, and I wanted to tell my stories and show my images to sort of offer a different take. One that didn’t feel exploitative because you’re an outsider looking in, I think particularly when it comes to imagery from the African continent. But I wanted to give a different eye because what we know is that most travel literature is written by Western white men. And so this was a unique opportunity because we just don’t see this level of content that is this varied, 100 different countries written by a person of color. I don’t even know if we’ve had that before at all.

Ross Borden (25:37):

Yeah. Oh, what an amazing project. And it was great. Did you use all of your own photos? A hundred percent. Jessica Nab bongo photos for the book.

Jessica Nabongo (25:46):

There’s one stock photo because the image, we had one stock photo, I couldn’t find the high res, and so we couldn’t use it. So there’s one stock photo in the book, but outside of that, I either took all of the images or it’s pictures of me, which was not my choice. Some of the comments are like, oh my God, there’s so many pictures of her. And I’m like, that’s thanks to Na Geo’s photo editor, not me.

Ross Borden (26:10):

I can kind of see why they would do that. They’re like, this woman’s not just writing about great places, but she literally has been to all of them. So I think it’s kind of important. And so you are also a fine art travel photographer. Your work is in Christie’s. Tell us about that. That sounds exciting.

Jessica Nabongo (26:28):

It’s crazy. So I started collecting art back in 2021, and so I met, you meet curators. People are trying to sell you art. And so I bought a piece and the curator, Shonda came to my house to bring me the piece that I purchased, and I showed her my book and she’s like, oh my God, these pictures are incredible. I was like, yeah, I took ’em. I was like, you want to see more? I have them on my computer. And so I showed her some more on my desktop, and she was like, what are you doing with this? And I was like, nothing. Should I be doing something with it? Always? For me, it was always a hobby. Again, the problem with me is I’m not constantly thinking about monetization, so I’m not the best creator. I’ve done very, very well for myself, but I’m sure I could be making more money.

(27:13):

So anyway, she just took that. And so she has an amazing program called Art Leader. So she focuses on art created by women. And so that was March, 2023, I mean, before then. But she was like, oh, we’re doing a show for Women’s History Month in New York. Do you want to put some work in? And I was like, okay, cool. Then she sent me a message and was like, oh, we’re actually moving it to Christie’s in London. I was like, what? My first time showing my art, art prestigious in Christie’s. That’s amazing. That’s insane. So I created these one-off embellished photos. So basically I would take an element from the image and put it behind the picture, and the picture was floating. So for example, there was a woman in Central African Republic who was roasting plantin. So I put Plantin chips down, and then I floated the image in front of that. And so it did great. I sold one piece at Christie’s, which was awesome.

Ross Borden (28:16):

Nat Geo book check piece sold to Christie’s check. No, I’m just kidding. That’s incredible though. So it wasn’t just photography, it’s like you did something with the photo that made it a little more artistic that made it like an art piece. Yeah’s really cool. Exactly.

Jessica Nabongo (28:33):

Yeah.

Ross Borden (28:33):

Amazing.

Jessica Nabongo (28:34):

I’ll send you pictures later.

Ross Borden (28:36):

That’d be great.

Jessica Nabongo (28:37):

We can insert them because y’all can

Ross Borden (28:38):

Edit. Yeah, we’ll insert them. Send, well, this is all going to be on YouTube and all the socials, so we’ll check it out. I can’t wait to see it. Awesome. And then tell me about, I know you didn’t do brands for a long time, but are you doing brands now? I think I saw you in a Cadillac Post or the Four Seasons. Tell us about some of your favorite brand partnerships that you’ve done recently.

Jessica Nabongo (29:00):

Yeah, I’ve done a ton of brand partnerships, now, favorites. I would definitely say Four Seasons. We’ve done so much stuff together. It’s been really amazing. Cadillac for sure. Also, Lynn Blad, I went to Antarctica with them this year. I did a really dope travel series with WhatsApp, so that was a full YouTube series, which was really incredible because we were basically looking at these sport groups in different cities. So in Boston, we were looking at the Ugandan community in London, the Nigerian and Indian communities. In Berlin, it was the Turkish, and then in Sao Paulo, the Japanese community, it was called Crossing Cultures. That was super dope. I’m trying to think, who else did I look? Expedia, oh my God, I just did a six month travel series with Expedia, giving my recommendations every month. So yeah, I’ve been really lucky, largely because I don’t pitch. Whenever I pitch, I don’t get anything from it. I pitch tourism boards and they won’t even give me a free trip. So I’m like, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. If there’s other creators that want to help me, that

Ross Borden (30:12):

Is shocking to me because there’s a lot of tourism boards I feel like would really value someone who’s been everywhere, who’s a great photographer, who’s a great storyteller. So maybe Matador, you and Matador need to work together. We work with about 350 DMO and tourism boards. And so yeah, that’s shocking to me. But you’re saying the best ones find you In terms of the brand partnerships, those are mostly inbounds.

Jessica Nabongo (30:39):

I would say. If you look at my life, my life is 99.9% inbound, and I’m so grateful because I’ve just been able to do so many incredible things. I mean, I’ve spoken in the Mal deves, I did a keynote and then I was on a panel with their minister of environment. I spoke at, I was hosting a conference in the south of France and Marse, I got to introduce his Serene Highness, prince Albert. I’ve spoken in Peru. So my work has taken me all around the world and thank God, because people have found me. I’ve done media in a lot of different countries as well, which has been really helpful. And so everything has come into me, which is great because again, I think it’s about alignment. I say no a lot as well. I’m very grateful that I can say no as much as I do. But for me, the name of the game is, someone said to me, why look for 100 pennies when you can find four quarters? And so that’s me. I’m like, I just want four quarters. I don’t need a hundred pennies. And that’s sort of

Ross Borden (31:45):

Fewer, bigger, better. Yep, it’s good.

Jessica Nabongo (31:46):

Exactly. When it comes to work, being a creator, being an entrepreneur at all, it can take over your entire life. And so for me, I’d rather have a little less money and more free time than counting my pennies.

Ross Borden (32:02):

So that brings up another question. I mean, you’re like a quadruple threat. You have all these have brand deals, you have the store, which now it sounds like you’re winding down. You have the books, and I want to hear about your second book. What has been the most lucrative? Where are you putting most of your time as a creator, and especially in this career as a creator, and what’s sort of your advice to people getting started and wondering, like, alright, I love travel too. I want to make a career out of this. So I guess two part question. One, your personal experience and where you’re focusing most of your time going forward. And then what’s your advice to new creators who are just starting their progression?

Jessica Nabongo (32:48):

I love that. So for me, most lucrative is for sure brand deals, but also am hourly rate. Speaking engagements are really, really good because it’s like you just have to show up and do the thing. I don’t have to post about it. I just have to be there. So I love speaking engagements, and that’s also a significant portion of my income. The book, obviously you do make good money upfront, but unless you’re selling a million books, it’s not as lucrative as people think. However, the impact. So Detroit Public Schools is using my book as a sixth grade textbook this year. So 4,000 students are going to read that book. People, these kids, most of whom have never been out of the country, their parents have never been out of the country. So that impact to me is super valuable. I don’t care about the money, it’s just mind blowing to me. But yeah, I would say those are the biggest buckets for sure.

Ross Borden (33:50):

Cool. And what do you think, Jessica, for, what’s your advice for newer creators who are just getting started, who are like, I want to do what she did. Not necessarily go to every country on earth, but make this your career. What’s your advice for creators in terms of monetizing travel and making it their full-time gig?

Jessica Nabongo (34:13):

So you know what my first thing is? What is your why? I think we are in a world of copycat, and I want to do this. It looks like it’s great, it looks like it’s fun. I think you really have to ask yourself what is your why? I think that you have to pick something that you are truly passionate about and something that is authentic to you. Because when it comes to longevity, longevity is based on consistency. If you’re doing something because you saw someone else do it and you’re not actually passionate about it, you won’t be able to keep going. People are like, you still travel? Or, oh my God, this year I took 79 flights. I’m like, that’s a light year. People are like, I can’t believe you still travel like that. You don’t get tired. I’m like, I was built for this and I’ve also always been doing it.

(34:58):

You know what I mean? So I’m never going to get burnt out. I might get burnt out from posting, but I’m never going to not travel. That’s just part of who I am. So I think it’s really important. Authenticity, I think is being overused now, but it really is the key to consistency and longevity. And I think beyond that, it’s important to of course, know your worth. I think people are abusing that, but I do think it’s important to, if a billion dollar company asks you to do something for free, you might want to say no. So they stopped doing that, which is something I still deal with. And I think it’s just really important to find brands that align with your brand and don’t think you have to be pigeonholed into one thing. Everyone is like, I do travel, I do travel. And I’m like, yeah, I also have a face. I love skincare. I love clothes, I love, there’s other parts of me. I used to work for the un. I love global affairs. So I think that you don’t have to think that you must do a single thing. You can evolve, you can pivot, you can do multiple things at once. I’m pivoting into the food space. I think the biggest thing about creating is, again, authenticity, passion, and just, you got to be ready to take a chance on yourself. You’re going to get a lot of nos, and you got to be your own cheerleader.

Ross Borden (36:30):

Awesome. And what about the new book? Tell us about that, if you can share.

Jessica Nabongo (36:33):

So the new book is called Catch Me in the Kitchen, and it’s a cookbook. And so it originally started as my 50 favorite recipes. It has now morphed into one recipe from every country in the world. And

Ross Borden (36:49):

Wow, this would Nat Geo, I assume as well.

Jessica Nabongo (36:53):

This is with Nat Geo, catch Me in the Kitchen. It’s like a good idea. But now I’m like, it’s a lot of work. It’s

Ross Borden (37:02):

A lot of work.

Jessica Nabongo (37:04):

But what I love about it is it was actually their idea, to be fair. But I love the anthropological part of it as far as food history and arguments. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Joof Wars. Different people think they own falafel or K Nefa, and so there’s all of these tensions who owns what. It’s super fascinating and what can be considered American food, what can be considered British food? So I think beyond being an amazing cookbook, I think in the press run I’ll do, I really think that it will challenge people’s ideas. It will make some people mad. But I think there’s a lot of conversations to be had about this identity around food and how in a globalized world, those identities tend to shift.

Ross Borden (37:52):

Any quick examples that would surprise people about the origin of a famous kind of food?

Jessica Nabongo (37:59):

So for the uk, my recipe is chicken tikka masala. So I stress it’s a British recipe. It is not English or Welsh. It’s a British recipe because immigrants from South Asia developed it in Scotland, I think in the 1960s. So some people might get to that and they’re like, where are the bangers in mash and the mushy peas or the Sunday roast? And it’s like, well, the Indian influence on the entire British kingdom or empire, British empire can’t be understated. But there’s a lot of people from South Asia that live in Britain that are absolutely a part of the fabric of the country. And so that’s why I chose that. And I just loved, when I lived in London for a year, I mostly ate Indian food.

Ross Borden (38:43):

Yeah, amazing Indian food in London. So you said that’s coming out in two years or when? 2026.

Jessica Nabongo (38:50):

All 2026. All

Ross Borden (38:52):

Right. Well congrats. It’s very exciting. Alright, we’re about to wrap up. I have one question I ask everyone, Jessica, and I imagine it’s going to be very tough for you if your passport only worked in three countries in the whole world and you had to choose those three countries to live in and you could go nowhere else. And yes, you do include the United States in this list. If that’s on your list, what are the three countries?

Jessica Nabongo (39:19):

This is so difficult. Damn, I feel like you should do six because then you can get one country for each content.

Ross Borden (39:30):

Six wouldn’t be that hard. I mean, you really need to, and everyone struggles with this and it’s like the more people have traveled, I’ve been about 60, 65 countries and it’s hard for me. I would imagine definitely twice as hard for you. Okay,

Jessica Nabongo (39:45):

I’m going to say three. I feel like if you asked me tomorrow or in one hour, it could be different, but this is what I’m going to go with. I was, okay, so I’m going to say the us I’m going to say Italy and my goodness, my family will disown me. I would say Kenya.

Ross Borden (40:06):

Kenya over Uganda.

Jessica Nabongo (40:08):

Right? I’m getting disowned on the coast. Uganda’s landline.

Ross Borden (40:12):

Yeah. I saw one of your things in your store was called Lamu. I had an magical time in Lamu,

Jessica Nabongo (40:20):

Amazing place. I was there again and I went back in January. I hadn’t been since 2016. I was there January, 2024. Still as magical. There’s not a ton of tourists and I’m like, maybe we should stop talking about it now. But just such a energetically beautiful place.

Ross Borden (40:38):

Yeah. Kfi, Mombasa, I mean, yeah, the whole Kenya coast is very solid.

Jessica Nabongo (40:43):

You see, that’s

Ross Borden (40:44):

Solid Kenya. Kenya’s definitely top for me as well. Amazing country.

Jessica Nabongo (40:50):

Yeah.

Ross Borden (40:51):

Awesome. Well, Jessica, thank you so much for joining us. Great to have you. Congrats on all your success. The Christie sale, the Nat Geo Books, the brand partnerships, your amazing channels. And by the way, tell people where they can follow you across different platforms.

Jessica Nabongo (41:09):

So you can find me on threads, which is my new favorite thing to play on, and Instagram, Jessica niv, bongo. And then I’m on YouTube to catch me if you can. There’s not much, but bear with me one day. There’ll be stuff there. Yeah. But you can find me the catch me if you can everywhere.

Ross Borden (41:26):

Cool. Thanks for joining. Thank you. Creator. The is produced by Matador Network. We are a leading global travel publisher focused on travel and adventure. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please subscribe. Every week I interview a new top creator. New episodes are released every Tuesday on YouTube, apple Podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere podcasts are found. Thanks for listening.