A 2023 life-update video by Nate and Kara Buchanan reviewing 2022 and outlining plans for 2023. They recap recent travel (India, Japan, NZ, Streamy Awards), run lighthearted 2022 superlatives (e.g., most-viewed: 72-hour desert island survival), and share channel metrics and concrete goals. Key 2022 stats announced: 52 videos posted (one/week), 16 new countries visited, +516,000 subscribers, 56,000 miles flown across 15 airlines, 37 flights, 34 airports. They describe three 2023 goals: (1) continue posting a weekly long-form YouTube video, (2) reinvest in short-form daily vlog-style shorts (aiming for daily uploads; commit to first 30 days and an aspirational 365), and (3) grow their newsletter The Daily Drop (from 0→400,000 readers in five months) with a goal of 1,000,000 readers and hiring six full-time staff to support it. The video also includes a Maldives giveaway winner announcement and a tentative 2023 travel itinerary (Norway/orcas, Arctic/never-night, Japan, Central Asia, Maldives, Nepal peak, van trip to finish U.S. states).
Questions this video answers
52 (exactly one per week).
16 new countries.
516,000 new subscribers.
56,000 miles on 15 different airlines, 37 flights, and 34 airports.
400,000 readers in five months.
Chapters
Is this a terrible idea?
Yeah. All you do is twist it. Oh, gosh.
All right, ready? No.
That was a lot more calm than I expected.
A portion of this video is sponsored by Primal Kitchen.
So last year, the first video that we filmed in 2023 was called 2022. Oh, yeah. Was called 2022 life update. And last night we went back and watched that video, and it really fun to look at how we thought the year was gonna go and how it actually went. So we've decided to make this a tradition. Let's look back at 2022. Oh, wait, before we look back at last year, should we catch people up on what we've been doing for the last six weeks?
Oh, that's a good place to start.
So the last video that you saw of ours, we were in India riding the Maharaja Express.
I feel like an Indian princess.
From there, we flew back to the US With a quick four day stop in Japan, mainly just to eat sushi.
And raw and do karaoke.
We l We rented a karaoke room and just sang to each other. Then we made it back home for Thanksgiving and celebrated with the family.
And from there we flew to LA for the Streamy Awards.
We didn't win, but it was still really fun.
We got to connect with a lot.
Of great people and we got to dress up.
Then we flew back to Nashville, celebrated an early Christmas with my family, and then flew to the other side of the world where we currently are, New Zealand.
New Zealand.
To spend Christmas with Kara's sister and her brother. No brother. And, well, I was. Oh, Kara's sister and our brother in law, who are currently living here.
And sweet baby Ann, we had such a fun week with them. It's summer here in the southern hemisphere, so it's just been warm and beautiful and the days are really long. But now we're in Auckland in a hotel. Vacation's over.
We celebrated New Year's Eve last night. Saw the fireworks from the tower. It was so weird. Celebrating New Year's, like 20 hours before the U.S. i'm kind of ready to.
Be on a more normal time zone.
We're just gonna do some quick 2022 superlatives like the ones that you used to do in high school.
I got most influential.
Did you?
I did.
I did not get an award. I was not that popular.
Our most viewed video of the year was our 72 hour desert island Survival in Panama video.
Yes. This is a huge deal. I feel like the videos that we make that I'm like, oh, YouTube's gonna.
Love this video, not even YouTube's gonna love this video, but this just is an amazing video that people.
I feel that way.
We hit upload and it's always like the worst performing video we've ever made. Then the videos that we think like, oh, this would be kind of cool. Those like blow up and we just never know what the secret formula is. But finally a video that we think is awesome was our least view video.
Least viewed video of the year.
If you have any guesses. I'm sorry, I'm still thinking about those coconuts.
And there were some toasted coconuts on a yogurt thing that we were eating the other day. And Kara literally could not eat it because she's still scarred from the coconuts.
I had to go brush my teeth. I can't do it anymore. You look like a two year old being forced to eat green bean.
She still hasn't viewed it.
Made me want to gag.
Do you know what our least viewed video of the year was?
I guess unfortunately it's unfortunate because the video is my idea.
That was like the most creative we've ever tried to get.
That won't happen again.
Our two least viewed videos of the year, the silent video. And our other. Maybe I won't do it again was football first. Football.
That one surprised me. I enjoyed doing that.
It was a great experience in real life. Like personally, maybe it's a lot worse than I think it is. Maybe we just didn't do a good job because that is an interesting video. Now to the opinion superlatives. The scariest, scariest video to film of the year. 1, 2, 3.
Alcatraz. Probably the most scared I've been in my whole life. We've done a lot of scary, challenging things, like the latter in Austria or desert island survival.
Yes.
Riding on desert island, jumping out of planes, bungee jumping. Like those are all scary things. But this is the most just like out of control environment I've ever been in. Like, I'm not a strong, confident swimmer. There were currents, there were sharks. It was freezing and I genuinely didn't know if I would make it.
You weren't gonna die unless a shark hit you video that you were most proud of.
This was hard because I'm proud of a lot of our videos. Okay. So I wrote desert island survival.
Same.
Because I feel like I'm.
We spend way too much time together.
Very proud of like how we did. But also I think the video turned out really well. Like those are two different things. Yes, I think everyone should do that. If you have the opportunity. Like, I still sometimes when I get into bed, just think about how great beds are.
It'll completely reset your gratefulness meter. What was your least favorite video to film? I think you're going to be surprised by my answer. The second video that we filmed on silent yacht was my least favorite video that we filmed.
That's what I wrote.
No, I hate trying to make something in to something that it's not. And I felt like we had already made the first week video and we were spending a second week on the yacht and it was not going to be very different. But we had already agreed to make two videos, so we had to make a second video. It felt forced.
Another huge part of that to me was we're with Ryan Louie and like, I just love hanging out with them. And it was like, oh, we have to film this video instead of hanging out. But it's kind of this weird. Like, the only reason we get to be on this yacht is because we're making a video. But also I value, you know, like, intentional conversations and having fun with my.
Friends video that you had the most fun filming.
This is so hard. I put the Baja Van Life series.
That's what I put. I thought this was gonna be fun and we were gonna have different answers and surprise each other, but we're like the same person at this point.
Sorry, I thought you were spooky.
That trip was just incredible. And it felt like the camera was just coming along with us and we were literally. We weren't doing anything for the camera. We were just documenting daily life. And then I also put skiing six mountains in six days. That video did not do great, and I don't think it was actually a great video, but the experience itself was amazing. Okay, last superlative. The most underrated video of the year.
Goes to Nate running 100 miles at the North Pole.
Oh, really? I like, kind of felt like that was a cool thing that I did, but I'm not sure the video turned out right now.
I thought it was really cool and inspiring. Thanks.
Thanks. I think the wife caring video was really underrated.
I agree.
I think people thought we were trying to make like a weird YouTubey, like.
Clickbaity, but it was actually, it's.
It's a Finnish tradition and it was an amazing experience and I thought we did a decent job capturing it. That was a really fun video. Oh, I have just a few more stats to share and then we will move on to 2023.
Last year we posted 52 videos. Exactly one a week.
That's crazy.
We visited 16 new countries, gained 516,000 new subscribers, flew 56,000 miles on 15 different airlines, 37 different flights, and went through 34 different airports.
I maybe would have told you we went to like four countries this year.
Can I have a pay break?
Drive down.
Boom.
Once again, we just spent too much time in a hotel room.
Where's my thingy?
Moving on to 2023.
We have three goals for this year and one of them, at least committing to it publicly kind of terrifies me.
Yeah.
Goal number one, post a weekly video on YouTube. As usual, that's standard. So we've been posting weekly for three years, but the videos get bigger and bigger. And now we're traveling internationally again. We had never posted these, like, weekly big, kind of like more story oriented videos traveling internationally until we started doing it in March of this year. And I feel like at the end of every year, we look at each other like this and we're like, do we have another year of this in this?
The world changes. YouTube changes. We're changing. So we just want to make sure, like, we're not just in this routine and not being intentional with our time.
Anyways, Our answer for 2023 is we still have it in us. And we're going to hustle to bring you an awesome video every week with.
The help of our team.
Yes.
Because they are getting bigger and we're still posting every week. And I can't do it all alone.
As far as what type of videos we're going to be posting every week.
We thought by the end of 2022 we would have kind of figured it out. Like our channel is about this, but we still kind of feel.
The first four years of the channel, we had this goal of going to 100 countries and that defined exactly what we were doing. And I feel like ever since we hit that goal, we've been trying to figure out what that next definition is.
And not that we have to have one, but it's honestly just kind of nice to have one. I mean, we're still having a lot of fun and still doing things that we want to do.
I mean, that's what it is. Yeah. Karen. Nate's interest. I'm not sure that this helps at all, but I think I've found five categories that all of our videos fit into.
Five is a lot.
Unique accommodations, unique or luxurious transportation. Physical challenges. Add two more. Don't worry. I've got my trusty note here. Oh, van life.
Yeah, that's a hard one. I kind of feel like we closed that chapter. But then there's always like, oh, or we could go in the van.
Yeah, I don't want to be the van life people anymore, but there's still one more thing that I want to do in the van.
And we might end up going.
And then I feel like the last vertical that just kind of like gathers everything else is unique experiences slash adventures.
So that was a long way of saying you still just have no idea what our channel is actually about. Like, travel is just the broadest thing.
I think what I said last year still holds true. I think the videos that we decide to film are based on a Venn diagram. And on one side of the Venn diagram is the things that we're passionate about. And on the other side of the diagram is things that people want to watch on YouTube. The problem is it's always changing. As those circles shift in the Venn diagram, the videos that we film change. On the physical challenge side of things, I think it's kind of like our passion. That's really why we're doing it. It's like people don't want to watch it that much, but we're passionate about it. So there's enough overlap. We're on the other side of things like these really luxurious experiences like the first class flights and the trains and that kind of stuff. It's not that we're not interested in that. If somebody has to do it, I'll happily be the one that gets on the plane and flies first class. But when we post one of those videos, it performs. The bigger that middle circle gets, the more likely we are to film the video.
Goal number two.
We'Re going back to our roots and we're very excited.
Short form content is something that, like, the pressure has just been building for the last two years. And we were like, I don't know what we like.
We make YouTube videos. Like, we don't make short videos. And I don't really know how. And we didn't really know where we fit in the shorts world. And I felt like this whole other.
Thing and then YouTube was like, we're doing shorts. And we were like, please don't work out. It felt like we had spent six years, seven years at this point figuring out how to make this long form content. And we had finally gotten decently good at it. And then it was like, figure out this other thing. But something clicked and we have come up with something that we're really excited about. The way this channel started back in 2016 was we picked up a little point shoot camera. And every day for the entire first year we traveled, we daily vlogged. It was like the camera was just following us around. We weren't going to shoot content for the video.
And obviously our videos now, now are very different. We've grown and evolved and we're never gonna be those people again. Like, we can't just be these wide eyed, clueless travelers with no idea what they're doing. But I feel like now we're kind of going back to that with our.
Shorts because I think we missed that.
Okay, so we are gonna post a daily vlog short on our channel every day.
A video every single day, less than 60 seconds that documents the entire day. You may discover that our lives are more boring than you actually think. So our goal, 365 daily videos.
No, I don't know if I can commit to365.
I know.
I'm saying every day. I don't want to set us up for failure. And this feels like a huge thing. I'm very committed to the first 30 days of 2023.
To be fair, that is exactly what we had discussed.
Sometimes I'm like overwhelmed and tired and.
I don't want to. I'm not forcing this.
So maybe one day my short will be I'm overwhelmed and tired. Bye. It'll probably be the best performing one.
We've put a lot of pressure on ourselves to figure this out for the past two years. And this morning we posted our first short on YouTube.
Ready, scared.
It's uploaded.
I don't know if anybody else really cares, but it felt like a huge deal. It's just this thing that's been hanging over my head for so long. And we finally posted one and we're going to post one tomorrow and the next day.
Maybe we should just commit to the first 30 days and say we're going to see how this goes.
Is that not exactly what I said?
So five months ago, we launched a newsletter called the Daily Drop. It was a bit of an experiment and we didn't know how it was going to go.
Spoiler alert. It's going awesomely and it's the best newsletter on the planet.
So if you haven't heard, I don't write it or if you haven't heard us talk about it. It's a daily newsletter that covers the best travel news every single day and also covers the world of travel hacking, which basically teaches you how to get trips for less. Everything we've launched outside of this YouTube channel up to this point has kind of felt like we were forcing it. Like we were like rolling a ball up a hill.
Even if we were really excited about it, it was kind of hard to.
Get other people excited where when we started this YouTube channel from almost day one, it was like we were trying to keep up with a ball that was rolling downhill. Like it was just kind of taking on a life of its own. It had momentum and we were just like, how do we keep up and make the most of it? Of this? Yeah. And the Daily Drop is the first thing that we've launched that people have just latched onto it. And once again, it feels like another ball is rolling downhill and we're trying to keep up with it.
It's so fun.
In five months, we went from zero to 400,000 readers. So our goal for 2023 is to get to a million readers and make this the best travel newsletter on the Internet.
It already is.
So to help us achieve this goal, we are hiring six full time people this year. Six everything from more writers to people who are going to be making social media content to bring the information that we're providing in the Daily Drop to other platforms. So if you or anyone you know is interested in joining the Daily Drop team, we will leave a link with all the open positions in the description below.
Greetings from the future. It is tomorrow.
We ran out of time to choose the winner of the Maldives giveaway. So as we were leaving our hotel room, I wrote down 50 names on these papers. Basically what we did was there were thousands of entries. We narrowed those down by a randomizer program on the computer to 50 people. And those 50 people's names are on these sheets of paper.
And one of them is going to win a free all expenses paid, even the flights. Six nights in an overwater bungalow in the Maldives, arguably the dreamiest place on the planet.
Now we're gonna fold all these up and put the names in this soup bowl that we bought from the lounge.
This is also kind of a spoiler alert of the night this video. We're currently in the Emirates first class lounge.
Are we folding all these right now?
Yeah.
Oh, no, I dropped one.
Okay, that's all 50 names. I'm going to mix them up. You don't look.
Are you picking?
No. You're picking. I'm picking.
Why don't you pick and put it in my hands?
No. Just so you know, we're not cheating.
Oh, please be somebody who is going to be as excited, if not more excited than I was the first time we went to the Maldives.
Are you gonna pick or what?
This is a big moment, Nate.
I'm just holding up a pillow in the middle of the lounge.
Okay, I have one. I have one.
And the winner of six nights in an overwater bungalow in the Maldives is.
I feel like I'm gonna cry.
Sean C. From Iowa. If your first name is Sean and your last name starts with a C, you should have an email in your inbox from us by the time you see this video.
If we don't hear back from you after 10 days, we have to draw a new name. So the competition may not be over yet. I can't believe it. I'm so excited.
We'll save these names and pick a new one. If Sean does not respond.
You putting those in your backpack or mine?
Back to the hotel. So last year, we sat down with the calendar and we stuck post it notes on the calendar to show our year visually. And we both thought that it would probably be a gigantic waste of time and we would look back and laugh at all the things we thought we were going to do that we didn't do. But we actually did the majority of those things. Anytime we put something on this calendar, Carrie kept saying, it's just going to be fun to keep this calendar so that when we do none of these things, we can look back on what we thought we would do at the beginning of 2020, too.
It's true. We're just as shocked as you are. We really planned the first six months of the year. Second half of the year, we had some things on there for sure. But most of it was up in the air. And we. I don't think we did anything.
The second half of the year felt very reactionary. Like it was. Like stuff was happening to us.
But I think we prefer kind of having a plan, which is weird. We've never been that way before.
So this year we're going to be a little more honest.
Yeah.
And we're going to tell you what we actually think we're going to do. Tomorrow we are taking what might be the best flight of our entire life. And I don't mean just like the best flight we've taken up to this point. But I'm not sure that it gets any better. I think it's all downhill after this. That plane is going to take us to Norway where we're getting on a boat for a week to hopefully swim with orcas. Then we're going to a place where the sun never rises. Then we're flying to Japan and doing a whole Japan series. We haven't filmed in Japan since 2016. Next is Central Asia in two different countries. That's a pick.
Go ahead, say it.
Yeah. Potentially going back to the North Pole for something very different. Then to the Maldives, then to Nepal to climb a 20,000 foot peak. I don't know if this is going.
To happen, but we can't say that because this is what we want to do. And if it happens, great. And if it doesn't happen, then it's fine.
Late summer. I think we're going to get back in the van and finish the remaining 12 states.
Oh, I didn't know that's what you.
Were going to say.
I didn't know you were going to. I told her. I said I don't know.
I was looking at this one.
Hope you're excited about 2023. We are. Thank you for listening to us ramble. Where did my little kazoo go?
Thank you for watching our videos and making our life possible. I genuinely don't know what we would be doing with our lives if we weren't here. And we're so grateful.
This is pretty much repeating what we said last year, but I still. No, no, no, I'm not. I'm saying I still feel this way just as strongly as I did last year. It's not lost on us that we get to do all these amazing things and that we get to sit in a and plan out the most epic things that we can dream of and then get to go do them. And we get to do all of that because of you. So thank you to you.
I can't believe it's 2023. It's gonna be epic.
