A couple days ago, this TravelPod post reminded me of something …
A few months back, I sat quietly pondering all the potential ways – illicit and otherwise – to fund a lifetime of travel. The key was to be creative, to truly think outside the box backpack. Not getting a second job; not selling drugs lollipops to school children (again); and certainly not begging for my first job back at the WalMart shoe department (again).
Then it came to me. Not with a saintly vision or any hark (or is it harp?) angels singing, but rather as a big bright eco-friendly light bulb over my head. I got it: corporate sponsorship. Like Globe Roamer TV meets MillionDollarHomepage.com meets a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book.
Huh? I can hear the venture capitalists among my readership scrambling now: tell me more!
Imagine this: you set up a simple website where companies, people, whomever, can bid on (a) where you’re going next, (b) what stupid trick you’ll do when you get there and (3) how specifically you’ll promote the bidder’s product or company. Highest bidder gets to choose, perhaps from various places and stunts that you select. Or if you’re feeling particularly foolhardy, you could give them free reign. Maybe you skydive naked holding a giant flag for Trojan condoms with some tagline about safety worked cleverly into the bit. Or you dress up like a bear and run with the bulls in Pamplona advertising ETrade in someway (that’s a stock market joke by the way and a mighty clever one if I say so myself).
It was a fleeting concept – one that I quickly jotted down and rehashed in my mind for hours trying to work out the kinks. As I’m wont to do, I eventually figured out all of the ways that it wouldn’t work and quietly brushed it under the rug of forgotten entrepreneurial ideas that will never indefinitely fund my travel dreams. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of dust under that rug.
I realized it wasn’t for me because I’m not someone who enjoys being the center of attention. I can put semi-coherent sentences together on paper. I can make a witty, sarcastic retort with friends. And I can whip up a fantastic (I mean hold on to your drawers!) frozen peanut butter pie. But host my own online travel show? For like a year? Not happening. And do wild and crazy stunts for little to no profit, like swim with piranha or BASE jump off the Eiffel Tower in a GoldenPalace.com speedo? Very not happenin’.
So why bring it up again? Because I think it’d be a phenomenal idea for someone else. And I’d love to read about it and live vicariously through that certain someone.
Never mind how you couldn’t possibly plan a less fulfilling trip with a gun to your head. Or that, in essence, you’d be selling your entire dictated journey to corporate America. Purely from a business standpoint, what do you think? Am I nuts? Could this be the next great internet/travel “thing”? Stride gum is paying Matt (of Where the Hell Is … Matt? fame) to travel ’round the world and dance like … well to dance like me after a few mojitos if I’m being honest. So I have to imagine that there are enough companies out there who’d be chompin’ at the bit to jump on board with this.
Anyone with me? I’ll gladly accept beer royalties if you rip my idea.