Interview With Selena & Jacob From Find Us Lost

With over 168,000 followers on Instagram, this travelling duo never fail to inspire us with their beautiful photography of the most stunning places they visit. Their success as travel bloggers is in no doubt due to their passion for travelling, as well as the insanely stunning content they produce and the way they love to share their experience. 

Find Us Lost was born out of the desire to create informative, inspiring travel guides for all of the destinations in the world they stumble upon. Living the dream, we wanted to find out the best parts, the challenges and everything in between. 

We found out more from Selena and Jacob about life beyond their pictures, how passion is key in developing a blog and the dedication and hard work that goes hand in hand with their lifestyle…

“I wanted to create beautiful travel guides on our blog that people would visit both for inspiration and to plan out their travels.” Selena, Find Us Lost

Taylor Magazine: Tell us a little bit about what you do with Find Us Lost!

Find Us Lost (Selena): We left Los Angeles in 2016 – we’d been living here for about 5 years. Our initial plan was to move abroad because we were both sick of the lifestyle and wanted a change. We set a date in 2016 and started a three month road trip through Europe, ending up in Amsterdam which is where, initially, I was going to get a job.

When we were traveling, our friends and family were asking us how we were going to share our travels. They wanted to know what was going on so we started an Instagram account that just ended up growing way quicker than we could’ve ever imagined. That’s how it all started! It was more of a passion project at the beginning and just a way of sharing travel photos together. As it started getting attention, we started to see the potential and that’s how it took off. We work on Find Us Lost together, Jacob acts as the photographer/videographer and I manage our blog and Instagram.

Taylor Magazine: That’s great! And it’s such a fun thing to be able to do as well. So, what were you doing in LA before the move? What sparked the interest for the trip to Europe?

Find Us Lost (Selena): I was working as a Marketing Manager, and handled marketing campaigns for restaurant brands.

Find Us Lost (Jacob): I’d been working in film production and photography for a number of years. I also did some video and promotional work.

Taylor Magazine: Nice! So you had experience with photography and videography and things before the blog started?

Find Us Lost (Jacob): Yeah, so it was a natural thing doing it when we started up Find Us Lost.

Find Us Lost (Selena): I think that starting this as a passion project is why it worked so well because both of us were doing very different work than what we do now. I loved photography before, but it was always just a hobby of mine. I never pursued it professionally until Find Us Lost.

Taylor Magazine: What would you say is the key thing to becoming successful and feeling fulfilled when it comes to blogging?

Find Us Lost (Selena): It has to come from a place of wanting to provide information to your reader and better your audience constantly. When we left and started the Instagram, all my friends said: “Why aren’t you starting a blog? You’re gonna be traveling for three months! People wanna hear about your experiences!” And I thought I wouldn’t have time to write because I was traveling. But it was so funny because at the end of the three months, I thought, “There’s no way I’m not starting a blog!”

I wanted to create beautiful travel guides on our blog, that people would go to both for inspiration and planning their travels. When planning our own trips, I’d find beautiful blog posts online with all these great photos but no information about the place. Or I’d find a really informative blog post but the pictures would be less than inspiring. I knew I wanted to create the best of both worlds when we first started the blog.

“It can be a hard industry but at the end of the day, when somebody messages to tell me that I inspired them to take a trip they would never have gone on if it hadn’t been for my blog, it makes everything worthwhile.” – Selena, Find Us Lost

Taylor Magazine: Amazing! What would you say is your favourite thing about travel blogging specifically?

Find Us Lost (Selena): Honestly, I think it changes a lot but being able to just connect with people who are passionate about travel in the same way.

Taylor Magazine: On the other hand, what would you say is the most challenging part of running a travel blog?

Find Us Lost (Jacob): It can be really hard to shut off sometimes. I usually have a tendency to think about a lot of things and it can feel all-consuming. For me, it’s making a real effort to have time to relax and enjoy everything. That’s really important. 

Find Us Lost (Selena): That’s my mantra for 2019!

Taylor Magazine: Why do you think you became big on social media so quickly? And what do you think it was about Instagram as a platform that led to this rapid growth?

Find Us Lost (Selena): We were selective with what we were posting and we were excited about the places we were visiting. So, between Jacob’s professional background and the fact that I was always into travel and photography, it worked. Eventually, what happened during that three month trip is that I learnt so much about photography from Jacob and he taught me new things along the way.

Taylor Magazine: Who do you like to get inspiration from?

Find Us Lost (Selena): Someone I love to follow is @haylsa. And I love her for a few reasons: her page really made me want to visit Australia and we also started growing at the same time together.

Taylor Magazine: Where has been your favourite travel destination (or two) so far? There’s probably quite a few…

Find Us Lost (Selena): The place that we return to probably the most is Greece because honestly, it just gets better every time. There’s a lot of beautiful places around the world and so many countries I’d recommend people to visit for different reasons but there’s something about the Greek Islands that I fall in love with even more, every time I visit. Every island is different and unique, and every city is different.  The food is great, the people are great, the views are great. I couldn’t say a bad thing about it!

Taylor Magazine:  At Taylor Magazine, we’re all about self-care and being the best version of yourself. When you guys are traveling, it must be full on and busy at times. What do you do when you’re on the road to have some downtime and relax when you’re away?

Find Us Lost (Selena): We’re really trying to get better at not getting caught up in our work and take time for ourselves – we’ll set a night that we’re like, “Okay, we’re going out to dinner. We’re gonna come back.. .even if it’s just watching Netflix together, we’re gonna do it and we’re gonna shut off.” And when we do that, it’s exactly what we need. Our favourite thing to do more than anything is to go out for dinner and leave our phones at home – it’s the best!

Find Us Lost (Jacob): We make it our mission to go out of our way and explore other places and go off the beaten track a little bit as well, to really relax and see new things. 

Taylor Magazine: What would you say has been the most memorable part of this journey so far?

Find Us Lost (Selena): We got married last year, so I think that’s pretty memorable!

Taylor Magazine: Oh, absolutely! Congratulations!

Find Us Lost (Selena): Thanks! Jacob proposed the day after we left LA to start travelling because he was too scared to hold the ring for too long! We ended up on a road trip and got married ten feet from where he proposed to me in Hawaii, so we kind of came full circle.

Find Us Lost (Jacob): That was definitely one of the best days! 

Taylor Magazine: What country is next on your list to visit and what’s next for Find Us Lost? 

Find Us Lost (Selena): We just set up a home base in New York and we’re currently planning a trip to India. For Find Us Lost, I really want to build our blog into an online destination, where people come for inspiration on where to travel. And, I want to be able to help people learn more about photography. I just launched our own line of photography presets and tutorials so that’s probably the most exciting thing!

Follow Selena and Jacob’s adventures by checking out their blog and website where you’ll find the best travel guides and inspiration for your next trip away. Don’t forget to follow them on social too! Check out their Instagram, Youtube, Twitter and Facebook.