2025 year in review

WORDS WITH A WISEGUY #23 ...

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2025 YEAR-IN-REVIEW

It was a memorable past 12 months exploring America! Statistically speaking it was also the most successful year on the channel. Sometimes I get asked how many miles I’ve traveled or how many hotels I stayed in. Unfortunately I don’t keep track of all those details, but I did put about 30k miles on my Jeep (which I only use for YouTube travel). I probably spent about $20k on my trips and visited 32 states (plus 3 Canadian provinces).

As for the channel, here are a couple metrics to see how things compare to previous years:

Views: 2025: 6.8 million, 2024: 4.1 million, 2023: 2.7 million, 2022: 1.1 million, 2020-21: 142k.

Subscribers: 2025: 29,990, 2024: 18,753, 2023: 10,908, 2022: 7,497, 2020-21: 1,083.

Without a doubt, 2025 was the most successful year on the channel ever. I am so thankful to you for supporting this quirky idea I had almost 6 years ago. To put things into perspective, I got 142,000 views in 2020-21 combined, and that’s about how many views the channel gets in one week these days. So cool!

WINTER TRIP RECAP

Over the winter break, I spent 27 days on the road and ended up making 16 videos, several of which have already been published on the channel. I spent a couple days in Missouri before exploring across Arkansas on US 64. Then I spent 3 days finding the 10 smallest towns in Tennessee. I spent a week with family in Ohio. I spent another week exploring the 10 smallest towns in Kentucky as well as New Year’s in Johnson City TN. Then I drove back to Kansas through Missouri.

Besides the videos I’ve already released (9 of them), I still have the following remaining from the trip: 10 Smallest Towns in TN, 10 Smallest Towns in KY, The Ark Experience, Cumberland Gap TN, Small Town Downtown OH, Abraham Lincoln Historical Sites KY, and the Chanute KS Safari Museum.

TRACK SEASON HAS BEGUN

As you may know, I coach track at Wichita State University. The indoor season is now getting underway, so in the coming weeks I’ll be traveling to Manhattan KS, Lincoln NE, Topeka KS, and Birmingham AL. I have one weekend off where I plan to head to Oklahoma. So, obviously, these areas are where I’ll be getting content in January and February. I’ve been releasing videos 3 times a week, but it may be difficult to keep up that pace if I don’t have time to film that much. At the least I’ll still put out videos Thursday and Sunday as well as the weekly members only video.

APPROACHING 70K SUBSCRIBERS

We are really close to the next milestone on the channel of reaching 70,000 subscribers! Every time I hit another 10k level I do a YouTube Live. So I am planning on Monday, January 26 at 7pm Central. This will be the third YouTube Live I’ve done. The first two were a lot of fun and hundreds of people joined in on the chat. Keep an eye out and I hope to see you there!

WANT EVEN MORE CONTENT? BECOME A MEMBER TODAY!

If you’re not aware, I also have a member section of the channel, where you can get extra content every week. We have a lot of fun with these videos, and the support goes a long way in helping the channel continue to grow! If you are interested you can learn more on my website: https://www.travelwithawiseguy.com/membership

THAT’S ALL FOLKS!

Thanks for reading my ramblings!

If you enjoy my channel and want to help it grow, feel free to share videos to your friends and/or family! I also have Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter/X (Instagram is probably the best to follow, links below). Oh yeah buy some merch! (but only if you want). Info for everything can be found on my website: https://www.travelwithawiseguy.com/

Thanks for all the support and we’ll see you down a backroad!

John Wise