Shaun Takes America: The Origin Story

How this Scottish guy fell in love with America

I know what you’re thinking. Why is this Scottish guy writing about America? 

Some readers may even wonder if I’m butting my nose in where it doesn’t belong. 

Please allow me assure you: my curiosity and writings come from a place of love, deep respect and an eagerness to learn and share my experiences of your great country.

In this, my inaugural post on Shaun Takes America, I want to tell you the curious backstory of how and why it came to be.

Let me begin with some advice for any budding content creators, storytellers or journalists out there: if the Embassy of a country like the United States of America gets in touch with you, pay attention and reply. I almost didn’t, and that would have been a tremendous loss of opportunity. 

Indeed, in my case, the story leads to a life-changing adventure, taking me to this point in my journey at the launch of this very newsletter, bringing you and I together here on these pages.

Have you ever had one of those ‘life reset’ moments? The kind where you take a seemingly foolish risk and start again? I’ve had several of them.

The one on question was in early 2017.

I’d recently quit my stable, well-paid job as a corporate writer and editor at a multinational bank to launch my career as an online content creator through my own personal brand. While I had been creating content for the bank, building my own audience was the only thing I could think about, day and night, so I decided to give it a go full time and do some travelling I’d been wanting to do.

I’d started to build a small community over on YouTube, and it was exiting. Making videos about my life was my new passion and, even if it wasn’t bringing any money, it was a new way for me to tell stories in a way that pushed me out of my comfort zone.

Days after leaving the office for the last time, my wife and I had some friends staying with us from Brazil. We decided to go with them to London - showing them the sites in the UK’s capital city seemed like a great way to forget about my scary life choice for a few days.

While we lived in Edinburgh, we travelled to London regularly as we both love the city and took any opportunity to go there, whether for work or pleasure.

I’ll never forget the moment. We were just off Oxford Street, taking a break from the shops, drinking coffee at Starbucks, I checked my phone and had a freaky-weird direct message from a blue-ticked verified account.

I did that thing where I pushed the phone away at arms length, squinting at it in disbelief, as if I was having trouble seeing.

It was from the US Embassy to London, seemingly. But it couldn’t really be the US Embassy, right? I mean, whatever they wanted me for surely couldn’t be a good reason. Perhaps I’d insulted the newly elected US Government in tweets or something.

More probably, I thought, was that this was just some BS political propaganda. So I ignored the message.

Later that night, we all went out to a bar and got drunk. A few beers in, I vaguely remember opening the message.

“Hi Shaun, it’s [redacted identity] from the US Embassy in London. We’d like to have a chat with you about something. Could we have your number?”

Wait, what? Maybe it’s not propaganda, I thought.

In those early days of my career, few companies of any size would ever pay attention to me or my social media ramblings. I had to really hustle to get even my local barber shop to engage with a picture I’d posted after a hair cut with them, for example, so for a department of the US government to be contacting me seemed bizarre.

I obliged.

The next morning, to my surprise, a Scottish-sounding lady called, claiming to be from the Embassy’s press office. She wanted to meet me in a cafe - in Soho of all places - with a diplomatic colleague. That very day.

Again, I played along.

My wife and our friends were as dumbfounded as I was at this point.

Intuition has always been my friend. Whenever I’ve made big life choices or taken risks, good things have happened. This, it seemed, could potentially one of those times.

And so, I went along to the Soho cafe to meet the US Embassy’s PR person and diplomatic colleague. They were lovely: she, indeed Scottish, and he, the exact picture you have in your head of an American diplomat: suited, well presented and intriguing in his ambiguity - exactly how I imagine a spy might look and behave. It all seemed pretty weird, if I’m honest.

Nonetheless, they had an offer for me that blew my tiny mind.

They had identified a small group of British content creators, including indy journalists, YouTubers and Instagram influencers, to go on a diplomatic mission of sorts. It was to be an all-expenses-paid exchange trip they were calling ‘Exploring American Values’.

The premise would be that they’d take this small group of British storytellers to various locations in America over a two-week period, give us incredible access to government, charities, businesses and other influential people so that would learn about America and talk about it to our followers.

It sounded incredible, though I was still shocked that they wanted me. After all, I only had maybe a dozen of so thousand followers on YouTube at the time. 

They informed me if need to get a special diplomatic visa for the trip, and that I’d receive this in a few weeks time at the US Embassy itself, where I’d also receive my briefing and meet my new diplomatic / influencer colleague.

This was wild. 

While the information made me trust that it was all legit, I began to think they were conducting some kind of elaborate social experiment, or perhaps a reality TV show, and I’d somehow be a part of it.

Nonetheless, I went with the flow, following my intuition hoping that it wasn’t indeed some kind of set up.

I turned up at the US Embassy in London’s Mayfair at the allotted time. 

Today, the US Embassy is a modern building in Vauxhall on the South of the Thames, but the previous US Embassy at Grosvenor Square was notorious for being one of the most intimidating and secure buildings in all of London. 

I arrived at reception, having gone through an all-body metal detector, and was then picked up by the Scottish PR lady from the coffee house. She whisked me away through the guts of the building and into an obscure meeting room, in what seemed like the basement.

I was one of the first to arrive. I had a welcome pack on the desk in front of me with my name on it, and there was a projector on the whiteboard including the US State department logo with the headline: ‘Exploring American Values’.

Over the course of around 20 minutes, the 8 other content creators arrived. As it turns out, they were just as bemused by the whole thing as I was. Collectively, we agreed this must be some kind of social experiment.

But over the next hour, the US diplomats took us through a presentation, explained everything we’d be up to and then took us to get our visas stamped in the place where they do that in the embassy.

By the way, you can also watch the YouTube vlog of the event I’m describing as well:

This thing appeared to be real and was happening. In fact, the departure dates and flights were in just two weeks time.

The schedule was incredible and I was literally like a kid at Christmas. I’d never stepped foot inside the US before, other than in the London embassy, but always felt pretty close to America, and would one day visit in any case.

We were given our final instructions for departure and sent on our way, back onto the streets of London.

I got together with two of the other Scottish people on the trip at the nearest bar. One was Kate, a video creator from Glasgow, and the other was John Loughton from my hometown in Edinburgh. I knew of both of them, though we’d never met. Kate was active in the same social media scene as I, while John had won reality TV series Big Brother a few years prior.

The Scottish contingent on Exploring American Values.

As it happens, John is now one of my best friends. I’m skipping quite a lot of this story, and indeed, I will not be recounting the absolutely incredible things that happened during the Exploring American Values tour in this post as I want to serialise the experience over multiple articles.

Safe to say, it was life changing. And it’s also the origin story of how I fell in love with America.

Fast forward to the present time, because of that trip, I have been fortunate enough to have travelled all over the USA. There are a great many places I still need to go, admittedly (whole sections of the country, in fact), but I have seen a lot. More importantly, I have built a large audience of amazing community members from all over the states.

Through my experiences of communicating with this audience - probably many of you reading - I have made some great friends and have many places I can actually stay when I travel around the country.

I also receive letters and parcels on a weekly basis from people who watch my content from all over the US. I’ve had parcels from Arizona, Washington, Boston, Atlanta, Louisiana, Detroit, Chicago, Alaska, and literally everywhere in between. I realise I’m mixing states and cities in this list, but these are just a small selection of the many places I’ve received parcels, off the top of my head.

People have sent me such kind messages talking about their experiences of connecting with me through my content and community. It is truly one of the most humbling things that’s ever happened to me.

These letters I receive are, in a way, love letters. I fall in love with the people who send them to me too, along with their story, their families and the city or state in which they live. I learn a lot from them, and dream of one day being able to visit them.

In a way, this newsletter and the posts that I will shared through it are my way of returning my very own love letters to America. In that sense, i’ll aim to post at least once a week for all subscribers, and 2-3 times a week for community members.

I can’t wait to get started and return to the US to travel and experience more. I am deeply passionate about this, and I want to let you know how much my experiences of communicating with American audience members like you has given me a positive outlook on the world.

Until my next post,

Shaun