Travel Influencer Reveals How His ‘Dream’ Job Turned Into a Nightmare (Exclusive)

Exploring the world was always the goal for Jaro, a 26-year-old with wanderlust who was raised on Hawaii’s island of O’ahu since he was five years old — that is, until his lifelong dream became his reality.

Today, Jaro — who simply goes by “Travel With Jaro” on Instagram and TikTok — has successfully evolved his vision of adventure and spontaneous exploration into a full-time career as a content creator, boasting 2.5M followers across both platforms to date.

Upon first glance at his social media grids, online viewers are almost guaranteed to be overcome with FOMO (short for “fear of missing out”) due to his dream sequence-like videos and picture-perfect photos, which onlookers might even question if they’re AI-generated (they’re not).

In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, Jaro opens up about building a life he’d always dreamt about, and the unexpected reason why it wasn’t what he thought it would be.

Jaro, who was born in the Czech Republic before relocating to the Aloha State, was basically raised by Mother Nature. Having lived there until he was 21, the island shaped him (and taught him many lessons, English being one of them).

“That was really the place where I found myself from a very young age,” he tells PEOPLE exclusively of his upbringing on the small pocket of land situated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Jaro shared, “Waking up in the ocean every single morning, going out and running around barefoot, hiking barefoot in the mountains with my best friends, going cliff jumping… It was always outdoorsy things, this passion for life and adventure growing up there.”

But for an island that can take a driver approximately one hour to get from one side to the other, he felt “boxed in,” especially having come from Europe at a young age. Ultimately, the wide-eyed free spirit sought more.

At age 19, an eventual “itch to travel” entered Jaro’s soul, and romance entered his heart.

“I ended up falling in love with this girl,” he says of his Vancouver-based love interest at the time, noting that they did “long distance” for about three months until they decided to take a road trip together from Oregon to Utah.

“It was [really] transformative for me because this was one of the first times that I made it outside of this state,” he shares, adding, “For the first time in my life, during this road trip, I really got to see how much bigger this world really is.”

Fast forward a few years, Jaro completed two years of community college in Hawaii before realizing he wanted to pursue his “passion for travel” seriously. He moved to Oregon, and they went to a Christian university together, but after some time, he dropped out.

Jaro moved to Vancouver with his then-girlfriend, but felt held back — so he did what was best for himself and the “abstract dream” he had in mind for his future.

“Every time I would talk about my dreams of traveling and hitchhiking across countries and doing something that was a bit wild, living on boats, living on sailboats, none of that was accepted by the people that I was around and my partner at the time,” he shares.

After five months in Canada, Jaro listened to his gut and ended their relationship. Despite their romance coming to an end, the adventure seeker’s exhilarating life — filled with twists, turns and a fair share of couch surfing — had only just begun.

“It’s not like I had loads of funds coming in at this point, but I had a car and I had all of my university things — so I drove all the way to California,” he explains. “My friend told me I could crash on his floor for a couple months until I figured out what I wanted to do with my life basically.”

Jaro, then 21 years old, wound up staying with his friend until he sold his car for approximately $7K or $8K, which was enough for him to pack up and head out to further pursue his dream of “creating travel content” and “getting paid to travel the world.”

“I have this tattoo on my arm. It’s ‘November 7th, 2019,’ which was when I decided to drop out of university and pursue this passion and leave everything behind,” he tells PEOPLE, looking back.

The first place Jaro went? New Zealand, his first solo trip in February 2020 (and notoriously, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic). At the time, he had just $8K in his bank account and was making around $700 a month doing remote marketing work for his mom’s massage therapy clinic.

“I was living in hostels and I hitchhiked around the entire country, but I didn’t have any real plan,” he admits. “Transport was too expensive. So, I would meet new people in a hostel every single day, and sometimes, we’d go hitchhiking together — or then, I would go off and hitchhike on my own.”

Jaro pushed himself further in an attempt to achieve his dreams and gave himself an ultimatum.

“When I sold that car and left California and left my friend’s house and went to New Zealand, I told myself that I wasn’t going to come back home until travel content and content creation was my full-time job,” he says.

Ultimately, it took Jaro “about two years” until he allowed himself to go back home and see his family, thanks to a “turning point” opportunity to travel from New Zealand to Fiji on a sailboat with a few friends he met, or rather, a mecca for content creation gold.

“I really used that as an opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and be able to document a real story out of it,” he shares. “About eight months after that day, I made it to Bali. Within two or three months of being here, I really, really zoned in on what I was doing.”

“And within that two-month period, I landed on my first viral video on TikTok,” he continues, “And that was a video that hit 23 million views and took me from 150 to 650,000 followers within a single week.”

Now, Jaro’s job has transformed into “sharing unique travel experiences and opportunities” with his viewers, he explains. “I love the really grungy type of travel that pushes you outside of your comfort zone.”

For example, one scroll on Jaro’s social media platforms and you’ll see him jumping out of planes from beautiful locations, mountain climbing in Nepal, diving with sharks in the French Polynesia and bungee jumping off cliffs in Bali, among other exotic — and at times, knee-weakening — experiences.

“Now, what I get paid for is mainly working with the travel brands,” he explains, citing collaborations with major companies like Apple or Meta. “It’s not just within the travel space, but sharing more life experiences.”

Then, after five years of creating content full-time, the unforeseen wild card factor hit him: it “ruined” his life.

“It can really disconnect you from what’s happening in the present moment,” he tells PEOPLE transparently. “I was constantly telling myself to create or try to be perfect for a camera or to create this certain moment that wasn’t really real.”

He adds, “I felt this very strong disconnect from the moment rather than having the camera be a part of the moment.”

Jaro credits one quote that “changed” his entire life: “Document it, don’t create.”

“When you have this constant urge to have to pick up your camera and take a video of something just to get paid, there’s a bit of your freedom that’s taken away… and a bit of your heart,” he admits.

“It takes away from the reason why you really started this in the first place,” he continues, “Which was to experience more.”

Since that switch of mindset and newfound perspective, Jaro’s flying high — both literally and metaphorically — having traveled to 35 countries since his self-started career took off, creating content for his millions of followers across his social media platforms.

“Miley Cyrus’ mom follows me on Instagram!” he points out with a laugh.

As for the best part of his job?

“The impact that you are able to create… Social media has the impact to literally change people’s lives,” says Jaro, just as it’s changed his.