donovantwaddle

My education is all in communications. With a degree in public relations and another in visual communication with a multimedia emphasis, my experience evolved and took a different direction. 

In 2010, I co-founded a travel blog with a friend called 365 Twin Cities. We started with a Facebook page for a couple of weeks, then launched a corresponding blog in which we wrote about cool things to do, events, and fun places in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area in Minnesota. 

The Facebook community went viral. We launched April 1, 2010, and by May 1, our community grew to over 50,000 page likes. 

I signed my half over to my co-founder in 2015, and launched a new project in January of 2016, based on the same idea. 

That project was 365 Costa Rica. 

At first, it wasn’t intended to be a business, just a social media presence in which I shared beautiful and interesting things to do in Costa Rica, as well as places to stay, eat, and have fun adventures. 

I started a new perfumery hobby, which I intended to turn into a business around the same time. 

Founded originally as Rebel Fragrance House, my intent was to sell my creations. 

My exploration and creativity exploded during the lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, with lots of time on my hands and extra money, I built my library of perfumery supplies and had a prolific year in experimenting with scent and building a community, primarily on Instagram. 

The business was ultimately not sustainable because of the great expense of production, so I decided to put that project on the back burner and focus on building 365 Costa Rica. 

Armed with some new ideas and expanding into user generated content, 365 Costa Rica started to grow little by little after shifting my efforts to that project. 

I’m currently working on building the community, establishing a network of hotels, resorts, photographers, drone pilots, influencers, transportation services and tour companies in Costa Rica, and carefully curating travel itineraries for travelers planning Costa Rican vacations. 

I’m also working on a line of products, including tee shirts, mugs, calendars, and printable digital art, and developing an NFT strategy for my potential clients. 

I believe NFTs could be integrated into a travel company, and offered as an alternate way to incentivize travel perks like hotel upgrades or discounts. 

So I’m currently working on curating unique travel experiences to Costa Rica and integrating Web3 tech.