Three people with travel ‘dream jobs’ explain how they scored them – CNBC

From waiting tables to living in a basement apartment, three travel hosts tell CNBC about how they got to where they are.

Here are their stories.

Job: Emmy-award winning TV host of "Samantha Brown's Places to Love"Started in: Comedy

"I went to Syracuse University for musical theater because I so desperately wanted to move to New York City and become a thespian. I wanted to do Shakespeare and be on Broadway.

That didn't pan out. I waited on tables for a good eight years. But I loved improv, and I was a part of an improv comedy troupe. So I just kept auditioning for jobs.

Samantha Brown said the best part of her job isn't "that I get to travel to all these free places it's that I get to spend time with people in their everyday lives."

Source: Samantha Brown Media Inc.

A writer recommended me to a production company that was looking for a host. But my audition for it had to be totally improvised. That's how I got the job.

When you are a travel host, there's no script. Yet it is still up to you to define the scene, to understand the trajectory of a story and how to end it. Also in improv, the golden rule is to never say no, it's always yes to keep things going.

Waiting on tables in New York City for eight years, you start to be really humbled, [but] those were the tools that I had that got me a job that I never in my wildest dreams thought I would ever have."

Job: Creator of "Strictly Dumpling" and other YouTube channels (total: about 8 million subscribers) Started in: Accounting and wedding videography

"I moved to the U.S. from China when I was 8 years old. My parents started working in restaurants, and eventually started their own very Americanized Chinese restaurant. So I grew up on a steady diet of General Tso's chicken and crab rangoon.

There wasn't a lot of diversity where I'm from, but it helped that my parents sent me back to China when I was 13. Most people get grounded and sent to their room as a punishment I got sent to China for two years. That's when I was like: Wow, it's so amazing the people, the history I want to know more.

After college, I went to New York and worked on Wall Street for a year. Then I became a wedding videographer because I wanted to be flexible. I was living in a small basement apartment in Brooklyn with no air conditioning, making about $400 on a good week.

But this was the first time I was eating something that wasn't Red Lobster and Olive Garden. I got a taste of diverse ethnic food in Chinatown, and I started to discover a lot of my heritage that I never really saw as important before.

I started recording food videos on YouTube as a food diary for myself. I remember having a conversation with a friend that food content will never amount to anything. There wasn't anybody online doing it. I had like 10 subscribers. Somehow it grew to this, which was never expected.

I never really had much money growing up or throughout most of my adulthood. So I was always looking for things that were inexpensive but also really filling and delicious. And that's pretty much what I do around the world now."

Job: Television host of "Family Travel with Colleen Kelly" Started in: Sales

"I tried out for the broadcast school at the University of Texas. The school gave you one chance to be accepted into the program. I had never sat at an anchor desk with a camera pointed at me. I failed miserably.

Several years later, I graduated and got my first job in sales, eventually moving to Chicago and working in the pharmaceutical industry. The money was amazing, and I had a company car. But I wasn't living my dream, and this started to really bother me.

In my early 30s, I got married and eventually quit my job to be a stay-at-home mom. One day, when my two little girls were in school, I went to our town hall's cable TV station and asked if, in exchange for teaching me how to edit, I could host the local entertainment show about our village something like "Access Hollywood" for our 50,000-resident town.

Because they had no other offers, they said yes. I acted confident, but I was as green as they come. I was shaking in my boots every time I did an interview and read voice-over, but I was gaining experience and knowledge.

Colleen Kelly with her family at Mirabell Gardens in Salzburg, Austria (left); and filming "Family Travel with Colleen Kelly" at Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland (right).

Source: Kelly Media Productions LLC

I confided in another mom that my dream was to host a national travel show, and, surprisingly, she agreed to produce it with me. We wrote a script, found a local camera guy for a few dollars and made a pilot.

I took meetings with two major companies both said no. I was told by one network that women don't watch travel shows, so the concept of family travel didn't appeal to them. I then sent thousands of emails to television stations. Nothing worked. Finally, my mother suggested I call the local PBS station. I googled the head of programming, called him (no emails) and got a meeting.

After more meetings, we learned PBS was picking two shows to go national, and "Family Travel with Colleen Kelly" was one of them.

We scraped by for a year, producing 13 episodes that first season. Now, the show has been on for more than 10 years. And, the best part is that I can bring my family with me.

It's been a long and arduous journey, but I hope this story inspires others to believe in themselves, ignore the naysayers, and never give up on their dream."

Editor's note: These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

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Three people with travel 'dream jobs' explain how they scored them - CNBC