The Creator Passport Review: Was TCP Worth It for Us?

The question we get asked more than almost anything else is how we grew Templeton Travels.

For years, we thought we could figure it all out ourselves. And honestly, we probably could have. We had already been creating content for years, researching everything we could, testing different strategies and learning as we went.

But eventually we realized there was no prize for taking the longest possible route.

We didn’t need someone to magically grow our account for us. We wanted to learn from people who had already built the kind of creator business we were trying to build, stop guessing at what worked and get there faster.

So in July 2025, we joined The Creator Passport.

Looking back, we wish we’d joined sooner.

TCP didn’t just change how we created content. It changed how we thought about Templeton Travels as a brand and a business, how we worked together, how we approached growth and how we made money from what we were building.

So if you’re wondering what The Creator Passport actually is, whether it’s worth the investment and what it can realistically do for your creator business, here’s what our experience looked like.

Quick disclosure: we are affiliates for The Creator Passport, so the links in this post are affiliate links. We paid for the program ourselves in 2025, long before we ever signed up to promote it. Our full affiliate disclosure is here.

What The Creator Passport actually is

The Creator Passport, usually shortened to TCP, is a coaching program for content creators. It is run by Giselle and Stephen, the couple behind The Lovers Passport, who built their own travel account into a full time business.

The program covers all aspects of being a content creator. Finding your niche and building a brand around it. Growing an audience and making content people actually stop for. Then the business side: brand deals, UGC work, pricing, contracts, and the other income streams that come out of a creator business once the foundation is there. You apply and adapt the frameworks to whichever platforms you are on and your style.

The best part of TCP is that it is not a course you buy and then watch alone. Each cohort runs as a group. There are live coaching calls, office hours where you bring your own roadblocks, co-working sessions, guest experts, and a student community where other creators look at your work and tell you what is not landing. Behind all of that sits a library of lessons and templates: media kit templates, contract checklists, pitch frameworks, hook ideas, licensing, and usage guides.

For us, the live coaching and feedback were what made TCP so valuable. There is endless free advice about content creation online, and trust us, we had consumed plenty of it. But there is a huge difference between hearing general advice and having experienced creators look at YOUR account, YOUR content and YOUR goals and help you figure out what to change.

That was exactly what we wanted. We weren’t looking for someone to build Templeton Travels for us. We wanted to learn how to build it better and faster ourselves.

If you’re considering TCP 6.0, join the VIP waitlist

Before we get into what TCP did for us, here is the one practical thing worth doing right now. If you’re thinking TCP might be right for you, join the TCP 6.0 VIP waitlist.

It’s completely free, and you don’t have to commit to joining TCP in January.

There is no downside to getting on the list now. You’ll get free TCP resources, early access when enrollment opens and plenty of time to decide whether TCP 6.0 is right for you.

And if you do decide to join in January, maybe you’ll be smarter than we were and won’t spend years insisting you can figure everything out yourself first.

Where we started and where we are now

We joined TCP in July 2025 with about 18k followers on Instagram and graduated in November at around 28k. At the time, adding 10k followers felt HUGE.

We had no idea what was coming next.

In January 2026, we booked a one-on-one coaching session with the TCP coaches to look at what we had been doing since graduating. They suggested a handful of changes to how we were opening our videos, how we were relating our content back to our audience and which content pillars we should lean into.

None of the changes felt earth-shattering on their own. But we implemented them, kept testing what we had learned through TCP and started seeing the pieces come together.

By September 2026, Templeton Travels had grown to more than 140k followers on Instagram.

We would never tell you TCP magically handed us 100k+ new followers. We made the content, tested a LOT of things, posted consistently and put in the work. But TCP gave us the strategy and foundation that helped us understand what was working, what wasn’t and what to do next instead of throwing content at the wall and hoping something stuck.

And the change wasn’t just followers. We hit our creator income goals in 2025, are on track to do it again in 2026, have landed paid brand partnerships and built multiple income streams around Templeton Travels.

That is probably the biggest difference between where we were before TCP and where we are now. We didn’t just want a bigger Instagram account. We wanted to build a creator business.

TCP helped us learn how to do that.

What actually changed for us

We started running it as a business, with both of us in it

Becca had always run the account. Drew was in the content but not in the operations. TCP made the case that a creator account is a business with a back office, and that the two of us should split it.

That shift completely changed how we worked together. Instead of Becca trying to carry almost every part of Templeton Travels herself, we started treating it like a business we both owned and giving each of us clear responsibilities.

Drew took over brand partnerships, outreach and much of the day-to-day account engagement, while Becca could spend more of her time doing what she does best: creating the content.

It sounds simple, but TCP helped us realize that growing Templeton Travels wasn’t just about making better Reels. We needed to build the business behind them too.

We finally defined what our brand is about

Before TCP, we knew we were travel creators. What we hadn’t figured out was what made Templeton Travels different from the thousands of other accounts posting about travel.

TCP pushed us to get much more specific about what we wanted people to know us for and gave us a framework for defining our content pillars. At the time, ours became unfiltered adventure travel, destination travel and outdoor adventures. Suddenly, instead of just asking, “What should we post today?” we had a structure for deciding what belonged on our account and why.

Once those existed, planning stopped being a weekly panic. We planned a month at a time on a whiteboard, one post per day, each tagged to a pillar, plus a fixed story theme for every day of the week. A bucket list trip like planning Antarctica and a weekend of dog friendly hiking with the corgis stop competing for the same slot, because they are not in the same pillar.

TCP also made us look at all the smaller pieces we had mostly overlooked, like whether someone landing on our Instagram profile could immediately understand who we were and why they should follow us.

None of these changes felt huge individually. Together, they gave Templeton Travels an identity instead of simply being a collection of places we’d traveled.

We learned how to pitch brands

Before TCP, brand outreach felt like a giant question mark. We knew creators were getting paid to work with brands, but knowing that and knowing how to actually turn YOUR account into those opportunities are two very different things.

TCP gave us a system for it. We learned how to find the right contacts instead of sending pitches into a general inbox, how to write a pitch that clearly showed what we could offer a brand, how and when to follow up, how to price our work and what to look for in contracts, licensing and usage rights.

We also built the things we needed to start treating brand partnerships professionally, including our media kit and our brand and UGC portfolio. Those aren’t exercises that disappeared into a course folder when TCP ended. We still use what we built and what we learned every single week.

And maybe most importantly, pitching stopped feeling like this mysterious part of the creator world that other people somehow knew how to do. We had an actual process we could keep using, testing and improving as Templeton Travels grew.

Who we think TCP is best for

One of the things we liked about TCP was that everyone wasn’t starting from the same place. There were creators in our cohort who already had established accounts, people trying to turn content creation into a business and people who hadn’t even started posting yet.

We think TCP is especially valuable if:

• You want to become a content creator but have no idea where to start
• You are already creating content but feel like you are guessing your way through growth
• You want to get more intentional and consistent about what you create
• You want to turn your audience into an actual business
• You want to work with brands but don’t know how to find opportunities, pitch or price your work
• You keep questioning your niche, your content or what you should be posting
• You want actual feedback on YOUR content instead of trying to apply endless generic advice from the internet
• You are willing to show up, ask questions and actually implement what you learn

TCP isn’t a magic “gain 100k followers and land a brand deal next week” button. We still had to make the content, send the pitches, show up to the coaching calls and implement what we learned.

But that is also exactly why we’d do it again. We didn’t want someone to build Templeton Travels for us. We wanted the knowledge, tools, feedback and strategy to help us build it ourselves, without spending years figuring out every piece through trial and error.

Questions we get asked about TCP

Is The Creator Passport worth it?

For us, absolutely. We’d pay for TCP again, and if we could change one thing, we would have joined sooner.

We spent years trying to learn everything ourselves because that is very much how we operate. We research, test, Google, watch videos and convince ourselves we can figure almost anything out eventually.

And we probably could have figured all of this out eventually too.

But TCP helped us get there faster. Instead of spending another few years trying to piece together content strategy, brand positioning, pitching, pricing, contracts and the business side of being creators on our own, we learned from people who had already done it and could give us feedback specific to what we were building.

You do still have to do the work. TCP gives you the education, frameworks, tools, coaching and feedback, but you have to actually use them. We did, and the return for us has gone far beyond what we originally hoped we’d get from the program.

How long does the program run?

It is cohort based rather than open enrollment. Ours ran roughly 3-4 months, July through November of 2025, with live calls throughout and access to the lessons and community.

Do you need a big following to join?

No. We joined at about 18k and there were people in our cohort well under that, including a few who had not started posting at all. The program is designed for creators at all levels, with content you can adapt based on where you are in your creator journey.

Is it only for Instagram, and only for travel?

Neither. The lessons cover all platforms and are often focused more on higher level content concepts that can be used anywhere. The business side applies wherever you post. The coaches are travel creators, so the examples often lean that way, but pillars, positioning, pitching and pricing are not travel specific.

When does TCP 6.0 open and how much is it?

TCP 6.0 opens for enrollment in January 2027, and VIP waitlist members get access a full day before enrollment opens to everyone else.

Pricing will be announced closer to launch, and we’ll update this post when those details are available.

If TCP is even on your radar for 2027, we’d get on the VIP waitlist now. It’s completely free, you’ll get two free TCP lessons right away, and you’ll be the first to know about the free challenges and opportunities leading up to enrollment.

Would we join The Creator Passport again?

Absolutely. And we would have joined sooner.

We went into TCP hoping to learn how to grow our account and become better content creators. We came out of it thinking completely differently about Templeton Travels as a brand and a business.

It changed how we plan content, how we think about our audience, how we work together, how we approach brand partnerships and how we make decisions about where we want this business to go next.

We still did the work. We made the content, sent the pitches, tested things that flopped, learned from them and kept going. But we weren’t trying to figure out every single step from scratch anymore.

That’s what made TCP worth it for us.

Could we have eventually figured a lot of this out ourselves? Probably.

Would we choose to spend years doing that when we could learn from people who had already done it and get there faster?

Absolutely not.

If you’re serious about building something with your content and TCP 6.0 is on your radar, get on the VIP waitlist. Take the free lessons, join the free challenges and see what you think for yourself.

Maybe you’ll save yourself a few years of insisting you can figure everything out on your own like we did.