Followers of Dwight and Sheila Greene’s new “All Over the World with Dwight and Sheila” Facebook vlog might be easily confused into thinking the Fort Worth couple is on nonstop vacation.
The Greenes, a Fort Worth couple who met at TCU, are parlaying their yearslong wanderlust into a social media enterprise. Dwight Greene — a sometime-actor, movie maker and entrepreneur who also spent years as a newspaper obituary writer and funeral home office supervisor — retired in February last year from the funeral job. In March, the couple started “All Over the World with Dwight and Sheila.” They followed that up with an Instagram account and are looking for other ways to monetize the business while seemingly always on the road.
“I’ve been in the death trade for too long,” Dwight Greene said in an interview at the couple’s home between trips. “The stats say you’re not going to live past 70.”
That might be slightly pessimistic. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, American men live an average 75.8 years, and women live an average 81.1.
In any case, “I said nobody knows when they’re going to die,” he said. “We might have 10 years of mobility and health left.”
Sheila and Dwight Greene, aboard a cruise ship. (Courtesy photo | Dwight and Sheila Greene)
So, two days after the Greenes posted a video of themselves this spring showing off the fitness center aboard the Villa Vie Odyssey cruise ship, one of numerous clips they published from a weeklong trip on the liner that markets itself as the world’s first “continual world cruise,” they reappeared at DFW Airport in another short.
This time, Dwight Greene brandished a passport and boarding pass as he perambulated the terminal to the strains of Herb Alpert’s “The Lonely Bull,” nodding at imaginary off-screen characters in a clip headlined, “I always get a hero’s welcome whenever I return to DFW.”
In fact, the Greenes, both 63 and home for a few weeks following the cruise, were at DFW beginning their next adventure: a six-week jaunt through Europe.
When Dwight Greene retired from producing what he estimates were 2,000 death certificates annually, he started his Social Security and two pensions early, piggybacked on his wife’s employer health insurance, and began posting snippets from the couple’s travels on his personal Facebook page.
Sheila Greene has taught robotics in the Northwest ISD for 20 years and — with accumulated vacation, scheduled breaks and their protracted video publishing schedule — manages to appear in the couple’s adventures as if she’s traveling full time. Their Facebook followers have grown to more than 2,500.
“Teachers — a lot of people I don’t know — tell me they’re following us,” she said.
Find Dwight and Sheila Greene online at:
The Greenes aim to be substantially different than anything else in the travel vlogosphere. Their videos carry folksy unscripted narration and conversation. “I never know what he’s going to say,” she says.
And unlike other travel vlogs, their clips sometimes show the couple in unexpected situations — such as a street fight in Miami they witnessed; Dwight Greene landing in a ship’s infirmary and explaining his bill afterwards; and him wearing a vintage Versace shirt, talking the couple’s way to a table at the Versace Mansion without a reservation.
“We’re not going to do what everyone else is doing,” said Dwight Greene, who occasionally switches persona and impersonates the “Star Trek” actor Patrick Stewart in the couple’s videos.
Sheila Greene with husband Dwight, aka “Patrick Stewart.” (Courtesy photo | Dwight and Sheila Greene)
The idea for the travel channel came up after the Greenes’ last of four children moved to Washington, D.C.
“No one was coming for Thanksgiving dinner, and we realized our lives had changed and we could get up and go,” Dwight Greene said. “We’d always travelled with four people. Once we figured that out, we thought why not share this.”
Their target viewers: “We think it’s the empty nesters who are just a little nervous about going to another part of the world,” Sheila Greene said. “Those are people who have the money, have the time.”
“If you’re in shape, you can do this,” Dwight Greene said. “We want to tell people how to do it.”
The Greenes acknowledge it’ll likely be a while before the enterprise has any shot at making money.
“A lot of people say how do you do this?” Dwight Greene said. “Did you win the lottery? You go without (making money) for a while.”
The couple deploys a lot of “tricks” to save money, he said.
“We don’t pay top dollar,” he said. “We’ll pay for a cruise ship room with a balcony. Once you pay for it, all the cruise lines will give you the opportunity to make a bid for a higher room at discounted prices. You always have rooms available at every category.”
The couple also doesn’t buy the drinks package aboard cruise ships.
“If you really crunch the numbers, you can’t drink that much,” he said.
Other lines they have in the water: “There’s opportunities out there that you’ve got to be prepared to seize on,” he said. The couple purchased $300 worth of Virgin travel vouchers aboard a recent cruise, and obtained $1,200 in credits in exchange.
“We take advantage of offers from overbooked flights,” he said. “Once we get going on this, we’ll schedule our travel two years out” for more savings.
The couple doesn’t pay for premium class air travel, he said. “Not unless you give it to us.”
All of this differs dramatically from the days when the pair had four children at home.
“There were years when we didn’t travel,” he said. “We didn’t have the money. Any place in Texas we could drive.”
Robust social media channels make money based on numbers of subscribers and views as well as lengths of views. The Greenes have been noodling on other ways to make money, ranging from running escorted tours to establishing a premium channel that carries episodic content rather than their shorts.
They’ve purchased a cabin aboard the Villa Vie as a business investment.
The couple hasn’t received compensation from travel providers, or asked for it, Dwight Greene said, citing his newsroom background.
Some cruise lines deploy brand ambassadors, and the Greenes don’t rule that out.
“Are we going to do that?” Dwight Greene said. “That remains to be seen. We are looking to make money, but the more honest you are with your audience, the more they like you.”
The feel of a continuous vacation isn’t difficult to come by, he said.
“I’ve got a pipeline of so much material that never gets boring and never runs out,” he said. “We’ll do 50 30-second snippets in a day and publish them over an extended schedule. People like these short clips.”
The couple shoots and produces primarily using their iPhones. The clips require little, if any, editing. “I carry two phones,” he said. “Sheila carries one. No track. No mics. It’s amazing what you can do.”
Among their most popular videos so far: 3,800 views of a passenger being airlifted from their ship; and a comedy skit Dwight Greene did. “That got 4,500 views.”
What’s on their travel bucket lists?
“Asia is a big part of it,” Dwight Greene said.
“Mine’s long,” Sheila Greene said. “I’d also like to see Africa. Australia. New Zealand.”
Scott Nishimura is a senior editor for the Documenters program at the Fort Worth Report. Reach him at scott.nishimura@fortworthreport.org.
At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
Related
Fort Worth Report is certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative for adhering to standards for ethical journalism.
Republish This Story
Republishing is free for noncommercial entities. Commercial entities are prohibited without a licensing agreement. Contact us for details.