Walker Ward
speaker
170 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Walker Ward’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Thank you so much for having me, ladies. I'm so excited to be here. Let's go. I'm honored to have been a hand selected by Grandma Gail. I feel like I'm not worthy, but I'll do my best.
Oh, let's go. What's your mom's first name?
Hey, Barb. Good to see you.
Yeah, we did. No, that's a great, that's a great question. And seriously, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. So long story short, um, my, my, my God given birth name is not walks house 42. It's Walker ward. Surprise. Shout out mom and dad. Hi guys. Um, and I was born in New York city. I grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. So I'm from the Garden State, God's country.
And I grew up there, went to college in upstate New York, and then I graduated in 2016. Didn't really know what I wanted to do. I was an English major. You know, I wasn't like – Same. Let's go. We're linguists.
I wasn't on like a specific path, but I could spell check an email very well. Yeah.
Exactly. Now we're kind of obsolete.
But long story short, I was working at a winery in upstate New York when I got a phone call from a family for whom I used to babysit. And so my mom runs a nursery school in Princeton where I went, Nassau Nursery School, class of 99. Go geese. And I – this family – so she was like the babysitting plug for my siblings and I our whole high school career.
So I babysat – I was kind of like the Manny in Princeton. That was like my job in high school. It was fun. I love kids and – anyway. That was great. And so this one family who I babysat for all the time, we obviously became very close.
And so fast forward, however many years later, I get this phone call from the dad and he's like, hey, Walker, we're hiring a junior sales guy at this like Wall Street sell side company. Would you be interested in applying for the job? And I was like, yeah, I'd love to move to New York. I mean, I was held back in math in high school.
If you ever told me I would have had the opportunity to have like, you know, a classic, you business job, at least dip my toes into the financial world. I was like, yeah, and I want to go to New York and that'll be great. So I took the job and worked there for five years, five and a half years. And then the last summer I was let go from the job.
And then that was really the impetus for kicking off the content. I will say COVID, when COVID hit, like so many people March 2020, I'm, you know, all the offices, everything shut down. I'm back in my like childhood bedroom in New Jersey. And I started this little nature show called Nature Walks with Walker that I filmed on my Instagram.
And basically I rented a, like a raft on Amazon, like a blow up raft and like a captain's suit. And I was just posting these little vignettes videos. This was like pre-reels, like reels weren't even a thing. It was just Instagram videos. But anyway, I, That was really where the content actually started. I had a full-time job, but as we know, everybody was remote.
And I was loving it. And I sailed this little raft down this river in New Jersey that runs through our backyard. And I pretended to be stranded in— So fun. The wilderness and like knock off little like ode to Castaway instead of Wilson the volleyball. I had Tito the vodka bottle. So good. With like little hair of grass. And I carved a face in it.
So anyway, that was the first kind of taste of content. And the thing I loved the most about it probably was that I still do is – kind of going into my little hole and cooking up fun ideas and then making a little, you know, 60 to 90 second video story, whatever.
And then putting it out, not to be dramatic, but like into the world and letting people see it, you know, and, and seeing the comments and watching other people enjoy something that I have really loved making is a very good feeling. So that was love the process of the process, but that's how it started. And then my parents were like, You know, kids pack up the car.
We don't know what's going on with this virus. We're driving across the country to Idaho. We grew up going to Idaho. And I said, Mom, Dad, like, how are you going to pull the rug out from underneath me? I have this huge nature show. You have a huge following. And this is definitely pre-following. This is like...
I had like my normal, like whatever, 3000 Instagram followers who I just kind of cornered all over Manhattan. I was like, follow me. Um, but no, they were just my friends. And then, so because we were driving across the country, I was like, I have to take advantage of this road trip. So I came out with hot dog boy.
So Hot Dog Boy was just this – me and I would review gas station hot dogs every time we stopped at a rest stop. But we – the drive probably took three days, and we stopped probably six or seven times. We had a dog. We had my mom, my sister, my brother. There were like eight people traveling with us. So we stopped a lot, and I would release one video a day. So people thought I was on the open road.
For like a month. But it was just, you know, we just shot it quickly. So anyway, bringing this whole answer full circle. Sorry for the rant. No, I love it. That was how it really started. Nature Walks with Walker and Hot Dog Boy. And I still get people messaging me today who are like, bring back Nature Walks. Bring back Hot Dog Boy. And this was all when I obviously, as I said, when I had...
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