Meet Discover The Carolinas Founders
Brett Barter
Brett Barter attended Michigan State University where he earned a B.A. in Advertising. After graduating, he began a career in commercial real estate. In 2008 he moved to Charlotte to further his career and escape the cold. He immediately fell in love with the city. In 2011 he co-founded QC Exclusive . When he isn’t dedicating his time to the magazine, he’s enjoying his other passions: live music, golf, traveling, and spending time with his beautiful wife Layne, his precious daughter Lennox, and their sweet son, Bowen.
Born in Dillon, South Carolina and raised in Southern Pines, North Carolina, JP attended Appalachian State University and graduated with a degree in journalism. Since then he’s backpacked Europe, Australia, and Asia, started an internet auction business, worked as an editor for High Country Home magazine in Blowing Rock, and co-founded QC Exclusive. When he’s not writing, editing, or designing issues of the magazine, he enjoys fly fishing, photography, traveling, and spending time with his friends, family, and dog.
How We Got Our Start In Media
Publisher Brett Barter and art director JP Grice — with the help of photographer Jamey Price and talented editor Sunny Hubler and the rest of our talented team— have spent the last decade producing nearly 100 issues of one of Charlotte, North Carolina’s finest magazines: QC Exclusive.
The QC brand is centered around a luxury lifestyle publication, website, and social media following dedicated to Charlotte and its metropolitan area.
The topics covered by QC Exclusive a wide variety of topics including arts and culture, food and drink, home and design, sporting, and travel in print, online, and on social media.
How Discover The Carolinas Came About
In 2019 another magazine in North Carolina gave us some true inspiration to expand our offerings. So, in the summer of 2020, in the midst of the Covid pandemic, we decided on a different kind of self-isolation. We decided to go explore our two states — North and South Carolina — and gather as much content as we could… in solitude of course. So, we hit the trails, camped all over the region, and recorded thousands of hours of travel video and took literally hundreds of thousand of photos. Then we launched Discover The Carolinas on social media.
As a native of the Carolinas, our art director JP wanted to share the many places he has been an advocate of for his entire life. While publisher Brett, a transplant from Michigan, wanted to share all the things that made him stay here in NC, and ultimately call it home.
Since then we have explored so many different hiking trails and beaches. We’ve gone on some truly memorable adventures. We have stayed in some amazing and unique Airbnbs and hotels. And we’ve been to so many thriving downtowns.
And we’ve had a chance to promote all of these experiences on social media channels. Luckily for us, both Tik Tok and Instagram turned out to be a big hit, gaining over 125,000 followers in less than 18 months.
In mid 2022, we launched this website and our newsletter to accompany our social media presence. Here we showcase all of the gems we love in North and South Carolina. We cover our favorite things to do, where to stay, Carolina towns to visit, adventures to go, the best of the best activities and much more.
We hope you like the content, find it helpful in planning your next NC or SC trip, and wish you nothing but the best as you discover our favorite place in the world: The Carolinas.
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