670: $1000/mo Helping People Plan Trips: Inside the Travel Advising Side Hustle

25:18It could just be focused on how to travel. You'd be amazed at how many people simply are not as familiar with the world of passports and visas and what is a WHO vaccination card and all of these different things. I have heard of people going to different countries. Let's say Vietnam, I think. You have to apply many months in advance to get your visa. It's not like just showing up in London where you can say, oh, I'm from the USA. I'm here for a week. I just want to be a tourist. The relationships with all countries are not like that. And so hosting some of these how-to travel info sessions can be such a really great way to get clients because once people get into that info session, and you're certainly not trying to scare anyone, but they realize that they just don't know as much as they need to know in order to have a successful trip, they're immediately going to think, I'm going to be a lot safer in the hands of this travel advisor who's hosting this session.

26:09It's not even an ageist thing, but certainly there are people as well that maybe are not as online as much, right? So they don't know all of the different, you know, resources available to them. And so they would just benefit from doing, you know, work face-to-face with someone. Yeah. The amount of information out there is so overwhelming where it's like if somebody could cut through the clutter and help streamline that process, it makes a lot of sense. I feel like my parents have gone to, you know, the Rick Steves info session and then they end up booking the Rick Steves tour. So it's like, this is a strategy that clearly can work.

26:42Absolutely. And if you show them something that they don't think they could have found on their own, so going back to that Japan info session we were talking about, if you show them, hey, here's this incredible activity, tour, private cooking class, whatever it might be, they've never heard of before, right? You're not going to give a talk and you're not going to name the top five spots that they can easily find by just Googling what to see in Japan. Yeah, the insider knowledge, the off the beaten path stuff. Yes, that's exactly what people want to know. That's what I based my business around.

27:12You mentioned earlier Unlisted Travel. That is my bread and butter. I love, love, love to be able to delight my clients by saying, hey, I'm super excited you're planning a trip to London. Did you know that I can get you this private tour of Stonehenge? Did you know I can do this private thing? And they're always, what? You can? I'm so excited about this. Yeah, that's very cool. And And then through Fora, you have a relationship with that private tour provider and you get your finder's fee, your referral commission on that. Oh, exactly. And that's one of the other great things about working with these host agencies is that it's not just about the relationships between, you know, the host agency and one hotel.

27:49But it's also these other companies like a context travel. They're a tour operator that Fora has a relationship with, and they do these really authentic guided tours all over the world in all different cities. Or eatwith.com, which is a really great way that you can get cooking classes or group dining experiences, private dining experiences with local chefs and things like that. And so we can book all of those for our clients. And all of these different companies and suppliers and resources, that client that you're working with, they've never heard of these things. They're just not as plugged into the travel community.

28:23And also, you know, I mentioned community. Your host agency likely is going to have something, whether it's akin to a Facebook group or some sort of online community where you're going to be able to mix and mingle with all of the other travel advisors that belong to that host agency as well. And it's such a great resource because if the host agency is doing a good job, they're going to foster collaboration. And so you can post in there, hey, I have some clients that want to go to Egypt. I've done my research. I've found incredible things, but I'm just not really sure where I can find a private driver I can trust.

28:53Does anybody have a recommendation? Boom, boom, boom. You know, you're going to see lots of recommendations and that's, you know, it's a really great resource. This is inside of the Fora forums or the Fora Facebook group? Exactly. That's what they call it. They call it the Fora forum, which is such a great name. I love that. Okay. Yeah. So be able to crowdsource a little bit of recommendation. If it's a place that you don't have experience with on the ground per se. So I know that that makes sense. One strategy that I want to highlight that just came to mind is Rob Petingalo runs a walking tour company in Washington, D.C.

29:27And the way that he drove business, I thought was really creative. It created a lot of Q &A content for future D.C. travelers. Like how does the metro work in D.C.? Or what is the best time to visit the Lincoln Memorial? And come on and say, hey, I'm Rob. Rob, I run this tour company or walking tours in DC. And here's the answer to your question. Like fill in the gap with that. And really well done content. But like all things in content marketing, a certain percentage of those people were like, I really like Rob. I want to book his tour when I go on this trip. And so targeting these like future, you know, high buyer intent type of keywords, like beyond what are the best things to do, or just you could probably have any number of different keyword tools or answer the public or something to figure out what questions So people asking on their way to, it probably works better if you're targeting a specific location like he was, but an interesting way to get in front of new customers.

30:22You're absolutely right. And again, it's about just building that trust. I mean, when it comes down to booking that tour, are you going to book with this individual who gave you all the answers to your questions and seemed super helpful and honest and trustworthy? Or are you going to book with kind of a faceless company that you're not really sure if you trust them because the reviews are only 3.5. It's a no-brainer at the end of the day. Yeah. How do you break down those know, like, and trust barriers as quickly as you can? Anything else you found effective on the marketing side? Well, like you mentioned, there's always the online strategies as well.

30:57Creating a location-specific Facebook group or travelers or people who want to travel to Japan type Facebook group or things like that. Or even online events, if you're not able to do them in person, you can host these sort of online info sessions that you can record and then post on your YouTube, things like that, creating this library of content are all going to ultimately, you know, help you. Got it. Actually, we were just on the Reddit forums about Japan last night. Like, how do the train cards work? Can you get the kids discounted train card at the airport? And there's a lot of questions out there on the internet that are probably ripe for you to answer.

31:32And if it's a topic you're knowledgeable on. I have seen a couple people who are actually American expats who have moved to different countries and they're there for school or something, but they've ended up doing the travel advising thing on the side, I think, because people want someone in the country they can trust who knows exactly how it works. So those are some people that choose the location-specific niche as well. Very good. More with Bailey in just a moment, including the tools and tech that might be helpful in running a travel advising business, the role AI can play, and how to potentially score your own discounted trips.

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33:58There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. Side Hustle Show listeners get a$75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash Side Hustle Show. Just go to Indeed.com slash Side Hustle Show right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash Side Hustle Show. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring. Indeed is all you need. All right. That was a ton of different ideas on how to generate interest and potential clients in your services. I think those are great. I wanted to ask, you know, the percentage of people that you're serving, you know, remotely, is this like an online only side hustle or people coming over to your house or the coffee shop and we're hammering out the details of this itinerary?

34:43What does it typically look like? I think in the beginning, it can be a little bit more face-to-face, especially as you're working with those friends and family who likely live within 10 miles of you, probably. At least that's how it definitely was for me. And I do enjoy that element of it, working with my uncle who wants to go to Costa Rica, sitting down at his house and going over in person, all the different things. Because one of the greatest things we can do for our clients is help to get them excited and say, don't worry, I've got you. This is going to be so fun. I'm already thinking of all these great ideas, right?

35:16And make sure, again, you're building that trust. But naturally, if you want to really grow your business, you're going to end up working with clients who don't live within 10 miles of you and who are not related to you or that you do not know. And so that's when all of the online infrastructure really starts to come into play. And so for that, you're going to need things like a website, scheduling software, you know, tools to be able to really run your online business. And we can go into those if you'd like. Yeah, if you're doing, you know, onesie-twosie trips at a time, it's probably relatively straightforward to keep track of in Google Docs or Google Sheets or something like that.

35:53But if all of a sudden you're juggling multiple different itineraries, multiple different locations, now it gets a little bit more difficult to juggle in your mind. Anything you found useful on the tools tech organization side? Yeah, absolutely. There's actually a large number of tools specifically designed for travel advisors. The most important one you're going to need if your host agency, again, doesn't provide something for you is a CRM, a customer relationship management software, which is where you're going to keep track of all of your clients' information and where they're at in the process of working with you on their trip.

36:29And so a few famous ones are Travify, Travel Joy, or Turn, T-E-R-N, super popular, very common. But it should be noted that not all CRM softwares for travel advisors have an itinerary builder component, which is something you'll definitely want to invest in as well. So if your CRM doesn't, you might need to get that separately. A really popular one is Safari Portal, creates beautiful online itineraries where you can upload lots of pictures, show people what they're going to be doing day by day. Because when you deliver that first edition, that first version of the proposed itinerary, you really want to make it your best.

37:11You really want to knock their socks off and you want to make it visual, show people exactly what they're going to be doing. Oh, you're going to be going to an ethical no-touch observatory elephant sanctuary? Well, what are you going to do. You could put pictures of these really cool elephants, you know, bathing in a local stream so people can start to visualize what their trip is really going to look like. So in the beginning, when you're trying to do this all very inexpensively, I have even seen people build itineraries in Canva. Obviously, that's not going to work at scale. You know, that would be very tiring to try to manage.

37:45Yeah, if you're moving stuff around, like it could get a little trickier, but visually it'll look nice. Yeah, exactly. Well, the CRM softwares and things allow you to have different features that you might really like. So for example, if somebody goes in and requests a change to a certain part of the itinerary, you can make that change and then you can ask them to approve it in the CRM software. So you have evidence that they approved the change, right? So these are some advanced things that would be really nice to have if you're taking your business seriously and you're looking to grow and expand and you're trying to be efficient and keep track of all this stuff.

38:15In the beginning, when you have less capital and you're really trying to do it inexpensively, use the tools that are available to you. I imagine AI could be a helpful planning tool. Like, hey, give me a five-day itinerary to London that would be good for a honeymooning couple and fill in a few more qualifying prompts here. To what extent is AI a threat to the travel advising business? Well, if I just throw in a few prompts, it's going to tell me where to go, what time, where to stay. It's going to throw out all these recommendations and potentially cut you out of the picture. It's possible, but I like to think that those people who are using AI are not really my ideal client anyway.

38:54The people that are going to work with me are either people that are not that tech savvy, people that don't have the time to organize these trips. So even if they had an itinerary, they don't know how or where to book it. They are not as experienced in travel, so they don't know everything that can fall through the cracks. They want someone to guide them through the process of obtaining all their travel documents and things like that. My issues with AI aren't that it can be a useful tool for people that want to discover interesting travel things, but AI doesn't think. It's not a human. It can only regurgitate the information that's already inside of it.

39:29And so if you are going to want to have, as you said earlier, the best trip possible because you're spending all this money, then you want to go with somebody who actually has been there or knows the area well or has all the connections. because another thing that that AI is not going to do, just to give you an example, it's not going to say, oh, I actually happen to know the name and the WhatsApp number of a private driver who I've actually worked with before in Columbia, totally trustworthy. I'm going to go message him right now, right? The only thing that AI can really do is give you the name of a company that you might have already been able to find through Googling anyway.

40:09And again, how do you know if that person is trustworthy or not, right? I use that example because I was recommended to somebody else to use a man named Oscar whenever I was traveling down in Columbia by myself and needed somebody to drive me around to show me the sites and who I could trust. And he was fantastic, would recommend him every time. You're not going to get that from AI. Right. He's not going to show up in a Google search. Right. No, he does not have a website, right? In all parts of the world, these travel services and suppliers aren't necessarily as professional or as formal as we might like to think.

40:45Sometimes it is really built on those relationships. Yeah, those relationships are what can lead to hopefully recurring customers coming back for their vacation or their trip year after year, where it's maybe you waive that planning fee upfront to get some reps in and down the road, that can turn into a... I imagine the lifetime value of a customer in this business can be pretty big if people have, you know, 20, 30 years of their traveling life ahead of them. Absolutely. And one thing we haven't really talked about yet as well, but really goes into why you would want to work with a travel advisor and making sure those clients come back, is the support that you can provide to that person while they're traveling.

41:26And so one of the things that we as travel advisors do before someone leaves for their trip is try to prepare them in every way possible so they don't have to contact us as much because we want them to be able to resolve any issues on the ground immediately if we are not instantly available. but that being said, very often somebody will message us on the trip, you know, oh, my flight was just delayed. You know, I've already talked to the flight attendant or the person at the counter about it, but what happens when I get into country? Are they going to know my flight is delayed? You know, they just, they have these concerns and we give them documents.

42:05We give them phone numbers. We say, oh, well, if you need to call the airport pickup people, this is who you call. But so often they're going to come back to us because we are the ones that they trust. Okay. It's just a little bit of handholding. Somebody called it a handler, where it's like, I just, I want to show up and I want it to be the easy button where, you know, the person is waiting for me at the airport and just, just things work. And it's like a different kind of travel than the more like adventure travel. We're going to go figure out the public transport. It was like, you know, serving a different client base.

42:34So we mentioned the upfront travel fees, either, you know, flat fee based on the itinerary option, you know, to waive that if you want early on, or a, you know, dollars per day, you know,$50 per day will help map out your two-week thing. The commissions on hotels, rental cars, tours, experiences, travel insurance, anything else on the revenue side that we missed or other opportunities that you see for travel advisors? Well, as far as the travel advising services go, that's pretty much the main two revenue sources. But I will say that some travel advisors branch out beyond that into things like selling online guidebooks or, you know, travel coaching or something where they will actually teach or like charge for workshops about, you know, passports and all this sort of stuff.

43:21So there are other sort of tangential revenue streams related to being a travel expert, I'll say. Got it. Got it. Okay. If you're the go-to expert for this particular location, you know, just, you know, download my guidebook. You know, it's the Rick Steves playbook. Yeah, you can book the tour or you can buy the guidebook or, you know, watch the free content on PBS or YouTube or whatever it is in this case. What kind of mistakes or what separates the people who pay the$300 fee to Fora and then never do anything with it versus the people who start to see success with this business? It really all comes down to being willing to put yourself out there and willing to advertise and market yourself and get those clients.

44:05So I do often see in the community that people will say, I just started with this three months ago, six months ago, and I'm having a little bit of trouble getting some clients. And when you dig a little deeper and you ask them, what have they done? Well, the truth is they really haven't done much, right? They told their friends, they told their family, and that's kind of it. So they haven't bothered to set up any website, any social media pages. They're not posting regular content. They haven't tried to do any of these events like we were talking about. Maybe they haven't waived that planning fee and done a couple of trips for free up front in order to get those testimonials.

44:44They don't have any systems. They're not doing any email marketing. They don't have a free travel guide PDF for people to get on their list. And they, in some cases, not all, but in some cases, people think that the host agency is just going to feed you the customers. And that's not the case. That's not what the host agency is there for. Okay. Yeah. It is true that in some cases, and this isn't for all host agencies, but it can be true that if you prove yourself to be one of the top earners, that sometimes host agencies get leads. And of course, they're going to give them to their best agents because they want to have the best reputation.

45:20So if you have just started and you've really not made that many sales, ultimately, you know, you're not going to be getting a ton of leads from the host agency. So you can't rely on them. And that's an important thing to acknowledge. Are they going to kick you out if you don't book anything or if you only book your own travels? Like, oh, could I just get a 8 to 10 % discount on my own stuff if I pay this membership and spend more than$300 or whatever the math is on the commission on that? That's a really great question. And we call that self-booking. Every host agency is going to have their own policy.

45:52So you're going to have to refer to that. It's not uncommon to book some travel for yourself, especially in the beginning. It's a stepping stone to learning. If you're booking your entire family's vacation and you're going, of course, you're going to be the one that's booking on your family's behalf. There's no problem with that, really. That's not a big deal. But if you are only doing self-bookings, there's usually going to be some sort of issue. So there might be a policy that says, look, within the first six months of you joining, you have to book for at least one other person. It can be your mom, but it just, it can't be under your name.

46:27My experience has been that the policies are not difficult to adhere to. So it's, I just want to reassure people that might be thinking, well, I can't get started because I can't guarantee I'm going to have 17 new clients in the first month. You, we're not talking those big numbers here. Yeah. Do you get to write off every trip? that you take as, you know, legit research for your business? Like I'm studying? That is a great question. Now, I am not a like lawyer or tax expert, so I don't want to say anything specific. But what I can point you to is a really great guy. He actually has a website called taxesfortravelagents.com.

47:02His name is Andy Rood. He specializes in doing this and that I'm in that Facebook group. He gets that question a lot. So you should definitely check with your tax professionals. Some of it may be, but I just want to let people know that if you are frequent and travel are thinking, oh, I can just write all of this off. In fact, Andy just shared a couple of weeks ago a blog post that he had written that was about an actual case. It was a case study that is going through right now where a U.S. citizen quit his job and went to travel around the world. I don't think he was a travel advisor specifically, but he was going to write books and sell e-books.

47:34And he really never really followed through with writing the books and making any money, but he tried to write off all these travel expenses. And the IRS said no, because you weren't really running a business and it wasn't really, you know, part of it. You're like, maybe I just suck at running a business. It's just, you know, there's some startup costs involved, some market research involved. I had the best intentions. I don't want to get anybody in trouble with tax law. The IRS really wants to know that you're, you know, you're taking your business seriously and not everything is going to be, you know, able to be written off just because it's travel and you run a travel business, I think is the bottom line.

48:06But you bring up an interesting point and something I did want to mention here, which is FAM trips. So FAM trips, that's short for familiarization trips. And this is something that a travel advisor can go on in order to learn more about a specific vendor or location. And so these are trips that are sometimes, I want to say sometimes free, but often it's usually that maybe your hotel gets comped or something and you still have to do the actual, like you have to pay for the flight and stuff like that there. But ultimately these are going to be trips that you can take that are organized by the supplier or by something called a DMO, a destination marketing organization.

48:43You know, you've seen ads for like tourism Cancun or whatever, right? So those types of organizations that are trying to increase tourism to an area, they might host these types of trips. Sometimes they do them for cruises as well, so that you can come and you can learn. How do you get on the list for these? That's a great question. So there's a couple of different ways. So there are some websites that just specialize in doing fam trips. So I forget what the exact website name is, but there's like fam trips, Mexico, you can go to and you can see the different vendors and you know, it might not be free, but it could be a reduced cost or something like that.

49:19And there's usually some sort of itinerary where they're going to do a hotel tour. They're going to show you all of the different things and talk to you about the hotel. And they might have one evening activity for you to mingle with other travel advisors, but you might also be able to get fam trips through your host agency. Again, do not expect this if you just joined and you've not made any sales. These are things that they're going to be giving to people who have really dedicated themselves to growing their business and proven themselves. But you can also contact the DMOs directly. So you can contact vendors and you can contact DMOs and you can tell them who you are and what you specialize in and that this is something that you'd really like to pursue.

49:54Even if you're not doing an official fam trip, as a travel advisor, you can often contact the business development manager, the BDM at a hotel or, you know, some sort of, you know, tour agency. And you can say, I'm a travel advisor. This is my website. This is my business. I'm, this is my, I add a number. I'm with host agency, you know, this, and I'm going to be planning a family trip to Cancun this weekend just because, but I, and we're, you don't even have to be staying at their hotel. You could say, you know, we're staying down the street, but I know that you are a preferred partner with our host agency.

50:29I was wondering if you wouldn't mind if I came over and you could give me a quick tour. This business is all about building relationships. And so if you can, you know, establish yourself as, hey, I'm going to be the Cancun expert. I want to, I want my name to be known with all the hotels in Cancun so that when I call and I say, I have a VIP client, what can we do for them? You know, they're going to, they're going to want to up the perks and make sure it's a really good experience for them. I like this strategy, becoming known, becoming the go-to person, building relationships with the people on the ground.

51:01And even if it's not a tax hack, sorry, that was a total tangent, but I was like, wait a minute, if I start an Instagram account about travel family stuff, does that mean I could just write off everything? Yeah, if only. As the wheels get spinning here. Bailey, this has been great. Anything that's surprised you the most over the last couple of years of doing this? Well, to be honest, I was surprised you could get paid for doing this. I planned my best friend's honeymoon. I planned my dad's lifelong dream trip to Montana. I was with Engineers Without Borders for a while, and I planned three different trips to Kenya.

51:34I got to go on one of those trips. So truthfully, it was an absolutely incredible way to practice these skills, but I wasn't getting paid for them. I was just doing it because I love travel. And I just, I was like you had kept saying, I was the go-to travel person in my friends and family group. Everyone always wanted my opinion because I was always, even when I had no money, I was, you know, backpacking around Europe and I was trying to do things to feed that travel passion of mine. And so it wasn't until 2023 when I really learned about the travel advising industry. I knew what a travel agent was, of course, but I always talk about my big fat Greek wedding where Tula, you know, is becoming a travel advisor or travel agent at the time.

52:12And she's like sitting in this little building with, you the big windows on Main Street, and she's got this huge desktop computer, and she's wearing a headset, and she's talking to people about cruise packages. And I was like, that's cool. That's not really what I kind of want to do. And so I had no idea that the industry had changed so much, right? That we were independent contractors, not employees, that you could set up your own business identity even while you're a part of this host agency. So I get to be a part of Fora, but I have unlistedtravel.com, which is where I run everything in my business.

52:44that could be fully remote, that I can work with clients outside of who's in my local town, that I can sell the travel that I want to. That's what we call it sometimes is that we're selling travel. You get to focus on the types of trips and things that you're passionate about. So all of this surprised me because I basically was like, I could have been getting paid for this for 10 years and I didn't know. And so when I kind of dived into it, I didn't know how the industry worked at all. You know, I have been an online entrepreneur for a long time, but this was a totally new field. I think that's a great marker.

53:17If you're already doing something for free for friends and family, it's like, wait, I can get paid to do this at no extra cost to the people that I'm serving that's coming out of the hotel in a lot of cases. Yes. That's always a good sign for potential side hustles. Like what are people already naturally coming to you for help with? If it happens to be travel, this seems like a natural next step. So you've got unlistedtravel.com. If anybody wants help planning an awesome trip, go call Bailey. You've got maketravelyourjob.com. What's next for you? What are you excited about this year? I'm excited to keep growing unlistedtravel.com.

53:53The truth is that's kind of a pretty new brand that I've established because I was just kind of doing things inexpensively like we talked about in the beginning, serving the friends and family and realizing the niche that I'm most passionate about. So I'm excited to do more. I'd like to establish myself as a travel expert beyond my friends and family group. And so kind of teaching people a little bit more about travel through that brand. And then bringing the world of travel advising to others through interviews like this, which I'm really grateful for, to be able to show people this incredible industry.

54:23I truly believe that there are other people just like me. I mean, I'm a millennial, so I definitely know that there are other millennials out there and Gen Zers especially that love to travel, wish they could travel more maybe in their own lives and would love to find some way to make it more a part of their personal and professional life, even if they, like me, couldn't just, you know, up and change careers and just dedicate themselves to flying around the world like a pilot or something like that. Yeah, to be able to live and breathe travel without fully committing to a digital nomad type of lifestyle, realizing, well, there's constraints and commitments, you know, back here at home, but here's a way to still make money from this travel passion.

55:04Well, this has been awesome. Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation 2025 edition. Then we'll take a trip down memory lane and revisit the 2016 advice. This one is simple, but I think it's a good one. Don't buy that premium domain. Don't do it. It's too expensive. I was looking over my books and I can't even tell you how many thousands, thousands of dollars that I have wasted. I'm not talking about buying like 20 domains that I ultimately didn't use. I'm talking about buying one or two or three premium domains that were thousands of dollars, four figures from GoDaddy, that at the end of the day, I either didn't end up using or it didn't really pan out or after I had bought the domain.

55:45But then I got to writing the website copy and sort of realized the angle that I was kind of going for isn't really going to work. What was your most expensive domain? My most expensive domain ever was evergreenmachine.com. And I loved it so much because of the cool rhyme. It was simple. And this is when I was doing evergreen marketing. Like evergreen webinars and like sales funnel type of stuff. Uh-huh, exactly. And it was a very, I don't even want to tell you how much it was. It was so expensive. And I did use it for several years, but ultimately at the end of the day, like I just, I could have built the same platform on something else and it would have been, or I mean, could have just bought the non.com version.

56:27I could have just like bought the.net or.co, which I know, I know, like we all want the .com. I do too. Yeah. It's like premium digital real estate. I know, I know. But I think in the beginning though, before you have proof of concept, like before you really bring, you don't even have necessarily a minimum viable product yet, or you haven't tested the waters to like, see if this is going to have it, you know, legs, if it's really going to like actually stick with you for, for years, or you're really going to be able to monetize it. So my recommendation is think long and hard about the name and try to pick something that you can either get the.com version when it's not premium 20 bucks, you know, a year is like what it should be.

57:02Right. But if you can't don't get so excited and buy that four figure domain before you've even ever sold something because now you're just starting in the red before you've even really got up and going. That's my opinion based on personal experience. I will not be doing that again. No, this is great. It came out of left field, but we could talk domain names in the graveyard of GoDaddy registrations. And it's like, well, that project never went anywhere or just never dedicated the time to that. My most expensive is not thousands, but it was made two or three hundred for like start my side hustle.com or something something side hustle related side hustle nation was already registered and so i had to pay it was only like a hundred bucks just approached the the previous owner of it but sometimes you get married to that idea and it is it's digital real estate so you know hold on to it long enough pay that registration fee somebody else with an evergreen machine i thought it was going to be like a machine shop in the pacific northwest like we have like evergreen fill in the blank name of company it's like super common up here.

58:02So somebody in the Northwest will buy that from you at some point. Yeah. 2016 tip was related to online courses and it was to provide value, make it a no brainer for, uh, for customers. It was like, just, I think it was in the context of giving away so much value for free. Well, I can't wait to see what's behind the paywall. I've built up so much trust and authority and credibility that, you know, it's a no brainer for somebody to click that buy button and keep doing business with you. I stand by it. That's excellent advice. Pat myself on the back for that one. Yeah, 2016, Bailey was smart. Well, I think it totally applies to our conversation here as well.

58:39You know, everything we were talking about, building the know, like, and trust. And I'll just say this related to that. You know, so many people, I think in the travel advising space, I have heard do get a little frustrated sometimes that now that they haven't been known as the go-to expert for so long, giving away their expertise, now they're going to monetize it. people still come to them and say, oh, do you have any recommendations for Cancun or something like that? And then the travel advisor, now a new business owner, is kind of like, well, I want to gatekeep because if I just give everything to you, you're going to book on your own and that's not how this works anymore.

59:11And I'm creating a new business model and I need people around me to understand that. I totally get that perspective. Here's my view on it. I think two things. First of all, communicate how your business now works, right? And say, hey, I'm more than happy to share with you everything I know about Cancun, but if you wouldn't mind, could I help you with your bookings because this is how I get paid? Because I just think sometimes people aren't aware, right? So they don't realize how you as the travel advisor are missing out. So I think that's one thing. And then through that, you can delight them, right?

59:46You can get them that perks at the hotel they weren't expecting, put a welcome gift of champagne or something if the hotel will work with you on doing something like that inside the room when they arrive. You know, those welcome gifts can go so far. And then make them realize how working with you in the future on every trip is a no-brainer. So I think that's the first part. But the second part is, it's just like advice I gave in 2016. Just give so much advice and value and make yourself known as the go-to person. I think people get hung up, especially service providers on turning every lead into a client.

1:00:19Like they want a hundred percent conversion rate, right? And that in any business, that's not how it works. But in this business, it's not how it works either. Some people are just ultimately, you know, not going to be a client, give them advice anyway, because word gets around, right? So you want, maybe they'll refer you to somebody else and they'll become your client. Yeah. And it comes down to tapping into your network's network in a lot of ways, especially early on, where you can occupy that little sliver of brain space or if somebody's going to Cancun or Egypt or Japan or, you know, they know like, oh, I know somebody who is great at that.

1:00:53They can help you. And like trying to get those referrals or that word of mouth engine spinning in your favor. So I really like this call to have some semi well-defined niche or specialization where it's like it becomes easy to make that referral. And that goes for just about any service based business. Different ways we talked about to establish that trust and credibility and meet your target customers in their natural habitat, hosting workshops, going to these bridal events, targeting the honeymoon crowd, and then potentially targeting a higher end, potentially older demographic that doesn't want to do it themselves.

1:01:25They want that easy button. They want everything handled, taken care of. It's like, I've been saving for this trip for a long time. I want to make sure that it goes well, or it's a complicated itinerary, multiple family members coming in from multiple locations. There's a lot of resources for the do-it-yourselfers, but it also takes a lot of time as we've learned firsthand with this Japan planning trip, which thankfully my wife has taken most of the reins on that. But it's like every evening, it's like more and more trying to chip away at it. So lots of different ways you can go with the travel advising business.

1:01:54We'll link up Bailey's resources in the show notes for you for this episode. Your listener bonus for this week is my big list of 101 service business ideas that you can apply some of Bailey's tactics to. Maybe travel's not your thing. Well, hey, we just opened up the playbook for lots of different niches that you might be able to use some of these same marketing ideas for. You can follow the show notes link in the episode description, and it'll get you over there. Big thanks to Bailey for sharing her insight. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit up sidehustlenation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.

1:02:28That's it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, help spread the word. Fire off that text message to that travel obsessed friend of yours. We all know that person, right? Let them know. Hey, here's a way to get your next trip paid for. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen. And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.