Transcript [EN]: How We Attracted 3000 Guests in our first year of starting a tour business (Ep 18)

but I think you need to know enough to be dangerous I think every tortimer should know because marketing is that what drives your business so you need customers and like I said we don't control TripAdvisor or get your guide or to a radar they change one algorithm you could be off the platform or one day they wake up and they say you know what we don't like your tour anymore one button you're gone welcome to the top earner podcast travel industry veteran Shane Whaley will take you on a journey with fellow top earners sharing their tips ideas insights and success stories to inspire you to make your tour business the best it can be now please welcome everybody and welcome to episode 18 of the tour preneur podcast today we're gonna talk with Ben Dolgov he runs a company called forever vacation now they're a boutique tour operator that provides premium tours and experiences in Bali and in select parts of Southeast Asia they are tours cater to millenials and focus on popular places where we can learn about the local culture and of course take amazing Instagram herbal photos and I use that word Instagram because that is one of his most popular tours so we're gonna talk a great deal about marketing particularly digital marketing how he got set up and how he kind of got set up in record time because it's remarkable he's been operational for less than a year and he's already looked after 3,000 guests over 3,000 people have been on his tour so he said quite a fast start to his business so you know me I'm nosey I dig into how he gets started what inspired him and what challenges he faced and then how he got the word out about his tours so we've got plenty in this episode I really enjoyed talking to Ben and there's lots for us all to learn in episode 18 of the tour preneur podcast welcome to episode 18 of true preneur Ben dog off how are you hey how's it going I'm doing great ya know I'm delighted to talk to you I've had to switch the aircon off it is really warm here pretty jealous of where you are can you tell our listeners that you know you were based in Bali right now yes I'm based in volume than the and I spent time also in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia as a and both our locations are now between Bali and kuala lumpur so yeah it's nice and warm over here and it's a nighttime now but uh yeah usually the sun is shining and originally you're a Boston boy correct I am yeah so originally from Boston kit Cod more specific and I was there and went to college out there and after college had a few startups and for the past five five years now six years I've lived abroad in the last five years I've been in Southeast Asia so love Boston love the US but uh Southeast Asia is pretty special yeah I can see from those photographs that Bali's always been somewhere I've wanted to visit for a long time so I hope I get to make that happen or come on down hopefully yeah it's an amazing place yeah maybe uh you know I guess I didn't go to arrival a pack this year I hope to go next year and then maybe I can take the trip after that brilliant so forever vacation I'm really excited to learn about your journey and about your company and can you share with us you know how did this all get started for you yeah it's a good question so yeah I've listened to some of your other podcast as well and I've talked a lot of different or your tour premieres and it's I think I have a little bit of a different story than most so right now where it's fabrication is it's a boat tour company and no we're providing fun unique all inclusive tours and we're mainly operating right now in Bali and Kuala Lumpur but looking to expand but how I kind of initially started was I'm a thorough entrepreneur I've had eleven different companies all in the past focused around like technology and marketing and never in tourism however I've always been passionate about traveling and meeting the people and like I said before I lived in Southeast Asia for the past five years so I was living in Vietnam for a couple years and my girlfriend Jamie who's my business partner now we went from Vietnam took a vacation to Bali and we just loved it like most people do so we're just a little bit crazy and we said you know what let's just let's just move here so two weeks after we went on a vacation to Bali at the time I was just kind of working on here with the marketing consulting we started to me some really cool people out there a lot of locals it's just amazing down-to-earth fun people we were going out on tours and you know hiring drivers and just great meeting some friends there and you know as we started talking to them a lot more tour guides one of the main jobs out in Pawleys know for local assistance whereas I mean hospitality so tour guides of the big one and you know we saw that you know they were so passionate about Bali and their home island and showing people around however was really tough for them to kind of get consistent work inconsistent jobs and you know being from a marketing background like online I love that kind of stuff so it was kind of like a fun thing we said hey let's let's work together a little bit we'll help you I'll set up a website and we'll you know do some so marketing just so me get some guests and see what we can do and we can pass them over too so just has it got kind of a trial and what started out as one or two kind of tours a week you know after the first couple months it it grew into something now that's about seven months later is nineteen team members we have about 150 private tours per month and we have a team of now 19 team members so you know something that kind of started off as like a fun thing to help out and what helped out kind of turn into a company into a business and now it's just been kind of the blink of an eye it's growing fast you know luckily knock on wood but yeah I hear a lot of entrepreneurs at Corp indoors today do a tour from their from their hometown or their country and they love to show people around their area which you know we love that we don't give tours ourselves but you know we love to travel we love to meet new people and we kind of fell in for this but now I'm just I'm in love with this business I think personally like I love online marketing but I've always had a kind of a void I felt like an online marketing it wasn't personable or wasn't personal like you didn't get to really get to meet these people or you know kind of talk to them too much in person on the end but with tourism and doing these tours that's great so we can do online marketing to gain awareness get the tours and then also get to meet them and meet our gas boa to dinner or share stories with them so it's it's a really amazing business so can you talk us through first of all how many tours are you offering on your site currently yeah so again I've listened to some of the other podcast it's it's funny so we started off with mainly like our flagship tour so the first couple months we started off with what we call it Instagram tourists we we focus well on Millennials in oh that you know love culture but they want to take great pictures as well and share with friends we started with two tours so we had a Bali Instagram tour which took people to kind of the most famous spots in Bali and then an illusive penita Instagram tour which is an island just off the coast of Bali and the same kind of thing so we started off with two and then just kind of guests would say hey do you have this toward you have this sort and we expand it now I think we're at about 20 tours right now which is already crazy yeah so we just added another one today so now we're at we have 20 tours in Bali so I'm looking right now on your site which is the Bali Instagram tour the most famous spot so is that the first one you started with yeah excellent so how did you go about building that tour yeah so I think one thing I've learned is kind of over the years you know with marketing and whatnot a lot of it is perception and kind of how you how you can connect with the end consumer the guests and I think in the beginning when we looked at this we saw that there was tons of tours out in Bali I think Bali on Trip Advisor's one of the most competitive places let's say that I think India is up there in Thailand but we looked at kind of just creating wandering like a flagship product we went on one tour that we could just sell give you all the best spots in one day so we could look at all the tours that were out there there was a whole bunch you know a lot of the main spots Bali is actually because lots of doing that on that small island but there's a good handful you know three distinct really cool popular things that people talk about so for us we identify which were the most popular places and and what was actually in terms of proximity close to each other so we could actually put a tour together and and then we gave it kind of a cool name so instead of just calling it like you know Bali Hai like tour or top Bali spots we wanted to kind of give a little bit of pizzazz so you know Bali Instagram tour most famous spots and then when that I started going well we kind of duplicated that to the Nusa Penida which is the island right next to Bali I'm just trying to understand the logistics of the tour itself do you hire someone else to run that tour on your behalf or do you go out and hire the tour guides how does that we'll look we don't outsource out any other companies we do out towards ourselves so not me and Janie is my is my business partner not me and Jamie operated tours but we hired now we have 16 guides and three basically back-office marketing so we have our own guides that will take the tourist directly with us yeah so we've accumulated them over the past seven months so this is I'm just looking now 250 now at all so it's it's all day it's it's all inclusive yeah so we're really focusing so a lot of our audience now is from the US mainly I'd say us and then parts of Europe and then Australia's they are our main kind of focus and we see a lot of people that one thing that we didn't see a lot Bali was there was a lot of private tours Bernardo of all-inclusive but I know when I travel I like to explore and be adventurous but I also want to know that you know I kind of leave my wallet at home or just kind of know that everything is taken care of if I'm gonna go on a big vacation and I think for us we're not really focusing on let's say we love travellers and travellers are important but we really are focusing on like people who are going on a vacation they take that one big or to think vacations a year it's a honeymoon or it's a family trip so the all-inclusive is really important for us and we've seen like you know really good feedback from our guests in terms of that they like how big just know that everything's taken care of we have a great itinerary lunch is all set entrance keys are all set any kind of attraction tickets are all set yeah and the other thing is we're really focusing on full big tours in there long like you said it's there's a lot of driving in Bali and unfortunately that the traffic has just been a little bit crazy in recent years because of the huge spike in tourism and it's always been popular but even recently it's continuing to grow so it's a 13 hour tour but it can start at either 4:30 or 6:30 a.m. and they and I'm gonna get back early evening but yeah it's a full day tour you get your money's worth and you get to see a lot of great things absolutely and it's interesting you mentioned that the labeling is Instagram because I remember and this was so long ago I'm not betraying company secrets I think get you guide or Asia office was the first one to do that and I actually remember the meet for the person who did it who shall remain nameless and he didn't call it Instagram tour and you're right the bookings just rocketed for that yeah me like we forget you guide and it's one of these really cool things that you know as digital marketing can be a real headache and it's very stressful especially when you run ads that don't work or you're short but when you get that sweet spot and you see those numbers rock there is not a feeling like that is there it's a pretty amazing thing yeah I think for us like now we have an account manager at TripAdvisor or the other o TAS that we work with and you know they even said our growth wasn't as normal and I think we got quite a lot of luck and a little bit of skill but I think it's so important like and again to touch on this stuff the marketing part is so important and the pictures are so important which we'll talk about but I think just knowing your audience so for us like we didn't want to necessarily go after let's say low-budget travelers which again nothing wrong with that or even luxury luxury luxury travellers we just wanted to be in that probably middle to above average price point where you know we were going up to more Millennials and and a lot of honeymooners that love their photos or families that want to capture these great photos and our guys are awesome they help to take photos of everybody along the tour and we just kind of knew who our market was and our audience was and we kind of took a title that a name that kind of matched the demographic and ran with it but it's funny like get your guide had that and now you know now there's a lot that having Instagram toured to or they're using stuff about like you know you Facebook and just kind of and which is another interesting thing is how social media is affecting the tourism industry but for us yeah it's just so crazy that when you look at that how much a title and how much the first image can make it can make a huge impact on your tours absolutely and that's why I'm really excited to talk to you today because I know you've been operational just under a year even a flying start and I want to share some of that knowledge with our listeners yeah what would you say it being the biggest challenge is in setting up and getting going to be honest I think be it was weirdly enough it wasn't the actual bookings we got bookings pretty fast which thank God and we're very fortunate with that I think it's finding the right people which you know it's probably a common thing but finding the right guides and finding the right team members that really care about the brand I think if you type in the Ambala guy there's thousands of guides that will say hey you know we'll take your tour or oh you can't do it for 50 we'll do it we'll do 440 we'll do it for 30 and those people lowering their prices just to get a job and once I get the job they don't really care about the customer and for us again which we'll talk about customer service is huge for us just finding people that actually like yeah they want to make money of course to survive and you know to get the things that you want but you also want to you know be part of something bigger and have a cool brand behind you and have a cool name behind you and have fun guests that are with you so for us it was just trying to find really good tour guides in the first three months we probably had like I'd say it 35 30 percent churn rate off of our guides in the beginning but in the past four months knock on wood we have it kind of lost anyone so we're at a point now where I think we know what we're looking for it and you know if we can't find that right person we're okay with saying no like let's just wait until we find that right one even if that means missing out on a few tours so people I would say is a big one especially when you're when you're in different cultures right you have to be aware of people think differently people don't always think like you so what what's logical to you coming from s culture is very different than somebody coming from Y culture so just be empathetic I think is very important and understanding how other people think and trying to help them get there and wanting goals as well and when you say you had a thirty fifty five percent churn rate was that mainly you letting people go because they didn't they wouldn't fit in your culture that you wanted to set up yeah so at first in the beginning it was more us and and that was kind of us and you know we give a couple guys a job and then it wouldn't really work out that well or and we let them go but eventually we hired a lead tour guide Peter he's amazing and you know we have a small now core driver team that has helped us to build a bigger driver team or a bigger guy team and the good thing about Peter is you know he's a friend all he's such a nice guy but he's also he also loves you know forever vacation and he loves what we're about and he loves the job that he's getting so he protects it really well and he knows that if our customers are our happier abuse will go down and we won't have jobs and you know it won't be as good as is now so he's done a really good job if somebody was late for the customer or if somebody to install kind of our standards he's pretty quick to say hey like strike one one more and you're gonna be out and in a nice way but it's also it's really important and you know especially in that torn business or travel business referrals or everything and as much as one review can help you outcome one battery you can hurt you a lot so I think we're really cautious on everybody that would bring into our circle now but because of Peter he's helped us really manage that I've seen that in a lot of places I've worked where you bring people in and they kind of police that for you not saying that we're lazy managers but you know they're constantly talking about the values and you know what it means to customers and I think those people you know that they're hard to find but when you get them to premieres we need to do everything we can to keep them because they just help to keep things running yeah we have a really good relationship and again like they see what us as a company or us as a team has been doing for their families in providing work and providing fun they don't want somebody else to come in and with a couple bad tours and a couple bad reviews take everything down that would work for so hard so I think that's a pretty interesting and that was always a tough thing in the beginning is like how did how did Jamie and I get you know these guides to believe and something else of course money is important but how do we get them not to think short term but focus more on longer term values that hey you know all right I might have to work a little bit harder or work a little bit different now but if i if I'm patient and I do this in a year or in 6 months it's gonna be a lot more valuable I think that's one thing that was a little bit tough that person but now finding the right people it's been a lot easier to connect with other donors then join our Facebook group or pronacom or - Facebook do you have any kind of tips for for interviewing that or any questions that you found have helped you find these people that's the trickiest thing is interviewing because everyone tells you what you want to hear in an interview yeah that's so tough we go out on tours with them to be honest so now that we're in two markets or looking to expand Jamie and I you know we don't have time to kind of interview all the drivers now we still of course through maybe like a virtual interview if we're not there but now we really leave it up to Peter Trina Adjei to do kind of like the allowing into our inner circle or group now but in the beginning it was more we asked questions but like you said everybody says yes and there's there's some language issues as well too sometimes with some of the drivers coming in and you know we focus on english-speaking drivers but there's still some you know maybe they don't understand 100% but there's still some miscommunication so I think in the beginning for us it was more about it was really tough to sell them something they didn't know or they didn't believe in so for like hey you got to work with us because we're gonna have so many tours for you we're gonna have great customers we're gonna be like yeah I've heard that heard it before and I think it was almost like us selling them kind of in the beginning and then for us once we felt like somebody that we connected with and there are just kinda kind of kind of go off the vibe but we didn't really have a direct interview questions it was more like let's let's spend a day with them how are they and I think that's another big thing about guests do want to learn about the culture and in the local kind of culture and what goes on but they just want to also feel comfortable when you're spending 13 hours with somebody in a car throughout the day so a big part of our is in the beginning was like let's go hang out this person can we have a drink with them can we just talk to them like are they showing us around the right way are they just flight you know are they patient if we have to maybe wait or stop somewhere to use the restroom more so I think that was the big thing is just getting into the car with them and you can learn a lot about somebody like that yeah absolutely I love it and it takes a lot of time it's a big time commitment from you and your partner but it just pays off because if you you know see someone and you are out with our most fun and if you coach them when they're just not listening to you and not confronting what you're saying you know it's probably not gonna work out and you know that until you're out with them when it comes to tours a hundred percent and I think though to put that in the beginning may it did everything if we were inpatient we're like you know what let's just hire this person or I'll just do this or who cares it would have just killed their business and you know there was a couple of times along the way where we lost some drivers and like right before a tour or something happen where it's tough because some of the cultures are different let's say somebody maybe in bali sometimes if they feel like offended let's say hey hey getty you know on this tour it would have been important if you did this first sometimes they take that really personal if you tell them and they'll just say okay bye and we've learned we've learned that a little bit the hard way too so going through some tough times where we actually had lost some guides early really quick you know again having that core team to help you know get somebody back in and cook enough or they take the tour has been really helpful so it worked for us if we invested a lot of time into the kind of like the first ones so peter dietrich invested a lot of time and the only way what we can do we can do what we can do now is because we really trust them and they are they are managers they are leaders and we put a lot of time into them and now you know they put their time into new guides that are coming in which helps us out a lot if we didn't do that in the beginning yeah we would have fallen apart by now sure one of the questions I always ask to Oprah is and I don't think I need to go over this in your case I normally ask if they suffer with any kind of imposter syndrome but just talking to you on air I can be very confident in what you're doing I get the feeling you didn't suffer with any kind of imposter syndrome no but I still like it's just weird Shane like where we're at now like to me like how we're building this company and I remember when we started getting like three tours a week and I was like okay like cool and then we got like ten tours a week and then we got 20 and I think the last week was our biggest week we had 41 tours and a week in private tours and to the to the four people it's just really weird and sometimes that imposter system creeps in you're like do I really know how to do this and I think for us we're still learning a lot we're still you know constantly learning about the tourism industry we love our guests so don't don't get me wrong about how like you know I know a lot of these Tork renewer start by they they deep towards themselves and they take the guests around for us like you know that haven't been something that we've done we've gone actually out on some tours our guide to the guests we're very close to all of our guests but I think from a marketing background like I I know how in general the tools to to get customers I think that the biggest thing that I always get scared about you know I have nightmares about like well a guide forget to pick up one of the customers in the morning or like that to stuff that like scares me but it's imposter know I think I'm surprised at how fast it's gone but I know that's you know we're still in the easy part right now like the tougher part would be constant growth but yeah I think there's still some things that I'm like do I really know what I'm doing on this stuff so and I'm constantly learning I think it's important that I'm learning a lot about tourism too and also just trying to get to know our customers more looking at data how people are coming in to us how they're finding you know how they think about our tours what we need to prove I think the one thing that we've learned too is that it's never over if you never put a tour up and you're done you're constantly constantly changing it you start to get feedback and that somebody says hey why do we go to the waterfall before this are a good point and then somebody else says it and now we're starting to change it so I think you're constantly improving your tours too so it's never kind of like a just set it and forget it you always constantly are kind of changing and upgrading sure let me ask you then what surprised you the most off to you first few weeks of operating I would say I don't like contradicting myself earlier but I would say the amount of Tours so in the beginning I was tough in terms of managing everybody it wasn't the customer there's more managing the logistics so I was in the beginning to be really honest the first like couple months yeah I was surprised at the volume tours and now looking back at it so we have an account manager now at TripAdvisor which is I think there's over now almost three thousand tours and activities in Bali segment on TripAdvisor it's very common to launch tours and just never get any impressions or views on them at all and I think I was surprised at how how fast it started coming in I think at first I thought like it's gonna come in you know it's like okay we'll put on this distribution platform will start getting tours and and I just didn't think the volume was gonna come in that fast and then the other thing that surprised us I would say is I didn't know how quick it would be to kind of create a neat tour so that's one thing that we've been able to and I heard the last guys talking and they said you know they actually removed some tours and it was some of the tours was tough for them you know because let's say the food tour they have two less margin or they have two different vendors and it was tough and I think with us we use a lot of our same partners that can manage and control multiple things so let's say for example if we have every tour involve some kind of guide or driver so we have that and then let's say we want to do a cooking class we select a really good vendor that we work with and pair them together so we're never just going to sell you a cooking class we're going to give you a cooking class and then you're in it you're going to get to visit the famous tanah lot temple and we'll package it into kind of a full day tour so we've managed to keep our tours really really really good itineraries no fluff really like stuff that you really want to see and just have good vendors and it's been able is it's allowed us to kind of create towards a little bit quicker and launch them on our website and watch them on the OTAs so yeah I was a little bit surprised at that I thought that would take a lot longer in terms of kind of getting the right partners or signing the right agreements but it's actually gone a little bit faster than I thought did you know every weekday same curates the most interesting news articles in tours and activities and sends them out in a snappy daily digest grab your copy of the tour Pirin our daily briefing at www.appraisercitywide.com you talked about customer feedback so any when it comes to improving tours in the itinerary etc how do you go about at four occasions actually soliciting customer feedback one thing that we've done is that we've done very well is really tried to take a friendly approach to our customers and people will probably say that people say oh we talk to customers but we're like probably obsessive about it it's probably hurt our growth to be honest with you in terms of long term growth how much time I spend on whatsapp to talk to customers which of course I'd love to do it it just it's tough to focus on like deep work and building marketing funnels when you're going back and forth but but I'll tell you our process so first thing that happens is when you get a booking in and this kind of goes back to getting feedback is first thing we're gonna do no matter what the platform is we're gonna create a group chat with them usually what's that or maybe facebook Messenger iMessage whatever it is and we're gonna really try to start talking to them hey how's it goin shame you got your tour oh we got your tour set for July 18th for a Bali Instagram tour where you pick up from here gives the itinerary let us stuff in me questions we're so excited to have you then we use a lot of emojis too which has been actually really fun and kind of like just loosened everybody up and you're coming to Bali so most people are pretty excited about it so we send a message and most of the time keyboard letters so excited hey Ben and Jamie we've read reviews about you guys and you know they're they're happy they're talking and we kind of have this relationship already and you know we're gonna who send photos back and forth well maybe if they have like a week week before the tour when I say you know hey Shane hope yours hope you're excited to get out here here's the polluting temple today one of our tours or anyway show my phone of the contacts awesome we're so excited to get there so we really which has helped us out so much is we try to really create a connection we have to talk to every guest I don't want to send out when it you know as they say and your tours coming up in a couple weeks you're confirmed Thaksin cuz I feel like you know people want to help people they like you know people that they like they're gonna do more for them or they're gonna be nicer to them or friendly or get more feedback so in the beginning we really take an approach that not email chat we want to chat with these people be a text message and whatever form it is and then get that relationship and then along the tour when is a day before the tour we're gonna add our drivers into the group and a couple of our team members and the cool thing is all of our tours and I can send you some screenshots later it's fun if we're having seven eight tours going on we have seven or eight whatsapp groups going with us Jamie and I in it a guy in it maybe a couple of other team members and they're all sharing photos so let's say Peters taking a volume Instagram tour he's thinking photos of the guests sharing it in the group the guesses in there we're all kind of talking back and forth we have Wi-Fi in the car so it's really like more like a friends and we're like a relationship would really care anything that they need we really try to move things around so at the end of the day they've had a great time right most likely they've had a great time we we say hey thank you guys so much we appreciate it also if you don't mind you know we really appreciate ya it'd mean a lot to us if you'd help us with a review we send them a TripAdvisor link and now I think after after let's say about six months on TripAdvisor now we have about a hundred and fifty some odd reviews we have all five stars - four stars which were like our first like three reviews which I'm still a grated about the titles even say like amazing tour I'm like ah my four stars and now we've cracked the top 100 but what we can see is like if you send an email after which I know TripAdvisor says they said he knows after if you look at or let's say on TripAdvisor it's very easy to just click delete and it's very easy to just like alright I'm busy you get your life going occasions over but with ones that we really try to keep in touch with them we'll send to the Assam for review will something like a little picture at the end of me and Jani and the team so it's really a personal approach so I they're open to give feedback and reviews because you know I think they have more of a connection they feel like we really care which we do and then actually also one thing we started doing is we started offering now just like a $10 gift card to Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks if they do a phone call interview after their tour as well so we just had our first one yesterday actually and it was great we have ten questions kind of like some tough questions - about their vacation the planning process their tours I think that's so important as we start to grow a company it's just really getting real feedback from the guests and whether it's positive or negative and then just constantly adapting and changing and trying to learn get better know that that's absolute gold he's having understanding that the Booker's journey it's just crucial to our business and it's like the tip of the iceberg and then you speak to a few people but you know I am always curious if when people go on that journey and they don't book might or what was it that they didn't like and it's so hard to get that data and the intelligence isn't that sorry yeah it's it's really tough and one of our questions is like hey if you didn't did you book all your towards of us if not you know why and then what could we were done differently to get that business so yeah I think that's really important because as we're starting to our marketing you know what we too expensive or maybe we needed to offer a discount if there was two or more tours right or if it's a package or and they just didn't know about it so I think that's something that we're we're constantly trying to get the data on and improve it it's so important and again I think it stems from that direct like again the texting with emojis and pictures it really helps kind of loosen up the customer and it makes them feel like you know they're really appreciated which they are and it kind of opens up conversations a lot easier yeah no absolutely if I had this myself up in Chicago recently where I took a lot of tours and there was something I couldn't do and I was talking to openers and I hate white new book our tour I said you know what I couldn't fit it in because your tour started at 12 the one I was on in the morning finished up and there were we didn't we didn't realize that maybe we need to go back look at our scheduling and I was like you know absolutely had been an hours gap I could have got to the side of the city and but I couldn't you know make it work it was only a short I know it's different for you with a 13-hour fourth there are things like that that are blockers in the book journey that sometimes we're not aware of so I loved how much time you're putting into the watsapp group I'm certainly the phone conversations and it'll be interesting you know if we get to chat twelve months down the road eighteen months down the road I hope back on the show it'll be how you made that scalable because you know there you're going with bookings that's gonna be take more and more of your time and that's the tough part right that's and that's the next chapter is again I stopped because I know that's like the bread and butter right that is the core of it that's all the part we fall apart but of course you have to understand that that can scale mm mm towards a month it would be talking every customer so that would be a next challenge ahead for sure so I want to dive into marketing which I know you're special yeah you know the number one question I get at two of preneur is you know please can you ask you.guess how they get the word out about that tour so I'm gonna ask you you know you started off you built these tours you said you did well on online marketing can you talk us through what you did yeah for sure so I think the first thing is very basic step that we overlooked so one of the things is having let's say for us to be found to get found we didn't focus well on offline I think it's still a huge part I just read a statistic that four out of five dollars spent on travel it still comes from offline whether it's offline travel agency or whatnot so we still haven't partnered really with hotels or you know offline travel agencies as much which is something that I do want to do in the future but right now we've really just focused online so for us to get the word out I think a lot of the stuff was low hanging through in the sense we're first off you need a really good website it amazes me now still that you know coming back from a technology background I know how in marketing and branding I know how important and that perception is that first look if you google you know Bali tours or Google most or look at most tour websites for the lack of where they're not that nice most of them they're not mobile-friendly which you know the majority of users now are on their mobile phone making decisions they're outdated there's a lot of text and not enough images where the images are like very blurry but they're not nice nice and to do so I first I think the first thing is having a really clear and easy to follow website and we're still changing and going back and forth and trying to update and use the analytics but I would say that's the first thing it's having a really good website there's no point of marketing something it's not well-designed the next thing that we did too is you know we weren't afraid to spend some money in marketing I think that a lot of people a lot of foreigners a lot of entrepreneurs a lot of small businesses are really afraid and they're so proud of their organic reach I think organic reaches you can see it's going away it's slowly going away it's slowly tougher you're gonna get your SEO on Google coming up from articles but try to post a Facebook post now and don't boost it or don't put any ad money into it if you have a hundred thousand let's say a hundred thousand you know followers if you don't put any money into it you're lucky if you can get 15 like if you put a dollar in right you're gonna get a hundred plus easily because Facebook needs to make money Instagram Facebook owns Instagram they need to make money they're putting money first out so I think for us it was that we weren't afraid to spend a little bit of money and you can do a lot with $10 a day you know people who say I don't have the budget for marketing of course you have the budget for marketing because it's a long term strategy so for us you know having really good pictures on social media and on Facebook right Facebook and Instagram doing doing targeted marketing which you know there's some deeper talks that we can have but in terms of even starting off if you're kind of a novice and don't know too much you can do boosting it with really precise targeting I can target people in Bali let's say so when we first started we were doing let's say $5 a day ads for hey are you in Bali question mark take our famous Instagram tour click here to get 10% off right and an iron to know they're in Bali because I'm targeting just Bali I already know they're on vacation or they're not from Bali because you can on Facebook you can target people who live at least let's say 10,000 miles away so you can tell if it's not their hometown to just visiting so Facebook gives you an option to say target people in Bali where maybe are they an expat are they on vacation are they visiting somewhere that's out of hometown so I can say hey are you on vacation and if you see that ad you know say how on vacation are you in Bali yeah I'm in Bali okay cool take our awesome famous Bali Instagram tour so I think that's a big thing is just leveraging social media the huge Facebook Instagram huge shoot is still so undervalued right now and I think Facebook is doing a lot of good things now in terms of trying to focus more on travel you can't beat Google in terms of intent Google's the best you're typing in tours in Bali book a Bali tour like that's intact right and that's why it's a bit more expensive because these people are looking for it whereas Facebook it's more based on your viewing pattern but in the beginning let's say in the beginning when we started it was a lot of Facebook social media at Facebook Instagram ads and then doing SEO kind of stuff and doing influencer marketing has been really big for us so in Bali it's like the land of influencers everybody's an influencer in Bali so I think partnering up with them was a really great kind of start for us so we'd say hey Michele seven seven you want we're glad to give you a free tour you all you have to do is tag us in two of your post write a blog article about us and they'll say you know share this post or share this article so elaborate thing kind of what you have in the beginning because our you know our cost can be a little bit lower with the with the guides depending on what we have because we control the cost so maybe it's bartering right instead of paying you don't have a lot of money but you just said share the massive tip there because I've some emails on this subject aren't influencers where some to Oprah Knorr have given the trip to an influencer a quite a large cost and then they've not got thing back in return and I was saying and well what you have to do beforehand is you have to agree what they're gonna give you because we give and I like how you just said that yeah I want two tags and I want this that in yellow it's really important I think to agree that for you know they go on the tour for sure and I think some people listening might not agree with me but I don't feel like the majority of 99% of the influencers are out there aren't gonna give you instant value so to me it's all long-term place I actually don't care too much about the post on Instagram because they see it it's gone okay people don't really care too much but a blog article or maybe some kind of you know shared content that we put in or like a link maybe week bring them into our affiliate program which we started where we say hey like we'll give you a free tour but listen I want you to write an article about the tour how you liked it or a blog and then you know what if you want to also make additional revenue here's a link here's our Bali Instagram tour I hit with your own referral link and I know everybody does this now the bigger boys like a tour guide and whatnot but there's a lot of software pieces of software you can get out there that you can launch your own affiliate program and we'll say hey you know you're running a you're gonna write an article about our tour put in your own promo link and we'll give you 10% off anything you refer I don't think you know a lot of the guy and we we've had we work with some influencers that will try to pitch us hey $1,000 and I'll post two things for you they usually don't work in terms of like the short term you know longer term is tough it's content I want the photos that you're gonna work with a photographer maybe you can't afford a photographer hey I'll give you a free tour but I want six photos of this that I could use my website or I want a video of this or I want a blog to me a blog with a link back is really important in terms of SEO so yeah I would say that kind of recap is having that good website with a nice brand using social media and paid social media and PPC effectively and if you don't know how to do it there's plenty of YouTube videos out there too to learn and then working with influencers helped us out in the beginning when we didn't have big fonts in terms of Facebook ads mean you're obviously well-versed in it for anyone out there who has never run an ad are there any books or courses or anyone you suggest that they follow because I ask that question because I know with digital marketing there's a lot of false or out-of-date information out there as well cuz this thing changes so fast for me I don't turn people I follow but there is actually there's a blog so one blog I love a lot is social media examiner they're really good and I can send you the link after social media examiner they're they're amazing they do a really good job at espresso and espresso is really good and I can send you some more links if you want to add it Antron or how about but I think that's such a big thing and it's just an excuse when people say there's so many people that say drop the budget right off time for that to me like that is so important like you need somebody that's gonna help the manager day to day operations the guy it's you need to have a hand in the pulse on that but for you to retrieve skill for you to truly grow and when I was at arrival there was a lady that best spoken to earlier she through the tour operator she had a really good speech about like how do you get to that next phase do you want to be a small company which is OK do you want to be a space in quote small company and you're making a good life but you know you're just kind of there as a passive income or do you want to build a big brand and how do you get to that next step and the biggest thing is removing yourself from the day-to-day so for me what I try like my kind of goals lately Janey's really been focusing on the operations which has been amazing and the drivers and the customers I still get my hands in there even though I should price they out of it as you can Mattamy times because I've always kind of overlooking or just just seeing just things up because I want things to be perfect but she's obviously she does an amazing job but for me now it's really focusing on growth and that's marketing so the blogs I mentioned are good but there's just so many pieces of content you can find online and like I said it's not expensive you don't need a budget of $100 a day you can do with as little as a dollar a day and I think it's interesting because a lot of people will try it for a day of the week and they'll say oh it didn't work but you gotta put some money into tries so what I like now what I'm doing and what kind of we're doing for our vacation is now that we're starting to expand you know we're in Bali we're in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia now and we're looking to go to Vietnam we did this because we're seeing a lot of our customers were doing multi country trips so we want to kind of catch a piece of that pie as well and we want to you know be smart about it but set up the right networks but what I realized at first is I always thought like before I kind of got into this industry all right let's do an ad people are gonna see it they're gonna click on it and the probably just gonna buy it if it looks cool right well that's completely wrong and if you look at any other studies you know people in travel on average most people this is a three-month six-month process they're looking at 50 to 100 different websites it's it's not a one touch point set and I think that I've learned over the last let's say six months is in I'm still learning a lot is kind of how to keep them coming back so how we're working for us what we do now is we're gonna do like that's if we're calling in a marketing funnel top of the funnel awareness stage just getting them to know about forever vacation nobody knows what we are so let's get them to know about us and we'll do maybe some social media posts with some targeted ads but we'll do a lot of Google pay-per-click so Bali tour tours in Bali honeymoon tours in Bali what to do in Bali those kind of keywords so then somebody will come to our site and you know with modern technology if you install a Facebook pixel into your website now we can track and put a cookie on their website which is a good tracking device so now if let's say Shane you come to our website through a Google ad you click it and then you click on a Bali Instagram tour you click on honeymoon tour then you go okay cool and then I'm gone you leave that's okay we don't have any of your information but now we and track which is like most people if you ever go on a website and then you open up YouTube or Facebook you're gonna see ads from that that company that you're just app right retargeting so what we're doing now is we're spending a lot a lot more money in terms of of our budget into remarketing ad so now if you come to our website you're gonna see on Facebook after videos we're putting a lot of time into a really nice video so we'll say hey looking to come to Bali which we know they are because they came to visit our website most likely check out this tour check out this and then they can click over to it and we're continuously remarketing to them and the only time they leave that funnel when they're not gonna see us is when they actually booked a tour so we'll have a pic so on that we know if this person bought a tour then don't show them the ads and now what we're doing now is to try to push them from the top of the funnel down to the bottom of the funnel through the sale is we're trying to do more middle of the funnel stuff now we're we're doing a lot of like guides like free guide get our 50 page free guide on how to plan your perfect Bali vacation so something comes to our website and it took me like a month to create but it's well worth it it's like a you know key stone piece of contact you know you come to our website you leave then on Facebook or Instagram you see looking to plan your ultimate vacation get our free guide Bubba block click here Facebook does amazing stuff when they have have these lead ads that are pre-populated with your email for the user with their email and their name so it says if you want our guide give us your email and name it's already populated through Facebook they to say cement and now we get their email and then we can start and it can go deeper and deeper but then we can start kind of getting them into a cycle or we can send them an email with the guide and then offer them tours and kind of qualify them as these potential leads that are coming in the next month or in six months and and so on so it doesn't it doesn't happen overnight and we're still like not even 50 percent have where I want to be in it but it's something that I'm really passionate and I think it's a great long long-term way to kind of grow the brand and I love the OTAs but we also don't want to be relying on them as well yeah you know and some trip Rinna's who may be listening over the call pixel this sounds complicated and it's really not once you if you say there's lots of YouTube videos and and I think the best way I can present this on the episode today I was talking to a fairly old guy the other day who was a copywriter in New York City and he telling me that back in the day yeah when writing direct response ads they were reliant on people getting that through their mailbox and then sending back the coupon or whatever it's like you kids today like yeah this is when you said actually think of this technology have where you know within a day or two it oh that ad it's getting no traction maybe jernej is wrong you need to tweak the copy or hey let's a be test that you know we're very fortunate that we have this and like you say it can be done for as little as five or ten bucks a day before you ramp up and my advice the trip renews is you know this isn't like going to the casino in Vegas perineum never water five weeks to find out your audience online Democrat good so that that's the way I would oh she was not you know hit the jackpot in if you might do it in twenty four hours are good luck to you generally it's okay that demographic didn't work let's change it around or that location or whatever it may be and there are so many different options aren't there within the Facebook audience so many people so many tools and I think it just depends what you want right it depends where you want to take your business if anybody says they don't have time for it I think it's a tough excuse like you can find somebody to write you can find somebody if you're lucky to find a good person and I think the guys from the last bike podcast that I listen to you like they hired an agency and didn't work out and they finally got a marketing person it's just true nobody's gonna ever care about your business as much as you right nor should that is you're the owner so I think it's really a genetic tough if you can find a really good you know marketing person that cares that great but I think you need to know enough to be dangerous I think every every tour preneur should know because marketing is that what drives your business so you need customers and like I said we don't control TripAdvisor or or get your kite or Tour radar they change one algorithm you could be off the Clapham or one day they wake up and they say you know what you don't like your tour anymore one button and you're gone so I think for me it's just like always knowing that I can have control of my brand I love them right we're working great and I you know I know there's always debate about Commission and whatnot like I have nothing wrong with the eggs I love them they've helped us out so much especially in the beginning but it's also really important to get your own customers because when you get your own direct customers you can get more data right you can do more kind of you know analytics around it but these words they might sound big like pixel or confusing or whatever but it's all easily easily easily discoverable all online just by searching looking at a social media examiner or just googling how to set up Facebook Ads you'll find out you know there's tons of really good articles and a lot of them aren't really scams like you can't unless they're trying to sell a course don't pay for a course you don't need a course everything should be free material it's just all recycled material it's all basic stuff we're go to Facebook including Facebook Facebook actually has an amazing Help section and they give demos and show you how to do stuff as well but I just think it's something that and like you said Shane like it's just you it's so accessible now you have to take advantage you have to know this kind of stuff because the majority of people aren't so this is I still think social media Facebook ads and cigarette ads are severely undervalued like right now for example I can share data I just launched a retargeting Facebook ad for our guide so if you come to our website and you don't make a purchase or anything most likely you might get retargeting on facebook that says you know they come in a ball you get our free guide to get it give us your email and right now I'm getting them as a last look for about forty three cents per email which is really good because yeah these are this isn't just a random person that's you know just in Alaska and he'd never thought about Bali this is the person that came to your website right most likely they showed intent and now I got their email they've been on my website they're saying hey yeah for our vacation send me a guide and now I have a direct of contact to them so now from there I can send them that guy and then I can do marketing automation if they open it do this if they click this do this and now I can give me promos based on what they do so to me like that's that's so valuable to get that kind of information so I think everybody has to be learning all these basic marketing you know if you're wearing this kind of business yeah absolutely and I feel we could go in a whole hour just yeah and it's a huge part of the the puzzle if you will I think in future episodes of the show I know we're gonna be bringing in some panels so maybe we do something along that lines I'd love love yeah all people who are in the field doing this and I also you know agree with you about courses and there's a lot of people out there selling stuff that is recycled and just be very very careful and sure we since it's very exciting conversation Facebook ads and Google Ads Google Ads I don't have so much experience with but their Facebook site it's a lot of fun never miss an episode of the show's subscriber to open or calm or slash subscribe what would you say are some of the tools or apps and I'm not necessarily thinking just marketing but in terms of running your business productivity what are the tools that you rely on of course for the ads you know like Birla Fame our tech marketing technology you know using Google Ads Facebook Instagram in terms of like ad stuff let's say in terms of SEO so I'm constantly and I'm trying to learn a lot more about SEO I use SEM rush they can be a bit expensive it gets about 100 bucks a month depending on what you're using it for I see value a little bit I don't know how to keep using it or not but it's an interesting tool if you're looking to learn about SEO and you know they'll help kind of track the competitors attract you kind of track your rankings the other thing I use which I love is live chat for a chat tool on our website you know you can do different let's say we have a little chat button on the bottom right and it'll pop up a message if you're a new customer it will give you a different message if you're a returning customer we can set it if you've visiting a certain page maybe if you're visiting the Bali Instagram tour versus the Bali six or waterfall tour it might be a different message and then people can chat with us directly also we use a tool called hot charts hot jar is really cool they have a free plan that's pretty basic but it can give you some value it basically it's heat maps so you can kind of see like who's clicking on your website but we and where they're clicking but we actually don't use it for that we use it more for the screen recording so it's kind of creepy but it's pretty cool it'll record the screen sessions for you on your website so if you come to our website like we can basically it looks like we're behind their shoulder looking at them as they're on the computer now there's no personable identifiable information so if they type in a credit card you don't see that or any text we don't see that but you can see like again it's like a video so their mouse is going up here they're clicking here what pictures are they click on why do they move here today where do they exit what's where do they go to next and it's really interesting to kind of see that and then adjust from there so that's hot jar they're really cool and then we use like Google Analytics we use Google tag manager which is a little bit more technical and then you know we use bouken right now for reservation software but we're actually building our own custom software actually now so funny like the guys were saying that in the last podcast that I had so tough to to kind of get a reservation management system that you know has all your needs so that's what we're working on now with our development team so we're kind of building our own in-house reservation management system to kind of fit into our needs in terms of booked on what aren't they doing for you that you wish they were stopped right I think so I used to be a product manager so I used to be a head of product for a company called data deck which is like a data software and I know how it is I know how tough it is so I'm preface it by saying I know how tough it is for them to like manage everybody's kind of let's say demands even if they're little things so something that might look so little you know as they're like an error but I only just fixed it you know there's a backlog of hundreds of things one the biggest thing is now is we use the mainly TripAdvisor did a great job of getting us into it because you know if you connect to it we'll give you a free spot replacement so that kind of got us in and then the price point was okay and it's great because it connects a few let's say you know Expedia and TripAdvisor and a couple other OTAs so the whole goal is how do you get everything into one place I think that's kind of like to go all tore produce like the prom they have how do you get everything all the tours all the data into one place they've done a good job of that to some level but then I think in terms of like adding so we get a lot of offline bookings or offline from bokken we don't use bogans widget to put on a website I just don't like it I don't think the designs nice we have our own kind of custom tool that we built so it's like getting offline bookings or booking that didn't happen on Okin how do we get them over to Bokan because the goal is to get everything at one place and it's really tough like let's say you book two tours with us on our website well it's not connected to Bokan so when i go in and add youtube Oken i have to add you your first thing your less than your email the tour then I have to add a whole new thing where I have to add your name again your last thing that you know the tour where as I just don't have a drop-down this is Shane select it ad tour so there's a lot of that kind of stuff the calendar they don't really know we use Google Calendar now we connect it using a one actually started to jump back to but one tool that I think all tour preneur should use is saffi it's a really cool system vapi ER it does kind of different automation for you so things that don't generally work together or talk to each other like let's say for example if I get a lead from Facebook automatically send it to my MailChimp account and if I get a new MailChimp contact in my account automatically add it to Google Drive stuff like that I can kind of talk and move things around but yeah so for bouken I think the biggest thing is it's just I can't put everything there I can't put everything in one place so I'm just walking out allowed to of course but did you shop around that competitors to see if any of their widgets would work for you so that it would save you all that time we just kind of took an approach and I think we started building this website before we really got into the whole like industry before I knew everything and before I discover you and other kind of like resources about that so my background is like just building technology and we have a development team so I kind of took the approaches a built and I think yeah looking back at it there's probably other tools that would be okay but it's tough even the ones that I've seen they're just not flexible in terms of like like poking widget if you wouldn't bed that widget if you go to the payment page like you even see them both in mobile like loads really quick and it disappears or like the loading speeds not fast or just kind of how it fits your design it's not really flexible it's more like a module where you can't really change everything seamlessly to kind of fit into it but no I didn't look at a lot of the other ones so kind of built our own map but now this is why I want to build our own platform and it's almost done but again I think the goal is like how do you get everything in one place and even let's say for example even if we did use bokken to get our you know our website Torsen we just don't have people that text us right on whatsapp and within one bucket or we have somebody that will call us still not too much but they will or we still help with other platform like booking comm or - Arita doesn't connect to de volcán so either way I gotta go find a way to get those in and the problem is they just don't unfortunately right now which probably isn't in their main focus but they don't do a great job of getting bookings that didn't happen pokin into oak which otas are you working with currently yeah so right now we're working with Trip Advisor we got TripAdvisor we're working with tor radar or working with Expedia we're working with booking comm I'm probably missing somebody but I think those are the main four we haven't worked with yet we're talking to them it's a different price point in terms of where I'm seeing a lot of their products but I don't think it would furthest so I still want to look and we're gonna still keep our price the same so I don't know how well it'll do well on that platform but I think it does not hurt I think the biggest thing is to is it can hurt if you're Luke is obviously a huge company and they're getting a lot of traction so so putting on them doesn't hurt but if there's new OTAs popping up all the time we get an email every week that says hey we just launched this platform we love to put you on it and as much as that sounds nice you know I always have some how many tours you're getting per bump and how much website traffic do you happen and it's tough because it actually does take a long time to upload all your tours and manage that so yeah I think for right now like I said TripAdvisor and to our radar Expedia and booking comm Luke definitely potential and also we're in the process now getting on trip comm excellence it seems like you have the OTAs co-ed how'd you see that OTA landscape I mean you're saying any only you don't mind them you don't mind the Commission's but how do you do it yeah I love them I think people that complain about OTAs it's a tough subject because you don't have to be on there so that you guys gonna understand it's a business and they gotta make money you would have never had that booking if it wasn't for them unless maybe they they saw you first on your website and they went over to kook and booked you there that's a different story but in general like just like anything right like if I have a house in the US and I rent it on Airbnb it Airbnb takes a commission just like they have experience well for experiences but that's okay because I would never have it just like if you're a sales rep and you sell something you take a commission so I look at it like that and if people say oh they cut too much of our margins well put your prices higher and have a better product now I love it I have no problem about it and people that have a higher Commission than others that's okay I either won't use them or I'll just use them and you don't change my product around to match I think it's an interesting landscape I think you see a lot of the startups now it's a hot thing where I poked and got acquired I think their fair harbor they they get acquired too right yeah by booking bikes looking right so so you're seeing it's a hot space I think they'll still be only a few winners I think like Airbnb doing an amazing job I think check out your advisors the biggest right now if you'd get your guide just raise to half a billion Expedia is still huge I think you're gonna see a lot of the big guys I think you'll see them eventually gobble up some of the small guys I think you'll see it like what you're seeing on social media where there's like a few that are kind of rockin and rollin and owning most of the market and you're gonna see thousands of these small tour premieres that are just hustling going out there but I think you have to look at them as your friend we're growing enough now we just got an account manager at TripAdvisor so I'd have to awesome so where's me to talk to before we're so tough to talk to anybody but yeah you know it's it's a business and these guys are multi-million multi-billion dollar companies I just see like you know either you can be with them or against them and it's probably not to be you know they're gonna win at the end these guys are huge they're spending millions every month of marketing I see there's a benefit do Asia flight to Bali hair Asia flies the ball yes they do dad doing something interesting where they are now offering experiences on their site and I'm saying any more air like I'm going to do this and yeah instead usually they would partner up with TripAdvisor or Expedia or get you tagged but he should have gone a different route so it's funny you mention that Shane I was just that arrived but I met Erin Sarma so Erin Sarma he's a I think he was the president of AirAsia calm and then he founded and started a company called City which was acquired by AirAsia which is AirAsia deals now and AirAsia deals is all about they're doing tours and in attractions right so yeah I think that's another huge thing like you're gonna see that is against what here be immediate Airbnb start off with they had their house and now hey if you already have the guests why not get experience is very another way to leverage the resources you already have them their planning same with you know again all these airline or hotel companies you know a lot of hotels we use something like TripAdvisor or Viator as it can affiliate partner but I see them also going into this so the hotels eventually or the airlines exactly they're coming in you know you know your guess is going to Bali nation you might sell em tours yeah absolutely I just saw soft West I've started doing it even here in the United States and they were our place paths were based in your home city or how many your fosston say I'm seeing it more and more but I think that the challenge they have is how they present the experience like just sticking a link up on the home page doesn't really do much for me it's all post booking a flight and can they get that data where they know what they do can be in destination how can they present that to you you know I I'm going in New York this week and you know I got an email couple of days ago from booking comm you know directing me to the air experiences which I thought was was a nice touch because you know I bought my hotel I'm out of there I'm not searching around but now I've had this email things to do in New York you click on it oh I didn't know I could go on a birth of Punk'd or in New York City or a tour it is how they present their thing they just stick that link on the home page I don't see it working and you know we're talking about Commission that's that's not cheap to do that to send out an email to package and present there and the links that all costs so exciting times ahead and before we wrap up here I want to ask you briefly about arrival how was that event for you yeah it was a good event so we got to see the last day of arrival and interpret Weiser had an event as well out there so they had like an another supplier so I didn't get to see the first two days of arrival I caught the last name and the Trip Advisor back but you know it was my first event let's say in the travel industry yeah I loved it I think the guys that arrival and there's three of them that founded it really seemed like good guys and it was just nice to have ever be in kind of one room so you hear about Trip Advisor here but neither guy he's big company so it was kind of nice to actually could just see them as humans and see that you know they're listening to your problems when they're trying to help it out and is cool to see roadmaps and but also to me a lot of the other local core preneur so I think like what you're doing now is podcast is great because and you can your other like-minded people and hear their stories and learn and you know from their mistakes or from their success and I think that like any time you can get to Oprah newer to the same room it's pretty special because everybody has very similar stories and ensure unique things so yeah rival was really is an interesting event for us the venue was beautiful and yeah overall well put-together and we got to me a lot of contact so is the first time we actually got to meet our TripAdvisor contact there are booking comm contact there so it was really nice to kind of put faces the names yeah I'm we're huge fans of arrival here at to a preneur and I have to take my hat off to Douglas Bruce and Alex because you know to organize this event in Bangkok it was the first one they arranged in Asia there was 500 plus yeah he's which you know for a first so it's yeah it's you know I'd really take my hat off to them that doesn't happen easily or automatically so I hope everyone who listens to to opener actually does go to their respective arrival because now they have them in the US and Europe Asia so you know I think it is valued for money and are there any books you recommend to to Oprah knows either those who are starting a business or they're in the middle of it are there any books that you feel really helped you I haven't really read any books in specifically toward like let's say the whole you know tour industry or whatnot but just some books that like you know I try to read a book a month again so the book that I like it's called trust me I'm line by Ryan holiday so Ryan holidays like a really good market or smart guy but just kind of about how like perception plays roles in in your business and how media has an effect a big effect on kind of how your brand or how you are perceived and we talked about how kind of easy it is this predator you know false information just kind of how to protect yourself and kind of build a brand and and the craziness at the marketing world and then also I just read which I like is it tell me focus little bit more but it's called digital minimalism by Callen Newport so he actually talks about how people are using social media and Technology you know too much kind of the wrong way so he talked about how to kind of using use it more like intently like really really how to kind of minimize it and only kind of use what you need he also talks about focusing I think that's one of my struggles is you know sometimes when you have so many things to do you you get nothing done because you're just scratching the surface of 20 things instead of just really focusing on like deep work on one thing so one thing I really been doing is learn from that book too just try to hope it's like one big task every day like nothing to be huge in terms of like time because so what's one thing that if I don't get anything else done that day what's one thing I'll be proud of is that launching a new tour is that having an awesome conversation with the customers that building a new marketing funnel or what not so yeah I think those looks were good and from good to great is really good or good as the enemy of great there's a couple good ones but those are the two that I've read recently that I like excellent I will add those onto the to of preneur bookshelf on I'm actually gonna make a PDF of these at some point for everyone that I'm a huge fan of reading and obviously podcast and I think really helped us in our in our businesses been we've overrun by ten minutes thank you I know I talking really good up I think we could have gone another hour but I hope you'd be interested in coming back on the show in the future maybe tell us a little bit more about how things have evolved for you particularly you know building your own reservation system and market and an expansion and while listeners love to hear that I would love that I think they'd be a lot of challenges along the way so I'll get to learn a lot I love to share and I look forward to hearing more of your podcast and hearing from other tour for new words for sure marvelous thank you for your time Pam I say I appreciate have a good day thanks for listening to the tour preneur podcast be sure to visit - opener com to join the conversation and access the show notes including links for the resources mentioned on today's episode this is Chopra