MBA1700 Q&A Wednesday: I’m a travel blogger. How do I pivot my business during COVID?

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Hey oh. Welcome to the $100r business growth on the Daily every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net. Today's episode is a Q and A Wednesday episode. On our Q and a Wednesday episodes we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. Today's question is from Jim and Jim asks hey Omar, Love the podcast. I'm a travel blogger and because of COVID 19 I'm a little stuck. I usually blog about my travels, share stories, share videos and even sell some personalized tours. But with lockdown all that is completely shut down. How do I pivot in my business? What do I do with my time? My finances are not totally dried up, but this situation for my business is not sustainable. Your help in guiding me is really appreciated. Thanks Love of the podcast Jim Jim, love the question and thanks for asking it. I wanted to say to you directly you are not alone. Many, many industries have been affected because of COVID because it's not easy for people to travel anymore. But just because we can't travel now doesn't mean your travel blog or your Travel blog business can't add value to people's lives. There's so much you can do. A lot of the things I'm gonna share with you are things I just picked up from looking at other travel bloggers. I love to travel. My favorite travel blogger is Rick Steves and I wanna share with you some of the things I lear how they're dealing with COVID some opportunities where you can build some new revenue streams and how you can ride this out strong. I'll also give some advice to anybody who's stuck because of COVID Their business is just kind of sluggish. How to get out of that, how to get things moving again? Let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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The travel industry has taken a major hit because of COVID 19 and today's listener. Today's Q and A Wednesday question from Jim is spot on. How do you pivot? How do you change? How do you make something happen when you took such a blow? First, let's recognize the truth of the matter. The truth of the matter is because of COVID people can't travel. Or at least depending on the country you're on, they can't travel easily or safely. This is assumption. We all say to ourselves, but it's partly true. People can't travel. Maybe internationally, but people can do some traveling like a road trip. Even if you're in a country like Australia, where they really are are super, super strict when it comes to the COVID restrictions where they close the borders between states like you can't leave. Let's say, for example, New South Wales, which is a state in Australia. When there are a few cases that pop up, you know, the borders get closed. But you can travel within New South Wales. So let's just define the problem. You can't travel internationally. And I understand that if you're a travel blogger, the world's your oyster and there's so much material out there. But this is an opportunity for you to create a different stream of income, a different chapter in your business career, local travel, road trips, exploring what's in your backyard. And of course, you could start with your own local area. But just because you can't go somewhere, let's say, for example, you can't go to Australia and help people in their local area to do some local travel. You can curate some content, curate some ideas from other videos, other blogs, and serve your audience. For example, in New South Wales, in Australia, you can go to beaches. You can go to the Blue Mountains, you can go skiing in the winter in Kosciusko Mountain, you can go to Byron Bay, which is sort of like a yoga, hippie, beachy vibe. You can go camping. There's so many options within the state and people are hungry for a break, right? So this is another option, just kind of pivoting your business, creating maybe books, guides, videos, courses, live coaching calls, summits, events where you help people or guide them to travel locally. It's easy for us to focus on problems and not think about what can I do rather than what I can't do. So, yes, you can't travel internationally, but you can locally, or you can help people travel locally. Another thing that comes to mind when it comes to travel blogging is like, hey, I usually do exotic locations like how to go to Vietnam for two weeks under $3,000 or backpacking around Europe. And these are not really options anymore for your target audience. Yes, they can't travel now, but any of these trips will require planning. And planning can be done anywhere. For example, Nicole and I took eight weeks and did a bit of traveling in Europe, and that trip took about nine months to plan. We did it with some friends of ours, Jason and Caroline Dzuk. It was a lot of fun, but there's a lot of coordination, especially if you go into many countries. There's different modes of transport. There's flying, there's trains, there's renting cars, there's accommodations, there's sites that we want to see in each city. There's downtime, there's beaches, there's cities where you want to shop. So it takes time to plan out a trip like that. And for most people, they're not going to go on a trip like that every day. They're not going to go to Europe every day or go to Vietnam every day or go to Costa Rica. They want to make the most out of it. And planning is a part of that. And in my opinion, planning is a big part of the fun of going on a big, epic journey, a big trip. So as a travel blogger, you can really hone in on the planning part. The preparation part of actual travel, and that's from the bag of tricks of Rick Steves. He really focuses on the planning. You can do the same. And you can even do a little bit of a niche thing like budget or luxury. And you can even just niche down a little bit and either do luxury travel or budget travel or how to travel in a big group, that type of thing. And this is actually a good time to do it because, you know, people are starting to see, hey, maybe we are on the other side of COVID The vaccine is out. Maybe in six, seven, nine months it's possible to travel somewhere maybe in a year. And that's just enough time to get the planning going, to have everything sorted out. So when you can travel, it's all planned out, you're all set, you're all excited, you're all packed and you're ready to go. So planning is a big part of that. So maybe spend some time focusing on that on your blog. What to pack luggage, what to buy beforehand, what about travel insurance. These are all ways for you to really have different revenue streams where you can do Amazon Associates and get commission when you recommend certain products or items. I always say when it's a downtime in your business, for example, in the software world, in the B2B world, December, January, notorious for being slow. So when it's slow, when you're having a downtime, it's a great time for you to invest in content. So if right now things are a little slow in your travel blog, this is a chance for you to really invest the time in building a YouTube channel, in writing a book on your travels and why you should travel or where you should travel to or travel guides. Because it's going to take some time for you to create this content, publish it, put it out in the world, market it, and by time it's all set and done, people will start thinking about traveling again. And it's an asset that you can use forever. It's not like you write a book and then you only can sell it tomorrow. You could sell it for years to come. And of course, if it's travel guide, you can use it as a base to start updating it year after year. The other day, our team at Webinar Ninja were running some webinars. Yep, we like to use our own software and one of our team members, cj, she was sharing some photos from our last team retreat in Bali. We were reminiscing with these photos and it was just reminding us of how much of a great time we had on that trip. And I thought to myself, how many people take all these photos when they go on these epic trips and they never look at them, they never reminisce, they never really look at it and say, wow, what a great time. Those are great positive feelings. And more people should do that to remember the good times, remember the travels. So that's something you can lead, that's something that you can create for your community. A weekly webinar where somebody can share their last trip, share the photos, share what they learned, share their favorite memories. Everybody in the webinar can experience that place virtually and get really excited about when they're going to go and see that place. And of course, if they're doing the sharing, gives them a chance to rekindle their love for travel.

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Now, Jim is not alone when it comes to Covid affecting their business, affecting their traffic to their website, affecting their industry. One of the things I want to encourage you to do if you're in that position is to ask yourself a question and deeply think about what can I do to serve my audience. Sometimes again, we focus too much on what we can do, what the limitations are. Think about what are the needs of my clients? What is the journey that my customer goes through to get to the result they want? Is there anywhere in that journey I can help them? What am I not seeing? What am I not doing to fill in the gaps for my customer, for my potential customer in this time? For example, in a previous episode, I mentioned that in a mastermind group we had somebody who had a cafe who was really affected by Covid that couldn't serve customers anymore at the restaurant. But instead of saying I can't do business anymore, they asked, what do my customers do every day? Well, they used to come to me and have lunch every day. What are they doing now? Well, did they just stop having lunch? No, they didn't stop having lunch. They're just having to make something at home. And he finally got to the point where he's like, well, maybe I can make it for them. Maybe they're really busy working from home, juggling things, taking care of the family. What if they signed up for a lunch plan where I delivered a lunch to them every single day, Fresh, ready to eat, they still have to eat lunch. I can still serve them, but just in a different way. So always if you're in this bind when you're stuck, ask yourself, what can I do? How can I serve my customer in the journey they go through to get to the result? Jim, thanks so much for asking today's Q and A, Wednesday's question. It was a great topic for us to discuss. I hope it was helpful. Some of the things that I shared with you, some of the ideas, some of the alternatives, some of the options. Those who survive this time in their business, they will be super, super strong coming out of it. It's because they use their wit, they use their creativity, they use their ambition to pivot, to change, to serve their customers regardless of the situation, regardless of the restrictions, regardless of what they can't do. If you have a question you want to ask here on Q and A Wednesday, just email me over at omar00mba net and I'll answer it right here on on Q and A Wednesdays. Thanks so much for listening. If you love this show, share it with a friend on social media. Tell them what you love about this podcast. Share your favorite episode. It's the best way to pay it forward. Thanks so much. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. What's great about being creative in changing how you earn your money in your business in a crisis like Covid is that you replace one income stream with another. But guess what? When things start to get better and things get back to normal, that old revenue stream becomes a new revenue stream and you can literally double, triple, quadruple your business. This is why I say when people survive this era, the businesses that hang on and are creative enough to find ways to serve their customers, they're going to really skyrocket when this is all over. Because the old stream of business, or the first stream of business, stream of revenue, I should say, is still applicable, still on the table for you to use, which will catapult your revenue and your growth. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

At Strayer University, we help students like you go from is it possible to anything is possible by offering access to up to 10 no cost gen Ed courses so you can reach your goals affordably and fast. Visit Strayer Edu to learn more. No cost gen EDS provided by Strayer University Affiliate sofia. Eligibility rules apply. Connect with us for details. Strayer University is certified to operate in Virginia by CHEV and has many campuses, including at 2121 15th Street north in Arlington, Virginia.