The Art of Selling Online Courses

232 How I Created a Career That Didn't Exist

• John Ainsworth • Season 1 • Episode 232

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What happens when none of the careers in your industry feel right? Sahara Rose De Vore found herself in that exact spot. She had a degree in hospitality and tourism management, she'd traveled to over 84 countries, and yet nothing in the travel industry clicked for her. So she did something most people wouldn't even consider. She created an entirely new career path and built the world's first and only ICF accredited travel coach certification program around it.

In this episode, Sahara shares how she went from broke college student to building the Travel Coach Network, a global community of over 750 certified travel coaches from more than 40 countries. We talk about how she educated a market that didn't know it needed her, how she generates sales through strategic price drops, and how adding a single deadline funnel to her email list brought in over $25K. We also dig into her surprisingly low ad spend, her experiments with Reddit ads, and what she'd focus on to grow her email list from 200 opt-ins a month to over 2,000 with the 70,000 monthly visitors she's already getting.

If you're a course creator trying to figure out how to sell in a niche that you've had to explain to people, this one's for you.

✈️ Check out The Travel Coach Network: https://thetravelcoachnetwork.com
✈️ Follow Sahara Rose on social media: @sahararosethetravelcoach
🧨 Check out The Dynamite Circle: dynamitecircle.com
Want to 2-10x your email list size quickly? Download our FREE Double Your Email List Guide 👉🏼 https://datadrivenmarketing.co/guide

#OnlineCourses #SalesFunnels #CourseCreators #DigitalMarketing

🤝  Get In Touch
If you'd like to talk more about how you can grow your course business, email me at john@datadrivenmarketing.

SPEAKER_00:

didn't align with any of the travel careers and jobs that I'd learned about or heard about or that came about over the years. I said there has to be more meaningful life. I guess I have to create my own business. Never thought I would have to do that. Didn't even know where to start soon after I did that. Others were reaching out asking what is a travel coach where you learn about this. I want to do it because I've been doing it, didn't know if there was a name for it. And something in my gut instinct clicked and I said I'll create the platform came out with a report in October 2025. 2026 to the year of what's called Yes Get. And so now there's this talk about transformative travel and why for travel and emotion space for travel. And that's exactly what we built travel code off of. We've already had quite a bit of success with our program thus far, so we're already fixing 2026 to be here for us. 750 members, and we're projected to reach a thousand members or more and hit a million.

SPEAKER_02:

Hello and welcome to the art selling online courses. We're here to get winning strategy at Top Performance in the online courses. My name is John Answer, and today's guest is Sahara Roseformer. Now, Sahara is the founder and CEO of the Travel Coach Network. They're a global community of travel coaches. Sahara went from being a broad college student to traveling on their own to over 84 countries to operating the department of the travel industry and her company ads, a human-centric and emotional approach to how and why we travel. This led to her creating the world's first and only ITF accredited certification program for travel coaches. We're gonna find out what a travel coach is later on, do not worry. They've got now over 700 coaches from over 40 countries, published author, global speaker, TEDx speaker, startup investor, and has been in over 350 media outlets for travel and business expertise, including travel weekly trip advisor, CMBC and Ford. She was also named one of 2023's most influential women in travel. Today we're gonna unpack how Sahara built the travel coach network and scale the world's first travel coach certification program that is ITF crypto. First, we're gonna talk about what's working in her marketing and funnels in email marketing course. Sahara, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00:

Hi John, thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_02:

So for people who don't know, which includes me, even though I've read your website, what is a travel coach? Like, just kind of give me a give us a background on like what does that mean?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, I think everyone knows what a travel agent or advisor is, right? Um, but a travel coach is someone who helps people really get to the root of their why for taking that trip, helps them set intentions for what they want to happen and come out of this trip, and helps them use travel as a tool in their, what I say their toolkit for life for healing, transformation, self-discovery, personal growth, professional development, all these underlying things that we turn to travel to in the first place and that research supports.

SPEAKER_02:

So, who are you helping with your courses? Are you helping people to become a travel coach, or are you also helping people to get the most out of travel coaching? Or like what is what are you kind of offering?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so our flagship program, our signature program is the travel coach certification program. So we certify travel coaches. So we help passionate travelers. And what we've seen what, especially during the pandemic, is it's more than just passionate travelers. There are people who have come from other backgrounds, whether they're in already in life or wellness or health coaching, or they are tour operators or travel agents, even medical experts come into our platform to learn how they can combine travel coaching with how they best serve their clients.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. So what's the is this something where there's like a latent demand? There's lots of people who are wanting to become a travel coach. Or have you had to like kind of explain to lots of people like you've just been explaining to us, like what a travel coach is and why you might want to do this?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean, I started this over six and a half years ago. So that was even pre-pandemic. Um, so yes, I uh started it without there being anything really about travel coaching out there. I started my own wellness travel coaching business in 2018. And soon after I did that, others were reaching out asking, what is a travel coach? Where did you learn about this? I want to do it maybe. Maybe I've been doing it, didn't know there was a name for it. And something in my gut instinct clicked, and I said, I'll create the platform. So, yes, it took a lot of educating. We still educate, we still spread awareness of what it is. But what we're seeing is this really incredible shift happening in the travel industry as a whole. And especially in 2026 as we begin this year. Hilton Hotels just came out with a report in October of 2025 that 2026 is going to be the year of what they call the why cation. And so now there's this talk about transformative travel and why for travel and the emotions base for travel. And that's exactly what we built travel coaching off of. And so we've already have, you know, quite a bit of success with our program thus far. So we're already predicting 2026 to be a huge year for us.

SPEAKER_02:

Nice. So how does it work? If someone's like, right, I want to work with a travel coach, what's the process generally like? Is it you were mentioning like life coaching and some other things? Is it someone who's generally already working with people on a number of other things, or is some people just focused on travel coaching and then like how long might they work with them? What would they get out of it? How does it kind of uh work?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so when I created first created the program, I created this without any other roles or hats in mind. I was not aware of the coaching industry per se. It wasn't until I started researching how to start an online business because I never found, even though I have a degree in hospitality and tourism management from Chicago, and I traveled to 84 countries, I didn't align with any of the travel careers and jobs that I learned about or heard about or that came about over the years. I said there has to be a more meaningful way. So when I said, I guess I have to create my own business, never thought I would have to do that, didn't even know where to start. And I started doing research online, and that's where I came across the online coaching world. So there was a lot of business coaches. Then I heard of life and health and wellness coaches, and I was like, wow, that's a really booming industry. Click, I want to be a travel coach. So that was the catalyst for my own wellness travel coaching. So when I built the travel coach certification program, initially it was built off of no other roles in mine. I didn't think about creating this for people already serving other people as coaches or travel agents who are booking trips because I didn't want to do those things myself. I didn't want to be a travel agent. I didn't want to be a tour operator. I don't want to run retreats. I don't want to work in hotels or be a flight attendant. And so, but what we noticed during the pandemic, even though the pandemic did a lot of, you know, terrible things to the travel industry of the world in general, it did a lot for travel as it came out, as we came out of the pandemic. If that makes sense. So what we saw during the pandemic as people were at home, people were rethinking, reconsidering how they were structuring their business, how who exactly they were helping, what companies they were working for. And we started noticing other roles. We that's when we started noticing people from different backgrounds, like well uh health coaching and life coaching and travel agents and retreat leaders saying, Hey, I want to add even more meaning, even more strategy to what I do and who I serve, even more of my own passionate heart for why I'm in travel into my business, and travel coaching aligns with that.

SPEAKER_02:

So then someone goes to a travel coach, what what's next? What's the what's the process like?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so it's the travel, the beautiful thing about travel coaching is we encourage people to build business models that light them up, that they want to do. There's no right or wrong to a business model, especially if you wear different hats. Um, and so uh every travel coach has a different niche, ideal client, and business model. So some might work, yes, in coaching one-on-one, but we encourage them to think outside the box. You don't have to necessarily serve one-on-one clients, uh, whether it's group coaching, whether it's adding retreats in there, in there, whether it is turning your coaching into more of a blogging style, um, and you educate and empower people that way. Um, really, there's so many different business models that our coaches have that we're even learning even more through them. Um and then to be able to find them, we it really just starts with who exactly the I the ideal client is. So if the travel coach is searching for or they serve someone, that in the thing about the travel industry is they're used to putting things in categories like luxury travelers, or if you are looking for adventure, you find like an adventure travel agent. If you're looking for um family travel, like there's these big kind of categories, but in travel coaching, it's so much deeper than that. It's about, for example, some of the niches that our uh coaches serve are women helping other women use travel as a a source for helping them after losing their loved one, their their spouse, their child. These are true stories. Um helping women who are tired of the corporate grind use travel to kind of add more fulfillment and self-care back into their lifestyle. Um, people who are empty nesters or in life transitions use travel as a way to find clarity for what's next uh in life. These are all reasons why we already travel. Travel coaches just help people guide them through that journey.

SPEAKER_02:

What does that mean? Guide them through the journey, like how how they do that?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so that's where the business models come into play. So every client, whatever their desired outcome is gonna be, that journey is gonna look different, right? So sometimes a client might need two weeks to learn whatever the coach is trying to help them to learn. If it's we have move abroad coaches, that's gonna take a longer time for someone to go from figuring out, are they meant to move abroad? Where do they move abroad? How do I do this? to actually moving abroad. That might be a six-month program. Um, some might be, if it's they're wellness related, they partner, they run retreats themselves, or they have uh they partner with retreat leaders and get referrals and affiliates through that. So that journey looks is very specific to the ideal client. It's the same thing for life coaching. Like if I came to you with an issue in my life or why ever I'm seeking a life coach, well, whatever I'm desiring to get as an outcome out of this, that that journey is gonna look very specific to my needs. So it's the same thing reflected in travel coaching.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. What's for you? What's the um what's your main offer? So it's it's helping people through the certification program, right? Is that like where people tend to start, or do you have like lower ticket things and people buy that and then they go up to the main one, or people tend to just go straight in with your certification?

SPEAKER_00:

People want the certification.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, I've tried other we do have some lower ticket items, but they're not nearly as effective as right into the certification program. It's a really robust program that covers all the things that people are looking for, plus they want the um accreditation that it has. Um, and so that's usually that's that why it's remains our flagship.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. And then how much is that? It's like$2,000, is that right?

SPEAKER_00:

We just increased it last year to just under$2,000 USD. Um, but honestly, our business model is price drops, and that's where we get the majority of our sales.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, cool. And so what's the what's the main traffic source for you? Is it uh website or YouTube, or where's your uh most traffic coming from?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh Facebook, Instagram, ads, and also Google. People tell us all the time they're just Googling us, or even nowadays, ChatGPT recommends us.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, nice. Um what how much are you spending on ads at the moment for that?

SPEAKER_00:

Um we s I run Google and Facebook ads, so uh we spend about 400, 300, 400 a month on ads.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, okay, pretty low.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's not bad. Um I just started Reddit ads, but interesting. We're gonna see how that does. Um there's another travel business owner, not in courses, but travel business owner who says that she does really well on Reddit ads, and I never even thought of it, so give it a try.

SPEAKER_02:

I had not considered that ever. I have never heard of it. No podcast guest, no client, nobody has ever mentioned Reddit ads to me before. So that's fascinating. One of the great things I think, anytime you've got a um a place which people aren't thinking about, it can it can be that there's really good value. You know, it's like, okay, well, nobody else is spending money there, so it's cheaper per person. It doesn't mean it will work, but it means it's got a chance, whereas, you know, Facebook in whatever, 2015 or something like that was great value compared to what it is now because so many more people went there and started advertising. So that'll be really interesting to hear how that does. Can you can you target certain subreddits then with your ads?

SPEAKER_00:

I guess so. I honestly haven't spent too much time learning because I never spent time on Reddit. She just told me how effective it was for her, and she's a newer company, and I was like, okay. So I went to, I just set them up and I'm just giving it a little time because as you know, any ad's going to take a little bit of time to get some traction or momentum. And so I'm gonna kind of I'll take some time to dive deeper into it and see what works and what doesn't work and look at the analytics.

SPEAKER_02:

Cool. Fascinating. And then so is that the main place that um you're getting sales from? And like how does I'm gonna ask a double question, apologies. And how does it work? Where are you sending them from the ads? Are they going just to the homepage or are they going to like a webinar sign up or like how does that work?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we just send them directly to the homepage, um, to the landing page of our program. All the information is on there. Um so we I desire them to either enroll in the program or right on there is gonna be our um our freebie, our lead magnet is on there because our email marketing is really effective as well. So getting them onto our mailing list.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. So you if you get them on the mailing list, then that's like a really great start, and then they're likely to become a customer afterwards. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Especially because it's travel coaching is a newer concept. It's gonna take a little bit of time for people to, they want to learn more. So that's why we do have a lot of education. We do have a lot of recorded trainings, we have a lot of uh we have our own podcast, we have um things for them to absorb because a lot of the people in our community are gonna linger a little bit to continue to learn to figure out is this for me or is it not for me? Um and so that's that's been our system. And so that's when we it kind of like builds up the hype, and then we do our price drops, and that's when they get in at this price, at a lower price.

SPEAKER_02:

And how often do you do those price drops?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, often, usually definitely quarterly, and then we kind of sprinkle it in there depending on what events we have. Um so we do it seasonally and then we do it around a couple of our bigger events. Uh, we have a large virtual event in May, a large virtual event in November, and then we'll do like um a Black Friday sale, a Valentine's sale. Um, yeah. So we kind of we do them often, but the price drops vary.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. What do you what do you drop it down to? What kind of price is it?

SPEAKER_00:

So during Black Friday is our lowest price. Um, and we dropped that down to$5.99. Wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Long way down. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

A steal. Well, we started around that. Uh, I mean, obviously, I mean, I think the very first person I ever got in was at like two, three hundred dollars, two ninety-nine. And she's still in the program. And I inched that way up until we hit our um founding membership. We cut that off and grandfathered them in because we do have an um annual re-accreditation fee that they are charged. So we cut that at$550. Um, and then from there we started to increase it. And then last year, because we add so our program adds so much value for the price, I honestly does. So I increased it just under$2,000.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, cool. And then can you give everyone like some kind of idea of the the size of the business, if revenue, if you're happy to share it, if not like you know how many customers you're getting a year, something kind of like that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So so far, um in total in our flagship program, we have 751 um members. That's between our English and our Spanish because we've translated our program into Spanish. Um, the majority of those are English because we just launched the Spanish last year. Um and so uh 750 members in that. And then this year we should reach, or we're projected to reach a thousand members or more and hit a million in sales, lifetime sales.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh nice. Okay, cool. That's a fun uh milestone to hit, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it will be fun when it happens.

SPEAKER_02:

Nice. Um okay, so you're driving traffic through to the sales page for the program, but you mentioned to me that one of the things that's kind of really important is getting people onto your email list. Have you have you tried ever just driving people straight to the like a lead magnet signup page?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. So we do run ads to the landing page as well as to the lead magnet. We do have two separate different ads running to see what works. Um and then when our we do have a main pro um Facebook group community where they join to kind of learn a bit more. When they join that, I asked them, do you want our free beginner's guide to travel coaching? Drop your email so they'll get added to the mailing list that way too, because our mailing list has a deadline funnel on it. Um and we have generated a little over, I added that, I want to say a little over a year ago, sometime last year. And that generated has already generated over like$25,000 in for us just for having that deadline funnel in our um mailing list.

SPEAKER_02:

And what's your best performing lead magnet?

SPEAKER_00:

Our beginner's guide. We just have um our beginner's guide to travel coaching on that and our um travel coaching one-on-one like free course, which has the beginner's guide and has some other stuff in it.

SPEAKER_02:

Do you know about how many new opt-ins you're getting a month at the moment via those lead magnets?

SPEAKER_00:

Um we get about 200 opt-ins.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. So the reason I'm asking is I think you said you got like 68,000 website visitors a month. Was that does that sound right?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, a little over 70,000.

SPEAKER_02:

A little over 70,000, okay. So we'd normally expect to see if you get everything set up right with opt-ins, that from 70,000 you should be able to get about two thousand, maybe three thousand opt-ins a month from that. I'm just doing some sums here. Uh I think the highest you might see would be like three, three and a half. So I reckon that there's potential there. Would it be alright if we went and had a little look at your website and kind of see what's some of the tweaks that might get you some more of those? Dominic, I might get you to jump in here because I know you're doing this, people, um, all the time. So let me share screen and find your homepage. There we go. So if you're listening and you're like, oh how's this gonna work? I'm gonna try my best to kind of describe what we're looking at as we go. Um, and we'll kind of try and do the same. Uh anybody's going through it. So this is your homepage we're on now, and then I'm scrolling down it, and we've got details about the program and hiring a travel coach, and then about looks like about halfway down, we've got the beginner's guide to travel coaching. Um, and if you click that, it opens up another another sign-in sign-up page. Dominic, what would you tweak about that if you were going to try and increase the number of opt-ins on that home page in particular?

SPEAKER_03:

Well, the first thing I would offer it right at the beginning. So at the above section. So that should be the first thing people see when they land on your page. Uh, people love free stuff. I mean, who doesn't, of course, right? So um you can already have a really nice compelling headline telling people what they'll get if they sign up for this lead magnet. So you would use some sort of benefit they can expect from downloading the lead magnet. And then you can also use some bullet points in terms of benefits, uh, they can also see from it. Like uh, I don't know, everything they will get from uh from downloading this. Um you would also have on the same page you want to have uh the opt-in information, so which is the name and the email address, just so you make the process as frictionless as possible. Um the beginner guide uh looks as an amazing, uh as an amazing lead magnet itself. Uh but yeah, otherwise um people tend to jump off the page uh if they don't find something interesting as soon as possible.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

So having this um in the middle of the page is better at than at the end of the page, of course. But you would definitely get more people coming in uh to your email list if you have it uh at the beginning already. You can always add a few sentences just for the people who are not aware of okay, what is travel coaching, and then just have a small of uh sort of introduction and stuff, but definitely focusing on that at the beginning of the page. Uh show them, okay, here's something free for you. You can expect this from downloading this lead magnet, and it's gonna help you in the long run with your amazing goals that you have for travel coaching. Uh, you will get people here already, and then if someone is even more interested, then they can continue scrolling the page and learn about uh more about what you do, what's your expertise, the testimonials of other people and stuff. Uh, but offering this as soon as possible or at the above the vault section would definitely be a better case rather than just having. Having a welcome message and having them needing to scroll down and actually search for what you're offering here. Also, so at the moment, for those who are just listening, there is a double step. So first they need to click on the call to action button, then they get to the opt-in page. It's always better to have everything on the first step. So they can uh leave their first name and the last name, or even better if it's only a first name, because people don't uh tend to leave their personal information uh as much. So first name is enough here, and then ask for an email address, all at the first step. So you create the process as frictionless as possible, and also uh so they don't have to return back to the homepage to actually search for some other stuff. Because right now they click on this page, they get to this page, and there is nothing else here, right? So they sign up and then they need to again uh do some other things uh to either return back or they will go to some other pages or go to cook lunch or whatever else that we're doing at the moment. So if you have it on the first step, uh you are more likely to uh have them continue either seeing everything else that you're offering, is it the courses, is it the um intro model about who you are, what's expertise, and everything else. Um also another thing um that we like to um add to our clients is the actual tripwire funnel. I'm not sure if you let's not get into that today.

SPEAKER_02:

I think that's gonna be too much detail. But yeah, yeah, no, I thought that as well when we got into this page because it's like, oh, you could have something else here. There's some other stuff, but like let's just keep it to one. The other thing I was looking at in terms of opt-ins is if I go through to does your blog get a lot of um traffic?

SPEAKER_00:

Um not as much as we'd like. I honestly haven't looked at the analytics because our blog isn't really what we drive people to.

SPEAKER_02:

Because the other one, if you if it is getting if some of these blog posts are getting a lot of traffic from from SEO, um then you could then put the lead magnet on these pages as well. So I'm just gone through to one of the um, if you're listening, I've just gone through to one of the blog posts. And the the resources and the free lead magnets are mentioned, but they're right the way down at the bottom of the page is just kind of like some links. Um and uh I'll just show you an example of one that like we've done that oh they've updated the homepage there. This is one where we've uh gone through and like edited a lot of the um lead mag uh sorry uh blog posts. You'll see like as you're scrolling through the um through the blog post, you've got a button promoting the lead magnet at the top, one in the sidebar, and then another one towards the bottom. Like as so wherever you go through it, you're always getting kind of a lead magnet promoted quite heavily. And that makes quite a big difference in terms of getting more more opt-ins. I think like there's a bunch more stuff, and I'll what I'll do afterwards is I'll get uh Yosip, who's like our head of funnel strategy, I'll get him to record you a video and give you some some more tips and links to resources and whatever else that could be helpful. Um but I think if you do all of those things, you should get up to at least a thousand opt-ins um a month, and quite possibly two thousand. And I think if you then because you've got such good email marketing, it sounds like you know, you're making all this money from your deadline funnel and you've got great uh price drops and you're doing all these things really well. If that list was growing faster, then instantly you've got like a big increase in revenue and get you to that uh um that one million in revenue uh faster.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. No, I love that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

No worries. So what's next for you? Where do you want to go to with the business? You said that like you think this year is probably gonna be quite a big deal.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and I don't say that just from like because it's my business. Um, I say just from because I'm hyper aware of what's happening in the industry. Like I mentioned, you know, these right now they're just buzzwords on transformative travel and um this why cation and stuff like that. But really, it is the fundamental shift that's happening in the travel industry. Like traveler behaviors are changing. People are um spending more time figuring out like where they're going and what they're doing and why they're traveling with a lot more purpose. Um, the companies they choose is gonna have a lot more purpose to it, all of that. And so um, we really just fit into this shift that is happening. Um, and so we're exactly what exactly that's gonna do for us this year. Um, I mean, I have my hopes, but who knows? Um, but because we've done so well so far without this full industry support, um, we also get recognized by a lot of big companies and we have a lot of potential or a lot of partnerships already established and in the works of establishing. And so um being able to be aligned with some of these um heavy hitters in the industry, um, you know, you know, who knows where that's gonna put us for things too.

SPEAKER_02:

That's exciting though, isn't it? It's like this could be fun. Um it's always tricky when it's like if you're if you're trying to do something that is like ahead of the curve, it's like not everyone kind of knows about yet, then it's like almost having to create demand by like putting stuff out and talking about it, it's whatever. And there's uh there's a really seminal marketing book from I think probably 1960s called Breakthrough Advertising. And he like hammers home in that book how important it is not to be trying to create demand if you want advertising to work, but to tap into existing demand. And it's like I've be I've worked in a business before, like I was um trying to do something that was almost like changing an industry, and it's like, oh my god, it was such you were just pushing and pushing and pushing. But if you've now reached the point in the market where it's like actually there might be some other there's other people who are creating demand and talking about these themes, that could be brilliant for you. You know, that could really lead to a lot more people searching for the right, you know, for terms like whatever you're offering and what your ads are advertising against. And who knows, maybe there'll be a new Reddit Redditor subreddit that's relevant for you guys.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

That's nice.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I know it's exciting. I'm just working on I'm expanding my team and kind of getting people in place and and ready for all of that. We have a lot happening this year with partnerships, a lot happening with our events and um the growth of our members and the value we add to our members, and then there's all the the business side of things of funnels and making tweaks and learning. And um I I'll be doing more in-person events this year as well, too. Um, so we it's gonna be a pretty good year, hopefully.

SPEAKER_02:

Topics, your team.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, so I have uh uh four consistent. I just hired another and then I hire based off of projects. So then we'll do some freelancers off of um based on projects. Actually, I just hired two. Um and then I added um put some more hats on the other people on my team. Um so right now we have about six. There's six on our team.

SPEAKER_02:

Nice. That's great. What's the biggest issues for you at the moment? Like what's the things that are stopping you from from hitting your goals?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, I think it's just focusing on too much of the the daily like the smaller tasks, and that's why I am hiring the people I'm hiring to kind of take some of those things off of me so I can focus on the bigger things. Um like attending in-person events and networking is does wonders for my business. Um you know, speaking at more events, um, securing higher ticket partnerships, more strategic partnerships, um, securing sponsorships for our events, all those things take time. So taking all these smaller tasks off my my plate. Um, I'm someone who is very uh independent and I'm capable of doing everything and anything. But as we know in business, you can't do it all if you're trying to do it all. So um it's been a learning curve for me to be able to like release control over things and to learn to delegate. Because in my mind, I'm like, if I can just send an email in two seconds, why do I need to email you to tell you to email this person when I can just do it? But you know, it's a business, and you have to, as the the CEO of a business and the founder of a business, you have to put systems in place um and um give control over to people as well, too. So that's what I'm working on a lot this year.

SPEAKER_02:

Nice. It's one of the things I found really interesting is that like I know a lot of people who run run their own businesses. Like most of my friends are uh online business owners and all of our clients, obviously, as well. And it's almost like in order to start a business, you have to be the kind of person who can and will do anything. Yeah. Right? You have to be able to learn whatever the skill, right? I'm gonna learn, now I'm gonna learn sales pages, now I'm gonna learn SEO, now I'm gonna learn talking in events, you know, and improve my public speaking. And you have to do all of these things. And then at some point, you have to switch. It grows big enough, right? But you then have to switch and then stop doing that. And so you've learned, you've like learned as like almost like a personality trait to be like, I could do anything, I could do everything, I'm gonna do a lot. And then at some point you have to go, no, I'm not gonna do anything, I'm not gonna do everything and change it. It's just like, oh, it's hard to, it's hard to get going, and then it's hard to stop again afterwards, you know?

SPEAKER_00:

It is, it is. I mean, especially because we all work so differently. So we have our own systems in place that works for us, but that to then onboard someone and then train them and have them figure out a system that works for them when you're trying to translate the system that you used over to them. Like when I say system, it's like even just like you're down to your simple notes, you know, how you stay organized on the task that you do every day. Like, I'm very much not a tech person in the sense of like all my notes are handwritten. I I have to see, and this is how I am able to do as much as I'm able to do every single day. Like I have my my system. And so how can I take that and say, hey, make sense of all of this and you know, do the job? That takes thinking and and work and and time and stuff too.

SPEAKER_02:

So yeah, I'm glad that everybody in my team is so uh patient with me because I kind of work in a very like and it it's a it's a very common entrepreneurial kind of trait, like a little bit ADD, a little bit like jumping around, lots of ideas, like so many ideas that you can't kind of control them all and whatever. And uh I'm lucky I got uh Yosip, I mentioned to you before. He and I work very closely together, and he's very good at being like, those are really interesting ideas. Okay, back to what it is we're supposed to be doing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, right. And that's why like I'm hiring people to be like, remind tell me of this. Tell like remind me of this. So like I need someone to be on top of me for things just because I like I'm in my zone. Um, but yeah, I have a page where I brain dump everything because I know you can't we can tackle every single thing and not everything should be done. But I also work from home with a two-year-old, so I have that to to do too.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh wow. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So I'm a new mom and a growing business and working.

SPEAKER_02:

Do you still go traveling then with the two-year-old in the growing business? How are you managing with that?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, so no, I don't quite yes and no. For personal leisure, yes. Um for business, not yet, but I do have several events um that I'm traveling to this year for the first time um without my son. And w will he come with? Maybe. Um, as of now, no. But it's figuring out that. So not only am I figuring out a system within my business, I am figuring out a system within my personal life of like childcare and and who who's going to cover for me. And, you know, when a mom's gone, there's a whole team that needs to come into place to take care of a child.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm in um like my the main uh entrepreneurial group that I'm in is one called the DC, uh, the dynamite circle. And it's all people who are running online businesses and who are obsessed with like travel and lifestyle design. And so it's fascinating, which because uh like we've reached a point now where a lot of the people in that group are having kids, and then they're like, Oh yeah, yeah, but I'm not stopping traveling. So it's like you're seeing everyone kind of figuring out like, right, how are we making this work? What's gonna happen? I was off at one event um with a friend and his uh mum had come with him, and she was looking after his son while they were off for you know conferencing. And then another friend who lives out in Thailand, he was traveling with his nanny, and it's just like, okay, that was interesting. Why not? Absolutely, let's take her and she can look after you know uh um his son while his busy doing everything. But he was like in between talks, he'd be like, Right, I'm gonna go play with my son. We're gonna hang out by the pool. Do you want to come? I was like, sure, yeah, let's go hang out.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so um That will be my future, yeah. I uh I mean I am married and my husband doesn't he has a job that doesn't allow him to travel very much outside of their own conferences. And so um my life, my backpacking nomadic life um, you know, is not what I currently have. Now it's business and events and stuff like that, but I will be the one having a nanny with or having my mom with to take care of my son while I'm at conferences because I want him to be able to experience things too.

SPEAKER_02:

My girlfriend, uh, her her job doesn't really do travel that much. Can do some, but not that much. And I said to her recently, I was like, babe, I just I'm just gonna go on adventures. I'm just gonna be gone sometimes. Are you okay? Just like go, go. I I I need you to be happy, you know. Yeah.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I was like, right, I just went off on a road trip with a friend last week. We drove down from uh I flew into Lisbon and then we jumped in the car and we drove through Spain over like four or five days, down to Barcelona and then hung out there for a couple of days. I was like, oh, I feel happier now. Okay, I'm gonna go home and do some more work.

SPEAKER_00:

You're making me jealous because like I uh I uh becoming be you know, I was married and had a child and all this within a short time frame, and I went from this on my own, traveling solo, starting my business on my own, doing everything, and now having others depend on me and I'm stationary in in my home. It's hard. It's a hard mindset shift. It's like I can't just pack a backpack and pick up and go. You know, it's not I can't just think about myself now. So it's uh it's hard. So I get envious and I'm like, hmm, what's possible? Can I can we go somewhere? So right now I'm just kind of using my my work trips for for that uh you know leisure and travel too.

SPEAKER_02:

I'll send you through the link to this this group because there's a lot of people in there who are who ha are figuring it out and are going and and doing a lot of that. Um if anyone, if you're listening, if you're interested, I know that at least one person who listens to this podcast has then gone and joined the DC because I was out in Thailand one time. Um, this guy's uh uh Canadian and he came up and was like, Are you John Ainsworth? And he's like, I heard about the DC through your podcast, and then I joined, and then like you know, just bumped into each other at one of the events. Um he's been on the on the podcast since as well.

SPEAKER_00:

So um the some of our travel coaches, they like I was on a call with them recent one of them recently, and she helps people figure out how they can have a nomadic lifestyle with their family. Nice, it's just fascinating.

SPEAKER_02:

So if you're listening and you're like, oh, that sounds interesting, go check out dynamitecircle.com. Stupid name, great group. So um there is a reason, but I won't explain it about the name. Um, it's not good, it's just kind of uh a bit weird. Um okay, cool. So you've kind of got big plans or big hopes for this year. You're hiring a bigger team, you're scaling things up. Um if you could waive a one that improved one thing in your your uh kind of the marketing, the funnel, the email marketing, whatever, um what would you choose?

SPEAKER_00:

Um well, a big thing was the email marketing. It honestly was a thought of mine recently of like, I really want to focus, make that a focus this year of like growing my my email list. Um, because I've noticed it's been a big stagnant because as you know, people join and then people unsubscribe, so it's like the numbers fluctuate. Um and so my brain is just going up like where where and how to do all of that. Um, one of the things that did really, really well for our, and this is not this is like pretty rare, it doesn't happen for people often, but because I get a lot of media media coverage, um, when we were in CNN travel back in 2023, I woke up to like hundreds and hundreds of new subscribers to my mailing list and Facebook group, and I thought I was hacked. I thought it was like spam. And like, what happened? And then I was like, oh wait, let me check this CNN if it came out. And they didn't tell me it came out yet, but it did. And it we had so many people joining, and it was one of our biggest two months of just growth in general because that article, but it was the right publication at the right time to the right outlets, you know, stuff like that. But like I want more momentum like that.

SPEAKER_02:

Nice. So if for everyone listening, if you want to go, if you also want to go grow your email list, episode 100 of the podcast is how to 2x your opt-ins. Um, and so I'll send you through like some uh resources and links and whatever to stuff for you. And like I said, I get Yosip to record your video too. And the other thing I think for everybody, if you're listening, and if you go to datadrivenmarketing.co slash resources, I'm almost sure we've got some good stuff there specifically about opt-ins. Mm-mm-mm. The complete lead magnet guide we've got there, and then double your email list guide as well. So the two of those are gonna like help a lot in terms of increasing increasing opt-ins. Sahara, this has been awesome. Uh, I love what you're doing with the business. I think this is absolutely fascinating. Um, if people want to go check you out, where should they go?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, you can find us at the travelcoachnetwork.com or the travel coach network across all of the social platforms. You can find myself. I'm Sahara Rose, the travel coach across all the platforms.

SPEAKER_02:

Beautiful. Um, and you said you got a podcast as well. Yeah, I think that's called the Travel Coach Network? Yeah. You really bagged that name. I love that.

SPEAKER_00:

That's simple.

SPEAKER_02:

As always, thanks so much for listening. Uh, really, really appreciate you guys. Um, Sahara, thanks so much for coming on. And Dominic, thanks so much for coming on and uh helping give you advice about the opt ins as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much for having me, guys.