Adventure Travel with Kelsey Tonner - Guest Focus

Kelsey Tonner

Founder
Guest Focus

Kelsey Tonner is the founder of Guest Focus Tour Business Coaching and for two decades he’s been helping tour business owners as a mentor, consultant, speaker,  experience designer, guide trainer, and award-winning tour leader.

Since 2015, their programs have helped over 2,000 tour operators from 75+ countries around the world and Kelsey has been a regular speaker at over 35 industry events and conferences.

summary
In this episode of the Big World Made Small podcast, Jason Elkins interviews Kelsey Tonner, founder of Guest Focus, a coaching service for tour and activity businesses. Kelsey shares his journey from being a dog sledding guide to leading multi-day tours around the world. He discusses the importance of creating memorable experiences for travelers, the challenges faced by tour operators, and the significance of relationships in the adventure travel industry. Kelsey also delves into the coaching process, the need for effective marketing strategies, and the optimization of sales pages to drive bookings. The conversation highlights the value of understanding guests' needs and the importance of providing practical resources for tour operators.

takeaways

• Kelsey Tonner is the founder of Guest Focus, helping tour businesses thrive.
• Creating memorable experiences is key to successful tourism.
• Relationships in the adventure travel industry are crucial.
• Coaching differs from consulting in its approach and focus.
• Understanding guests' needs is essential for tour operators.
• Sales pages should effectively communicate offerings to potential customers.
• Optimizing marketing strategies can significantly impact bookings.
• Practical resources can help tour operators improve their businesses.
• The importance of community and shared experiences in travel.
• Kelsey emphasizes the need for continuous learning and adaptation in the tourism industry.

Learn more about Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Marketing and join our private community to get episode updates, special access to our guests, and exclusive adventure travel offers on our website.

Transcript

Jason Elkins (00:01.071)
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Big World Made Small podcast for the adventure traveler. This is a big deal for me. We've got Kelsey Tonner here. I know some of you have heard that name. He is the founder of Guest Focus. I've been following him since I had a balloon ride business back in the day and just picked up a lot of useful tips along the way. Kelsey's so happy to have you here. Thanks for joining us.

Kelsey Tonner (00:24.866)
Great to be with you, Jason. Thanks for the kind intro.

Jason Elkins (00:28.697)
Yeah. And you know, before I kind of, I didn't really tip on what guest focus is. I really want to learn your story, kind of figure out how you got from where you were to where you are now. But before we get into that, let's give our listeners kind of the 30 second elevator pitch for what in the world is guest focus.

Kelsey Tonner (00:46.542)
Yeah, big picture. are tour and activity business coaches. So kind of a team, we're up to about 13 or 14 coaches. As we were saying before the call, kind of half of our coaches focus on multi-day tours. Half of our coaches focus on day tour operators. And what brings us all together is really trying to help folks build a thriving, profitable tour and activity business.

We'll talk a little bit about where we came from and how we got to where we are, but not dissimilar to yourself. We are the type of people that when we travel, we want to have the best possible experience. And we see kind of our broader mission to kind of push back on a lot of the, you know, kind of mediocre phone it in mass tourism experiences that we've all had out there and instead kind of, you know, be the change you want to be in the world, right? We want to, we have a community, let's say of people that are.

really inspired to create memories that last a lifetime. And then hopefully through sharing some best practices, some things not to do, some things to do, we can build a thriving, profitable business that can keep those experiences in the world for decades to come.

Jason Elkins (02:02.821)
That's great. I love that. It definitely resonates kind of with my mission of big world made small is just get people out there having these good experiences, connecting with other people in the world and, and doing it the right way. So thank you for, thank you for sharing that. So Kelsey, how, I know you've heard this question probably thousands of times. I'm not going to ask you any questions you haven't heard a thousand times. And that's why I think our listeners like to come back because I'm probably going to ask the same questions that they would ask if they were sitting with you right now.

So let's start with how in the world did you get to where you are? How far back do we need to go to kind of understand you,

Kelsey Tonner (02:38.486)
Yeah, well, I'm Canadian by trade. So those astute American listeners will pick up on that subtle accent, but I'm originally from Nova Scotia, Canada, after university out there. Basically took any job that allowed me to travel, to see the world, new people, new places, definitely had that adventurous spirit. And so that led to all kinds of really incredible experiences from...

Jason Elkins (02:43.771)
you

Kelsey Tonner (03:04.586)
I was a dog sledding guide in the Canadian Rockies for a season. I led wilderness trips through Wisconsin, the boundary waters for another season. Down to Australia leading high ropes course and eventually picked up with Backroads Tours. so for those that aren't familiar, Backroads Tours is, they their claim or their tagline is the number one kind of active travel company in the world. And so they do week long bike tours, hiking tours and multi-sport.

tours all over the world. And so this was just a dream come true that, hey, somebody would pay me to go on these trips. And so I spent about five, five and a half years working with back roads, getting to lead these active and adventure tours. Yeah, in like 40 different countries around the world. Through them, eventually got into sort of mentoring and training tour, other tour guides. We eventually got into tour design. You know, I started taking over itineraries or building new trips.

Jason Elkins (03:51.3)
Wow.

Kelsey Tonner (04:02.658)
I remember one of my job at bilingual growing up in Canada, so spent a lot of time working in France and would go into a region like Burgundy. And at that time, this was one of the lower performing trips, let's say in Europe. And so, okay, what do we need to do to tweak this itinerary? How can we find more memorable experiences, really work with, trying to figure out what they would optimize that guest experience. Anyway, so that, I met my start there, yeah.

Jason Elkins (04:29.243)
Hey, hey, do you mind if, Kelsey, do you mind? Yeah, do you mind if I ask you, can we go back a little further? Because when I hear you say, you okay, I finished school and then I went and did everything I could to travel and to have these experiences. And you and I both know that not everybody finishes college and is hell bent to go do that type of thing. So what happened to you before, maybe before college growing up? What?

Kelsey Tonner (04:49.538)
Yeah, once I the road.

Jason Elkins (04:57.411)
What was going on that got you thinking? When did you start thinking that maybe you wanted to go do that stuff? Because I think that's an interesting part of it.

Kelsey Tonner (05:05.312)
Yeah, gosh, mean, you know, not having a gap year really extends that 12 year slog of education onto another four years going right into university. So I was ready for that shift. Going back and digging. Yeah, you know, there's got to be something in the DNA here.

Jason Elkins (05:23.631)
I mean, was there someone, the DNA or was there someone in your life that inspired you? I've had a lot of conversations with people say, know, an uncle or my grandparents gave me a subscription to National Geographic or something like that. I'm just like, what was going on when you were younger? Were you burning to go?

Kelsey Tonner (05:36.93)
Yeah, both my folks.

Yeah, both my folks were essentially in education. They were teachers and eventually administrators. And my dad, right when I was born, I'm the first of three brothers, he had done this sort of deferred leave where, you know, put away, I think a quarter of the salary for three years. And then essentially he did a year of travel that coincided with the, you know, the year I was born. And so they really bumped around. So, I mean, I was pretty young, so I'm always a little bit, you know, that's the story they like to say that, hey, we've got

Jason Elkins (06:04.474)
Okay.

Kelsey Tonner (06:11.118)
Kelsey here and that's what I'm like now. I've just turned 40 recently. I've been incredibly fortunate to see a lot of countries around the world. think up to 79 or 80 countries or something like this. So they always tell that story where they're like, well, here he was as a baby through Australia, through New Zealand, through Western Europe, through here and there. But then we really settled down. Then we were just basically in Nova Scotia for this good run. So something like that.

I was always one for outdoors. I was always certainly one for adventure and being active. know, that was kind of through the Boy Scouts. And I remember working at summer camps. Never went to camp as a kid, but really loved doing those kind of trips and some of that wilderness tripping that I was doing. That was just like a dream job before the travel. was like, wow, I could be out in nature and with the canoe and people are paying me to do this. So I was definitely drawn to the outdoor nature experience. It's pretty young. And then, yeah, once you.

Jason Elkins (07:06.683)
So what did you decide when you went to university, what did you study?

Kelsey Tonner (07:11.628)
Yeah, did international development and philosophy was the minor. it was pretty broad, like undergraduate experience. took a lot of science courses, took a lot of different things. yeah, I had some opportunities to travel through university. was involved with World University Service of Canada, where it was kind of an application process. But 20 university students from Canada are sent every year. And they go and...

Jason Elkins (07:19.642)
Okay.

Kelsey Tonner (07:41.292)
work with a particular country. And so was in Sub-Saharan Africa and Burkina Faso. so that was a pretty eye-opening experience, getting to not just travel, but also travel to a part of the world, one of the poorer countries in the world, that really have your mind open to the many different ways people are living around the planet and how that can be a really enriching experience. You start to appreciate, there's so little that I know. There's so little that I've experienced. So that was certainly part of it.

Jason Elkins (08:08.091)
Okay, so now it all kind of makes sense to me. So when I said very few people just finished college and say, okay, I'm gonna go start traveling. So that adds a lot of color to your story. So thank you, that's very helpful. So when you did finish school and start working in tourism, it probably wasn't a big surprise to your parents. Were they supportive of that? I know sometimes when somebody finishes college and...

goes to be a guide and doing stuff like that, they get some pushback from family. What about your family?

Kelsey Tonner (08:39.724)
Yeah, they were very supportive. Wonderful, wonderful folks. They, again, simultaneous when I started to go to university, my dad actually became the administrator of a Canadian private school in Abu Dhabi, of all places. And so there was this kind of odd shift where here I was thinking that we'd done this travel and then we really didn't do anything for 12 years, at least in my opinion. We didn't have a lot of big international travel. And then basically the first year of university,

Jason Elkins (08:57.335)
Kelsey Tonner (09:08.562)
my mom and dad kind of left the car and then they were essentially overtaken. They took my two younger brothers. And so, you know, a lot of people in first year university, they're still going home for Thanksgiving. Their moms may be still doing their laundry. You know, I remember within a month of my mom and dad leaving, they're like, yeah, the, you know, the everything on the van is expiring, right? You got to go take it in and get it registered. You got to renew the insurance. So you got to do this. by the way, you have to go, you know, close up the cottage, you know, and all this sort of stuff. I was like, okay. You know, so there was a real thrust of independence that came with that.

Jason Elkins (09:32.923)
Uh-huh.

Jason Elkins (09:38.925)
I bet. And I'm curious about your siblings. Did they end up doing similar type of stuff or what is it? Was it just you? mean, how did how did that upbringing impact them?

Kelsey Tonner (09:47.315)
Yeah, the youngest, Yeah, the middle brother, I would say is a little more of a homebody. He really had deep roots and connections to the community in Nova Scotia. And then youngest brother also got that travel bug. And so he's he actually got him a job joking with Tom Hale. think they were just Tom Hale's the owner of Backroads Tours. And, you know, we were celebrating Martin.

He was my youngest brother, about 10 years with the company, maybe last year or something like that. And so I joked that years ago, I got paid 500 bucks or something to get my brother hired at this company because they had a referral program. trying to get the best possible tour leaders. And so I said, hey, man, you got 10 years out of this. I feel like there should be some residual commissions or kickbacks or can at least get a referrer of the decade or something like this. So anyway, he's still working with and.

The curious angle here, our fun angle is I met my now wife and mother of my kids working through back roads and Martin has done the same. So he also ended up connecting, marrying and now having kids with a back roads leader. And Tom Hale affectionately calls this within back roads, the leader breeder program. I don't know if other companies are quite large enough to have this, but there are some 30 to 40 marriages and kids that have come from.

these types of connections. kind of a neat. you don't always get a wife out of your job.

Jason Elkins (11:18.651)
That's very cool.

Well, and actually, you know, lot of the people I speak with and a lot of people that I've worked with in the past in this business, that can be one of the challenges for working in this industry is relationships because not everybody values, you know, not everybody has the same values. And typically the people that like yourself and I that that work in this space really value that that exploration and those opportunities to go do things. And sometimes if we

If we don't realize how much we value it, we find ourselves in relationships with people that maybe value new bedroom sets or new kitchen remodels or houses or cars, and that can be a challenge. So that being said.

Kelsey Tonner (12:03.544)
We quickly found that when my girlfriend at the time, when you're trying to line up schedules, but if you think about working for these multi-day tour companies, we were regularly going to different trips, different countries. And so you kind of had this choice to line up and you could work together so long as you showed, and you could do this professionally, or you could line up your time off. And we quickly found that it was a lot better just to line up the time off. We tend to be, these are long days on adventure tours and it's easy to get short with.

maybe a girlfriend or significant other in a way that you may not with someone, total stranger that you just happen to be working with and meet for the first time. So once we started lining up our time off, that was a big unlock for us. And it really allowed the relationship to deepen because one of the perks of back roads where you kind of have this network of, it was called like leader houses, but essentially the rough schedule would be you work two trips on and then you'd have a week off. But maybe you're in Switzerland or maybe you're in South Africa.

Jason Elkins (12:34.362)
Mm-hmm.

Kelsey Tonner (13:02.008)
Morocco or we worked a few years in Southeast Asia and Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. And so we had this opportunity, you know, to essentially do our own travels, our own adventures, our own bicycle trips. so we really had some bucket list adventures together, facilitated through that job. And we always kind of took that, us to do the, you know, the walkers haute route in the Alps. We did a couple months trekking in Patagonia. We did a month long bike trip through South Africa that was outside of work, but

certainly facilitated by that kind of job. So pretty special way to connect with your significant other.

Jason Elkins (13:34.629)
So it sounds like you guys would, yeah, absolutely. And it sounds like maybe you weren't doing the same group, same departure, but in the same geographical area, work a couple of weeks, get off. You're both already in Europe. You're already in Southeast Asia. You go do things. I guess I'm jumping ahead a little bit here, but I can see that experience is something that you're probably.

Kelsey Tonner (13:48.806)
Exactly.

Jason Elkins (14:03.321)
I can imagine able to help with some of your clients. I mean, I don't know. I haven't been on one of your coaching calls. I don't know how that goes, but typically everything gets involved with business. And in coaching, it's like, okay, what's getting in the way? And I suspect you've run into situations where you've got clients that are having marital issues or relationship issues that can greatly impact their business.

Kelsey Tonner (14:10.818)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (14:29.023)
And what I just heard from you is great, really great coaching advice. Maybe instead of working with your spouse in the business. So I don't know, does that come up sometimes?

Kelsey Tonner (14:37.07)
Yeah, yeah. You know, it's fascinating. We typically steer away from that sort of more personal side of it. I think inevitably it comes up when we have our one-on-one sessions. The model of our coaching program is one where we're leaning into best practices and we wanted that mentorship and accountability. But it's still relatively limited compared to maybe a life coach where you're spending three or four hours together.

know, a week or maybe a business coach that you're hiring really is more of a consultant type role. And so I think just because the nature of our calls are a little bit shorter, you typically a 30 to 45 minute call every couple of weeks, we may not have the time to go so deep on that. But I mean, no question. The boundaries blur here when we're talking about something like time blocks or, hey, we committed to getting something done in the business and it doesn't get done.

Jason Elkins (15:22.491)
Okay.

Kelsey Tonner (15:36.054)
that's going to come up of like, what's going on here? Do we have some kind of block? What's getting in the way? And so that can dredge up a whole pile of stuff there.

Jason Elkins (15:39.513)
What's getting in the way?

Jason Elkins (15:47.429)
I'm curious, Kelsey, did you spend some time, you obviously learned a lot about tourism, adventure travel, all of the stuff that we've been discussing, the coaching part of it, is that just something that just came naturally for you? Did you go through some sort of coaching program yourself? Because coaching is a unique thing. It's different than consulting, right? Coaching is that.

Okay, what are you committed to this week? What are you going to do? What are your, you know, what are your action steps? And then when they come back the next week, okay, what did you commit to last week? Okay, what did you actually do and what got in the way? So I'm curious what your background is in coaching.

Kelsey Tonner (16:29.526)
Yeah, I never received any formal training, let's say, as a coach. And honestly, for a lot of our coaches, maybe a quarter of them had some background with coaching. But by and large, they haven't had a whole lot of experience in that. And partly, the reason is we wanted to draw on that pool of doers, the people that have built and scaled and been in the trenches.

And then part of what we do is then provide them kind of more infrastructure, more support as coaches where, hey, you maybe if you're jumping onto our coaching team, you don't have to have an encyclopedic knowledge of all these best practices. But what you're contributing to the team is your background, often, you know, expertise, like some of our coaches. Midgey Moore comes to mind, who's up in Alaska. She just does a ton of work with the cruise ships and cruise industry. And so she's an invaluable

kind of resource to the program, but we don't expect her to, you know, have an in-depth knowledge of maybe other aspects of the travel trade industry or whatever the case might be. And so we back up our coaches with this kind of success path and everything that has, we put in the success path is really grounded in practical. Like what drives us crazy and certainly drove me crazy was hearing very like theoretical or pie in the sky, you hear some advice and then you don't even know how to get started implementing.

Like, and there's a lot of that floating around. And so we always try to just bring it right down to the practical. And that was only possible because we focused so clearly on during activity businesses. And we could be talking about, hey, here's a pricing calculator that one of our coaches shared. And, you know, here's a short training video of how you can use this. You don't have to reinvent it from scratch or, hey, here's how we can optimize our sales pages or here's, you know. And so, yeah, back to the core question, which was, hey, did we invest in a coaching program? We did.

this model that we took, this kind of group coaching program where we layered in accountability and one-to-one mentorship, we enrolled in, I forget, is it two years back? That was probably like a 25 or $30,000 group coaching program by someone that we really respected, we saw in the industry. And so we were able to experience kind of a program executed at a really high level, one that was really impactful, but could be scaled. So we learned a lot and I've taken some of those courses.

Kelsey Tonner (18:54.35)
Certainly education invested in our own kind of know-how and knowledge in that way But in terms of a coaching certification was never something that I had my mom and dad will also tell you that them being teachers Probably has quite a bit to do with where we ended up You know, I had a friend bring this up to me whose parent was also a teacher and she said don't you realize how lucky we were to have Parents that were teachers, you that the way that they related to us the way that they

Jason Elkins (19:12.122)
Yeah.

Kelsey Tonner (19:22.785)
probably coached us, educated us, supported us at home in a way that so many other kids didn't. They became obviously masterful at that over a career. And that hadn't really clicked before, but no doubt there was a lot of that in that makeup as well.

Jason Elkins (19:39.481)
No, it seems like a real natural fit. I've heard it referred to as the heart of a teacher is somebody that's open and curious and wants to support people in their journey. And that's not something that everybody has. There may be some great, I'm sure you've experienced this, some great tour operators out there that are great in their business, but maybe you're not the best person to be coaching other tour operators. No doubt about it.

Kelsey Tonner (19:47.372)
That's lovely.

Kelsey Tonner (20:06.07)
Yes. I think you put your finger on kind of what we discovered as we started growing the team and looking for who were those diamonds in the rough who could not just run the tour business, I think had a generosity of spirit and a certain inherent ability to meet people where they're at, to be a guide. And those tour business owners that came up and were guides themselves, they had that firsthand experience with

Jason Elkins (20:23.461)
Yes.

Kelsey Tonner (20:35.074)
facilitating experiences, facilitating transformations in some case with their guests. Those, they're I think easier to come by in our industry than maybe another industry where there's a little less focus on that human to human element.

Jason Elkins (20:52.107)
And yes, and there's still I remember as we're having this conversation, I remember back to when I was a fly fishing guide in Montana and ran a guide service there and we had this guide. He was really good with his clients. His clients loved him. They go out, catch a bunch of fish, have a great time.

But boy, he was not going to share any information with any of the other guides. And he would just he would come back with pictures of big fish, but then he would lie about where he was. And and I'm not knocking him. It's just his personality. So, you know, yeah, he's got great reviews, great, you know, tripadvisor stuff, whatever, whatever. But he's not the guy you're going to hire to come in and train a bunch of new guides because he's just kind of had that mental, that scarcity mindset.

which I think you and I were speaking, I can't remember if was before I pushed the record button or not, but you and I were speaking kind of about the mission of just kind of making better experiences for everybody, whether it's your competitor or not. So for example, I'm in Colombia. If someone comes to Colombia and has a bad experience, if I'm a tour operator in Colombia and someone comes here and has a horrible experience with my competition,

They're not going to go home and say, yeah, don't go with that guy in Colombia. They're going to say we had a bad experience in Colombia. Period. And that and that can impact me as a tour operator as well. So does that align kind of with your philosophy?

Kelsey Tonner (22:15.596)
Yep. Yep.

Kelsey Tonner (22:24.044)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. think there was a, basically to connect it back to our personal story, after I was kind of, had met my wife, we had done four or five years with back roads, when we looked at starting a family, we kind of looked at that next chapter of our life, we realized this would be pretty challenging to do from the back of a bicycle. And so we kind of had to do this work to be like, well, what do we want to put into the world?

How can we help? How can we be of service? And that's where we kind of looked at this experience on any given multi-day tour. What do you get to experience as, let's say, a tour director or somebody who's facilitating it? like, well, there's any number of subcontractors of, yes, restaurants and hotels, but even on a typical day, you we might have one or two other guides or experienced hosts, tour leaders who we got to

Jason Elkins (22:57.851)
Hmm.

Kelsey Tonner (23:22.794)
experience, we got to appreciate. It certainly helped that Backroads is one of the most quality obsessed companies that I think I've ever encountered. And so they wanted to make sure if you had a guide on that trip, this was not just any guide or not just one that was available, but this was a real world-class experience. And so it was this exposure and through osmosis, getting to firsthand appreciate, wow, what made these tour leaders and guides exceptional?

what made these businesses that were creating experiences for travelers so unique. so that's really where we had this incredible advantage to be able to try and articulate it, put it into words. We started a YouTube channel where we really, we started as Be a Better Guide. We really sang the, hey, let's focus on that facilitation, the tour leaders. And so that was the first four or five years. The business model at that time was

Jason Elkins (24:14.627)
I remember that.

Kelsey Tonner (24:21.012)
our online courses, essentially education that could help you excel as a tour leader, help join this, again, creating a community of people that wanted to elevate what it meant to create an experience for folks. that was initially, and then the kind of evolution to getting into entrepreneurship and business was we just kept showing up and asking people and as our audience grew and...

community grew and said, well, what are you struggling with? How can we help? And that's when questions started coming up like, well, how do I price my tours? That's something I've always struggled with. like, I don't really know how to do sales pages. This is a common challenge of people who are great, potentially at facilitating that experience, can really struggle to put that into words. By the way, most of us in this industry don't have a background in sales and e-commerce. That wasn't usually part of the journey to get to where many of us are here today.

And so that's basically the evolution as we said, okay, there's a real need here to support people who are a little more entrepreneurial, people that wanted to turn this maybe a gig or this job into a business and touch even a business that would support their lifestyle. And so the evolution of the name from be a better guide to guest focus kind of happened as we shifted that focus, we still have a lot to say about how to...

create incredible experiences, how to recruit, hire, and train the most amazing guides in the world. when we were really thinking about that term guest focus, we absolutely fell in love it because it still had that same DNA, which is to be obsessive, to care more than your competitors, care more than anyone else about the guest experience on your tour. And that's the big unlock to having success in the space.

Jason Elkins (26:13.593)
What do you think is the, so obviously the people that reach out to you, that come to you, or maybe you reach them through some sort of outreach, but they're aware of you and they follow you. Maybe they sign up for one of the coaching programs. You mentioned a couple things that they kind of come to the table with. How do I do this? How do I do that? I'm curious on your like.

Maybe on your initial intro call strategy call, I can't remember exactly what you call it on your website, but what are the top two or three things that you see the most? It's almost like if you're training someone new, you're like, you're gonna hear these things on these calls. What comes to mind?

Kelsey Tonner (28:30.688)
Yeah, the how you would appreciate this, I think, as a marketer by trade or certainly having that background that everybody often comes with this challenge of I just need to get my my tour in front of more people. They really come in with a sense of, if I just if I could just sort out the marketing, if I could just figure out that that one hack or that one Facebook ad tactic or X, Y or Z, then then all my problems would

would go away. so that's typically where we meet people at. But we're often then moving backwards to something more fundamental, which is that we may not have a really clear idea on who our ideal target guest is. We may be trying to be too many things to too many people. We're taking a limited marketing budget and, you know,

spreading it too thin across a broad range. So that's typically where we're meeting people at is, hey, how do I get my experience in front of more people? And I think a big unlock of when we looked out at some of the most successful tour and activity businesses on the planet, the thing that really jumped out was they, many of them had really niched down and they were trying to serve a small, even micro niche.

within a larger group of either inbound or outbound travelers, potentially locals. And that allows, it just solves so many problems. It allows you to, most importantly, I would say, serve those people at the highest possible level. It allowed you to have a unique value proposition to be able to differentiate yourself from...

alternates from competitors. so while having a really tight people sometimes, and certainly may have heard the term ideal customer avatar, same sort of thing here. We just love the term guest because we feel it captures obviously the space that we're in and how we want people to feel when they're with us. But having that ideal target guest isn't just about spending your marketing resources more efficiently. It's

Kelsey Tonner (30:55.902)
actually much more fundamental. It's actually about adjusting the tour design, adjusting the experience to be the best possible experience for that specific individual. They have those specific pain points or those specific dream scenarios. And those look really differently, even for someone like you and someone like I who have a shared interest in adventure travel and active travel. I bet a lot of the same sort of tours and experiences would appeal to us both.

But guess what? I got three girls under seven, seven, five, and three. I'm gonna come with a lot of unique needs. I'm gonna have very different priority lists of what that adventure experience might look like for me. And if it was perfectly optimized around my family, my needs, my itinerary, my schedule, all those types of things. And so that's where I think it's often lost on many...

Operators yes in adventure travel, but across all of the different verticals in Tourism in in hospitality that when you can get that product market fit That's really when you've got the right offer for the right person and so much of that is not just hey Here's this latest Facebook marketing hack. It's actually we have to go back really

We refer to it in our coaching as do a guest deep dive, but let's not just make assumptions about what those individuals want, what some of their frustrations are, what some of their dream scenarios are, but let's actually have a dialogue and a conversation with them. That's going to set you up for success to not only design the offer, but man, to put together a bang in sales page, to be able to use the language of your customers, of the people that you're trying to serve. sometimes we make business harder than it needs to be. It's like, hey, how do I have success? Like ask somebody what they want.

and then give it to them. Sometimes this is about as simple as it is. And sometimes the flip. Ask somebody what they don't want, what drives them crazy and what they're trying to avoid. And you position your tour, your activity experience as something that stays 100 miles away from those things. Hey, we give you the easy button and we take all those things off your plate. That's how you have a really compelling sales page. That's how you really have a successful, thriving, profitable tour business.

Jason Elkins (33:22.011)
Very, very cool. So I'm curious about the process. So you've got that first call. You just kind of explained some of those things that just keep coming up and maybe that they're not aware of when they get there. But you also mentioned you've got a bunch of coaches, it sounds like with a variety of different kind of areas of expertise. So when someone books that initial call with you guys, do you use part of that call as?

you're going to be working with the person that took the call or is part of the process figuring out who to pair you up with for the one on ones? Because I know you do kind of a kind of a group coaching then with one on ones as well. What does that look like?

Kelsey Tonner (34:01.26)
Yeah. Yeah. So I think the initial call, we offer a free 45 minute strategy call with one of our coaches. To me, that's really kind of the middle to bottom of the funnel, so to speak. So all we're really looking to deliver during that call is making sure that an operator that calls in or somebody that's looking to get some advice on their tour activity or experience business, they come away with that call with some real practical

strategies with feeling like they got a ton of value out of that call. So that's goal number one. It is a way for us to do a couple other things, like some qualification to assess, hey, do we think that this person is a good fit for the coaching program? And that's not everyone that books a strategy call for sure. We're at a stage now where we can be a little more picky with our clientele and we've started to find out which businesses really click well with us, which

You can have, I think, the right mindset and certainly an open mind to be able to work with a coach or mentor. So sometimes if we're getting on a strategy call and we're offering advice, this is a real good test. Say, hey, here's another way of looking at this. Or hey, have you thought that? And if you get a lot of pushback, a lot of resistance, or no, no, no, that would never work. It's like, hey, it sounds like you got this figured out. Yeah, yeah, no problem, no problem. It sounds like you got this figured out.

Jason Elkins (35:18.939)
you don't understand my business. That would never work. Yeah, yeah, I get it.

Kelsey Tonner (35:27.246)
Anything else we can help you with, but those are some of the indicators during those initial calls that will allow us to make the call on whether we would then take the next step to invite them into the coaching program. During onboarding, we do a coach matchup process that kind of gets to what you were asking about of like, well, hey, how do you do that matching? That's based on the coach availability. It's based on their business. And then we can get started with the program. But even at the top of funnel, the way most people hear about us is probably a little bit maybe years ago, how you end up hearing about

what we were up to, which was through a YouTube video or maybe a download or a guide. We've done lots of workshops with various partners, maybe with booking software partners, with marketing agencies, anyone that's really serving in this industry. We really tried to take that Costco approach where we have lots of free samples. If you're going to ultimately, know, sell coaching, sell advice.

Jason Elkins (36:17.819)
or maybe podcasts, you go on somebody's podcast, somebody hears about it there, know, yeah, yeah.

Kelsey Tonner (36:21.822)
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Look, this is the type of outreach. what we really want people to do is, you know, whatever, check out that YouTube video, but not just take it passively, but we're offering really practical down to earth advice. Go try this right now in your tour business. Whether that's a guiding tip, whether that's a way to make your sales page more effective, whether that's a way to reach maybe some new clients or creative best practice around a marketing strategy, go and get some results.

Before you ever ask us, hey, how can I give you money or hey, how do you make money? We want them to have those results so that when they're ready to come and have that conversation, and we've already got a leg to stand on, hopefully you're coming into that with a sense of like, hey, that really worked. I wonder what else they've got or wow, hey, I really already got some results. And if we can, that's pretty typical for the way that people find their way to us.

Jason Elkins (37:15.195)
You know, I want to tell you, Kelsey, actually part of why we're having this conversation is I've been aware of you for quite a while and I've, I got one of your emails kind of talking about the landing pages, sales pages. And as somebody who's into website design, I got pretty excited, honestly. I I watched one of your videos and I was like, oh yeah, yep. I see that. I see that. That makes sense. I want to go back and rework some of my stuff. And that was fairly recently.

And that was free. You know, I'm on your free email list and it immediately, man, I really want to talk to Kelsey. So I, you know, I'm not having conversation with you now about signing up for your coaching program. Maybe I will. but it definitely made me want to reach out to you and have this conversation. So, if it's working, it's obviously working in your business. Yeah. Yeah. It's good stuff.

Kelsey Tonner (38:00.194)
Yeah, well, I appreciate that.

Kelsey Tonner (38:06.604)
Yeah, look, we mentioned this tour sales pages. You probably get this a lot, especially working on people's websites, is that there's a lot of room for improvement. There's a lot of small optimizations that maybe aren't that time consuming that people who are creating experiences, whether they're day tours, whether they're multi-day tours, that they can make these tweaks to the website to help them.

Jason Elkins (38:08.219)
And actually, one of the...

Kelsey Tonner (38:34.478)
really put into words, let's say, how great their experience is, leverage some of the well-established e-commerce best practices that, quite frankly, are often overlooked. And so those types of just small tweaks can make a big difference to whether or not somebody's going to click that, know, check availability, that book now, if they're ready and willing to move forward. So...

That's another place where we're regularly meeting people at, because most people have a pretty good sense of like, nobody's happy with their website, or they always know that it could be better. So that's another great place where we can deliver lots of initial value. And like we said, we try and put that out into the world free of charge.

Jason Elkins (39:19.643)
Do you think that, because I know ego can get involved. Some people in this business have pretty good sense of self. And maybe some of them have designed their own websites. That's not my run into sometimes. I'm having conversation. They designed their website 20 years ago and they're rightfully proud of it. When they did it, they learned a skill set. They did it themselves. They should be proud of it.

But do you think that sometimes that's a big thing that gets in the way? Like the person that designed his own sales page is much, maybe sometimes less likely to take the coaching than somebody who's just can set that ego aside and just say, look, I don't care that I designed it. I want to do it the right way.

Kelsey Tonner (40:07.508)
Yeah, people feel very often a close relationship with their website, especially if they are in that category. They put a lot of effort into that. So yeah, no question that's an error. What you were pointing out is common. Where we try to meet people at is, let's measure this. It doesn't really matter if you like it more or not. Is it helping you drive more bookings or not? And I'm sure you use that line an awful lot.

Jason Elkins (40:31.267)
you

Jason Elkins (40:35.205)
Yeah.

Kelsey Tonner (40:36.768)
We can be agnostic about how this makes you feel. If the goal here is to convince more people, if it's to grow our revenue and get more people onto this experience, then let's that be our guide versus just aesthetic preference or what. We're often getting people out of their established ruts. So that's where we are often meeting people at.

Jason Elkins (41:07.547)
I, right before we started this conversation, I went and took another look at your website. And one of things I noticed, but it was like so clear.

and just say, okay, this is what we do. Here's how you take your action. There wasn't a bunch of stuff about how great Kelsey is, how great the coaches are. was like, I knew what I was looking at. I knew where the next steps were and I wasn't getting distracted by a bunch of bells and whistles. So kudos to you on that website. So, hey Kelsey.

Kelsey Tonner (41:36.578)
Well, that rule applies to us as well. We are always looking to improve our own website, but that's a great little takeaway and even maybe a value for people that are either getting started or you're looking for ways to optimize. They get really clear how to do business on your website. We tend to get caught up in a lot of other things. And sometimes Donald Miller, does Business Made Simple, I think has a really, really good job of emphasizing this, where he calls out web pages where he's like, I don't know what it is you do. It's like, you know what you do.

but I don't know how to do business with you. I don't know what the next step is. I don't really know what the last step is. sometimes just having that second set of eyes on your website can go a long way. I was on some calls this morning where somebody was talking about, and they're like million dollar plus operators. And I'm saying, I'm looking at your homepage. I don't know if you do group tours to Ireland. I don't know if you do custom tours. It was just not clear to me at all what their product and service was. And I said, wow, that's.

That's surprising. This is what we do. was like, yeah, you should put that on your website. What you just said, we're off.

Jason Elkins (42:38.203)
Well.

Jason Elkins (42:48.219)
Yeah, and I get it. Sometimes we're so close to our things. It's like we just think everybody must understand what it is we do and because we live it, breathe it, eat it, sleep it. So obviously I do group tours, whatever. But somebody that's just landed on your website for the first time, man, you know, you really don't want to make them dig that hard. So, Kelsey, one of the things I wanted to touch on real quick is because

You'd mentioned before I hit the record button, you'd mentioned that you actually have a tool that anybody is listening to this might benefit from. And it's kind of one of those those freebies, you know, provide some some value. And I told you that if it came up in this conversation, we make sure it shows up in the show notes so people can take advantage of that. So is that something you still want to do? Is that what would you like to tell us about that?

Kelsey Tonner (43:40.334)
By all means, yeah. You can go to YouTube and you can check out, we cover lots of aspects of how to successfully create, market, and sell an experience. And we're pretty broad on that. Whatever that looks like, whoever you're selling it to, whether that's somebody that's more local, maybe they aren't a traditional traveler, maybe they aren't traditionally in tourism, a lot of these best practices will still apply.

the free tool that you can download. It's kind of just a sample from our program, but it's a 40 page workbook called Irresistible Tour Descriptions. And basically we try to break this down into a really practical approach to improving conversion rates, to having a more compelling way of sharing your experiences on a sales page. And so we have 12...

Elements we call them the 12 essential elements of an irresistible tour description. You can kind of go through each one and just ask yourself Hey is this present on my website and it can be something as simple as Hey, do we have an FAQ a frequently asked questions section on our specifically on an individual experience page? That's overcoming some of the concerns and hesitations that people might have some of the things some of the reasons that they may have to get on the phone with you or send you an email before they buy boy

We sure want to answer those questions on a sales page that's online 25 hours a day, seven days a week. That should be your best salesperson. And the best salesperson should really do a good job of anticipating what some of those concerns might be. It could be something as simple as having a lowest price guarantee, just putting those words on your own sales page. We call this risk reversal, where we're trying to take away that concern of, could I get this cheaper somewhere else? Maybe I should shop around.

Should I check TripAdvisor or Viator and see if it's cheaper there? Well, we can eliminate that risk. We can give people peace of mind by saying, no, hey, if you book directly here on this web page or by giving us a call, we guarantee this is the lowest price that you'll find. So just small best practices like that. You can check it out on our website, but I believe we put together a URL at guestfocus.com forward slash big world where you can go in and grab a copy for yourself.

Kelsey Tonner (45:58.07)
Or again, if you've got a friend or a colleague or someone that might find that of interest, by all means, feel free to pass it along to them.

Jason Elkins (46:04.483)
I part of why I brought it up, Kelsey. Yeah, part of why I brought it up is because when we're done with this conversation, I'm going to do some editing and get everything uploaded and put that link in. I'm going to click to link myself and I'm going to go get it and look at it as well. So I know it's I know it's going to be good stuff. So anybody that has any interest in this in this stuff, go click the link. Kelsey, we.

Kelsey Tonner (46:19.753)
You betcha.

Jason Elkins (46:29.763)
We discussed a lot of things, but I actually, think we could probably do a whole season of episodes with you about these topics. But I want to know what did I forget to ask or what should I have asked that's important for our listeners to hear before we wrap it up?

Kelsey Tonner (46:47.532)
Well, I'd love to even ask you this question. I don't know how often your guests get to ask you questions, and I'd be happy to answer it afterwards. given you're running the show, you're interviewing all these great people, when you get asked, hey, what has been one of your most memorable, let's say, guided experiences? It could be a day tour, it could be a multi-day trip. Do you have a go-to answer? Because I know I get asked that a lot. But do you find yourself answering that question? Yeah.

Jason Elkins (47:14.479)
What is one of my favorite?

Kelsey Tonner (47:18.582)
or most memorable, most impactful.

Jason Elkins (47:20.505)
That question is, what is my favorite or what I you and I both know that we have a little bit of a technical issue going on. I know that the end result is going to sound great. Nobody's going to recognize this, but do me a favor and just repeat the question so I can make sure I get it answered.

Kelsey Tonner (47:36.312)
You got it.

Kelsey Tonner (47:40.782)
The question that I get asked a lot, and I'd love to hear your answer to it first if you're a game, is what has been your most memorable active travel experience? When you think back, the one that stands out in your mind, is I get asked this question a lot. I'd love to hear what you, do you have a go to?

Jason Elkins (48:00.313)
Yeah, yep, I got it.

Yep, I got it. I've shared it. Yeah, I do. And it was actually, I was doing a fam trip as part of the ATTA World Summit down in Namibia several years ago. And we went out a bunch of other tour operators, buyers or whatever went out on this fam trip. And the operator we're with took us to this place and it's like, okay, we're just getting started here. We haven't done any groups here, but we think it's going to be great.

And I remember they executed everything flawlessly, but what was most impactful was one night at dinner, they had somebody come back. Somebody came in and kind of whispered in the ear and pulled the guy to side and the guide came back over and says, you guys, one of our team members found something over the next ridge. And it's really, really cool. We don't know exactly what it is, but if you guys want, we can get up in the morning and we'll take you out there and we'll look at it. And I think it's going to be really cool.

And of course, we're all like, yeah, OK, cool. You know, this is an adventure. And they got us up the next morning and we walked and I'm sure we could have drove to it, but we walked and walked and walked and we get there and there's some burial mounds and they're like, we're not sure. We think maybe there was a battle in this area. We've never seen this, dude. But boom, boom, boom. And we all just kind of sat around and talked about what maybe had happened and imagined.

And then at the end of the day, know, we had lunch, we get back to camp and I was like, they should do that every week. And then it occurred to me, maybe they do. You know, and then like a couple of days later, we were driving up over the mountains down to the beach and the the the land drivers kept getting stuck in the sand and we're like, my God, we're going to die out here. But then they would get it out.

Kelsey Tonner (49:40.184)
Amazing.

Jason Elkins (49:55.427)
you know, 20 minutes, I'd get it out. We'd keep going. And when we got to the beach, we're like, wow, we survived. And the same thought occurred to me again, is like, man, they should do that every week. Maybe they do. And to this day, I think it was wilderness safaris. I can't remember the operator, but I was like, man, you've got a group of tourism professionals. And we were all like, wow, that was the most amazing experience. And I was like, yeah, they should just duplicate that every week.

So that was my that was my experience. I still to this day don't know how staged it was, but they executed it really well.

Kelsey Tonner (50:24.92)
Yeah.

Kelsey Tonner (50:31.822)
Yeah, that's tremendous. I love those. The one that I mean, there's countless guides and tour leaders that stand out over the years. But I do remember one experience in Belize, and it was really going into this sort of flooded cave network. And basically, you follow this guide, you had to swim across the swimming hole. And I had this, I think it was especially memorable because my mom and my dad were

on the trip with me. And so, you know, I couldn't believe mom and dad were doing some of this stuff. I don't think they knew what they had signed up for. But, you you kind of float through this cave network, just your head can pass through and then we climb up and then these incredible, ancient, know, skeletons like in the flowstone and, you you're caving and kind of like spelunking. And it was...

Honestly, one of the more memorable experiences mornings with my mom and dad and with Sarah, my wife, but it really had to do with how they go. The guide set it up, the anticipation, how he was able to quickly build rapport and a little bit of that, that sense of adventure. It's man, man, it's pushing the comfort zone, I think is a key ingredient here. And that's, that's a task that you have to do pretty delicately, but if done well, boy, you can have a, some transformational experiences.

Jason Elkins (52:01.563)
Yeah, very, very cool. Well, I, I, certainly appreciate you coming on here and sharing that story and everything else we've kind of have touched on today. I know there's a lot more. Again, we're going to have those links and the show notes and, yeah, anybody, if this is the first time you've heard Kelsey, it won't, I, I'm sure it won't be last time because you're all sudden that your radar is on. You're going to go over, look at his website and, Kelsey, I look forward to collaborating on some more projects with you in the future. Thank you so much for joining us.

Kelsey Tonner (52:30.518)
Absolutely, thank you.