More than you think.
Lao Tzu penned a very well-known proverb, one you’ve no doubt heard before.
It starts:
‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.’
To start a travel business you need customers, to get customers you need to market your business.
You’ll see opportunities out that that ‘provide you with leads’, and that might be great for a week or two, maybe a couple of months. But when this happens, you become reliant on someone else for the success or failure of your business. You’re not in control.
You’ll have no power to push marketing in a certain direction, you won’t have a voice to ask for a specific type of market. You’ll just sit at the table and eat what’s given to you.
And that same old meal is going to become boring at some point. Your appetite might grow, but the meals will contain the same calorie count. It might not even be particularly good food. Maybe the scraps are left over after the bosses have eaten. But you’ll accept that because it’s all you know.
Then one day, that bowl of gruel will come to an end and you’ll ask for a little bit more.
“Please, sir, I want some more.”
We all know what happens then.
Obviously, I’m talking about enquiries here. And here’s where it gets better. You’ll be given access to enquiries to start your business, you’ll do all of the work sifting through the grisly bits in the pot, and when you finally find a bit of the good stuff, you’ll have to give up to 50% of it to the big man at the head of the table.
That’s how being provided leads work.
Sound good?
Come on, that’s no way to start a business.
As you probably know, Lao Tzu’s proverb finishes:
“Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”
That’s how you start a healthy business.
If you’re serious about starting a travel business, you need to learn how to do everything in your business, and a huge part of that is finding customers. You need to learn to fish.
You should learn how to find the exact type of customer your business is looking for.
Then, forget the gruel, you can fill your plate with anything you like.
And before you think “oh but that’s going to cost me”, of course it is, but you’ll pay one way or another. Nothing comes for free, as Oliver found out.
But at least you’ll have the freedom to choose what you eat, and how much of it, AND keep the lion’s share of it.
So don’t be fooled by promises of a free meal.
Learn to be self-sufficient and give your business a better chance of success.
Let us teach you to fish.
We’ll do it one-to-one, showing you exactly how to catch your next meal for yourself.
Every month we’ll show you how to get better at it with our marketing reviews.
This method leads to more successful long-term businesses. It also leads to franchisees less reliant on us, and businesses that will be able to stand on their own two feet when the right time comes.
So when you’re researching your choices, think about what you learned from starting a travel business. If it’s an easy route, it probably means it’s more beneficial for the franchisor. If it takes a bit of education for you, it’s always to your benefit.
