Adventurous Couple Turns Travel Itineraries Into Cash

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

I once took a six-hour train journey from Bucharest Romania to Moldova. It was one of the most authentic travel experiences I had in that part of the world. I still remember it now many years later. So if you ever get the chance to go to Eastern Europe, away from some of the more frequently visited countries in the West, it can make for a truly unique and interesting experience. But it helps to have a guide.

So in today's Sadosil school story, I'm going to tell you about an adventurous couple who turns travel itineraries into cash, earning extra money showing off the beautiful country of Romania. It takes a while for them to get going, but now they're touring clients every week, bringing in a substantial second income. So we'll look at how they got the idea, what went well, and what was challenging for them, along with perhaps some takeaway lessons for you. That story is coming up in just about 30 seconds. Besides packing, many people consider the return trip home one of the worst parts of travel.

That return trip signals the end of an adventure, sometimes a return to a less exciting routine. For others, the journey, lacking the anticipation that comes with starting a new adventure, just seems like it takes far too long. Returning from a weekend trip to the mountains, Bucharest Romania-based Karina Preta and her husband Flora shared some of these thoughts. Driving back to the city meant a return to the hustle and bustle of their busy schedules and jobs. Karina spent her days working in human resources and Flora in the pharmaceutical field.

While they had little to complain about, they would have loved a few more days away. Driving along the country Romanian roads, they were already looking forward to their next adventure and talking about ideas for where they wanted to go next. They both immediately said, "We want to keep traveling," which is not surprising, since it's something they both loved since they were kids. But then one of them suggested, "Wouldn't it be great to have a business in travel?" Soon they decided on starting a travel agency offering guided trips and custom experiences. Karina loved researching and planning itineraries.

Flora loved sharing cool places and things, so the idea was perfect. Not only did they like the idea of showing off their home country, the travel business could earn extra money and allow them to travel more themselves. It was a win all around, or at least they thought it might be. Entrepreneurial ideas weren't new to them, but where others remained merely ideas, this one was different. The couple started researching their new business idea the very next day.

They knew nothing about the travel business, so they had a lot to learn. They quickly discovered that travel agencies in Romania require licenses and training. These education requirements took several months, and Karina and Flora used the time wisely. Whatever time wasn't spent at work or in class was spent developing their new business. They refined this business model by researching competing companies, especially the products they offered and how they priced.

This information helped them finalize their own products and develop a formula to calculate pricing. Karina built the website herself, which saved them on startup costs. They decided to offer many different packages as well as custom experiences, all of which were outlined on this new site. In total, they spent around 1,500 euros, or about $1,700 US, a good portion of which went to the necessary licenses. Finally, their training was complete, and Secret Romania was open for business.

They published their website and worked hard to promote it. But they got little initial traction in business. In fact, it would be about a year before the couple had what they considered to be their first real customer, someone they didn't know. Karina and Florin were excited, but also surprised when a traveler they didn't recognize emailed them to register for a walking tour of Bucharest. The client's travel package wasn't very expensive, but it gave them a boost and re-energized them.

Still, after this first client, business continued to be slow for nearly two more years. Karina and Florin maintained their full-time jobs while seeking the advice of others in the industry. They also tried new marketing strategies, but nothing seemed to work. Some days, they thought about giving up. Not only was their lack of success mentally draining, but the business wasn't even covering its minimal operating costs.

Fortunately, they kept at it, and things began to change in 2017. After partnering with a new booking platform who brought customers in exchange for commission, business increased, and has grown steadily ever since. Today, in Secret Romania's fourth year, this side hustle consistently earns them 1,300 euros per month, roughly $17,000 US dollars per year, and also known as a lot of money in Romania. These extra funds allowed Karina and Florin to save money and take more trips of their own. The bonus income also gave Florin more flexibility to reduce his work schedule, which he loves.

In addition, they've learned a lot of new skills. Starting a business from scratch, they've learned about everything from SEO to finance, marketing to time management. All skills they say are invaluable for whatever they do next. While their mistakes have led to important lessons, there are a few that Karina says she would rather have skipped. If they were starting the business today, they would begin with fewer product offerings, just two or three maximum, and then put a lot of promotion into them.

They also didn't have an effective way to track what marketing efforts were actually working at first, which led to wasted resources. With the lessons learned, they've been able to improve. And the work continues. Karina and Florin are excitedly looking ahead, refining their marketing and optimizing their website to showcase their homeland. Most of all, they never stop learning and never stop thinking about their next adventure.

Awesome! So what can we take away from this story? Well, sometimes it takes a while to get up and running. Maybe that's the first observation. Most overnight successes tend to take a lot more than one night.

Sometimes it takes weeks, sometimes months. And sometimes, like you heard in this story, it can take even longer. So in some situations, the answer is, you know, just be patient. It's going to take time, especially if you're doing something that you haven't tried before or something that's not familiar to your target market. There could be all kinds of reasons why it doesn't happen right away.

Now, at the same time, in this story, we can identify a few things that they would do differently if starting now that might save them some of that time. They started with offering too many packages. They offered all kinds of packages. They would customize everything. It's basically like, hey, if you want to do something with travel in Romania, we can do it for you. That's not always the best approach.

Sometimes it's better to say, here are the two or three things that we do, maybe even just the one thing that we do, and we're going to really focus on promoting this one thing. Now, it's also important to track what's working because in their story, like for a long time, they weren't sure what marketing efforts were working and what weren't. That led to some wasted efforts and resources. Finally, they really started getting this boost once they had some form of lead generation. They partnered with some kind of booking platform that essentially brought customers to them or brought leads to them. Once they started doing all those things,

reduced the number of packages, began paying attention and saying, "Where are our efforts actually producing good results?" and identified a source that could bring them leads, that's when it started working for them. Now, it's going really well. I mean, $17,000 a year as a side income in Romania is really, really good. And speaking of that, they had to undertake several months of training and apply for all these different kinds of licenses to be able to operate this business. So if you don't live in a place like Romania, you don't usually have to deal with that much bureaucracy.

So be thankful for that. It's usually a lot simpler, especially for this kind of service business. So congratulations to them, and if you ever find yourself wanting to plan a different kind of trip or go to Eastern Europe, maybe see something that's, as I said, a bit different from the more frequently visited cities and countries to the West, check out Secret Romania. We're going to link them up on the show notes page. That page is at sidehustleschool.com/959.

The weekly recap is on the way tomorrow, along with a whole new set of stories next week. I hope you'll join me for them. My name is Chris Guillebeau, and this is Side Hustle School. From the Onward Project.