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#201 - Food and Travel Writer Creates Food Tours in Marrakech, Earns $60k Annually

2017-07-20

In the North African city of Marrakech, an American expat starts a project that she hopes will earn $200/month in spending money. It ends up earning more than $5,000 a month.  Side Hustle School features a new story EVERY DAY of someone who started a hustle without quitting their job. You’ll learn how they got the idea, how they overcame challenges along the way, and what the results are. You need a hustle! Share: #SideHustleSchoolShow notes: SideHustleSchool.comTwitter: @chrisguillebeauInstagram: @193countries

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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Many side as a school. What's up, this is critical about here we are rocking episode, two hundred and one big day yesterday with episode. Two hundred, thank you again for joining me on the journey so much more to come in. Today's episode takes us to Morocco, the north african nation, that Border Spain, where an american ex that starts approach with the goal of earning a couple hundred hours of mine. But then it jumps to five thousand dollars a month, crazy. How that works are you exactly how it happened in just a moment. First, I wanna Hannah MIKE ever to listen
afraid shot out of someone who is help them along the way. Let's hear what they have to say, hello, like from annex I, of course helping me take my educational, consulting firm to the next level, the person that help me with my dad, but it came time to name my company. I chose LUCA partners because my dad's nickname was LUCA local partners that come thanks. Chris support for this punk, comes from progressive. What would you do with an extra eight hundred dollars? Biplane ticket paid on your student loan, treat yourself to those whose, U benign with progressive you could find out drivers who switch Save save an average of seven hundred ninety six dollars on car insurance. Get your quote online a come and see how much you could be saving national average annual cards savings by new customer service who saved with progressive and twenty nineteen
In January, twenty fourteen Amanda Ponzi imo. Turkey was sitting with her husband you said at a cafe on a main square in Marrakech. Morocco, watching tourists going to restaurants. They knew weren't great as an american expert married to a local Amanda, would give advice, She could only specific recommendations on her website rock Mama, but watching those tourists go into our dining experiences he suddenly realized. She was. Situated to offer English speaking tours and would show tourist where the good food was hidden in Marrakech and as a freelancer who wrote about food and travelled referred Amanda had the skill set to pull it off since her husband, Youssef grew up in Marrakech. You already knew a lot of people and a lot of good places to eat. They also aid out fairly often so they had plenty of non tourist. He stopped to choose from the first step was coming up with a tour route that made sense
They wanted the tour to be a walking progressive meal, so they go to one place for appetizers, neither for the main course and then a stop, of course for dessert making sure they all The food and the root of the walking to our made sense was the most time consuming part, at least initially. Well. Imagine yourself already knew the restaurant owners at some of the stocks they wanted to go to. They didn't know all of them, which may be to spend some time introducing themselves in explaining what they are trying to do. This wasn't something ever been done in Marrakech before so some people, weren't, interested or just weren't sure. So it took some persistence to get a comprehensive tourists while they were in the design stage. They kept his guiding principle in mind what you saps mom eat here, what Amandas american mom everything to walk into this place. If the answer to the first question was yes and a second question, no, then they knew it was a good fat once they had the route set. Amanda set up a new website using word press. It accepted payments through Paypal and she made sure to use good keywords. So it was,
easily discoverable in search engines. She spent fifty dollars buying domain names, but then she was already pay. Hosting under other website, that was, it is biotechnology as more challenging part of set up was figuring out there your staff, particularly in Morocco, the tourism industry in Morocco, is highly regulated, which, out of the hole or a bureaucracy for them to navigate. They had to work with licence city guides who, for the most part, work on commission but Amanda naturally wanted a food focused shore. Without the high pressured shopping, so we had to find and higher ought to be willing to work for an early rate, not on Commission Amanda. You separate technically led the tours, but the hourly licence what accompany them with their official badge. That made everything legal without legal framework finally set up. It's a minimal marketing and place. It was time to officially launch Marrakech Food Torres, Amanda started with some pretty low expectations, she wanted to make two hundred dollars a month to cover schooling costs for two kids side note school is pretty cheap and Morocco, early and together budget a little more breathing room in general, they started out charging fifty dollars a person
for the walking towards, and within a couple months of launching and may twenty fourteen there. In a few hundred dollars. A month with Youssef guiding about six tourism month after only three months, they increase the price from fifty dollars to sixty, dollars a person and actually had a number of bookings increase when they did that, while they had acceded Amandas financial expectations in the first couple of months, revenue continue to increase and within six months of launching they were bringing in two thousand dollars a month. The increased demand for tourists meant that they needed to hire guides, who had actually lead those tours not just accompany them. During the past two years, they ve slowly added guides who are both qualified to leave the tours and open to being. Eight hour instead of on commission by adding guides able to increase the number of tourists in these days by working with five contract guides, they been able to run twenty five to thirty tourism month, distantly bringing about five thousand dollars a month. They boss
made some minor upgrades to their systems, including switching to a new booking process, and while they hired guides to run the tours depending on a season Youssef still clocks. In about ten five hours a week, leading some tours and doing administration, but now, instead of doing this on the site, you saw him. Able to quit his job and focus on a few tours meanwhile Amanda still has other freelance projects and only spent about five hours a week, keeping things running, she still doesn't spent much time on marketing because most of their buckings company referrals, Tripadvisor and Org search results, Amanda credits, alot of their success, to finding something missing in the marketplace and then going for it. She also says we were the right people at the right time to meet that need at last they made the decision to just focus on food and only detours in English. They could have done a bunch of other kinds of tours. They could have done towards. In other languages, but at least in this case, the choice to specialise was definitely the right one,
Possum story, regulations, Amanda and yourself times when you have an idea for a site. Hustle, you have a goal like me. A couple hundred dollars a month and, as you can see in this It goes on to do much more than that. So aside, us what can affect your life and all sorts of positive ways, and I love what I've been able to do not fun personal note I remember going to Morocco years ago, and I was in cost like I know, thinking backing to experience enjoying being there. I think I went on a little guidance for myself in addition to exploring dependent lay, but I also seem to We're going to some really bad restaurants, and that, because I didn't know where to go so, if only onto Marrakech instead of Casablanca and if only Marrakech, food towards that existed at that time, Maybe I would about a bitter experience, banal, listers listeners. Next, on your in Marrakech, you know where to go as always. Inspiration is good, but instead combined action, so much better traditional, its heart
school dot com, slash to a one. If you have a comment, question for the show dot com, slash to a one. If you have a comment or a question for the show, give me a call on a hustle hotline at its eight for four So much more is on the way for the rest of the year. I'm critical about the societal school.
Transcript generated on 2020-08-06.