Ep. 9: Global tourism (with Kelsey Tonner of Be a Better Guide)

Kelsey Tonner is an experienced, global tour guide and founder of the Be a Better Guide Project. Be a Better Guide helps tour leaders and tour companies all over the world create, sell and market their experiences. Also, he founded the Online Tourism Academy, which offers premium online training programs for tour leaders and tour business owners. All in all, Kelsey’s mission is to help anyone, anywhere, create extraordinary experiences for travelers.

Where to find Kelsey

About Kelsey’s Mission: beabetterguide.com/about
Online Tourism Academy: onlinetourismacademy.com
Facebook: facebook.com/beabetterguide
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kelseytonner
Instagram: instagram.com/beabetterguideproject
YouTube: Be a Better Guide YouTube

Read the full transcript below.

Kelsey Tonner: If you’re wanting to sell an online course or online program, people need to know who you are. They need to know are you a good instructor or teacher or do you actually have worthwhile or useful things that you’re going to be sharing or communicating? And I would highly recommend giving away a lot of stuff for free and giving away sometimes some of your best stuff because it really kind of creates the sense of like, Oh wow, like if, if he’s giving all this stuff away for free, like what is in these paid programs? These are more premium programs.

Melissa Guller: That’s Kelsey Tonner, an experienced global tour guide and founder of the Be a Better Guide Project. In our upcoming interview, it’s clear that Kelsey radiates with a joy and passion for the outdoors. After working for one of the largest tour companies in the world, he and his wife Sarah realized that the tour guide lifestyle wouldn’t allow them to pursue their next big adventure: parenthood. But they knew they wanted to keep traveling the world, and so the idea to create online courses felt like a perfect fit to support their dreams. However, Kelsey struggled with the same thing many early course creators face, which was an uncertainty around what to teach. But after sketching out a few ideas, he landed on tourism, and the Be a Better Guide Project was born. Even though he had zero pre-existing knowledge about online courses, Kelsey has been able to turn a passion for tourism and travel into a thriving online course business to support his family and their global adventures. Today he’ll share how both observation and a mission driven approach have powered his success. Stay tuned.

Announcer: Welcome to Everything is Teachable, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes to learn how everyday creators have transformed their skills and passions into online courses in businesses. To introduce this week’s episode, here’s your host, Melissa Guller.

Melissa Guller: Hey everyone. I’m Melissa from Team Teachable and today I’m here with Kelsey Tonner, founder of the Be a Better Guide Project, a movement that brings together tour leaders and tour operators from around the world to learn from one another. His mission is to help anyone anywhere create extraordinary experiences for travelers. Kelsey has led tours in over 15 different countries from Europe to the Americas and from Asia to North Africa. Over the past five years. Kelsey has designed world-class online training programs for tour leaders and tour business owners and delivered them to customers in over 40 countries around the world with practical yet wise cracking advice. Kelsey inspires a global community of tour operators to create truly unforgettable experiences and helps them earn more money while doing it. So Kelsey, I’m so excited to welcome you to the podcast.

Kelsey Tonner: Great to be here!

Melissa Guller: So to kick things off, how about we go back and we start with your earliest career. I know you were involved with different leadership trainings and summer camps, so I’d love to hear all about those.

Kelsey Tonner: Yeah, you betcha. So I grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia here in Canada and then went directly into university after I graduated high school. And I guess through high school up here in Canada, we have a lot of sort of high school leadership. It can be organizations, there can be, you know, a little bit like student council, but these are kind of between schools. And so I would go to these conferences, really enjoyed those. I ultimately became the president of this sort of high school leadership organization for our province. And so that, that kinda, you know, dip my toe into some of what leadership really is all about. You know, how do you communicate with people? How do you listen actively? How do you manage people in any sort of team setting or in a business setting. But basically then when they transitioned to university, know I, gosh, I took everything that I was interested in.

Kelsey Tonner: It was very not very, not like the I’m going to go to university then I’m going to get the job. I went to university and took any course that I was interested in and ultimately after university, you know, I ended up with a degree in international development, minored in philosophy, a few things, but basically just wanted to travel. I wanted to experience a different parts of the world. And so I looked for any job that would allow me to do that and that’s kind of how I stumbled into the summer camp world. Uh, so I traveled and worked at different summer camps. I did wilderness tripping in Wisconsin. I had worked at a summer camp in Nova Scotia for a few years. I built a leadership program for a summer camp out in California, which was an amazing summer. Then I got into sort of tour leading. Essentially.

Kelsey Tonner: I found that there are these great jobs where you can be outside, you can be active. All of these sort of things that I loved. I grew up camping and being sort of an outdoors person. And so I worked as a dog sledding guide in the Canadian Rockies. I coordinated youth volunteers up at a fly in Inuit community on the, in the Northeast. So basically lots of fun jobs like that. Oh yeah. I spent a year down in Australia and got hooked up with some summer camps down there or they don’t really have summer camps, but the called school camps. And so I did, you know, canoeing and high ropes programs for Australian kids. Oh, it’s just a ton of fun. And it needs tracking this sort of progression into tourism and tour leading because, uh, basically one summer I picked up a little bit in California, but in Nova Scotia I became the program director.

Kelsey Tonner: I essentially created the entire program like what are the kids gonna be doing this summer? How can we make it fun? How can we make it engaging? And you know, if you’ve got, you know, 60 to a hundred young kids, you have to put some thought into how you’re going to have fun with them that day. How are you going to explain that game? How do you manage all of these children? And a lot of those skills actually translate really well into tour, leading into tour guiding because basically adults are just, uh, children who are a little bit bigger.

Melissa Guller: Yeah. And I would guess maybe kids are even tougher critics in a lot of ways. So I’m sure if you can please and entertain a group of kids, maybe pleasing, entertaining a group of adults could be slightly different, but a similar experience.

Kelsey Tonner: No question. I almost, all of the strategies you use with children actually work extremely well on, uh, adults more or less no matter what background, you know, what culture they come from. There’s a lot of, uh, of big wins there. So just to finish that story, I basically got into international tour leading, which was just like blew my mind that this type of job was out there. But the company that I, uh, was able to get in with was called Backroads tours. They’re actually based out of Berkeley, California. I worked for Backroads Canada and they have, Oh, now they’ve grown substantially, but you imagine about 400 to 500 tour leaders that they fly all over the world and they really focus on active travel trips. So these would be hiking, cycling adventures, sometimes multi-sport itineraries that last about a week. And, uh, it’s a very difficult and sort of challenging application process, but I trick them into hiring me and bam, I was away to the races so they would just fly me around to different countries.

Kelsey Tonner: I probably worked with Backroads in 25, 26 different countries around the world and they’re kind of on the luxury end of the spectrum. So these, these trips are just absolutely magical. You know, we’d be in, you know, Northern France or Croatia or Costa Rica. I led trips in Morocco and Vietnam and Cambodia and it’s based around staying at these really lovely hotels, but then getting outside and doing an adventure. It’s a hike, whether that’s biking, sometimes you’d be biking every day, kind of between your hotels. And then of course immersing yourself in the culture so that, that was just a dream job. And I did that probably about four or five years.

Melissa Guller: Wow. And so are there other qualities that you think make for a really great tour guide?

Kelsey Tonner: A lot of it boils down to social skills, right? When you think of those great tour leaders or people who are working in this space, they tend to be people, people and uh, there are some schools of thought that, Hey look, some people are just born with it. This is a lot of times these are things you can’t work on, but we 100% fall into that other camp where I 100% believe that these are skills that you can work on, that you can improve your people skills, you can get better at public speaking, you can improve your memory, you can get better at service related things. So I know that some companies really rely on that. You know the, there’s, as we’ve quickly found is there’s a lot of tour businesses out there who don’t do a ton of training and we’ve probably all had pretty crappy tour guides and tour leaders as we’ve gone around.

Kelsey Tonner: They were experiencing a new place and you have somebody that’s just phoning it in. They’re not that great a tour leader. Maybe they are like mumbling. You can barely hear them. They’re not sharing anything of interest or they’re like really going off on really esoteric kind of boring staff. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of tour companies out there who kind of maybe just hire from that people skills. We say sometimes you know, if if you got your able to smile, you’ve got a nice smile. They seem to be pretty decent people. Then, Hey, now you’re a tour leader. Away you go, but we know that’s not what makes a amazing experiences for,

Melissa Guller: I think that’s a great point that even if somebody is, as you said, like a people person, there’s still so much knowledge and training and knowing how to engage with your group and keep them caring about what’s going on. That goes far beyond just being maybe a natural extrovert or somebody who enjoys travel.

Kelsey Tonner: You bet you one of the biggest questions as I really got serious about being the best tour leader that I could, one of the questions I started asking my own guests was, Hey, who is the most memorable tour guide that you ever had or your most memorable tour? And if you just sort of listen and pay attention and hear the stories that come out of that, you start to appreciate what are the core sort of skillset that you need to work on. And basically I was just like a sponge. Anytime I was working with people just blatantly stealing some of the strategies that they would do. Um, you know, I noticed straight away at some of the most amazing true leaders they were going around. Just something simple and like checking in with everybody at a lunch break or maybe you’re doing a full day tour and then just around lunchtime, I’d see at the tour later get up and just go around and do a quick check in and say, Hey, you know, Melissa, how you doing? I just want to make sure you’re having a great time. Did you have any questions from this morning and what are you most looking forward to this afternoon? Little stuff like that then gives you the tools to, to really enhance their experience and give that really personalized service.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, it’s amazing. Just hearing you talk about how something is so small, like saying hello checking in. It sounds really obvious when you mentioned it here, but I’m sure it might not occur to everybody to do that naturally. And so even just piecing together what all of these different people on your tourists said was so memorable or wonderful. I bet a lot of them were little moments like that. They weren’t big gestures necessarily, but piecing them all together, I’m sure made a huge difference.

Kelsey Tonner: Yeah, you bet you and, and oftentimes it’s just being really explicit. You know? If you’re not, I guess a careful observer, maybe that’s one of the skills that I was able to hone. You might not actually know quite what that tour leader is doing. So you might say, wow, yeah, they’re very warm, but what was it? It’s like, well, as soon as that person arrived, they came over, they said hi. They introduced themselves like how many tours have you been on? Whether you know it’s a segway or a walking tour and somebody doesn’t acknowledge you right away or maybe you’re kind of standing there awkwardly with a bunch of other people. You don’t actually know who he is, who is the guide? Is this the right place? Is this the office? You know, something like that’s a little bit general like, Hey, be warm with your guests or be friendly can be translated into really specific actions to do and not do.

Melissa Guller: [inaudible] it’s really interesting and I think important that you called out how important it is to be an observer. I think that’s true for anybody creating anything online, running any business. If you’re observing what your customers or your readers are telling you, if you’re observing what other people in your space are doing and what is really working for them, I think that’s such a powerful way to better understand what you could be doing as well. And maybe an underrated skill observation.

Kelsey Tonner: And the the, the other half of that is of course the execution. You’re trying yourself, I love Bernay Brown and all of her books and her works. If you folks haven’t heard of her, you should definitely check her out. But she has that great quote I think she takes from Roosevelt’s or someone, but that about getting in the arena, you know, really taking those things, going out and trying them herselves and that, and that does take a lot of courage as well to try new things, to shift up maybe a set script that you’ve been following or do something that is a little bit scary. Maybe that’s whether it’s trying to be funny or trying to approach people in a different way or do something a little bit silly, right? Like putting on a costume or adopting a character or these, these types of things. Take courage to, to try out new yourself.

Melissa Guller: Hmm. I know you do some silly stuff on your website, don’t you?

Kelsey Tonner: I, I have embraced the inner silly, yes.

Melissa Guller: Yeah. I think that’s overlooked as well too. I think so often we’re so serious about all of these things that we’re doing and of course, you know, earning money, providing for yourself, for your family. Those are, those are serious topics, but I think it was maybe a yoga teacher recently who said to us that yoga is a serious practice, but you don’t have to take yourself seriously doing it.

Kelsey Tonner: Yeah. You patch it and think about those, especially in that tour experience right away where you’re just looking at this person and you’re like, okay, there’s a lot of judgment happening in these first couple moments. Like, am I going to have a good morning here? Is this going to be a good good day? And if you’re the first to laugh at yourself, if you’re the first to be that little bit silly to show just what you’re saying, that Hey, this is not going to be really, really serious. People relax, people will, will appreciate, you can feel the tension kind of loosen up. Cause right away you’re like, Oh gosh, is this going to be some self-important individual who’s gonna bore us to death for the next two hours? Right away. You let people know we’re gonna have some fun here. We’re not going to take things too seriously.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, great advice. So we’ve talked a little bit about you as a tour guide. How did that evolve into training? Cause I know that’s kind of where this went next.

Kelsey Tonner: Yeah. So inherent as I became more experienced, I did some on the job training for Backroads. So I’d be working with new tour leaders. Some of that happened inherently, but I think the biggest moment was really when we were looking at I, I met my wife. I mean this is, this is a big part of this story is I met my incredible wife doing this incredible job. You know, there was a company full of people who loved outdoors, who were all these incredible people, people adventurous, they love travel. And, uh, lo and behold, there’s, there’s my future love of my life right there. So that was incredible. We pretty quickly, gosh, when I started, I think within the first year we had started dating and then for across those next four years in the company, we, uh, we dated and eventually got more and more serious and wanted to raise a family.

Kelsey Tonner: And it’s a little bit difficult to raise a family from the back of a bicycle. So we had to come up with a plan. We had to come up with plan. Uh, it’s, it’s quite challenging to do that [inaudible] lifestyle where we had essentially lived out of a suitcase. We had had the time of our life. We, we, you know, led these tours all over the world. And then we, we came up with this list of the biggest adventures that we wanted to go on. And then when we would take time off from tour leading, we’d have these month or two month chunks. So we went down and we went down to Antarctica and we did a big, like one month hiking trips through Patagonia. We did a Walker’s Haute route through the Alps. We went to the Himalayas and did big hiking routes. We did a bike tour in South Africa.

Kelsey Tonner: So we had these incredible adventures together. And then basically we kind of got to that point where like, yeah, we would love to raise a family, but we have to make a bit of a transition. And uh, of course that’s when some of those topics came up. Okay, what are we going to do? And we saw an opportunity to do something online that would allow us to preserve the adventurous and traveling lifestyle that we had loved so much. And so what did you do next? Well, we came up with the idea to essentially create online courses, online programs, and to focus them around, uh, our skill sets. And I actually kind of went to the drawing board. It wasn’t the most obvious thing that I was going to be. Okay. I’ve been a guide for a long time here. Let’s teach guiding online. I actually remember sketching out all kinds of different skills or things that we could teach online and they weren’t necessarily courses.

Kelsey Tonner: And then I think of over that first year two things became really apparent. Um, I know when you’re speaking with some of your other guests, you’re kind of asking what was there like a key moment? And that moment actually for me was a, believe it or not, that Tim Ferriss’ book where the four hour work week, the bestseller, lots of people have read it. And what didn’t resonate with me of course was like, how do I reduce and not only work four hours a week, but the whole notion of trading dollars for hours. Like that was the first time in many entrepreneurs and people who have more business background than I had. This would be much more self evident. Of course, you make your money work for you. You don’t necessarily want to be salary or there’s more opportunity for, for growth and for earning an income by not trading those dollars for hours. So that really resonated. That became my guiding principle. And then when I looked at the different routes that we could go in terms of, you know, like a blog or creating content online and trying to monetize through advertising. The next big realization was, Hey look, online courses are the way that most successful people seem to be doing that.

Melissa Guller: It’s interesting hearing you talk about how touring wasn’t an obvious topic for you. I think a lot of creators early on in their journey really struggle with what should I share? Like do I even have knowledge worth sharing and are people going to ever buy from me? And I think a lot of people started off where you are maybe at the drawing board, maybe testing out a few things and I think that that’s great to explore a couple of different options and this concept of trading dollars for hours, I mean that’s so powerful and like you, I don’t think all creators necessarily are looking for an only four hour work week actually. I think a lot of people really enjoy what they end up creating and sharing with the world, but just being more in control of your freedom and your time. The world of online business can really open up a lot of opportunities.

Kelsey Tonner: Yeah. And it really just checked those two boxes. One was we wanted more physical freedom, the ability to move around, not be stuck in an office or stuck in one place. And then to that time freedom as well. Like we had gone on these adventures of a lifetime and we had absolutely no regrets about, you know, essentially putting off, I’m starting a family until a little bit later so we could have those adventures, but then we didn’t want this to be okay close the close that chapter and then now we kind of get into humdrum, uh, you know, nine to five stuff. So it really checked those two boxes and that was, that was powerful and I think has really bared a lot of fruit over the last four or five years as we’ve made it a reality.

Melissa Guller: That’s a great point that the online business world doesn’t tether you to one place. So certainly if people are seeking the opportunity to travel or to live in a new place or to have adventures like you and your family, this can be a really great option. Yeah. I’m curious, once you decided you wanted to go for an online course, what did you do first? Did you start creating a website? Like what did you do? What was the series of events there?

Kelsey Tonner: Yes, so the, I w I would definitely say there, there were people that I began to follow. So some of the names of people who are in the online course creation space. You may have seen people like David Siteman Garland, Maria, cause you know the Amy Porterfield’s. There’s a number of people out there who really do focus, you know, on courses. And then there’s of course the wider range of people who focus on online marketing. And so I came in with really zero background in business, in any online marketing and anything having to do with recording. It was just really zero. And so it actually began this sort of really exhilarating period where just using the internet and frankly just using almost entirely free resources. And again, that observation skill, watching what online course creators were doing, how they sold, how they marketed, what their online presence look like.

Kelsey Tonner: I sort of embarked on a journey of learning how to do everything. I built the the for first website from scratch using WordPress. Again, not recommending everybody follows this journey. It definitely I think slowed us down a in lots of ways. But the flip side of it was we were able to do it bootstrapping, right? We didn’t have to save up, we didn’t have to start with another job. We just had, look, everything is figureoutable, let’s get to it. I, I’m sure I can make this stuff work. So there was a lot of that in the early days. But the big picture strategy Melissa was, was pretty key and I was really happy with this one decision, which was to start with the why. So basically we started the Be a Better Guide before I created any kind of Be a Better Guide course. So be better guide was the name that we kind of landed on.

Kelsey Tonner: You know, it was a bit, didn’t put a ton of thought into it if we had few names floating around, but we liked it. It was pretty self explanatory. But the notion of the Be a Better Guide Project was essentially to create a mission to raise the bar on what it means to create incredible experiences for travelers, to create a community of people who could come together online, find each other, we could share best practices and really United around this mission that we want to create the best experiences we possibly can for fellow human beings. And that community focused, that mission focus was really what allowed us, I think, to build our email list and build a community before I just had something to sell to them before. You know, if you’d flip that on its head and say, here’s the product, here’s the product I’m selling right from the beginning, I really, really would highly recommend, um, no matter what your niche is, if you can start with a why with a mission, some common identity, uh, or common purpose, that’s really gonna be powerful for growing an email list and building a community of people who respect that mission that you’ve created.

Kelsey Tonner: That’s really interesting advice because I think a lot of, you know, standard advice out there says start with the topic or start with a passion of yours. But even different people who may feel drawn to talking about being a tour guide might have a different mission or a different approach. So two websites about the same topic could feel very different. So I love this advice about figuring out your mission and your why, because I imagine then that guided a lot of the decisions you made afterwards. Yeah, you bet you and, and it doesn’t have to be a big sort of profound why, but whatever your, your niche is, make sure it’s, it’s usually tied to something like a excellence, right? Or wanting to, to create the best X, Y or Z possible or to bring certain values to it. And so what I started doing was creating a ton of free content.

Kelsey Tonner: So I started with short, I tried to keep them between six and eight minute long free training videos. And so I probably created, wow, gosh, I forget the exact number before we had our first actual program, but let’s say somewhere between 10 to 15 and here where is where I was starting to learn a little bit about online marketing. I wanted something that would be useful to people. I wanted something that would be very easy to share. I wasn’t crazy about writing or blogging. Uh, so I very quickly taught myself how to make videos happen. I learned about great audio at learned all online, all for free, just how to make a great quality video, how to do video editing afterwards, how to upload, how to host, how to get it to stream on your website, these sorts of things and distributed those both on the website and on YouTube and then essentially had lots of ways to opt into the email list.

Kelsey Tonner: But the videos were free to and they were free to share and of course encouraging people to share them. And I think that was a big part of how I was able to be known in the, in the industry is people found these videos. They said, Hey, these are these actually great. I mean they have to be good. They have to. You have to know what you’re talking about. You have to give really advice. I tried to keep the instruction in those videos, very short, very punchy, but practical down to earth. This was the more theoretical videos. It’d be like how to get people’s attention, you know, things to do in the first couple minutes of your tour. You know how to work with upset guests. Topics like these that any tour leader or tour activity business is common issues, challenges, frustrations, those sorts of things, and I started there and got those up on the website and then built the website around email capture. Again, following some online marketers, I very quickly grew to believe that the email list was going to be key for having success when we eventually launched our products and programs.

Melissa Guller: I love the idea of making those short, punchy videos because anybody has, you know, five or six minutes to learn something and if in those five minutes you can give them something really valuable or entertain them or make them feel like you’ve shared something great with them, then they’re going to want more from you. And I think that’s such a great way to build a relationship with people right off the bat.

Kelsey Tonner: It is, and it many people talk about a personal brand. I think a big part of what you’re doing. If you’re wanting to sell an online course or online program, people need to know who you are. They need to know are you a good instructor or teacher? Do you actually have worthwhile or useful things that you’re going to be sharing or communicating? And I would highly recommend giving away a lot of stuff for free and giving away sometimes some of your best stuff because it really kind of creates this sense of like, Oh wow, like if, if he’s giving all this stuff away for free, like what is in these, these paid programs or these more premium programs, you know, it actually can work in your favor versus I think just giving away, you know, things that might be obvious or more simple or more common. And then keeping some of your best stuff in, in main programs. I think for me, an online program that you can get in depth, you can create a step by step system. You can get promise a result, we’re going to get you from a to B, but that doesn’t mean you can’t give away a lot of your incredible advice, the stuff that you want to be your first impression completely for free and then package it in in different ways.

Melissa Guller: So let’s talk about what those online courses started to look like. I know you mentioned giving away a lot of content for free. How was it for you when you were actually developing your first online course? Yeah, definitely

Kelsey Tonner: with a survey. So one of the great things about building that email list, I was very lucky to find lead pages. I would honestly say that they have a great product a for one. So it was very easy to create what are essentially landing pages, squeeze pages, lots of ways for people to opt into the email list. But they also were my GoTo for education on how to do email marketing effectively, how to have email captures, little things like content upgrades where even though we gave away the video for free, I started creating PDFs or other things that would allow people to put in their name and email to get an additional thing. So maybe it’s public speaking would have been the topic of the video, but then I may have a little PDF that is related to body language and you can get this body language PDF, you know, BiPAP only way to get that was by sharing your email.

Kelsey Tonner: And so all of that email and list building was so great because then I could actually survey and I asked people, Hey, what were your biggest challenges when it comes to leading tours, creating experiences for people, and that really helped flesh out what would ultimately be the first curriculum and what was that first curriculum and tell us all about it. Yeah, so we land on the topic lead amazing tours and it really was all about creating unforgettable experiences for people. We wanted to keep it down to earth. We wanted to keep it practical. I think the focus of the program actually shifted because initially I wanted to focus quite a bit on the soft skills. I didn’t go to niche in terms of, okay, this is going to be specific to rafting guides or hiking guides or heli skiing guides or walking tours. I want it to really focus on the, when you’d say soft skills, that would be common across the entire industry.

Kelsey Tonner: So that was the big focus of the program. But I would say after we created the initial version, actually after we had gotten some initial customers, I kept speaking to those people who had actually purchased an enrolled and they actually helped build out what ultimately became the other half of the program, which was helping people with some more of the um, business side of running a tour. Like how to create a great tour description, you know, how do you manage online reviews, how do you design a great tour, how can we think about pricing? And a lot of that wouldn’t have been obvious to me, but it really helped us drive sales. And I think we were able to market and sell the course in a way because we were hitting more and more of those pain points that our um, our ideal customers we’re ultimately asking about. But I only learned about that by surveying both before creating a program and then after.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, I mean I think that’s a really smart approach to make sure they are asking your audience what they actually want, creating something for them. And then to your point, like as you started to learn even more about those customers, then figuring out a natural step of what comes next. And it turns out to be this business side. And I think a lot of us try to guess maybe early on and they’re, you know, that’s what a good, maybe YouTube or blog or even a podcast strategy could be for is testing out different content to see what people like. But when the time comes to make something that people will buy, I think it’s such great advice to actually survey people and just ask them directly. Yeah, and the questions

Kelsey Tonner: are, are key. So what I’m saying like, Hey, what do you want in an online program? Probably isn’t gonna yield you a ton of useful results, but a question like, Hey, what are your biggest frustrations around this topic? What are your biggest obstacles? What is the most frustrating thing about doing X, Y, orZ ? And that will really get you quite a bit and no question you, if you’re still sort of have experience, um, you don’t even have to think of yourself as an expert. Like that’s something that you quickly have to kind of deal with. Like I had been a very experienced tour leader and guide, but then here I was coming out online telling the worldwide web. Like here I am, some sort of expert, but I w I was at, because I kind of framed it in this like, Hey, this is the Be a Better Guide Project.

Kelsey Tonner: Here’s what I’m going to be doing. I want to be releasing these free training PDFs, free videos, et cetera. Uh, I think people respected the fact that I was giving away so much for free that, you know, it was less about, Hey, I have all the answers. So I think you want to be a little bit humble if possible in your tone. You definitely want to speak with the authority. And for lots of people, I know it’s just having a confidence to even teach something, but try and keep that, that humble attitude in there because people don’t love somebody who is like a know it all. Um, so I think some of those best instructors, those best coaches and mentors are people who are able to still be humble, to be very empathetic, to say, Hey, here’s, here’s telling a story through yourself. Here’s some of the mistakes that I made early on. Or this was a really big turning point for me when I started doing this. Or if I could go back and start again, this is what I would do differently. Those are great ways to introduce, um, lessons or things that you want to teach.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, that’s really well said. I think there are lots of different ways you can be an expert. You know, certainly some of them are certifications or accomplishments or people who are top in their field. But I think for many more of us, being an expert is more like being a really helpful friend. It’s somebody you know who’s done it before and then they’re just willing to be in the trenches with you and help you out and give you that little tip you need so that you don’t have to learn at your own on the, you know, a harder way just without the help of somebody who’s been there.

Kelsey Tonner: Yeah. Yeah. You bet you and, and what was so great about actually creating videos and doing instruction, I know not everyone does this and you don’t feel like if that’s going to be a big challenge or you’re less comfortable being on camera, there’s many paths to doing this. But what I loved about being on camera in front of people doing the actual instruction is that it showcased some of those skills that I had to actually communicate this information, that it was actually useful. And so, so many people who ultimately enrolled in purchasing our first lead amazing towards programs had like, yeah, we’d seen your free videos, use them, uh, got some results from the free staff and wanted to try out the paid program. So it was very much getting my personality out there. As you say, and if people want to check it out, it’d be a better guy.com the, I’m pretty silly in those videos. There’s a lot of personality in them. I wanted people to get the sense that this would not be a boring program, but we’re going to have some, some fun with this, that that really helped seal the deal when it came to people having the confidence to do the purchase.

Melissa Guller: Yeah. I imagine that there are a lot of transferable skills between being a great tour guide and being a great online course creator because in so many ways it’s just about giving somebody a great experience, making sure that they’re learning something, enjoying themselves, that they feel like they’re, you know, caring like we talked about earlier. So I could see how there could be a natural fit for you in the online course world.

Kelsey Tonner: Yeah. I went through quickly noticed recording myself. We really be, I’m sure people have had this experience when you’ve sat down to record some type of instruction, but I remember recording, you know, gosh, she’s usually in some basement. Oftentimes for me, it was later at night and I would listen back to it and I’d be so bored, I’d be like, Oh my God, this, this person who is coming through the computer just sounds like they have no energy. And so there is something about the computer, that process of recording that just SAPs energy. So mans some advice that really I would give and I know that from my experience as a twirler, like you’ve got to bring the energy, you’ve got to set that level high. You’ve part of engagement is, is getting people fired up, getting people excited. And so I was used to ramping that up a little bit.

Kelsey Tonner: And I think that helped once I realized like, Oh wow, this is actually the same skill. Like if I, if I don’t get an extra like 15% energy here and really sound almost a little bit hyper, you know, a little bit loud in the microphone, I’m gonna bore the crap out of people. So that for sure is a huge part of the skill. And you don’t have to be like overly go, you don’t have to go too far. But man, if you’re not dialing up your energy a little bit, when you sit down to record, you’re going to run into some, some challenges because it really can sat the energy out of it, especially long recording sessions, man, you’ve gotta get up, shake yourself off and smile if you’re smiling on the microphone that really comes through. So make sure you’re doing lots of smiling.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, really great advice. Well, I know you’ve mentioned now you’ve had a couple more years of doing this, so I’m curious, how has your business evolved over time?

Kelsey Tonner: Yeah, I mean, right from the beginning, there’s, there’s lots of different ways that you can launch the course. Uh, we, we went with sort of a big launch. We’ve always chosen to keep our programs open for short periods of time and then actually closed the door afterwards. And I know there’s lots of different schools of thought for us, but that’s, that’s always worked really well. And then, so we have some of that pent up demand. And so we, I remember the first person that purchased, you’ll always remember your first, uh, online course sale. Uh, I always knew that I wanted to go to, towards the premium pricing too. So I started out at $500. I did have a payment plan, but that’s what it costs for lead amazing tours. And my goal was to get that price up. I would say we did four launches at the $500 price point and then moved it to $1,000 a or 997 or is it actual pricing?

Kelsey Tonner: And then we did have a payment plan as well. And the first sale was a woman in Finland named Joe Zan. And I had never met Joe. I’d never seen really her email and sure. Like sure enough, there we go. Uh, someone sent you, you know, whatever. I think she had done the payment plan like a hundred bucks over over the internet and it was just jaw-dropping. You’re like, Oh wow. Like this is actually working. The initial launch, I think we made like $10,000 or something like that. Which over the course of a week that the shopping cart was open and or anyone who is just that first little taste of success or that this could be something or this could actually work, this might actually feed you and the family you want to create a that that is such a game changing moment and uh, so appreciative of those initial people who purchased, who enrolled.

Kelsey Tonner: And that’s why, you know, it’s such a natural thing to want to take care of these people, to find out who they are and what convinced them to, to purchase and enroll and keeping them happy as I felt like it was such a natural progression from your first launch or first time you put a program out into the world because you’re just so thankful that people have enrolled in it doesn’t always go like that. I know 100% people that sometimes tribe ideas in it flops or you don’t get the sales that you, you want or only just one or two and sometimes you have to go back to the drawing board. But for us, we felt just enough success. And I would say that the biggest game changer for us was when we got our price up to a thousand dollars so that had given me I, that was probably about a year since the first launch.

Kelsey Tonner: I think over the first three, four launches we did between 10,000 and $15,000 and really working with those individuals to one create new content so people would come back. I had mentioned a few of the topics, but as they had suggestions, I could quickly record them and just upload it into the program, pop everybody email, say, Hey, this new module is up there, take a look. And then the second big thing was the testimonials. So that makes such a huge difference. And I really wanted some solid video testimonials and obviously written testimonials when I was in professionalizing things as I made that jump up to $1,000 and that was I think our fifth lunch and we made a, yeah, it was over $40,000 off of that launch and that was just again, amazing. It really started to to click for us there.

Melissa Guller: Wow. And the testimonials I’m sure made a world of difference because it’s one thing to say, you know, this course is great, buy it. It’s another to hear somebody else say, this course made me a better tour guide. I love this teaching style. You know, just really singing praises and it can make such a difference. And I love that you got video testimonials. That’s such a great idea. And I also appreciate that you shared how you started at one price and then move to another because I think the question, how much should my course cost is another big one for creators. And I think kind of a sneaky hidden secret is you might have to test out a couple of things. Maybe you start at one price point and then I would encourage most course creators after you try it out, maybe try a little bit higher because I think more often than not, people are undervaluing their courses rather than the other way around. So we always a Teachable, encourage people to charge a little bit more. But I think your story is a great example of how people are still willing to pay pretty decent money for an online course because they want that knowledge that you have.

Kelsey Tonner: Yeah. And, and honestly, my advice would be don’t go below $500. If you want to be really serious about growing the income, I think your, your goal should be to go for that premium end pricing. It might mean putting a little bit more work in upfront. It might mean paying a little bit of money to get help with the, the sales page. Um, with again, some video testimonials, these, these sorts of things. But the goal, yeah, start there. And it’s very common pricing for online programs. This was a point I was gonna make before that you can go to somebody who is blogging or content creator and everything that is in your program might be out there online for free on a blog or it could be in a book. There’s probably somebody who’s written a book. There’s probably dozens of book books on your specific topic and somebody could pay 15 bucks to get the exact same information.

Kelsey Tonner: Or you can assemble it into an online program, it takes more effort. Of course, there’s a lot of advantages. There’s some disadvantages too, but all of a sudden that price point can be something like $500 or $1,000 for the exact same information and it has to do with people’s preference on how they want to consume it. People’s perceived value. Yeah. There’s no way that you could, it would be very challenging, I’m sure, to sell somebody a $1,000 book or a $500 book even, but just by putting it into an online program, you can reap a lot more rewards economically, and so that was why we were drawn to online courses. I could have written a book, they’d Be a Better Guide book and sold it and I’m positive that I would have not made near as much money as we have with the online programs.

Melissa Guller: Yeah, really great point. We’ve heard a couple of other successful creators say something similar that the amount of effort and knowledge or expertise you have could go into a book. It could go into a course, but the value that people place on online courses is so much higher for whatever reason, than a book. And so in terms of which one gives you a better economic benefit, it’s going to be the online course every time. Yeah.

Kelsey Tonner: What’s amazing is, I even looked back at it now and our, our email list has, has grown and we’re 17,000 or something like that. And the amount of people that have actually purchased, uh, of our programs, you know, is maybe 300, 350 or something like that. It’s not a huge number of people. There’s going to be a lot of people that won’t purchase your program for $1,000. But if you can get a hundred people over the course of a year or two years to purchase a program at $1,000 that it’s just the right fit, they, it’s solving their pain points, then that’s, that’s a a hundred thousand dollars right there. So it can be, it can feel very overwhelming, but you just have to find those

Melissa Guller: people. Yeah, great point. And although it’s fewer people, I imagine the quality of your students who are willing to pay a price point like that is much different. So I think creators kind of have to ask themselves, do you want to create a $10 course where you need 10 students to make a $100 or if you had a hundred dollar course you only need one. So it’s a very different game to play at a premium price compared to a lower price point.

Kelsey Tonner: Yeah. And I remember there was some um, interview of Renee. Christine is another person who’s who I encountered through I think David Siteman Garland, but she was, she had a product that was to like single moms who are trying to start businesses and, and she in one of the, I don’t know, a podcast or an episode I had listened to where she really hit home for me that like, look, I am in like the worst demographic in terms of people that have disposable income to buy an expensive or premium online program. These are like single mothers were at home. They’ve got, you know, a couple kids. They do not have a ton of extra cash, but if I’m giving them the result that they’re looking for, which is like how to build, whether it’s an online business or an arts and crafts business or whatever particular program she was selling, then that is 100% worth their money because it’s an investment for them.

Kelsey Tonner: It’s, it’s getting them that result. It’s hopefully, uh, the more you can tie your result to some sort of monetary benefit that the more likely it is that people will be, will be purchasing. And so that really hit home to me like no matter what your niche is, if you’re like how to draw horses with watercolor paints, you know, something that’s so small and you’re like, who the heck is going to pay $500 or $1,000 for a program like that? Really just consider Renee and all of the other, of course creators out there who have created premium programs at those price points who are finding those people. And it’s not going to be everybody in your 100% going to price certain people out. And I don’t feel badly about the people who I’ve out priced or who can’t access or can’t afford our program because we give away so much stuff for free and that’s, that’s part of that giving and content creation mentality is we give away so much stuff for free.

Kelsey Tonner: There’s tons of people who actually write me these days and say, I feel so guilty that you’ve now come out with two or three programs and I haven’t ever enrolled in any of them and I just continue to come to your free workshops. You use your free freestyle. And I write them back and say, Hey, like no worries at all. Like that’s, that’s part of that giving spirit. And the flip side of that is, and I have no guilt about saying, look these, if you want the goods, if you want these results, this is the price and here’s why it’s worth it.

Melissa Guller: [inaudible] great point. Plus, I’m sure over time, maybe the time isn’t right today for somebody to pay $1,000. But if they’re really enjoying your free content, maybe things change for them over time or they even refer to your website when they’re speaking with friends and maybe a friend is the right fit. Just the power of being generous with your knowledge. We’ll, I’m sure lead to, you know, more sales in the future, even if it isn’t happening right now or even for everyone who’s on your email list.

Kelsey Tonner: Yeah, yeah. You betcha. I mean, your, your question was, Oh, how are things changed and evolved now? Like I’m now about four or five years into this. So one of the changes is we have two kids now, so that’s, that’s different. But had the, the, we were 100% able to create that lifestyle, which is basically we, we being my wife and I, and then we, now we have dragged our daughter, our first daughter, uh, she’s now two years and change through three months now. We dragged her all over the world. You know, we, we hundred percent took advantage of the fact that we could run this business from anywhere. So we, I think by the time she was one year old, she had been on over 30 flights. Just to give you a sense of, we went out and spent two months in Hawaii and were able to work from, you know, different locations either where we are renting or I have, we absolutely love renting motor homes.

Kelsey Tonner: We weren’t really motor home people before, but now you have like a small human being to feed and bathed and they have to sleep a lot and those sorts of things. The fact of having a little home that you can drive around is just brilliant. Like we absolutely love that. So we did that in New Zealand for two months. We, I did that in Italy, the spring we were down in Panama. A lot of opportunities came out of building that community too. And by building that email list and community, we knew that Hey, if this program flopped or it didn’t work, um, or we wanted to continue to monetize it in different ways. The community. It was not built around the product. It was built around that ideal so we could go back and we have gone back and created subsequent programs and tried out different things but it also led to other opportunities where that trip out to Hawaii, we actually found a tour operator who was on a wahoo and they said, Hey, do you ever do in person trainings?

Kelsey Tonner: And it wasn’t really part of our business model but they offered to fly us out, put us up. We did two days of in person training and then we essentially have this round trip flight to Hawaii paid for. So we stayed there for two months. The same thing happened down in Panama and the operator now. So we were really selective about those, those opportunities and we’re mostly based around lifestyle. We actually backed away from doing that because it just wasn’t, it was taking so much of their time and effort to do an in person training that it just really hit home to us. Like either we need to like quadruple our prices for doing live in person things or just double down and focus on the online trainings because the return was just so much greater.

Melissa Guller: That’s a great point about the return because I think the huge benefit that we’ve kept circling back to is that the online business gives you a lot of freedom to make choices about, you know, where are we, what are we choosing to do with our time in person? It’s a much different opportunity than maybe people have in an office. And so it’s interesting to hear you talk about how not only are you traveling, but now you’re getting the chance to speak or to teach or to decline to speak or to teach and to just really have your pick of how you spend your time outside of working. Cause I think that’s so important, right? Like what’s the point of all this? If we can’t go on adventures, spend time with our families.

Kelsey Tonner: Yeah. You bet. You and we 100%, uh, we’re not really focused on like, let’s just grow this thing as fast as we can. Let’s earn as much money. We, we were definitely lifestyle focused. I took big chunks of time essentially off or a lot of it to be with my first daughter and we’ve just had her second now three weeks ago. And it’s the same sort of thing. I just have that, that freedom and that flexibility to really be there for my wife, to really take the time to go on these adventures. Now with our kids, like I was up, she’s waking up at five 30 in the morning and we’re up here in a Ontario right now on these working on, uh, my wife’s family has a cottage up here. It’s incredible archipelago of like 30,000 islands. So with my first daughter is waking up at five 30 these mornings.

Kelsey Tonner: We’ve gotta sort that out. But anyway, at five 30 in the morning, basically we’re going up and we’re going and paddling and canoeing around on the Lake for the last week. This is what we’ve been doing up here and we’re going to be based here for two months cause we just love it. We’re out here. All I need is a cell phone that connects to three G or LTE and I can do calls like this, I can run the business. So it, it’s been so rewarding to work on something that has yielded those results for our own lifestyle. Some people call it the lifestyle design, but if you are in that position and it just hasn’t clicked yet and that’s still a long ways off, I don’t give up on it because it’s 100% a hundred percent can be done and we wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Melissa Guller: [inaudible] that’s great to hear. And I love that you mentioned too that your goal wasn’t just to grow and to grow quickly because certainly that’s a great goal for some people. But I think for many of us we’re looking for a way to just, you know, have the means to support our family, to spend our time with people who mean something to us or to travel. And an online business is certainly a great option for many people in very modern times. And you know, I know we’ve touched on it a little bit, but before we go, do you have any final words of wisdom or any advice for anybody listening?

Kelsey Tonner: It’s, it’s great. We’ve made tons of mistakes along the way. There’s tons we haven’t figured out yet. And I love hearing the success stories are always inspirational, but we, we’ve had a fair amount of success, but like, we haven’t figured out the paid ads. We haven’t figured out. Like, we don’t really have a marketing person on the team. Like is it really still just me and, and some of the people on our team, like messing around with amateur marketing, but we’re, we’re going after that now. And so no matter what that journey looks like for you, don’t beat yourself up that, Oh, I did. This just isn’t working. I just don’t have that skill set. Focus on your wins as you’re going and, um, as much as possible, be, be great at observing. Um, you know, listening to podcasts like these Teachable was fantastic when we made the transition to them because of the educational resources that you guys provide.

Kelsey Tonner: Melissa, you said you helped create some of them. Um, but there’s a lot of really great advice out there for how to have success with creating online programs. And I 100% recommend you just gobble up as much of that as you can and don’t be too hard on yourself where we’re at some stage in the journey and there’s a lot that I still [inaudible] try not to beat myself up about. But Hey, now I’ve got a little bit more capital and the resources we’re going to start working with some, you know, marketing agencies, we want to, we know where our weaknesses are and now that we’ve got a little bit more capital, uh, we can, we can pursue those [inaudible] great advice and it’s been such a pleasure learning more about you and your business. Kelsey, before we do wrap up, where can people go if they want to learn more or check out your website?

Kelsey Tonner: Yeah, the few places you can find us online or Be a Better Guide.com. It’s all one word ad. The Online Tourism Academy. You can see some of our core information pages there. Like I said, we, we only open the programs at certain times of the year. We do have lots of evergreen funnels that we’ve just sort of really focused on over the last couple of years. So we were definitely transitioning into wanting to be able to be marketing and selling our programs year-round, um, and move away from the feast and famine of launches. So we’re, we’re in a transition, uh, ourselves there. But those are the two places that you can 100%, uh, how to find this. And, and I, we didn’t get too much into it, but we have a couple of other programs. We have one on extraordinary storytelling for tour leading. And, and honestly this might be the last thing just to mention, Liz, as I did something that if you’re out there and you’re thinking, Hey, I, I’m just not sure if I alone have the skills to create an online program.

Kelsey Tonner: Then, uh, I just wanted to let the listeners know I did this just within the last year where people were coming to me asking a lot of business advice about how do I run a great tour activity business? And it was just outside. It’s too far beyond my comfort zone. You know what I mean? Melissa, like I, I wasn’t, I knew lots of things from working with tour business owners, but I felt like that was something I couldn’t teach a program on a loan. So I happened to meet a fellow from Australia who had built opportune activity business from $0 million to well over $2 million a year in annual revenue, sold that business and has, was now doing consulting to help people grow their tour activity businesses. We just happen to meet, uh, things kind of clicked. And so we really decided, I said, look, I’m, I’ve now had this skill set to help create and market and sell really effective and premium online programs and you’ve got the perfect skill sets and kind of the chops and experience and the great advice to build it.

Kelsey Tonner: So we built that program together and we launched that the seven or eight months ago now. And just to give people a sense, I think on our first launch we did over $150,000 in sales just from partnering up with somebody. And again, it was based off the community people were asking eh, but I wasn’t comfortable doing it by myself, you know, w on that particular topic. But I found somebody else, we partnered, we obviously want to obvious, but we do split the revenues 50 50 and that’s been a really incredible partnership and a huge addition to our, our program catalog. So don’t be afraid to bring somebody else on as a, as a partner that can sometimes work, work wonders.

Melissa Guller: That’s great advice. I’m sure a lot of people would benefit from having somebody in the boat with them because it can feel very lonely to do a lot of this at times. Or like you said, you weren’t fully comfortable doing that particular topic on your own. So I love the advice about maybe finding somebody else who could teach with you or alongside you. And it’s been just so exciting to hear about everything going on. It seems like you’re keeping quite busy, so I’ll make sure we get links to everything in our show notes so if people want to learn more, they know exactly where to find you. Thank you again for joining us and hopefully people really are feeling inspired to take their next step or be maybe a little more observational about what they might want to do next.

Kelsey Tonner: You betcha. Don’t forget to bring the energy and uh, being a little bit silly. It goes a long way.

Melissa Guller: Thank you so much for joining us this week. You can learn more about Kelsey, the Be a Better Guide Project, and Teachable in the show notes at teachable.com/eit9. Before you go, we hope you’ll subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they’re released and if you’re enjoying the podcast, please leave us a five star review in Apple Podcasts so more great listeners like you know that you’re enjoying our show. On behalf of Team Teachable, we hope you enjoyed this episode about traveling and observing with Kelsey Tonner. We’ll see you in the next episode of Everything is Teachable.