‘Idea’ to 7 Figure Blueprint

THE 15 CRITICAL STEPS WE TOOK TO TURN OUR PASSION

INTO THE THRIVING BUSINESS WE DREAMED OF AND LIVE
OUR BEST LIFE
So this idea in your head has come from somewhere. Maybe it was a light bulb moment. Maybe
you‟ve had a long, slow burning desire that‟s gathering momentum. Maybe you‟re just miserable
working for your ungrateful, uninspiring boss and are desperate to get away and see if you‟ve
got what it takes to be your own man. Whatever has led you to this point, you‟re feeling excited,
exhilarated, you have a sense of purpose you never had before...and you‟re probably shit
scared and overwhelmed too. You‟ve started dreaming already about what life is going to be like
when you „make it‟ and you‟re thinking about 100 steps too far down the track. Don‟t worry. I get
it. It‟s totally normal. We all do it.

Here’s woat we dnd to turn our ndea nnto a multn 7- figure business
AND live our best life:

Step 1: Get crystal clear on your ‘why’. How can you create a product and build a business
that allows you a dream lifestyle, if you don‟t know WHY you‟re doing it?
What‟s the lifestyle you actually want? Write it down. For example, years ago I wrote down what
my perfect morning looked like, then I wrote down what my perfect day looked like. It didn‟t
always go according to plan (hello babies) but I kept going back to this VERY DETAILED
description of my DREAM DAY and eventually it became a reality. Some of the key themes for
me were - time spent creating (involving mornings with solitude and a great coffee), time spent
in the sunshine, the outdoors, with my kids or on the beach, time exercising.

WHY are you choosing this way of life? Why do you want to find more time,? Is it to spend time
with your kids? Is it to pursue a passion other than your business? Or is it to turn your passion
into your business? To work on personal development?
WHY are you starting a business? Why THIS business? Why THIS idea? Are you REALLY

1
passionate about this industry, this product, about being in business, the people you will meet,
the lives you plan to change or enrich?

Or do you wish you could find more time to work on the parts you ARE passionate about and
delegate the rest.

GO BACK TO YOUR WHY TIME AND TIME AGAIN.

CONSTANTLY RE-EVALUATE THIS.
Step 2: Once you‟ve fine tuned your „why‟, you‟re now in a position to fine tune your idea. This
is your time to make as certain as you can possibly be that your idea is something you‟re really
good at, something you really love, something you feel will solve a real problem or fill a real gap
(you can get certain on this point later) and most importantly is something that has some
seriously unique selling points. What are you going to say when you sit down at your first trade
show opposite your first product manager, or with your first hotel concierge in that 2 minute
window you‟ve been offered and he or she asks “so what are you all about and how are you
different?” You‟d better have something compelling to say

Step 3: Your Customers. Who are they? What‟s your key market or markets? This is when you
need to really start reaching out. You find this information by a) researching and b) asking a lot
of questions. Where should you start? You need to get very very familiar with your regional,
state and national tourism organisations. What they offer by way of support and resources AND
build relationships with they key people there. For us, when we started out, we squeezed every
last drop we could out of Tourism Australia, Tourism Victoria, Melbourne Convention Bureau,
City Of Melbourne, Destination Melbourne PLUS every regional tourism organisation in every
region in which we operated tours (Mornington Peninsula, Yarra Valley, Great Ocean Road,
Grampians, Daylesford and Macedon Ranges to name a few). Wherever you are in the world
I‟m pretty confident you will have similar organisations. We used their resources, we devoured
their market reports and we kept asking questions over and over again. These are the
organisations and the people that are going to tell you what they think of your idea and who they
think will love it. Other places you‟ll get great feedback on your idea are other tour operators,
visitor information centres, travel agents and hotel concierges. Talk to all of them. Tell them
about your idea and I promise that by doing so you‟ll soon know exactly who your customer is
going to be. You‟ll be able to build and clear profile with details such as their country, age

2
bracket, whether they are single travellers, couples or families, their approximate price point,
whether they are first time or repeat visitors, their specific interests, time spent in destination,
travel habits, dining preferences and of course whether these markets are BIG enough for your
business to succeed..

Step 4: Prove the Concept. So now you think you know your target markets. What you‟ve got
to do next is get out there and prove that your concept has legs. You need to find these people
and find out if what you have in your head is what they really want. There are many ways to do
this and there‟s no right or wrong answer. A great place to start here is with travel agents.
Perhaps i‟ll give you an example. Let‟s say you are a strawberry farmer - you‟re passionate
about berries and you grew up on a stunning regional property in a pristine corner of the world.
Your mother, your grandmother and your great grandmother all make the most mouthwatering
jams, desserts and fortified wines using 100 year old family recipes from you rustic farm kitchen.
You‟ve always dreamed of opening up your little piece of paradise to the world and allowing
strawberry loving guests onto your family property to pick the sweetest fresh berries and learn
from the masters how to turn these into the most exquisite treats for them to take away.
Through step 3 you now believe that you know who your future customer is - everything points
to couples and family groups from Singapore, Hong Kong and mainland China as the three
major tourism markets that are going to love what you have to offer. Now you need to drill right
down. You need to find answers to a whole new set of questions. What do these markets like in
a tour? How long should it be? How far do they like to travel? Do they like to start early or later
in the morning? How much are they prepared to pay? What kind of inclusions do they expect?
What type of vehicle will they expect to travel in? Are they adventurous and prepared to get a
little dirty and „hands on‟? What time do they like to get home to their accomodation? Do they
expect all meals included? Do they prefer to dine alone or with other member of a tour
group?what do they expect to be provided for meals? Are they proficient in English?...that‟s just
a few quick ones of the top of my head. You need to get these questions answered. To do so i
would start with travel agents that cater specifically for these markets in Australia, plus travel
agents in those countries that sell Australia as a destination. I would also reach out to tour
operators in other parts of Australia that offer similar styles of tours to what you have in mind
and have many customers from these markets.

Step 5: Create the product. Now it‟s time to build your product. Get out there. Choose your
suppliers talk with them, work with them and ensure they understand your vision and may even

3
be able to help you elevate it. Map it out. Leave no stone unturned. Create your commentary,
refine those unique selling points. Remember what you have learnt about your customers and
keep this front of mind.

Step 6: Test the product. Once you‟ve built it you need to get some honest feedback. Now is
the time to invite those with the most to offer you to experience what you have created. As an
example, when we were starting out AND throughout our ten years in business when we
created new tours, we would always to get as many relevant team members from Tourism
Australia, Tourism Victoria, Melbourne Convention Bureau, Australian Tourism Export Council,
Tourism Alliance, Destination Melbourne to test our product so we could gather some honest
feedback before we launched.

Step 7: It‟s at this point and (we think) not before this point that you should be building that
website, writing those tour descriptions, choosing that logo, designing and printing that
brochure and possibly even putting a name to that tour or tours - and a name to your business.
Yes, yes, it‟s human nature to want to jump ahead and do all that stuff first, but trust me. All of
that stuff just isn‟t important until now.

Step 8: Host free familiarisation trips. Get as many decision makers as you can on your tour.
I‟m talking hotel concierges of your target hotels, key travel agents that deal with your target
markets,decision makers and product managers from key travel wholesalers, inbound tour
operators who are on the ground in your city or country. To maximise this you‟re going to need
to get creative and be really flexible. These are busy people and you‟ll need to juggle their
schedules and balance that up against ensuring you are able to provide the best possible
experience and make sure the experience you put on resembles your actual product as closely
as possible. You‟re also going to need to do deals with suppliers and rely on their support to
bring costs right down (to hopefully zero). You need to articulate what‟s in it for them. Let them
into your vision a little. Reaffirm your future commitment to them. You do NOT want to be
dipping in to your own pockets to run familiarisation trips. A good tip is also to approach your
regional tourism organisations and ask them for support. They often have budgets for such
things. Again, you‟ll need to articulate what‟s in it for them and for the region.

Step 9: Go get ‘em. Get after those first customers. Here you‟re after quick wins. Instant
results. By this I mean that your first customer isn‟t going to come from the product manager at

4
a large travel wholesaler you meet at a tradeshow - that process can be long and slow before it
ultimately bears fruit. You need to focus a lot of your energy on sources such as: selected hotel
concierges, visitor centres, conference organisers, tours/tourism organisations with budgets for
entertaining invited overseas agents. You need to start generating customers from your target
market/markets who are in town now or who are soon to be. You need to get things ticking over.
You need practise. You need testimonials and reviews. You need great verbal feedback to hotel
concierges. You need to get your chosen social media platform humming along and you need
great images from your tours to do so.

Step 10: Your vision. So now you‟ve got your business ticking along and bookings are trickling
in. You‟re on first name terms with a bunch of hotel concierges, you‟ve got your instagram feed
humming with some awesome „on tour‟ images, the teams at your local tourism organisations
know everything there is to know about you, many have experienced your product and they‟ve
been throwing a few other opportunities your way. Your site is up and generating enquiries and
bookings, your brochures are visible in carefully selected places, you‟ve got a handful of 5 star
reviews on Trip Advisor...you‟re away!

Now is a good time to sit down, take a breath, take some time to think and write down your 2
and 5 year vision. Get crystal clear on what you want your life to look like.What exactly does
your business and your life look like in 2 years from now and in 5 years from now? Break it
down and give details.

Set up a journal and in separate sections use the following categories: Your
Health/Friends/Family/Personal Growth/Fun and Leisure/Career and Business/Home
Environment/Money and Investments

Spend the time to think and write about each of these and then look back at them each month.
Revise them if you need to (that‟s natural as your life evolves) but never deviate from what you
want if you know for certain that you want it. This is a powerful exercise and we found this
immensely helpful and became the cornerstone of our life planning.

Step 11: Build great relationships. To complement the steady trickle, or (possibly even a flow)
of bookings that you now have coming in from your hotel concierges, referrals, your website,

5
visitor information centers, online platforms and more, your task now is to start working on
scoring some big accounts that you can really start to build a business around. Some „big fish‟.
If you don‟t already know exactly who these are, ask your state or national tourism organisation.
They‟ll know and they‟ll happily share this information with you. You need to know who the big
players are in your key markets that are the right fit for your product. Don‟t be scared. Why
shouldn‟t they work with you? You‟ve got a great product. You‟ve got runs on the board. You‟ve
got a dozen or more great reviews that you can share with them.. People in the industry are
talking about you. They‟ve likely heard of you by now AND...most importantly, you now have the
industry relationships to give you an introduction to the owner or the product manager of these
companies. It‟s at this point that you need to back yourself. Everybody starts somewhere. When
we started our business we were literally one man with a van turning over $60k per year. 8
years later we had one account (one travel agent/travel company) alone worth 270k annually,
another worth 220k annually and three more worth over $100k annually. That‟s a lot of private
day tours. When we were first introduced to these companies we had one vehicle and one tour
guide. You can do it. Find out what they are not getting. Find out what your city, your region or
your competitors lack. Ask questions, listen and collate data from these companies. Look for
common themes in the information you are receiving. Be ready for an opportunity. Be different.
Be exciting. Be consistent - and be patient. It may take one, two or three years to start seeing
some results from that initial meeting. They‟ll monitor your progress, they‟ll want to make sure
that you‟re around for the long haul before they start using you. That‟s okay. Keep chipping
away, keep knocking on the door and keep being exciting and consistent and you‟ll get your
chance.

Step 12: Outsource key tasks then start growing your team - When you start making sales
and you realise that people actually want to buy what you you‟ve got to sell, you‟re in business!
It‟s at this point that you‟re going to have some decisions to make. Based on what you have
achieved to this point, you need to ask yourself whether you truly feel you‟re going to succeed -
that you‟re going to make a go of this. If the answer is a resounding yes then...start outsourcing.
Initially you‟re probably going to have do it all yourself: Bookkeeping, reservations,IT, web
design, marketing, vehicle detailing, possibly even vehicle maintenance, operations, HR,
content creation...the list goes on. These early days are tough. You‟re doing a heap of things on
the fly and you‟re probably not great at most of them.

Soon you reach a tipping point. When you do, suck it up, take a risk and…outsource. You can

6
turn the tap off at any point. Focus on the things you love and the things you‟re good at and
outsource the rest. It‟s a couple of steps backwards to take ten forwards. Start slowly - one at a
time and see the impact it has on your business and your life.

BUT you‟ve got to be across everything. You need to have a working knowledge of every part
of your business and You need to hold people accountable. You can‟t assume it‟s in the hands
of the experts and therefore under control. Nobody will ever know your business and your
customer like you do. From this point, you‟ve gotta start thinking about growing that team. You‟ll
know when it‟s time. You need to be bold and ACT. How? When we felt it was time to bring
someone in and become a part of our team, we:

A. Wrote a list of every single task in our business that was done over a two week period
and exactly how long we were spending on those tasks.

Then we:
B. Wrote a list of all the things we weren‟t doing that we should be doing and how much
time was needed to do them. (for example interstate sales calls to key agents/developing
new tours)

and

C. Wrote a list of all the things we were doing but needed to do more of (for example 8
hours per week of hotel concierge visits rather than 4 hours/ more personalised follow up
with past guests for tour reviews)

By doing so we could literally calculate to the hour exactly how much help we needed from our
new Office Assistant and write a position description with detailed roles and responsibilities and
estimated times that these took each week. Our calculations told us that we needed a 4 day per
week Office Assistant to free us up so that we could start to step out and grow our business.

Step 13: Increase capacity. Initially you‟ll be increasing capacity by bringing in contractors and
and hiring touring vehicles. Soon you‟ll be able to crunch the numbers and work out if bringing in

7
the right people on a permanent basis is right for your business. It may or may not be, however
capacity has to increase if your business is going to grow and this is going to mean empowering
others to represent your brand and it‟s going to mean relinquishing some control. Yep - it can be
scary...we know. To do so you are going to have to create some first rate training manuals and
an operations manual. These may sound scary and overwhelming but they really don‟t have to
be. It‟s simply a case of documenting the process of everything that happens in your business in
the delivery of a service. If it happens, write it down. You should never need to answer the same
question twice. This is optimistic, but this is what you are striving for.

Step 14: Diversify, so now you‟ve got a great business with some beautiful products, loyal
clients, strong reviews and the capacity to grow. You‟ve decided you want to go to the next level
and build something remarkable. How are you going to go to that next level? Listen to your
customer, get creative, study your analytics, see where your traffic is coming from and what
they are looking at, look at industry trends,talk to people, talk to your clients and then start
creating multiple revenue streams - but NEVER do so on a hunch. You need to engage with
your customer and industry colleagues to see if your new idea for another or for multiple
revenue streams has legs. But now is the time to take a punt. Some will be wildly successful.
Some will flop. That‟s business. It‟s much easier to take a punt when you already have a solid
foundation and regular customers. Here‟s an example of what we did:

We first realised that - as our tours became more unique, interactive and immersive, we were
receiving a lot of enquiries from Melbourne based executive assistants, personal assistants,
sales managers and HR managers...saying „we love the look of tour x, y or z - could you tailor
this tour for my team or my clients?‟

Boom! MPT Corporate Events was born, offering client engagement events, team building,
reward and incentive days, company Christmas parties, EOFY events and more.

Next came MPT Worldwide Journeys - offering „once in a lifetime‟ celebrity chef led culinary
journeys to Spain - amongst other things.

We also created small group scheduled culinary journeys throughout Australia aimed at the high
end domestic market that ran right through the slower winter months .

8
We created snow tours for the Singaporean market and we built a range of „experience
enhancers‟ or „upgrades‟ into our tours so that we could make. All of these complimented the
core Melbourne Private Tours product offering beautifully and kept us busy outside of the peak
travel season.

Very simple but very important. ASK QUESTIONS!!! Ideas fail, products fail, BUSINESSES fail
because people think they know the answer and they don‟t ask questions OR they ask the
wrong questions. Trust me. You definitely DO NOT know what your customer wants and what
they are thinking. Finally, don‟t ask leading questions. Don‟t ask questions to extract what you
want to hear. Ask questions to try and prove yourself wrong, not to prove yourself right. If you
find that you‟ve got a bad idea then great!! You‟ve saved yourself a lot of time that could be
spent pursuing a great idea.

Step 15: Build great systems and clearly communicate your vision to your team about
what you want your role in your business to be. Nobody wants to create a 7 figure business and
work themselves into an early grave. Go back to your vision. Develop a plan and share it with
staff. Empower your team, step out and delegate. Work towards a reality where you only do
things that you a) love and b) are really great at. Put a structured and efficient meeting process
in place (this could be one weekly team meeting, plus 15 minute 1 on 1 „huddles‟ later in the
week) where everybody in your business knows that this and only this is the time get your
undivided attention. Train them to come prepared to maximise the opportunity of these
meetings. Make the meetings structured, consistent and outcome driven. Keep your word!!
Make people feel secure that they will be heard in these times. Never cancel, never skip parts of
these meetings, work towards making the routine of these meeting thoroughly predictable, no
matter where in the world you are.

Here‟s to living your best life and building an awesome business.