Once in a while this day comes. I turn off the alarm-clock and choose seeing dreams featuring unlikely plots and unlikely people engaging in the unlikely actions rather than getting up and embracing a very likely set of events and very real people. Once I am back from dreaming I would stay in bed for another good hour finding all good reasons to ditch the plan I had for the day. I embrace procrastination: I open the door and invite her to get in, we sit down for a cup of tea and talk for the whole day.
I don’t know why we are so afraid of procrastination. Freaking out about destroyed productivity, getting frustrated about unmet deadlines, hating yourselves for lacking will and strength. There is so much advice out there on how to fight procrastination! Procrastination makes you sabotage important efforts and delay progress. It is destructive. It is evil.
But why to fight something you can embrace and make use of? Procrastination interrupts the autopilot of your actions and challenges you to be conscious. Procrastination gives you time you have not bothered to take to think over what the effort you are making is worth to you, why you are making that effort and whether you are ready to face the outcome.
It is often said that procrastination is a result of either fear of failure or actually fear of success. In the case of fearing a failure you often times have not bother to look at the worst-case scenario and find out how not bad and actually manageable it is. When you fear success dig dipper - childhood traumas, subconscious beliefs and things alike may result in the self-limiting behavior such as procrastination. Either way, being it fear of failure or success you are forces to sit down and think about it.
I believe procrastination is like a flue: it knocks you down if you have been hard on yourself lately forgetting to rewind. It’s your compulsory rewind. Because your body knows better and we can push our body to the limit but there is a limit to that limit. If you don’t know the limits of your body a silly thing like a flue will show you. If you don’t know the limits of your willful actions - procrastination comes one day to tell you.
Today I slept for 15 hours, ditched a visit to a doctor, took hours to compose myself to go outside and buy my favorite tahıllı bread at Komşufırın; another hour of purposeless hanging out and a bowl of Turkish delight later I opened my computer, went through my mails, looked through a couple of links shared by a friend and realized how much it burdened me today. I put on a CD with drawling Turkish ballads complementing my mood and started writing. Will there be a big crisis if at a day free of clients in Istanbul and family responsibilities in Sapanca I will not bother myself with any plans - however strategic for my lifestyle business, however important for social life they are?
The longer I sat and the more Turkish delight I ate the more it became clear to me why the procrastination has kicked in. There has been a lot of new things happening to my lifestyle business of Istanbul food tour and cooking classes recently. I limited myself to the spontaneous reactions to each of them and have not bothered to think of bigger picture. And the bigger picture has revealed itself eventually: the business is growing.
Since December 2010 when I had my first walk and it seemed almost unreal - to me and to others - that I can do it for living I have managed to turn the walks into the economically viable lifestyle business. However growth shows up not only in the numbers but also in the new situations which appear as you become bigger and more visible. They test your business model and challenge assumptions you have made building it. Here are the few latest challenges I have encountered in my lifestyle business.
Dealing with Agencies
I have started receiving inquiries from agencies here in Istanbul and from my key source markets such as US. I understand that travel agencies could be am important vehicle for me to drive bookings. Especially boutique agencies focusing on food tours and other special-interest tours. Potentially, it can be interesting to make a couple of strategic partnerships with the agencies who would be able to provide a steady flow of my target customers.
I have corresponded with a one and didn’t like the attitude. They made a booking and after that started discussing the terms. Marina who works a free-lance translator in Istanbul and used to deal with agencies a lot says this is so typical here to agree on work, get it complete only to have the agency question the agreed terms in the end. This all sounds like a lot of trouble in exchange for a few additional bucks.
Another thing is offering commission to the agencies: I can see how it makes sense to high-turnover providers but I don’t see a lot of sense in that for me, as I am not aiming for high-turnover currently. By design of my lifestyle business I have financial ambitions enough to finance my lifestyle and anything beyond seems like unneeded effort. My direct bookings have shown steady growth. With venues such as Tripadvisor and growth of social media many travelers choose to source local tour vendors themselves without resorting to the services of the agencies. I will serve that agency booking but going forward maybe I am just better off without the agencies for now?
Being social in the social media
I am not big fan of Twitter. I think I am one of those who was overwhelmed by its abound opportunities and tons of information shared that I have opted out of it. The other day I “met” (well, we chatted on Facebook) another Olga who was introduced to me by a way more social-media-savvy-friend-than-myself. Olga is an interesting woman now living in Spain with her husband and two sons. She quit her corporate job too - she used to be a marketing professional - and recently has ventured into a cupcake business. After our chat I wrote a post on lifestyle business and a few days later I got an email from her saying that a food writer for a major Spanish newspaper is in Istanbul and interested in my cooking class.
Going back to my thoughts on the travel agencies it only makes sense to be more active on Facebook and Twitter. It’s a longer shot than google search optimization as you are fishing in the ocean sort of - sometimes only sitting by and watching the waves. Yet the reward is so immense that makes the shot very worthy: getting to know interesting people, engaging in inspiring chats and then welcoming foodies in Istanbul.
Not Worrying About Competition
Istanbul is such a hot destination these days combining delights of the Middle Eastern world and safety and comfort of the Western one. Plus, awareness of the food tours as a gateway to the local life which you would hardly grasp through a regular guided tour has increased too. I see my competition - every week at the markets and even more often virtually — in the customer reviews, blog entries, buzz on Facebook or Twitter. They have more customers and I can see how they handle groups of up to 11 people at a time.
It is a different business model, I guess. And clearly not a life-style business. I can’t imagine doing my food tour for more than 6 people. We would never be able to fit the tiny coffee shop which does the best Turkish coffee in town or the little shop with best baklava in Istanbul and we would need to go to larger mainstream places. And I guess the customers who want to take a 11 participant tour are very different from those who would go for a more compact group. I love my customers and confident about my business model. So, what’s the point of envying the thing I would not agree to do?
Embracing New Business Opportunities
A lot of ideas are coming from my customers: often times they share their travel experience in Istanbul, Turkey and outside which prompts lots of ideas.
The other day we’ve discussed how a customer wanted to take a photo tour in Istanbul. She did such tours at few other places where she traveled before but could not find a reliable vendor in Istanbul and have chosen to do a food walk with me instead after reading a feedback from a previous customer who called it “the perfect food and photo tour”. I asked what the photo tours she took entailed and her answer made me think I can definitely develop such a photo tour for Istanbul with my local knowledge and passion for photography.
Another time I found myself brainstorming business development opportunities with my other customers who suggested it is time to bring my tours to the next level.
Besides the actual tours more opportunities have popped up. I got contacted by the guys with a record of launching of a successful travel app and now are developing a cool food tour app - they invited me to write an Istanbul food tour part for them.
As the opportunities come they force me to refine the borders my my lifestyle business and going back to the original criteria of my business success. For example, developing another tour however puts additional pressure on my time capacity or creates a need to look for a reliable partner.
On the contrary, writing for an app is a great way to utilize the content I already have with little time investment and an interesting experiment in addressing the audience I would never reach with my actual tours.
Similarly, putting more effort into developing and marketing getaways to the Istanbul countryside, experiencing village markets and cooking at a professional kitchen with such a charismatic cook as Zeliha Hanim makes more sense to me: it utilizes the time I am already spending in Sapanca and creates the excitement of offering the experience no one else in Istanbul does.
…
Now after this cathartic exercise I can sit down and write down an action plan. Not such bad outcome for a day of procrastination.
