Building a Business Chapter 6/15-6/21

This Week in business 6/15/6/21

Last week was less than three hours put to this which is barely anything. Let’s get into a little of what we did.

I am beginning to get more comfortable with posting each day. I have just been trying to have fun with it. This venture is just a hobby right now so I don’t know why I would think of it as a chore and not something I actually want to do. I remember during the early days where I would get some hate comments, and I would get annoyed with them, like why are you taking the time out of your day to put me down by any means necessary. Now, I have been feeling more unbothered by them. Mostly by just keeping a friendly attitude towards them and not taking it to heart. They are random people on the internet that do have some stuff to say a majority of the time.

On the other hand, when I get a comment where they say, “I appreciate the transparency” or “I appreciate the info” that makes me feel good.  These comments have started coming quicker now and I try to reply to every single comment and say thank you or ask them what their thoughts are and answer any questions they might have. I have been able to breakthrough a little bit. I have been able to get thousands of views and doubled my follower count in a few days. My biggest video hit over 30,000 views a feat that I have not been able to come close to in the year of posting I have done. I have had three posts with over 10,000 in the last couple of weeks before those three that I posted might have happened once or twice in the year. That is a lot of eyes on me and almost a thousand people landed my account. Which had no bio. No quote form. Nothing.

I should probably change that. The issue that I tend to have has been how COMMON travel agents are these days. There is no shortage of travel agents on TikTok saying hey book with me hey over here book with me, and it just seems desperate. And maybe a bit annoying. Every single video has a call to action. Maybe that’s why they have more clients than me.

I have been learning though. A couple things that need to get completed for this week during a busier time of life for me.

1.      Create a quote form. It has been several months now with no call to action just hoping on a miracle for people to DM me to book their vacation for them.

2.      More picture carousels of other opinions surrounding the theme parks and cruises of Central Florida. This has gotten the most views by far and there really is no reason to stop them now. Picture carousels of nightly rates. Different cruise lines. Give out so much information. Maybe some mock vacations. Maybe some Ispy games. Also some money content because you need to know how much it costs to do some things.

3.      Keep responding in the community. Be active.

4.      Consider changing the name. It sucks because the domain name is that but I could put my name and change the domain name later. It came at quite an interesting time. It expires in a little over a month. Would it be odd to just make the website my name? Or journeys by JD? A question for AI. We talked it out. Here are the takeaways.

With the name journeysbyjd I get a chance to have somewhat more private life. I don’t just have my whole name out there. There are several different journeys people take in this life, and I love that I can help people on their journeys while I travel through a journey myself. I just like disconnecting from my real name even if it does limit some flexibility. I still believe it should be a wide enough net to practically write anything.

This week is a very slow work week. Not much work for anyone at the job and I have not been able to capitalize on this yet.

Once again, I wasted the week that I was given. Job has been incredibly slow, I had a holiday in the middle of the week, and I still probably didn’t get hit for five hours of work hit. The week is not over but it seems to be going poorly. If I can put in two hours today and two hours tomorrow it would salvage the week and really make me feel good about the spot, I’m in. I also would like to get the pricing on some hotels and cruises to get out so I can start helping them get over the pain points and maybe the mental barrier from not booking to booking. I have enjoyed the travel agent phase of life, and I was definitely feeling, why haven’t I been doing this all the time? The extra income I make, the special deals I get, the fun of working with Disney World and creating the type of life I want to live. Trying these new experiences for the good of myself and clients. I love it. It has been very rewarding. Still not incredible amounts of income coming in to quit my day job, but it is enough to pay for the special pricing on cruises. I have been able to go on five cruises this year and stay at a deluxe Disney hotel which was my first stay there with my adult money. Only time will tell if I can make this into more of a business but right now, I am enjoying the journey and loving my first year doing it. I nailed my sales goals for the year in the first six months and now I have achieved 150% of my sales goals for the year. There is a growth pattern where all the progress is hidden until it reaches a certain point and then it takes off and you see immense progress right in front of you.

I have felt that in my life recently. I have tried and failed at so many new things that it just feels nice to finally feel some slight success. I am still struggling to push through what I need to do. It feels like a push and not a pull. I have just been very distracted, watching video after video on tiktok. It makes me easily distracted, which has led me to not be able to get into that flow state where I am working as my authentic self.  

Two hours for the day seems like a long shot unless I get really fired up about a task for another person. If it’s just for me, I will push it off as long as I can.

Well…. I ended up not hitting the goals necessary, but I did post daily and show up most days. Unfortunately, it added up to nearly four hours worked. Three weak weeks in a row.