Tipping, TikTok and Evolving Your Business

<div class="p-rich_text_section">Talking to tour operator John O'Sullivan is always a breath of fresh air; he likes to think deeply about the tour industry, and experiment with new ideas that often challenge the tour operator orthodoxy.</div> <div class="p-rich_text_section"> </div> <div class="p-rich_text_section">John runs Depot Adventures in Melbourne, Australia and Minneapolis, Minnesota, as well as a new TikTok-based venture, One Minute Tours.</div> <div class="p-rich_text_section"> </div> <div class="p-rich_text_section">John's first Tourpreneur podcast was recorded with Shane back in 2019, where he shared his thoughts about the economics of the "free tour" model. It's still a worthy listen. Now he's back with a new venture, new locations for his old company. We cover a wide variety of topics:</div> <ul class="p-rich_text_list p-rich_text_list__bullet" data-stringify-type="unordered-list" data-indent="0" data-border= "0"> <li data-stringify-indent="0" data-stringify-border="0">how to structure and develop a tour in a new destination</li> <li data-stringify-indent="0" data-stringify-border="0">thinking about tour content in the age of Wikipedia</li> <li data-stringify-indent="0" data-stringify-border="0">developing a business across two extremely different locations</li> <li data-stringify-indent="0" data-stringify-border="0">does developing a global brand bring benefits?</li> <li data-stringify-indent="0" data-stringify-border="0">entering a midmarket destination: how to sell? how to price?</li> <li data-stringify-indent="0" data-stringify-border="0">hiring and retaining guides as employees</li> <li data-stringify-indent="0" data-stringify-border="0">John's experiment with tip pooling, and being transparent about his experiment with his guide community</li> <li data-stringify-indent="0" data-stringify-border="0">his accidental virality on TikTok, and how it's changing the direction of his business</li> </ul> <div class="p-rich_text_section">As always, bonus material and more can be found on <a class="c-link