Last Updated on February 25, 2021
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About Julia Menez
Julia Menez is a travel hacking coach, speaker, and host of the Geobreeze Travel Podcast.
After traveling to more than 30 countries before the age of 30 and saving thousands of dollars each year by travel hacking, Julia distills the strategies from top travel hackers around the world in her Geobreeze Travel podcast, and prepares personalized points and miles plans for her private coaching clients.
Through her podcast, Julia features a diverse roster of guests with experiences that are traditionally underrepresented in larger points and miles blogs and media. Her episodes often highlight travel hacking women, immigrants, or people of color.
Julia has been a speaker for FinConX, a course instructor for Frequent Traveler University Online, and has led workshops for thousands of attendees at events such as the SHEFACTOR 2020 Summit and PodFest.
About Geobreeze Travel
Geobreeze Travel originally started as a traditional travel agency in 2019. I was already deep into the hobby of traveling using points and miles by then, and honestly, the only reason I opened the business was so that I could qualify for business credit cards to get even more travel points. When 2020 hit, there was almost zero demand for traditional travel agent work, so I decided to pivot the company to teach people how to travel with points and miles. Additionally, I noticed that there were not many points and miles brands that collaborated with other creators, and nearly all of the major blogs only featured white men. I wanted to completely change this — I set out to build a brand built on collaboration and featuring travel hackers from many diverse backgrounds. Today, I prepare personalized strategy plans for clients looking to get into travel hacking, and I host events meant to bring points and miles enthusiasts together to collaborate on best practices.
Contents
How Did You Get Your First Several Customers Or Users? How Many Users Or Customers Do You Have Now?
When you’re first getting into private coaching, it is difficult to get those first few clients. I found my first clients through different social networks and virtual happy hours that I joined while we were all in lockdown. In 2020, I averaged one client per month in the later half of the year. In the first two months of 2021, I average one new private client per week, which is an ideal workload for the time-being.
How Does Your Company Grow And Acquire New Customers?
Many of my coaching clients find me through Instagram, my podcast, or through my features on other finance and business podcasts. Collaborating with other travel hackers on Instagram has really helped me grow — featured guests on my podcast share their episode and expose their audience to my page. I also implement a shout-out system, where in each podcast episode, the guest gives a shout out to another person who has helped them on their travel hacking journey; the tagged person will often will share the episode as well. Additionally, each month I host a community hangout where travel hacking novices and experts will all jump on a video call to exchange tips, and many of the attendees will share a photo from the hangout to their Instagram accounts, which helps to grow the brand too.
What Actionable Tips And Tricks Do You Have For New Founders Who Are Looking To Get Their First Thousand Users Or Dollars?
The first thousand dollars isn’t about having fancy funnels or websites. It’s really about figuring out what problem you want to solve. For me, I wanted to address how all of the major points and miles media outlets rarely seem to feature women, immigrants, or people of color, even though there are many of us who are already traveling for free using points and miles. With a focus on that problem, I created a podcast to feature diverse travel hacking stories and started to share more of this content on my Instagram page. This helped to bring in a larger audience who often say “I always wanted to get into this hobby of traveling for free, but was always afraid to ask questions to people I couldn’t relate to before.”
What Is Something You’ve Learned That Would Not Be Obvious To Somebody Who Hasn’t Worked In Your Space Before?
Collaborating with people who produce similar content and products is a strength, rather than a detriment, to your business. Giving praise and celebrating wins of people who you would traditionally consider “competition” can really help to boost your audience size. So many people who follow the traditional blogging business model in the points and miles space are afraid to ever link to other bloggers because they might lose out on affiliate revenue. But for me, these shout-outs and collaborations have been vital to helping my brand grow.
What’s The Craziest Thing That’s Happened To You (Good Or Bad) On Your Founder Journey?
The craziest thing that’s happened to me was getting accepted as a Breakout Speaker at FinConX last year. FinCon is the largest conference for personal finance content creators and brands, and many of my role models in this space are often featured speakers. I had barely started my company and had little revenue at the time, but applied anyway and was ecstatic when I received the email that I was accepted to speak! Always apply for the things you want to do!
What Are Your Favorite Books?
My favorite books are:
1. I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi
2. The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
3. Limitless by Jim Kwik
4. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
5: In Her Purpose: 40 Principles of Asian Women Redefining Success on Their Own Terms by Rose Buado and Jennifer Rdondo-Marquez
Anything You’d Like To Plug?
Download my free email template that I use to get free upgrades at hotels at https://www.geobreezetravel.com/download-gifts/. I’ve personally used this email template to save $1000+ at the Grand Wailea Waldorf Astoria in Maui and to receive free hotel upgrades all over the world!
Recommended posts:
- Helping People Move Abroad With Alison Johnson
- Becoming a 17-year old neo-expressionist artist with Evan Sharma
- Understanding Software Bugs Are Normal With David Pawlan
Book summaries, notes, interviews, and more!
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