QuarantineThai

Generated over 1M baht ($35k) in revenue in only 3 months with no capital, no connections and no brand.

For context,

Thailand imposed a mandatory 14 day quarantine (ASQ) for all incoming persons in response to COVID19.  I had been studying with a Thai language teacher who asked if I would help market his teacher network and services. He offered a commission on sales, but really... how much can one earn selling online Thai classes?

Online Thai teachers are a dime a dozen.
Classes run from 300 - 500 baht/ hour ($10-15).
Most significantly, few people are interested in learning Thai.

I didn’t have anything going on and wanted some practice copywriting so... why not? To make it worth my time, I’d need to:

1. Make people interested in learning Thai
2. Make this ordinary service (online Thai tutoring) unique
3. Make people buy in volume

It’s when I saw a Facebook post about the boredom of quarantine that I realized the solution to all three obstacles:

1. This allowed for higher-volume: (30 hours/ course) with a quick turnover (10 days/ course).
2. This was unique from every other school and teacher. It was the only intensive program for people in quarantine.
3. This made people interested in taking classes. It just made too much sense. Really, what else are you going to do locked in a hotel room for two weeks?

Marketing

I didn't have the capital for paid advertising and needed to get this in front of people immediately. No one knew how long quarantine would be in place, and I needed to take advantage of this opportunity now.

In addition to lack of capital and time, there was a lack of brand name recognition and credibility. My teacher was great, but he and his network didn't have a big name nor was I a known figure in the country.

I wrote up a convincing article that didn't so much try to sell anyone on the program as much as to sell people on the idea of learning Thai – more specifically the benefits of knowing Thai. I outlined the the common challenges for Thai-learners at various stages, and explained why an intensive program was the best option for any learner at any stage. You can read the article here which generated 100's of leads.

I then offered commissions to popular travel websites and hotels to post the article on their blog or to email to guests. Initially, I offered 10% which was too generous but necessary to get a response, but once I had enough positive reviews, I could offer 5% and emphasize the valued service that hotels could offer their guests.

This method required no upfront capital, allowed for immediate exposure to the RIGHT audience, and perhaps more importantly, added a level of credibility to the business and my name.

CRM - Sales Pipeline

I am so glad that I studied programming and web development in the past. While this operation didn't require I write any code, it required a level of computational thinking that IS programming. Below is a very rough, condensed idea of the thinking and design for one slice of my sales pipeline.

Again, this is a very rough idea of only one small slice of the pipeline, but I hope it's reasonably clear and helps to demonstrate the structured logic and moving pieces of designing any pipeline/ management system. This was continuously tweaked and improved upon for efficacy and efficiency.

Payment

All payments were made to my Thai partner's Thai bank account which was NOT a business account. Therefore only ONE payment option was available: Bank Transfer. No credit card payments, no PayPal, no debit card payments.

Bank transfer is a super common form of payment in Thailand, but it's not for Westerners. Imagine explaining to someone in the States that was planning to travel to Thailand and enroll in an intensive Thai program while in quarantine that they would need to transfer roughly $500 to a some Thai guy's bank account in Thailand.

Payment should be easy for any customer always. I thought for sure this would be the deal breaker for this operation.  The best solution I came up with was to write a super detailed, informative article on why and how to use TransferWise: The cheap, fast way to send money abroad.

I basically became a sales rep for TransferWise.

CRM -  Management

My Thai partner arranged teachers and delivered books. Beyond that, I had to leverage tech to manage everything: sales, marketing, customer relations, IT, accounting, invoicing, billing... it was too much to keep track of. My Customer Relationship Management system (CRM)  WAS my entire operation.

I tried a number of options, and this worked best:

To keep track of start dates, study times, hotel, deposit/ payment status, review requests. To send confirmations, calendar invites, and schedule various check-in's upon arrival, during and after the course.

80% of my efforts throughout this were developing and honing this system.

I believe this was a significant contributor to its success. The communication was crystal. Always. Timely emails, answered questions, confirmations, calendar invites, proper invoices, books delivered on time, teachers on time, no connection issues, no mix-ups, no confusion.

I consider this level of organization to be standard, but it's simply not in Thailand. I've written on this topic before as being severely lacking in this country and subsequently where Westerners have the most to offer here.

In conclusion

I unfortunately had to shut down the operation not long after honing the system due to a disagreement with my Thai partner.  

It was a great run though and a testament of what can be accomplished through messaging. After all, QuarantineThai was little more than Thai tutoring online -- packaged and presented in a way that was relevant and made sense.

A 1k baht initial investment into a domain name/ web hosting was enough to generate 1M baht in sales.