The Everyday Entrepreneur with Reet and Julie Singh: How To Turn Your Passion Into Profit
Husband and Wife Duo, Reet and julie Singh of Tripoutside
Have you ever wondered about wandering and the world of being a digital nomad? Well you’ve got to meet these guys either way:
Today I’m introducing you to Julie and Reet Singh of TripOutside. I love these guys like family and I know you will too. Well wait, Julie is actually my sister and Reet is my brother-in-law… regardless they are a total power couple and their business is truly unlike any business I have highlighted here before.
After a combined 25 years in the corporate world, Julie and Reet packed up their lives and began to build their business. Now they explore full time and run their business either out of their RV or in India (in Reet’s hometown!), all while balancing business and personal life as a husband and wife duo.
Their passion for what they do is palpable and beyond inspiring, partially because I know I could never do exactly what they do. I mean, getting rid of everything and living out of an RV and traveling the U.S. takes a huge sacrifice! One I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready for.
But somehow Reet and Julie make it all look easy and FUN! Today we’ll be zooming in on all the ways they make their non-traditional lives work, so keep on reading! You really won’t want to miss this one, if for nothing else, to motivate you to get the heck outside today.
Holly Knoll: Hi Reet and Julie! I'm so excited to have you here today. Thank you for making the time, all the way from India!
Let’s dive into your story and your business, TripOutside. What was it that made you start the company?
Reet Singh: Thanks, Holly, for having us on The Everyday Entrepreneur. It's super exciting to join and talk to your audience. We've been long-time followers of your content.
Julie and I started TripOutside in 2017. We left our corporate careers at Home Depot in Atlanta where we had both worked for several years because we were frustrated with the corporate lifestyle and not having the freedom to do what we wanted to do with our life.
A couple of years prior, we started thinking about starting something of our own and in 2017 we finally pulled the trigger.
We bought an RV, and hit the road. We now travel full time, sometimes it's out of an RV in the US and sometimes we’re traveling internationally. Right now we're in India.
Julie Singh: Hey everyone, and I'm Julie. Reet and I had always wanted to start a business together. When we first met we realized that we had complementary skills and we were both good at things that the other one wasn't as good at.
So we started kind of thinking about what we might want to do, what we're passionate about, and what we have experience in.
We took our combined 25 years of corporate experience and a few years of savings (which we decided we needed to have in order to kind of start a business full-time) and we got going.
Holly Knoll: That's great that you were able to make the leap from really lucrative corporate jobs to do something more fulfilling that aligns with your personal values and interests.
How would you describe your business, TripOutside?
Julie Singh: TripOutside is an outdoor adventure marketplace. We noticed an opportunity to start the company when we were traveling in our RV and meeting with outfitters for our own personal outdoor adventures.
Our pain point as customers was that it was really hard to find outdoor adventures online, in one place, and book them easily. So we wanted to fix that and create a website where people can book everything they need for their adventure, really easily, all on one page, and on one site.
Initially, we were going to create software for outfitters to use and customers to book. But after traveling around and talking to outfitters we realized that software wasn't really what the outfitters needed because great software options existed already.
We were a latecomer to the software game and we didn't really want to compete with software companies - we wanted to provide a marketplace instead.
We discovered that outfitters really wanted help with getting more bookings and with their marketing, so we switched gears and pivoted to just the marketplace model by creating a one-stop for customers to book all their outdoor adventures.
You can think about TripOutside to be like Hotels.com, Expedia, or Airbnb. We just feature the best local shops for any outdoor adventure, specifically silent sports only. That's anything human-powered like biking, paddling, skiing, snowboarding, and rock climbing. Things you do with your own physical body.
Holly Knoll: I never thought about the term “silent sports”. That's a really cool way of describing the type of outfitters you work with and the types of outdoor activities that you support.
Being a husband and wife team, what is it like to work with your spouse? And if a husband and wife are thinking about starting a business together what do you think they should know?
Reet Singh: Oh, that's a good one! It’s a daily struggle. We are not only just working together, we are also living and spending all our time together.
You know, we all have our self-learning and growth to do to become better partners and I know there's a lot of things that I need to work on.
Julie would probably say I like to come up with ideas and then move on to the next one. A few days later, Julie is often like, “wait, what about the great idea you had five days ago, we are still working on that one!”
I have such a great partner, Julie can execute anything. She’ll go through the to-do list and knock it out where as I sometimes spend more time thinking about things like, how can we collaborate with different brands and do big things.
You know, left brain, right brain.
So we've come up with a process to get things done and it's working. One thing we need to continue to work on is more check-ins. So like a three-month check-in and a 30-day check-in.
We’ve started to do this by asking ourselves, “Okay, this is what we want to do in the next <x> days?”
We manage our task list with a consolidated board. We have a Trello board to assign tasks and move things along. Mostly it’s me putting things on Julie’s plate and then her taking them off.
Holly Knoll: Ha! And it sounds like the Trello board keeps things objective as you move through your business so that it's all right there. You know what's happening at any given time, and who needs to do what, by when.
Julie, would you add anything to what makes the husband and wife combo work in terms of running a company?
Julie Singh: Well, we both have our different strengths. It's nice to know what each others’ strengths are and what we are both working on because it helps you not get quite as frustrated when their areas are different from yours.
Reet thrives on relationships, talking to people, and being in groups. And that’s the kind of thing that I'm not always as good at.
I keep us organized and on track. Sometimes my role can be a little frustrating because I'm the little auditor coming behind to make sure we're getting everything done.
We capitalize on our strengths, while working on the things that we're not as good at. We want to make sure we're still helping each other out as much as we can.
It also gets overwhelming sometimes spending so much time together. We have to sometimes just take a break from work and be like, “We're not going to talk about work right now. We're not going to talk about ideas.”
We try to make time to enjoy each other's company rather than always discussing how we're going to improve our business or implement new ideas.
Holly Knoll: I'm sure it's a constant balance. I'm really impressed that you guys have been able to make this work for so long!
What's one mistake that you made that you wish you could have avoided?
Reet Singh: The biggest thing is hiring and trusting the contractors we hire. When hiring, we’ve looked at their reviews and have thought perhaps they could shortcut our way to success because they're a top expert. We’ve given them our money and said, “Can you go do this for me.”
For example, we hired an expert for Google paid ads and they spent a lot of our money and we didn't get anything in return. We didn't know enough about Google ads, to audit their work so we didn’t get the results we wanted.
The learning is, don't blindly give people your money to do a job. It's important to know the basics, even if you take a 2-hour YouTube course to understand what you’re looking for when hiring and so you can ultimately hold others accountable.
Nobody's going to be able to run your business and understand it as much as you do, so test small projects with a lot of different people and on a smaller scale with minimum investment.
Holly Knoll: How frustrating that must have been to trust an expert and then not get what you expected in return.
Julie Singh: That's happened several times. We've definitely learned from it and what we've realized is we know we can't be experts in everything for our business. It's just impossible, but we do have to know enough to be able to guide and supervise while providing the strategy.
Holly Knoll: Lesson learned. And something I need to keep in mind for my business as well. It's important for small business owners to find the time to educate yourself even in areas you have zero passion for. It’ll help you be more successful in the long run.
just another day… Biking zion national park
What does a typical day look like as you focus on your business full time?
Julie Singh: We don't necessarily have a typical day. Days differ depending on whether we're in the US or in India. Right now we're in India and living a life in a home and not moving around all the time in an RV.
We usually spend most of the day working, we have fast Wi-Fi, and we also just launched our crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. So we've been crazy busy trying to get that completed.
We haven't really taken much time for ourselves in the last few weeks, but we still make sure we get a workout in. We belong to a gym here and we have bikes which we ride around town.
Working out and staying active is not only one of our passions, but it’s also a great stress reliever and helps us be more productive at work. If I don't get a workout in I'm crabby and not effective, so that's important to us.
We also have a little community here in India. We've met a lot of people through different friends and relatives, and so we make sure that we're getting out. One of the big benefits of being in a city full-time is that you can have a network of people that we don't always have when we're traveling by RV in the US.
When traveling by RV our typical day involves spending at least six to eight hours working. We try to get outside and do some sort of outdoor adventure - but that doesn't happen every day. Other days we might be going to visit outfitters, talking to local shops, and signing them up to be on our platform.
We also spend time talking to customers, like hanging out at trailheads gathering feedback!
Reet Singh: One difference in corporate life versus entrepreneurship is there's no weekday or weekend - every day is basically the same. There's a benefit to that. We can work the weekends, when everybody else is off and write deeper content or think about things that you want to accomplish in the weekdays when everybody else is working.
I really love that a day is just a day. There are no days off or on and that is the freedom of entrepreneurship - the reason we absolutely love it.
Holly Knoll: What are books or materials that have made a difference to you in the way that you run or think about your business?
Reet Singh: Thanks for asking that, you are the person that we can share those things with the most. Thank you for that.
A few of my favorite books are by Ryan Holiday. The Obstacle is the Way and The Ego is the Enemy, I really love his books and podcasts. How I Built This is probably my favorite business podcast.
But sometimes it's not just all about business. There's a lot of spiritual stuff that goes into making sure you're well rounded, Rich Roll is another one of my favorite podcasts.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is a classic that I still go back to every few years. The four square of prioritizing your tasks is a really great model that I keep refreshing.
Julie Singh: This question is really great for Reet because he's much better about this than I am. I get so focused on tasks and the to-do lists that I don't always think about how to grow and learn.
Reet is very focused on making sure he trains and educates himself on everything he doesn't know and it's very inspiring to me because I know I need to do more of that. But sometimes I'm like, oh, I'll just let Reet learn it and he can do it.
The How I Built This podcast that was most inspiring to me was the interview with the Tofurkey founder, Seth Tibbott. I absolutely love Tofurkey and it took this guy like 10 years to be profitable. He borrowed money from his friends and family and he had a support network of people that kept funding and believing in him.
Finally he made it and now it's one of the biggest plant-based products ever. The story is just so inspiring. I don't know if I could do this for 10 years without making money, but he just kept going and now is a phenomenon because he believed in himself.
This story just keeps me going, sometimes when I'm feeling down or want to throw in the towel.
Holly Knoll: 10 years to make it, inspiring indeed. So tell us, what would you say to someone who wants to start a business but instead they’re sitting at their desk, dreading going to their next meeting, just not not feeling fulfilled at work.
What is one action they could take to start a business today?
Reet Singh: I think if you're happy with your job, good for you, but surveys have shown that over 70 or 80% of people are not happy in their jobs.
Job unhappiness is a low level of pain that can last for many years, and instead of this sharp pain that you can dive in and solve the problem, people continue repeating the pain each day, hoping their boss, or whatever it is, might change.
You really have to decide what freedom means to you. We are the freest people to have ever walked the planet. So follow your creativity.
There's a million Facebook videos and Instagram influencers that will tell you that they have the answer for you on what you should do. But I would say really figure out what is it that you feel creative about and feel happy about and try it at a small scale. Don't really think about the money - think about how you're going to solve a problem.
Holly Knoll: Yes to solving a problem. Julie described earlier the pain point you’re solving for your customers. But there are a lot of people that start businesses out of a passion. That’s great and all, but they may ultimately find they are not solving a real pain point in the market, thus they go under.
Marrying up your passion and your creativity with an actual pain point is how one can put their genius to work with a business.
Julie Singh: A lot of people aren't always confident that their idea is really going to work. One of the reasons that TripOutside really stuck is that we experienced our customers’ pain point first hand. This made our business much easier to execute.
Start by doing research. Are there other solutions out there? Is there a way that you can take something and make it better? There are alot of solutions out there that just aren't great. So how can you make that solution even better?
Doing due diligence up front and making sure that the idea that you have is really going to stick is key.
A lot of entrepreneurs underestimate (as we did) in the beginning how long it actually takes to start generating income and to be profitable. Make sure that you have a fallback net.
Starting a side hustle is a really, really great way to do it because you're still making money from your core job or role and doing something additional on the side. Once the side hustle starts making enough money, you can leave your role. That's a really great way to do it.
Make sure that if you do want to leave what you're doing today to start something, that you have that safety net of knowing how long you think it's going to take and how much you think it's going to cost to live as you go.
Holly Knoll: Yeah. Not everybody has to go full blown “I'm quitting my job and starting my business tomorrow” mode. There are baby steps like starting research and identifying a way to solve a problem in the marketplace to get started without taking drastic measures.
On a final note, if people want to book gear or learn more about TripOutside and your story, how can we find you in the digital world?
Reet Singh: The best way would be to go TripOutside.com. Our Instagram and Facebook links are there too. You can subscribe to our newsletter, we publish new content that we’re passionate about related to the outdoors.
We also have a crowdfunding campaign live right now with amazing trip giveaways and some secret destination ideas that are only going to be available through there. So if you wouldn’t mind going out and supporting us, we are targeting to grow to 200 new destinations this year and looking to grow with our community. Your contribution would mean a lot.
Holly Knoll: Is there anything else you guys want to share that we didn't talk about that you feel would be important for the readers to know?
Reet Singh: Having a business, there are going to be really tough times where you're going to feel really down, but just keep going. If you need to take a day off or need to take a couple days off, take them off, but then keep going.
Julie Singh: Yeah, I think a lot of people glamorize entrepreneurship, and they think it's just gonna be like, I have my own company. I make tons of money. Everything I do is so easy. I just tell people what to do all day. It really isn't easy.
We had very hard, stressful, and time consuming jobs in Corporate America. Now we're working just as hard, if not harder on our own business. But this time around we don’t mind because it's our own business. It’s our baby and we want to devote almost every minute of our time to it.
Entrepreneurism is really, really, really, really hard and people have to be ready for that. You’re going to work harder than you ever have.
For us, the benefits definitely outweigh the downsides.
Holly Knoll: One day at a time, one step at a time. And two and a half years later, you're doing a Kickstarter campaign and you’ve on boarded so many outfitters already.
Where you are today is a culmination of thousands of baby steps. Thank you for being here today and sharing your story!
I always love talking to other business owners and being able to sit down and chat with my talented sister and brother-in-law was a new level. They are so incredibly passionate about giving back and helping fill a void in the outdoor community by helping people get outside more often and more easily. You can really feel their love for what they do come through.
I think it’s interesting that nearly every business owner I talk to talks about starting before you’re ready and taking small breaks when they’re feeling burnt out instead of just stopping all together.
It’s such a valuable insight to see that multiple people have recommended it as a way to power through and not give up. I can’t imagine how amplified burn out would be living in an RV and working with your spouse 24/7. What an inspiration!
Running your own business can be isolating, which is part of the reason why this series is so important to me. Sharing what other people from all spaces are doing to follow what they love and how they are all so similar still in so many ways. I hope it’s as reassuring to you as it is to me. And if you agree, send this article to a friend!
Holly works with professionals to create services-based businesses using expertise and strengths they already have. Holly is the creator of The Consultant Code, a program will have you up, running, and profitable with your services-based business in 60 days or less! Want to learn more? Drop her a note at: holly@hollyknoll.com