Download directly, on iTunes, or Stitcher.

This week we continue our travel entrepreneurship series as we sit down with Daniela and Azma from Adzenture Retreats. They run a travel business that integrates yoga and adventures by working with yoga teachers to plan and host yoga retreats around the world. Azma and Daniela were both inspired to start their travel business after realizing they wanted to leave the corporate world, desired more from their careers and that they both had a love of travel in common. The girls decided to start their business and after a brief setback and a change in tack, have been enjoying planning and hosting yoga retreats with teachers from around the world.

Daniela and Azma maintained focus on allowing the business to grow naturally and organically, which led to them being able to expand their retreats from their initially planned region of only Sri Lanka to international destinations such as Nicaragua, Cambodia, Mexico and Bali. The girls have used their travel experience to help research and select for ideal retreat locations, and have learned a lot about the patience and optimism it can take to run a business along the way. On this episode, we talk to them about everything from how they got Adzenture started, the lessons they’ve learned along the way, how the expectations of running a business differ from the reality, and Sri Lanka as an up and coming destination for yoga retreats.

Enjoy!

What we talk about in this episode:

• How Azma and Daniela first got into travel, and how the advent of social media and seeing what people got up to in the world inspired Daniela to quit her job and travel
• Daniela’s trip to Australia, Asia and Europe in 18 months, and how it changed the way she viewed travel
• Azma’s experience of moving to Canada at 9 years old inspiring excitement in her to get to know the people and culture of new places
• Azma’s decision to move back to Sri Lanka a couple of years ago to experience the country as an adult and understand what it was like to live there
• Azma’s trip through South East Asia enjoying the culture and food, and her return back to Toronro
• The story of how Azma and Daniela met while they were traveling during a friend’s bachelorette in Mexico
• How Daniela decided to move to Australia, and how the girls became closer relating to each other’s travel experiences and wanting to continue traveling once they arrived back in Toronto
• Daniela and Azma’s decision upon returning to Toronto that they didn’t want to return back to the corporate world, and deciding to create a travel business that would allow them to travel
• Daniela’s realization while working a corporate job in Australia that she no longer wanted to work for someone else, and that she wanted more freedom from her career
• Where the girls got the idea from for Adzenture, including Daniela’s love for yoga and getting her yoga teacher certification in Hawaii
• The value of getting away from your usual environment to educate yourself about something, including being around like-minded people, being completely immersed in the subject, and stepping out of your comfort zone
• How the idea for Adzenture came to her in a meditation, and how the girls explored a bunch of avenues and had to narrow it down to their current model
• The initial idea of the business being to bring people together and providing a retreat space, and how the girls came up with their initial itinerary
• The initial setback of not having anyone sign up for their first retreat, how they bounced back and what they learned from the experience
• How they decided to still go through with the trip to Sri Lanka and use the opportunity to get to know the country and create content for their business by taking photos
• How they shifted their tack from hosting retreats to planning them for yoga teachers, and how this was immediately more successful, and the decision to partner with other yoga teachers to host yoga retreats where there was already an established audience
• The importance of staying flexible and allowing the growth of the company to evolve naturally, and how this allowed them to go global with their retreats during a meeting with an international client
• The value that Azma’s hospitality background brings to the business and the importance of recognizing the strengths that each team member brings to the table
• The girls’ focus on trying to be optimistic as possible when running the business, and figuring out solutions to challenges along the way
• Some of the international locations they are currently running retreats, including Mexico, Bali, Cambodia, Nicaragua, and upcoming retreats planned in Iceland and Costa Rica
• How the girls find the local businesses they work with to host the retreats, including requirements such as needing a covered space, location logistics, reading reviews and reaching out to other tour operators
• How there is an overlap between researching for travel and researching to plan a retreat, and how the girls’ experience with traveling has helped them in this way
• How expectations for building and running the business have differed from the reality, including viewing new places in a business mindset as opposed to a traveler/vacation mindset, and the patience that is sometimes required to start seeing revenue coming in
• Their experience learning and improving as they go along and not tying all the work they do to a dollar value, the importance of building relationships with the teachers they work with and how this has led them being introduced to networks of other potential clients
• How Adzenture finds potential yoga teachers to work with, including targeting potential clients geographically, and the added challenge that working primarily digitally without meeting the person can add
• The girls’ personal favourite location for retreats being Sri Lanka, and how they love the diversity of the nature and the cultural warmth they experience there
• Azma’s other favourite destination of the hard to get to Little Corn Island in Nicaragua, and their hope to schedule a retreat there in the future
• Sri Lanka’s position as an up and coming destination for yoga retreats, and positioning it as a great new option to host them
• The girls’ future plans for where they would like to be based out of now that they run an essentially mobile business, and their eventual plans to open up a retreat centre
• Their future plans for Adzenture and the different types of retreats they would eventually like to run

You can also check out our new travel community on Facebook where you can ask questions, get travel recommendations, and find community members in your area!

If you would like to support the continued growth of the show and receive cool kickbacks like postcards from around the world and one on one calls with Ryan and Amanda, head on over to Patreon. Thank you so much for your continued support!

Music Credits:

www.bensound.com

You can connect with Daniela, Azma and Adzenture Retreats on Facebook, Instagram and online!