Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Karlie Cummins. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Karlie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Too often the media represents innovation as something magical that only high-flying tech billionaires and upstarts engage in – but the truth is almost every business owner has to regularly innovate in small and big ways in order for their businesses to survive and thrive. Can you share a story that highlights something innovative you’ve done over the course of your career?
My trained career and the career I worked in for 15 years was a teacher and curriculum coordinator at Australian schools. When Facebook launched their pages tool back in 2012 I decided to share my passion for visiting to Bali with my friends on a page. Little did I know at that time it was Facebook’s strategy to push the Pages tool to make businesses rely on using it….then eventually start to charge you to grow an audience. My facebook page for my friends quickly grew an audience of 10,000 followers on Facebook.
With my new audience came requests for assistance in Bali travel planning. The Bali Buddies Facebook page soon turned into a Bali specific travel agency. We added a website and Instagram and our audience continued to grow. After a couple of years we started getting media requests from resorts, restaurants and activity providers, which is what prompted us to open an Indonesian company to provide digital advertising on our platform and also do digital consultancy. It also saw our family relocate from Australia to Bali to pursue the business growth.
Fast forward to now, almost 11 years since I set up the Facebook page and my “business by accident” is on of Bali’s leading local media companies reaching millions of people across the world each year via our various digital channels. We also provide consulting services to a number of tourist venues throughout Indonesia and host events throughout Bali.
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
Again most of this is answered in the first questions, and it’s probably the lead feature of my business “story”.
When I started the Facebook page it was about sharing tips to my friends about travelling to Bali. I was a teach in Central Queensland Australia. As the page grew and I turned the page into a travel agency I was still teaching. I continued to teach on a part time basis for the first four years of the business. When we moved to Bali full time in 2017 was when I finally gave up teaching to focus on Bali Buddies full time. Now Bali Buddies has a team of 12 of us.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
Learn your team’s love languages. Learning about love languages has helped in all aspects of my life as a wife, mother, daughter, friend, sibling, Aunt, employee….but none more so than as a leader. When I understand each of my team’s dominant love language and I can ensure I give them what they need to feel valued and satisfied in their role. And there is nothing easier than getting them to actually do the multiple choice “test/quiz” in their starting week to help me get to know them and understand better.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://balibuddies.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/balibuddies/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BaliBuddies
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karliecummins
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbr4lG2vtvzbOr3GQ9H32sg
- Other: Tiktok –https://www.tiktok.com/@bali_buddies
Image Credits
Bali Buddies