In this episode of Failing to Success, host Chad Kaleky talks to Rachel Covello, the founder of OutCoast, a Florida-based LGBTQ travel blog. Rachel shares how her journey started as a platform to share LGBT stories of Tampa Bay and evolved into Florida's only statewide LGBT travel blog. One of the pivots Rachel had to make was to shift from being a community platform to a travel-focused platform, which turned out to be a perfect moment when every pride event in Florida was canceled in 2020. Instead of putting dollars outside of the state to bring people into Florida, they were looking at Florida platforms and advertising channels that would get people road-tripping across the state. OutCoast was able to focus on the drive market, which was the perfect demographic for them.

OutCoast's content is focused on anything travel-related in Florida, and they also support a lot of local Floridians as well. The blog has readers from over 130 different countries, but it was started mostly with a Florida focus in mind. Rachel realized that there were other platforms that were similar to OutCoast, but that had been in the market a lot longer, so she wanted to do something different that stood out from what others were doing. Her background in photography and the connections she made in the travel industry led to a natural pivot to do travel.‍

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Intro

00:01:29 Big Pivots

00:03:58 The Blog

00:05:12 Monetization

00:10:18 Contact Rachel