Thread by @bolanleolukanni

Crazy story. In 2021 I wanted to go to the Maldives & knew I wanted to do a collaboration with a hotel. So @Zainab__Balogun and I developed a a very well thought out pitch deck & began contacting hotels. Almost all responded to my dms

Some responded straight away and said they aren’t doing any collaborations. There was one hotel that responded and said I should send my deck. Upon sending it, this was the response I got from them.

It was very sincere, honest and not mean at all. I responded this back to them.

I moved on and kept pitching to other hotels. Finally we got a yes from a hotel- that’s been listed as the best resort in the Maldives. We went on the trip and it was amazing! But here is the crazy part-

One of the pieces of content that we created went viral and its probably amassed more than 5M views to this day when you combine all the times it’s been reposted. And it was exactly the piece of content I described, not over produced.

The video has been reposted by many global leading travel social media pages & it’s one of their top performing videos. Yes we may not have had so much experience in travel content as the hotel that rejected said, but we had a plan, We knew how to execute and we did!!!

Don’t let anyone tell you what you can or can’t do! Do your research, have a plan, do the work and show that you can deliver. Even if you don’t have experience, there is someone out there who will see the potential in you and when you meet them, they will say yes to you.

I can’t even find the original video, but here is a downloaded one :) Lool

And link to it on one of the socials that’s posted it. It was posted soooo many times and still gets posted. Video is pure vibes. instagram.com/reel/CUBcaeyse…

We went on to create some more amazing content for the trip and did so many other collaborations together with brands in 2021. Some pitched and some requests. Pitching is an art and it takes a lot of guts and being okay with hearing nos.