What If You Could Double Your Sales… Without Doubling Your Hours?

🎙️ New Episode: What If You Could Double Your Sales Without Doubling Your Hours

Most travel agents think growth means working more—but this episode challenges that.

They break down how every task you do falls into a different “bucket.” Some are $20/hour tasks, others are $200/hour tasks—and if you’re doing everything yourself, you’re slowing down your own growth. The real shift happens when you start letting go of repeatable work and focus on what actually drives revenue.

It starts simple: track your day. If you’re doing the same task over and over, it can be taught, documented, and handed off. That’s how you free up time—not by working harder, but by working smarter and building systems around what you do.

And the result? More time for sales, faster responses, and the ability to grow without burning out. Sometimes the biggest shift isn’t doing more—it’s deciding what to stop doing.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

One of the things I noticed is when a travel agent tries to hire a VA for the first time, one of the things they really struggle with is figuring out what to give to the VA or building up that trust. I think the easiest way to do it is just kind of keep track of what you're doing each day. And if you do something more than three times, let's say in a week or really even a month, that's a repeatable task. Any repeatable task should be able to be taught to somebody else. So keep track of what you're doing, kind of keep a notepad next to you. If you find yourself doing that task a couple of times within a month, go ahead and start creating an SOP. Start creating documentation around how you do the task. And now you have something else to pass off. Over time, this will build and build and build.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Year or two into my business, I knew I needed a change and I wasn't even sure what that change was yet. I decided it was time to get an assistant. Um, I was a little hesitant at first because I hate to give up control, but I finally gave in, gave up control. And not only did it give me back a lot of time, um, but I was able to expand my business and double my sales in less than a year. Best thing I ever did for my business. Welcome to the Travel Agent Guide, the podcast pulling back the curtain on what it really takes to be a travel agent. We're talking real life, the challenges, the wins, the money, the mistakes, and the growth. Whether you've been in the travel industry for years or are new to it, we're in this together and you're exactly where you need to be.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

This episode is so exciting because we're diving into the reality of how could I double my sales without doubling my hours, which is basically every travel agent's dream come true. And I think too many of us think, well, I can't take on that extra client because I just don't have time and I'm striving for some semblance of a work-life balance. And that is, I would say, the most difficult thing about this career is work-life balance. It just almost doesn't exist in this industry. Um, Haley, do you feel like you've finally gotten a good balance with your clients?

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Oh, yeah, for sure. I it took quite some time, right? It took a couple of years to get there, where obviously boundary setting um helped out, but learning to kind of give up some of those tasks that was sucking up all my time was pivotal, right? It changed everything. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Yeah. Yeah. Show of hands. Who's ever answered a text at 11 o'clock at night?

unknown 2:21

Right?

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Who's ever been on the phone on a Saturday when they shouldn't have? Like I think we've all struggled with that. And I think that that's where this conversation I'm really, really excited about because there are ways to get there. And one of the big things we're gonna talk today is about having an assistant. But we're not just gonna say you should have an assistant. We're gonna dive deep into exactly what your assistant should be doing for you. But then we'll also take some time and to explain like we'll talk hiring, we'll talk pay, we'll talk all these details because I think it's so important for people in the industry to understand. Um, so let's start there. Let's start with what an assistant is. And Haley, maybe you talk a little bit about your relationship with your assistant. Because I will be honest, I remember you really struggling with that trust component. Let's start there. Like, how did you build trust?

SPEAKER_00 3:13

I've always been a control freak. Um, so with work, it's you know, you take pride in what you do. And yeah, the first thought for me was if I give this up, what are my clients gonna think? Right? Like, how am I gonna position myself as somebody else stepping in to do my work? I felt like I was gonna be inadequate and not a real travel advisor. So it was definitely a mindset shift, and it took me some time to, you know, transition and figure that out. But the reality is, I got to the point where I had no choice. It was, you know, either now or it's just gonna be a mess. And now I'm gonna have my clients upset because I was unable to meet what they needed. Um, and that's when it all changed. That's when I got my assistant and I started giving up tasks little by little. And I'm like, oh, what else can I give up? And how much easier is this gonna be for me? And it really gave me the opportunity to focus on sales. I think at the end of the day, that's what this job is sales. I don't love the admin work, I hate it. It's not what I want to do. I want to be up front of my clients all the time. So by getting an assistant, it was a game changer for my business.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

And we have a similar story because I didn't want to hire an assistant. And now it's funny, every time I talk to an agent that's like, oh, I'm so busy, I'm gonna hire an IC. I'm like, oh God, no, that's the worst case scenario at the end of the day. And we can have a whole episode to dive deeper into why that's a bad first choice. But the assistant was really hard for me to swallow because in my eyes, I was just giving up money and I was just gonna spend money. And really what made me do it was because my customer service wasn't at the level I wanted it to be. I mean, the exact same thing you you experienced of, I want to deliver this, I want to deliver the white glove, the super excited, you have to come back to me because bird's incredible, right? And I was delivering that in the beginning through the entire sales process. And then afterward, when they would be like, hey, can we change this? Or hey, can we add this on, or hey, can we make this dinner reservation? Those emails took a lot longer for me to answer. Like I just wasn't excited about them. And I finally took a long, hard look in the mirror and realized this is B plus service, and that's not the kind of business I'm gonna run. Um, so that was the first time I started hiring. So we're very aligned with that. When people kind of give in to when they need help, um, it's probably because they feel like it's not quite to the level they want it to be. The other thing I would say is maybe you catch yourself turning away clients. Um, you know, I don't want to take that on because then I'm not gonna give the level of service. So I'm gonna turn that down. The big conversation here at the end of the day are that not every task is created equally. And we need to admit that to ourselves, right? Haley, did you ever get to the point where you were turning down clients because it was just too much?

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Yeah, either that or to be honest with you, I mean, clients waiting too long for me and walking away, right? And I've had that happen a few times where I just got too busy and instead of being transparent, or if I was transparent, it was like, okay, well, I have another travel agent who can get to me faster. So great, you know, drowning in the admin was just destroying my business. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Yeah, that's a really good look at it. Um, it's funny you say that because we did have a client that that walked away and she's like, I just want to let you know, I booked a $50,000 cruise with someone else because they responded faster. And I was like, oh, what a like you could feel the knife in your gut, right? And it's frustrating because I knew I had control over that. That wasn't anyone's fault but my own. Um, so yeah, it's a financial problem if you're not doing it the right way. Okay, so first let's dive into really the different types of tasks and what it could look like. Um, I do want to talk about assistant pay, what you should expect. I want to talk about the hiring process. There's a lot that kind of goes into this, but I think the low-hanging fruit is the task. Um, so I like to describe it as there's different buckets and your tasks go in different buckets. And if you're just hiring for the very first time, what I would do is I would literally have a piece of paper draw, um, draw some buckets on it, draw three columns, whatever you have to do. And above one, put $10, and above another, put $100, and above a third, put a thousand dollars. There are tasks you do that you could pay someone $10 an hour to do the task, dinner reservations, spa appointments. These are the obvious. We'll get in some really detailed ones here in a minute. But then you have tasks that are the hundred dollar task. They're a little more nuanced, they need a little bit more expertise. Um, this may be like proposal creation, pulling quotes. This may be um, I think there's a variety of like customer service issues when something's gone wrong, right? And then there's a thousand dollar task. Can you think of anything you've done that you've made a thousand dollars on in an hour? Booking the trip, right? Like or pitching the trip, doing the actual proposal. Um, usually you make $8,000, if not a couple thousand off of those if you're doing it the right way. Um, so there's these different buckets, and the idea is to just watch yourself work for a little while and have this sheet of paper in front of you. And as you're working throughout your day, kind of drop in each bucket the task that you're doing. So, you know, a client emails you and asks you about the dress code. That's a $10 an hour task. You could pay someone $10 an hour to do it. And the idea is you start offloading the smallest task first so you get comfortable and you kind of ease into it a little bit. Um, I think several of you are probably sitting out there going $10 an hour. It's $15 an hour minimum wage in my city. We'll talk through again pay in in a minute, but the idea is not the dollar amount. Don't get hung up on that. The idea is small, medium, and large, very nuanced task. Um, Haley, is that how you started kind of first thinking about this process as well?

SPEAKER_00 9:05

Yeah, absolutely. It's just figuring out the smaller things that you can give up and then eventually where you can give off the bigger things that are holding you down and weighing you down. I love the market. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

It's it's a we almost need to take into account inflation and be like, okay, you have $20 an hour, $200 and $2,000.

unknown 9:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

And change the conversation a bit. But um one of the things that we've done at Sava Travel is we've fully trained assistants for our ICs. Um, and we're we're a host agency, so it's not you don't have to use this. It's kind of an add-on product to the host agency that we've created where you can say, okay, I want to use an assistant, I want to use a guest experience assistant, I want to use a pre-departure assistant. Um, and for us, it was just simply the fact that it's really hard to train an assistant. So we'll talk about training here in a second, too, because that is the piece that I think is really intimidating to a lot of people. They say, Well, it only took me five minutes. Why would I take an hour to train somebody else to do it? Well, because it only took you five minutes, but you did it 25 times last month and you're gonna do it 25 times every month for the rest of your life. Take the hour and train somebody else. So I think that's where we get a little caught up is it takes me longer to train someone than it does for me just to do the work. That is true. So you've got to get it out of your head if you're going to use an assistant. Like that is if you're if you're not at Sava Travel, because we train them for you, but if you're training them yourself, like you've got to get that out of your head. That cannot be the mindset you have because you have to realize, yes, it does. It does take longer to train, and there's a reason that you're training and there's an end game here, right? Haley, when it comes to training assistants, did you ever have like hurdles? Did you feel like they kind of get it? Did you talk a little bit about that, about the beginning stages of working with an assistant?

SPEAKER_00 10:58

It's always gonna take some time, just like anything new. Um, typically, your admin or your assistant probably already has a good take on what admin work is. So it's just explaining your systems and training them on your systems and what your expectations are. Um, you know, creating documents and putting it down and writing for them. One of the tools that I do frequently is quick little Zoom videos or Teams videos where I'm teaching them and showing them how to do it, send it off. It's a five-minute clip, and this is how you do it, and then store that for them to be able to access. It takes a little bit of time, but if you find the right person and you go back and forth with each other, then you know, in in a month, you'll have a well-oiled machine and you guys will be rocking. I promise.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

Okay, so I I heard a bunch of horror stories before I hired our first assistant. And uh, so in my head, I just had that for sure this person was I'm gonna have to fire them in a month, and I don't want to do it all over. So I took a very similar approach to you, Haley, but I created um it. I use the word SOP. It's standard of procedures, is what it stands for. It's a corporate lingo because I have a corporate background, but essentially take a Google Doc. I would record the video. Um, I think people learn different ways, and you want to make sure that you have a lot of different options for them. So I would record the video with step-by-step instructions. I would drop the video into the Google Doc, and then I would have the step-by-step instructions written out. Each one takes like an hour. It takes like an hour to make an SOP, even if it's a very simple task. But the idea is just do one a week. And then at the end of the year, you have 52 tasks now off your plate. And if for some reason your VA quits or gets hit by a bus or whatever the issue may be, the reality is it doesn't matter. You can plug somebody new into this a lot easier because now you have all these training docs you've put together. So for our company, like, I mean, you know, like our blood is the SOP. When we bring on somebody new, we don't worry about it. We say, This is how you do it. Go watch this video, read these instructions, do everything exactly like it says, and you'll be fine. Because a lot of advisors have also, have you ever heard this? Like, well, I don't want to give it to someone else because they're not gonna do it the way I do it.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Yes, that was me. That was uh like the whole And then you're like, wait, they did it better than me. I'm not too. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

But like the whole point of an SOP is so they do it the way you do it. I mean, that's what that's my biggest comeback when someone says, I don't want to hire anybody, they're not gonna do it the way I do it. That's literally your job is to show them how you do it so they can repeat it. It's you know, I hate to to be this blunt, but what we do is not open heart surgery. And what you do as a travel agent, there's nothing that's that unique or special that can't be duplicated. Um, and I say that looking in a mirror, right? Like I'm not a unique, special butterfly. Like anything I do can be taught to someone else to do. So um, now the relationship building is where your thousand dollar tasks are. I would absolutely put that in the thousand dollar task bucket, and that's where you should lean in when you have all this extra free time. And we'll get to that in a minute. But um, so the SOP is a really unique, kind of easy way to start doing it. And I also want to say if you're sitting there like, okay, cool, bird, but I can't afford somebody 40 hours a week. A lot of companies will let you hire somebody for 10 hours or 20 hours, and then you could ease into using them full time. So don't feel the need to hire someone full time right off the bat, day one. Um, I hired somebody at 10 hours and within a month, he was full time because I was like, oh my goodness, look what this is doing for me. Look at the time I'm saving, look at the uh like amount of bookings I was able to handle. I would go back and do that 10 times over because it was so eye-opening. Um, so if you think you can't do 40 hours, start with 10. And I bet you'll prove yourself wrong really quickly. Um, all right, Haley, what else are we doing as far as like the beginning that training? Anything else that you're really doing that you've noticed has created a difference?

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Yeah, just you know, spending time with them and showing them your process, I think is important and explaining to them what a travel agent really is. So take some time and make sure, aside from the admin, this is actually what I'm doing. I'm selling trips to my client, these are what their expectations are. Um, I've never had an assistant who has built out a trip with me in the beginning process. If you choose to do that, fantastic. Let me know how it goes because that could be the next thing, right? Um, but with that said, it's just getting aligned with them. So you make sure you're on the same page from start to finish. And then that's pretty much it. Just spend as much time as you can, 10 hours a week, get them on a call, do all the things with them. Then they're gonna understand what your expectations are so they don't let you down, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:51

So I will tell you, I've hired three separate people just to create proposals for me because where I think I'm really great is I love pitching. I love doing the consultations. I like pitching is my that's my sweet spot. That's where I really have the most fun. So I was like, I don't wanna build it out. I just want someone to hand it to me and then I'll pitch it all day long, right? And I'm great at that. And it's never worked. And I don't know if it's me. I don't know because right, we've hired all these, we have 25 full-time assistants on staff right now, for anyone listening out there. Like we have this assistant thing dialed in and it's amazing. But that piece I've never been able to dial in because no one does it the way I want them to do it. And I try to explain, but then they come back with hotels that I just wouldn't pick that hotel, or maybe that's not exactly what I'm looking for. And it's a little more different because and difficult because I focus on FIT trips in Europe. So there's a lot to pick and put together. If you're out there doing cruises, if you're out there doing all-inclusives, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of options, a lot of nuance, and a lot of knowledge that goes into it. Um, but it might be a little bit easier. So I don't want to dissuade anyone from doing it, but I did Haley want to mention, like, tried it.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

I've tried everything. I haven't tried it and I agree with you. I think, you know, there's a process that goes into building a trip. And if I'm not spending that time doing it, I'm gonna get on a call and sound like an idiot, right? I'm gonna be like, uh, I don't know the proximity of this hotel or or what that looks like. So yeah, I agree. That's one thing I don't think I'm willing to ever give up. Um then at that point, our job is kind of not our job, right? Let's be honest.

SPEAKER_01 17:28

But I just want to be in a room and pitch all day long. Like that's all I want to do.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

After I book a trip, I I will have my assistant go in and breath out every voucher and all the final documents, add it to the itinerary, spiff up the itinerary to make it perfect. Absolutely, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:43

I love it. Okay, well, let's talk into what are these 25 people doing for us. So everybody can kind of get some really good ideas on um what they can train their own assistants to do and really, so this is probably the note-taking portion of the podcast. This is where I think you'll you'll spark some, oh, that might make sense for me. So we've done this in other podcasts and we've really gone into really um aggressive detail about our guest experience team and our pre-departure team. Um, but so we'll we'll keep it more high-level on this one, but I do want to just have a quick list of this is what they're usually focused on. Um, so Haley, why don't you take guest experience first and then I'll take pre-departure?

SPEAKER_00 18:23

Yeah, guest experience manager. Um, so again, your fully trained assistant is coming in whenever you're done booking the trip, right? They're gonna come in, take over. You can send an intro email to your client um and basically let them know like my assistant, clients love to hear that you have an assistant. Okay, great. Haley has an assistant, she's serious. She's it's a different level. So I do explain this in the consultation process, but either way, it's just reminding clients that we always have multiple sets of eyes on every element that I book. I tell them I do make mistakes, right? So having these people are just reassurance to making sure your trip is seamless. So guest experience will come in. I have guest experience quote out insurance as well for me. Um, so I just put over an email like, hey, let's get insurance quotes sent out. I do realize that, you know, Turn and some other platforms now have integrations with insurance. Travel insured is not quite there yet. So I'm still using that. But even at that point, my assistant can still go in and make sure that button's being clicked and being processed and the actual invoice has gone out. That to me has saved everything. And not only that, my assistant will tell me, hey Haley, guess what? Your client's traveling in a month and we still don't have an insurance policy. So let's follow up with them until we get this checked off. Um, if they're gonna waive it, let's get them a waiver sent over just to protect you. That extra protection has saved me so many times, like more times than I can count.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Here's where you said you didn't want insurance, even though you lied. I will also tell you some insider information that I think will probably be outsider information by the time this podcast airs. Travel Insured is uh finalizing their integration with turns. So I think that that'll be here before you know it.

SPEAKER_00 20:11

I'm excited for it. I've been waiting. So yeah, the insurance piece has been huge for me. Then we dive into special reservations and you know, certain things that I just don't want to have the time doing. I have a honeymoon couple who wants two spa days and all these special treatments. I don't have time to go pull the menus to help them figure out what they want. So guest experience will come in and be like, okay, here's the spa menus. Um, what are your options in send over final pricing, get confirmation on pricing? We go ahead and get it locked in. Um, they'll even upload the confirmation to the itinerary, right? So if something does happen when they're in destination and all of a sudden that, you know, confirmation doesn't they say, oh, we don't have that reservation, we have that to fall back on. Um that's super important to me as well. We also do that with dinner reservations. Um, so sometimes you have to WhatsApp or phone call in, that's fine. But every other chance we get in writing, the guest experience manager will upload all those documents to your itinerary.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

And don't forget like client special requests. How often do you have it like so-and-so's birthday? We went uh balloons in the room, or you know, I I want to propose somewhere. Where should I propose that? Like, I want to do whatever. And I I just really enjoy having someone to lean on where I'm like, hey, the Smith trip just said that they want to take family photos under the Eiffel Tower. I ain't got time for that.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Yeah, I just had a client, I just had a client two weeks ago heading to Japan and South Korea. They're like, Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you the 23rd is actually our anniversary. That day we have this tour. Can we move it? Because I think we want to find something super special to do that day. And it's two weeks beforehand. I'm like, okay. Guest experience. My assistant, can you help with this? And honestly, it's done in an hour. Like, if I had to try to get through that task of moving the tour, finding a new tour, and adding it on my plate, it would just be, it wouldn't have happened, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Or the flight change. So now I have to change the transfer time or update them. Like I hate doing that kind of stuff. Or like, did you put my TSA pre-check number on my flights? No, but my guest experience manager, well, like she's gonna be all over that. Or we want to make sure we're sitting together, we want to do whatever. I will also say, like, pro tip everyone. You know how you get on the pre-departure call and you're going through the itinerary and you're walking through all the details, and there's little requests that come up during that call. And it's a little annoying because you're usually one week out from the trip and you're like, oh, okay, I got to do this quickly. I will tell you that I just keep a list of each and every request. And then the second I get off that call, I email my guest experience manager and I put in the title, I put urgent Smith, you know, whatever the last name of the client is. And then I am like, here's the list of stuff they want you to do. And she knows they leave in seven days, you know, she has access to all my trips. So she knows and she's able to jump in there and and do what's necessary to get it done. And it's not any skin off of my back. They could ask all the requests they want. It's not on me at the end of the day. And I love, I love that process. It's my favorite thing we've created.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

It is, it's it's a game changer. You're still making the client happy, right? You're giving them everything that they want and you're leaning on your assistant to help you out with it.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

I I want to poke for a second too. And if if you're listening to the podcast, you're like, we've heard all this, fast forward a couple minutes because we will still talk about pay. We'll talk about how to hire hire. I want you guys to hear all those things as well. But um, I did want to kind of point out the the guest experience manager, like when you make that introduction, you mentioned earlier, like your clients love hearing you have an assistant. It makes you look like you're that much more successful. And I don't know about you, but when it comes to me choosing an accountant or a lawyer or any other professional services, I don't want the guy that's got three clients. I want the guy that is slammed and working really hard and has a ton of clients that trust him. And I think that just simply uh saying you have an assistant gives the client that idea, even if you don't. And I think that's why at Sava, I like it as kind of an easy add-on because you don't have to be full-time to use our guest experience team. And you don't have to be doing millions of years to use our guest experience team, but you have this person you can plug in and lean on. And the idea is that you're giving them all of those little tasks that take up time so you can really lean into your sales and hopefully spend time networking, asking for referrals, getting the repeat clients, and really build up your sales over time. So that's the idea. So our next one is pre-departure. Um, this is also an add-on we do for Sava, but this is also something you can absolutely hire at yourself. Again, I'm not a rocket scientist, nothing I'm doing is crazy here. Pre-departure, high level, they go into all of your actual booking systems and make sure it matches exactly what your itinerary says. So if you're using Travify or Axis or Turn or any of these other ones that have an itinerary built out, you're taking the confirmation number and putting and all the confirmation information and putting it into your system, right? And I don't know about you, but I've made a mistake or two in my day. And the reality is that that's normal and it's okay, especially if you're booking a million plus dollars a year. You're going to make mistakes. So pre-departure's job is to go in 30 days in advance and find your mistakes and fix them for you. So they check every single booking and make sure it's booked perfectly. They reach out to the transfers and make sure the transfer company has the flight information and the client's direct phone number. They make sure the itinerary has all the meeting locations for any of the tours, all the right times, um, all the, you know, anything at all that needs to be in there, train tickets, any kind of documents that need uploading, they're all in the right order, the things, right? Then for the hotel, this is the piece that I think is the most unique and um amazing about the way that we go after this process is our pre-departure team emails every single hotel 30 days in advance, and they will follow up continuously until they get a response. The email itself, there's three sections. The top section is the can you confirm? Here's the confirmation number, check-in, checkout date, client's names, room type. Just confirm it matches. The second section is can you please leave a handwritten note in the client's room signed by the advisor? Beautiful. The third section's a couple little like add-ons extras. So one of them is with that note, do you mind leaving a complimentary amenity? You'd be shocked how many hotels are like, yeah, we'll leave a bottle of wine in the room for you. And you're like, Really? I don't even have to pay for it. Like that happens very, very often. So that's one. Um, that extra, the other extra is it's the client's anniversary, honeymoon, whatever it is. Um, or it's um their flight lands at 7 a.m. Can we request an early check-in? And then last but not least is is there any construction happening at the hotel? I want to set expectations for my client. Is there any expectation setting that needs to happen before they arrive? Um, though that email has been a game changer so many times. I don't know if anybody out there is booking through beds online, booking through Rate Hawk, booking through Expedia, honestly, even booking through like Vacation Express and Vax or any of them, they're third-party booking systems. They're not direct bookings with the hotels. They they take your information and pass it on to the hotel and it hopes that it all aligns. But I'm gonna tell you, and granted, we're doing really high volume. So we probably run into this more than others, but it's not unusual that what you booked in the system is not what the hotel has. Hey, Haley, you've run into this, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:04

It's happened more times than not, which typically we catch it. And this goes back to me before I had my assistant, and this became a thing. I did have a client show up to Seattle and it was through Funget or VAX. And the issue was they were trying to charge a client's credit card, it was like $2,500. Um, clients weren't happy. I never reached out to them first because I didn't have the bandwidth, and it was a lot of going back and forth with VAX. But what happens is they're sending over like a corporate card process the payment, and sometimes those payments get lost between the front desk or whoever's job it is. It's common and it happens a lot. I've had it happen with dozens of bookings. Now with the pre-departure team, right? I 30 days we can typically catch it ahead. So if there is a problem, I can troubleshoot it. So when guests arrive, the issue's been they never know.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

They never even know. That's the best part. You want to know how many times I have royally messed something up. Pre-departure has caught it and I've saved it all, and the client is none the wiser. Like it's it's a beautiful system at the end of the day. And you need that second and third set of eyes on trips, especially if you're doing FITs out there. But even if you're doing all inclusives and cruises where they're much simpler, you need a second set of eyes. We had an advisor that a year ago booked the right dates wrong year, you know, didn't even think about it, didn't even like realize that she was going through. The client arrived, and they're like, You're supposed to be here next year. Come on back. Like, that's not gonna work. Um, and she joined our pre-departure team after that. But had somebody had a second set of eyes, they would have caught that, you know, and it would have been like such a game changer. So it's a lot of just making sure there's a safety net under you. If you're gonna do real volume in this industry, your reputation is everything. And I think too many people are out there risking their reputation day in and day out, just crossing their fingers that everything's going smoothly. Whereas whereas I get to sleep soundly at night because I know my trips are gonna run smoothly and I know everything's gonna go off without a hitch. Now a flight may cancel or a train may be protesting or whatever, that's out of my control. But as far as is the client gonna look at me and say, You did this, no, that's not on me, right? That those things are absolutely taken care of. So, anything else with peer departure, Haley, that I missed?

SPEAKER_00 30:29

No, no, they're just your saving grace before the trip. So I love it.

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Yeah, um, and that that service is different, right? Because it's it's a one-time, they're going in and doing all the things. So for that service, we charge a lot less than we do for guest experience managers. But for Sava, we do it as a piece by piece. And this is a piece where I really wanted to dive in and help you understand. So many advisors hire an assistant and they expect that person to be a jack of all trades. And I've gotta be honest, like the personality that is really, really great as a guest experience manager, and the personality that is really, really great at pre-departure and being detail oriented and analyzing things, those are different people. They just are, they're just different people. And I think too many people want to say, I'm gonna hire somebody for 20 hours a week to do all of it, and they have to be good at everything. You know, that that person that's very analytical and very detail oriented is not gonna be the person that's warm, bubbly, and great with your clients and building their own relationships. That's a really hard line to and some of you might have found someone that's perfect for it, and I don't want to belittle that. I'm just saying it's a really hard line. And if you have found that person, you need to give them a raise right now. Uh, would you agree with that or any any devil's advocate on kind of how those personalities play off of each other?

SPEAKER_00 31:59

No, I agree, Bird. I think obviously at first you want to kind of see what the admin's more excited for. And absolutely, there's you know, there's a difference working front to front with a client and saying, Oh, you really want to do an extra added on tour to Iceland, an ice cave. Perfect. So let me go research it and find it for you and bring it back to you and and and put it in the email. It is definitely a lot different than the pre-departure because you the pre-departure person has to be like very focused, very detail-oriented. They both are, but they're not having that communication with the client.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

Um, yeah, they need to be okay like being by themselves. Yeah, it's like you're not gonna talk to anybody all day long.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

And I guess so, anyone doing pre-departure, um, you guys are my angels, right? Because I couldn't do it. It's a hard job. It definitely is.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

It's a very hard job. And I I think I would just need to interact more at the end of the day because that's who I am, right? I'm an extreme extrovert, so I get all my energy from people, and it would be really hard to be in a room by myself all day and not talk to anybody. So, again, just as you're hiring, kind of keep some of those personality quirks in mind because I do think it will really attribute to the success or the failure of the person you hired. Um, let's talk about hiring more as well. So I do I do the hiring for this. So I'll take over a little bit unless Haley, if you think that I'm doing it wrong, jump in.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

I would have already told you by now, Bert.

SPEAKER_01 33:33

There we go. Um, oh, I know. No, I'm kidding. So, one of the things that I would say is really important for us is to make sure that you're not hiring somebody that is directly out of college, um, because there is a maturity that happens in those mid-20s years that makes a really big difference. Um, and I have noticed that time and time again. Every time I've rolled the dice thinking it was gonna be fine, it just wasn't. So a couple of years experience, this is not a they need 20 years experience kind of role. Like we know that, right? But a couple of years experience is um pretty mandatory, I would say. So let's say that we're trying to hire someone that's 26. Haley, you live in Massachusetts. Haley lives in Boston, everybody. Uh, if I were trying to hire somebody out of Boston to do hire a 26-year-old out of Boston to do, I mean, more or less customer service, uh, what do you think the ballpark in 2026 is for that kind of job?

SPEAKER_00 34:31

Probably minimum starting 20 to 22 an hour.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

And and I brought this up because we have an Amazon plant right up the road from where I live. And they pay starting at $25 an hour, and they're probably going after a similar market at the end of the day. And man, I don't know about you, but that is that's brutal. Like $25 an hour for entry level is it's really hard pill to swallow. And I think a lot of advisors are looking at it and they're just like, I can't afford it. Like I can't afford it at the end of the day. And there's a mindset shift that I want to dive a little bit deeper into, and we'll talk about how we get around some of this pay. But um, the mindset shift of I can't afford it, again, if you could find yourself affording even 10 hours, I'm gonna push you to give it a try because I guarantee. So let's say you are paying them $20 an hour. So that'd be $200 a week for 10 hours. That $200, that those 10 hours, if you could take those 10 hours and go to three networking events and close one deal from one person that you met at those three different events, that's gonna pay for the entire month of hours of that person, right? Because we know an average, well, depends on what you're selling, but um, an average commission, you're gonna make about a thousand bucks or more. So if that's the reality, you have to think of it in that mindset of yes, but in this time frame, could I get another client? Do I have the demand? If not, do I feel confident I could generate the more demands? And if you're in that position and you believe you know, you truly believe it, and you're not gonna just sit on your couch for those extra 10 hours, that's where this kind of makes a really big difference, I think, at the end of the day. Haley, what do you think you did with most of your extra time when you were first given it back?

SPEAKER_00 36:15

I was just finding more clients and selling more trips, I think at the end of the day. Um again, I opened up time to work on things faster instead of saying, Oh, I'm not gonna be able to get to you for two weeks, right? Um, so it just helped me build my clients, right? Now a client knows we're chatting, you know, actively. Hopefully, the plan is a Europe FIT within two weeks, the latest, we're already closing the trip. Um, then the process starts and off they go. And I talk to them again in a month before the trip, and that just gives me all the time to keep working on the next trip coming in. I think networking is huge. Obviously, get out of your house, take those 10 hours, do that. Um, but also another thing too is take the time and understand what you're selling, right? If you have opportunity to upsell and make more money, but you haven't really learned how to do that yet. I think that's a huge potential that a lot of advisors are leaving on the table. You know, when you're pitching a trip, throw in that five-star property with a $1,500 upcharge, you'd be amazed at how many people are just blown away by it. And now you just made maybe $300 more in commission, right? So there's definitely ways to offset it. Get in and send an insurance code to every person you have on the books. That's big commissions coming in. And if you have an assistant now and your level of expertise just, you know, what you're providing goes up, start charging those fees. Now you have that leg to stand back on and justify, hey, this is why I charge a fee, right? So there's tons of ways to make money in the industry. You just have to be willing to put the time back in to do it.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

Beautiful, beautifully put in put because the reality of the matter is you are going to be given time back if you go through this process. But if you don't use the time to make more sales, you're gonna end up just doing yourself this huge disservice. Now, there's a couple of ways around this. One of the things I would say is at Sava, we don't charge for our trained assistants up front. We take a percentage of your commission on the back end. So up to you how you do that. There's a couple of different approaches, but if you want to pay up front, one of the other things that I would recommend is going through a VA service that is international. So a bunch of different hotbeds you'll see for them. Um, Argentina and South America's one. That's a really nice option because they are in the same time zone. So a lot of people will use them. Uh, India is one of the most common that you will hear of. Um, they have a large population and uh they will work for very cheap, right? At the end of the day, it is a bigger difference in time zone. You need to think through that. It is a thicker accent, you need to make sure that you're comfortable with all of that. But there's a lot of customer service done in the country. Um, the third most common country that you will hear of is the Philippines. Um, that is the country that I believe has fit best with my business. Um, and that's where our 25 uh assistants all live and work and have worked for years for us. And I like the Philippines for a couple of different reasons. One is they are exactly 12 hours difference from East Coast time. So if you live in the East Coast, you don't have to do math. And while I love math, I don't want to do it all day to say, is my VA awake right now? It is 251 as we are uh as we are recording this. I know it's 251 a.m. where they are right now. I don't have to ever think, I just know. Um, so that's really nice. The other thing that is really nice about the Philippines is because there are so many islands, they have developed really different dialects on each island. And because of that, the inter-islands can't communicate in their own dialects. So, what is very, very common in the Philippines is they learn English from a very young age, you know, two, three years old, they're learning English. So they can communicate with people on other islands. And because of this reason, English is so common, it is really, really um easy to speak and to find somebody that speaks English there. The third reason I really love the Philippines is because um it is a very customer service-oriented culture in general. And um, you will find people with experience in that industry very easily there. So that's where we go. I've used a couple of different staffing agencies. One of the ones I've talked most about is pineapple staffing. Haley, I think I've told you I literally did an entire speech one time and talked about Pineapple Express for like an hour before someone was like, Do you need pineapple staffing? I'm like, Yes, sorry. Pineapple staffing. Um, there's a bunch of them out there though. So uh if you want to reach out, I'm happy to send you a list of ones I've used and where I've had success. Um, but what I would say is typically you'll get quotes for anywhere from six to eight dollars an hour USD. Um, I would always go in at least at 10. Um, and I say that because you're gonna breed an incredible amount of loyalty with that approach. And it's not that big of a difference to you at the end of the day. Um, so that's my that's my spiel. Um, once people have been on the team for a while, you want to consider those, you know, $15 or $20 an hour positions because you truly will have those people working for you for life and working so hard to make your business grow and run properly. Um, so to me, that's absolutely worth the extra money at the end of the day. So that's pay range and a little bit around hiring. Um, the only other thing I would say is um if you're using something like upwork, if you're using something, um, what's the other one? There's a fiver is another big one that you'll find. Um, I don't find those as easy to work through. And you do have to understand there's some legalities to having independent contractors in other countries, hence why I like going through a staffing agency. Um, they don't charge anymore, they're typically the same rate. So I would recommend the staffing agency because these people are gonna be true employees of the staffing agency. So they're gonna pay the taxes, they're gonna pay the rice stipend, they're gonna pay the 13-month pay, they're gonna pay all these things you have to pay in the Philippines, and you're not gonna know about it or have to think about it. So they just make it really easy for you to go into um into that realm. Okay, that is pay, that is hiring. Anything you think I've missed there, Haley?

SPEAKER_00 42:28

No, I love your expertise.

SPEAKER_01 42:31

I it's just such an interesting, um, it's such an interesting way to go about doing things. And I think a lot of Americans are very timid to do so. But if you find a culture that you really fit into and you really begin to love, I think that it it feels very different going after it. At this point, like my husband laughs at me. He's like, You're gonna move to the Philippines one day, aren't you? I'm like, maybe they're nicer to me than you are sometimes. Um, so that's how we do staffing here at Sava Travel. For us, it's just a really big important piece of the puzzle that's missing in the industry. I don't know of any other host agency that's trying to equip you with an assistant. So we're a traditional host agency. We've got the 80, 90, 95 splits, we've got, you know, you do things the way you want to do it. If you want to use your own branding, but use our iata, go crazy. Um, but when you're ready, the biggest piece is we want to be able to plug this into your business more easily. And we have everybody at Sava use the same CRM. So everybody is given turn for free under our agency. So your assistants are already trained on your CRM. And if you're like, well, I don't want to change CRMs, you know, that's a conversation. You don't have to use turn, but we train the assistants on turn because we just think it's easy to walk in and make it more of a plug and play than a hey, you've got to do this yourself. You know, that's our spiel. Did I miss? I think that's good.

SPEAKER_00 43:59

No, it's So circling back, right? That's how you double your sales without doubling your time, right? Is get yourself an assistant.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

Absolutely. And I genuinely do think, and Haley, you might want to share your numbers because you haven't done that yet. But I genuinely do think as I've watched the 50 plus agents that use our concierge team today, watch them get onto the concierge team. Every single one of them, you see their sales numbers skyrocket afterward.

SPEAKER_00 44:27

Yeah, it's insanely impressive.

SPEAKER_01 44:30

It really is. Like it's it's like this giant gift they didn't know they needed. And now they're given all this time and they're like, oh, turns out I can actually capitalize on a lot more opportunity than I thought. I love it. All right. So everybody, we hope you have a great week. We can't wait to talk to you again next week, and we will see you then. Bye.