Garret (00:04.434)

Rodney, welcome to my podcast.

Rodney George (00:06.744)

Thank you. Great to be here.

Garret (00:09.182)

This is gonna be a fun episode. So audience, normally of course, we're gonna be talking about real estate and investing. And I thought I'd take a little bit of a detour here. Rodney George is in the travel industry and I just came back from vacation. So this is a perfect segue. But before we talk about what Rodney offers his clients, Rodney, can you kind of go through a bit of a background about yourself?

Rodney George (00:33.688)

Sure. I spent most of my life in the financial services industry. I was a financial advisor for right at 30 years. Retired at 55. I was single at the time. I was just going to relax, play golf, travel. And that worked for about six months. I got a phone call from a friend of mine who was doing some consulting work. And I managed to...

take what he was doing and take it to a big warehouse that I had retired from. And we did a consulting project there for two years. And after that, 08 hit and the market of course did one of these. And so I decided I better start trying to work on my golf game, but I never could get good enough. My friends were always taking my money away. So I said, I gotta find something else to do.

And a good friend of mine said, why don't you go to work for a travel agency? You've been all over the world. And I said, well, I don't really want to work for anybody the rest of my life. He goes, well, then start your own. And so that was 17 years ago. And we've grown to an agency where there's 10 of us now and a little over 200 years of travel experience. I managed to recruit some top people.

in the industry away from various firms over the years and we're just killing it having a great time helping people plan incredible vacations on all seven continents and all seven oceans.

Garret (02:08.86)

Wow, why don't you back up a little bit and tell me why, I mean, travel, you said that your friend had said you traveled all over the world. What ignited that passion?

Rodney George (02:21.13)

I think as a result of being in the financial services industry and both the combination of incentive trips and the financial wherewithal to travel and to travel well, I thought I had a lot to offer to people because I had seen the best and the worst from the world of travel. And it really doesn't cost that much more to do things first class. And most people don't know that.

Most people think if they get on the internet, they can find the best deals, they can put it all together themselves. But one example that proved it to me in spades, my wife and I 15 years ago, right after I started the agency, we decided we were going to go to the Society Islands, Tahiti, Bora Bora, Moraya. And while we were on Papiete, which is Tahiti, we rented a car one day and she had 12 things that she wanted to see.

Garrett, how many of those you think we found in the course of a day in our own rental car?

Garret (03:25.982)

couple. Okay, there you go.

Rodney George (03:26.776)

zero. And that proved to me in spades that we need to get some expertise about this world of travel because when you travel that far and you're and you go 0 for 12, it kind of gives you a sick feeling. So I learned the hard way that we had to ramp up and we've we hired people we have in addition to the the financial the the

travel advisors that we have. We have a couple of ladies that do nothing but concierge work and that takes things to a whole new level for our clients.

Garret (04:06.94)

Yeah, I think there's a lot of parallels. Again, I just came back from vacation. It wasn't too complicated. I just kind of went west here in Canada to Banff and Canmore, Alberta, which is obviously very beautiful. I think when you're going to different destinations, is, I mean, obviously people can look on the internet or you take a cruise and you have all these excursions laid out for you. But what you just said there, I mean, is that one of the things that a travel consultant can do?

versus the average everyday person.

Rodney George (04:39.18)

Yeah, because most people just they think they have a list of things and places they want to see, but they really don't know how to access those places. For example, we were on a cruise and we were in Florence, Italy, and we wanted to go to the Fuzzi Museum. And so we had a guide. And when we walked up to the door,

He gave the guy our tickets. We walked right in. There was a line all the way down the street and down the next street. And we walked right in. We did our hour and a half tour. came out and people from our cruise ship were still standing in line. And I'm guessing they were paying almost the same thing we paid, but we had a guide that knew how to get things done. And that's the expertise that we offer all over the world. It's funny you should mention BAMF. I have four clients in BAMF today.

They did the Rocky Mountaineer and of course your railroad went on strike last week and so instead of taking the rail from Kamloops to Banff they had to do it in a motor coach and they weren't real happy about it and I said just wait till you get to Banff you'll be very happy you went.

Garret (05:55.484)

No, there's, when I'm thinking of those lines, so let's go back to the cruise for a second there. And I'm jumping all over a little bit, but I just wanted to expand that a little bit. You're like, when you go on a cruise, again, there's these excursions, you can stand in line, you can sign up for them. Are you saying that you hired a private guide that wasn't an excursion?

Rodney George (06:15.948)

Yes, that's right. Because I find that, you know, we live in an area, Naples, Florida, where people have the two key elements for as far as we're concerned. They have the time and the financial wherewithal to travel and they want to travel well. And you put somebody, if I put one of my clients in a two hour line outside of a major museum that they just had to see,

they would not be happy campers. So you have to know the workarounds, if you will. You have to know how to get into the, I'm having a senior moment here in Rome, the,

Garret (07:02.974)

Coliseum Okay

Rodney George (07:03.852)

The Catholic Church, you have to know how to get in there at night. And it's a very special tour because it's you and maybe a dozen other people instead of a few hundred or a few thousand people. So it makes all the difference in the world when you know how to take and get things done the way that people would like to do.

and the incremental cost of doing it that way versus riding on a motor coach with 54 of your best friends is very, very minimal. The Vatican, that was what I was trying to think of.

Garret (07:38.834)

The Vatican, okay. That's quite all right. Okay, let's back up a little bit. Try to get some structure here, because I get super excited about travel. It's one of the reasons I work so hard is to travel. So from a business perspective, tell me a little bit about the company, how you started and the scaling of it. Bring us along that journey.

Rodney George (08:05.142)

Well, originally I just intended it for something for me to do, just to occupy a few hours of my day. And I saw right away that there was a much bigger need there. We started out with a franchise type operation and we thought that was the way to go and too many restrictions, too many constraints. So we went with an independent

It's called a host agency. It's like your wholesale access to the travel marketplace. And that worked really good for about three years until we really started to ramp up and they have no systems or back office support. So we started shopping around and we found another franchise operation that had more technology than I even know how to use. And we've been with them for over 10 years now.

As matter of fact, they have 3000 franchises and we're almost always month in, month out, year in, year out. We're in the top three to five agencies in the country. And that's because of the talent that we have in working with people here in, and our clients, they may winter in Naples, but they live all over the world. So, and we work with them no matter where they happen to be.

Garret (09:26.822)

Okay, well walk me through a typical experience. Let's, I mean, I know there's so many family of four that want to go away for a week to Disney World. Okay, well we'll pick on Florida. Okay, mom and dad start, you know, start looking on the internet for discount airfares, right? And then they start looking around for tickets and maybe they know what to do, what not to do. Can you kind of differ what you guys might do for them?

Rodney George (09:30.018)

you

Rodney George (09:56.822)

Well, I'll tell you in general how we do. don't do any Disney because my clients don't do Disney. We have a lady in our office that does all the Disney, so she just takes care of it. So I should have asked her to come on. But in general, we spend time finding out what the client wants to do, why it's important to them, how they decided on whatever that destination might be. In this case, you mentioned Disney.

Garret (10:06.856)

Okay.

Rodney George (10:26.168)

And what are all the must -dos, the should -dos, the nice -to -dos on that vacation? And many times they don't know. They just know that they want to go to Disney or that they want to go to the Amalfi Coast of Italy. They have a pretty limited spectrum. So we have a whole host of questions that we go through then to help them really fine tune and tweak what's important to them.

about their vacation. I mean, have clients come back, I a family of 12. They did four of the Greek Isles in 15 days. They wanted to charter a yacht, but there were 13 members of the family. And in Greece, you can only have 12 fare paying customers on a yacht. And so we had to move them about using fast ferries from point to point.

The mom, the matriarch in the family, just, she was, she knew that this whole thing was just going to be a horror story. And when she came back, actually, our PR firm did a case study on them. And she said, I could not believe it. 13 family members, 15 days, four islands in Greece, and not one thing fell through the cracks.

Garret (11:54.672)

Okay, so let's scrap Disney for a second, because my kids are older now. When you are planning one of these trips for folks, you said you were going through some kind of questionnaire and they're just picking a destination. How do you guys know so much about that destination?

Rodney George (12:00.207)

you

Rodney George (12:15.128)

Well, when you have 200 years of experience in your office, and there are very few places in the world that I have not personally been, but we have people that, like we have a lady in our office who's from Sweden. So all the Nordic states, I mean, she knows that like the back of her hand, and she still speaks very, I mean, she has a very thick accent still, and she's lived in the United States for over 40 years. So we just have, it's almost like Mission Impossible. I don't know if you're...

You're probably too young to remember that show, but Peter Graves would have all the pictures out of all the people and he would pick the ones that he needed for that project. Just this morning, we booked a Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand trip with some really great clients. We booked a honeymoon, an over the top honeymoon for a new client. And this is all just.

Garret (12:44.625)

yeah.

Rodney George (13:10.762)

Okay, what do you know about this? I sent an email to everybody I wanted to have involved and they gave me their input. So when the client came in, we had everything ready to go based on a prior conversation, prior meeting that we had had. So we spend a lot of time trying to find out what's important to them about this particular vacation. And we are encouraged them to have what some people call a bucket list. We call it an experience list. I have a friend who's a...

public speaker and she says, a bucket list is a list of things to do before you die. And she goes, I find that very negative.

Garret (13:44.739)

that's fair. Okay, so you go through, find out what their wants and needs are, and then what happens next.

Rodney George (13:52.716)

Well, we talk a lot about what their budget is and a lot of people don't have a budget. go, you know, it's whatever it costs. We just want to do it first class and you know our parameters. And so then we start to pull all the pieces together. You know, how are we going to get there? That's probably going to take an airplane. What category of service do we want? Well, most of our clients fly business or first class, so we know that. And then it's merely a matter of putting together point to point where they're going to travel.

and finding the hotels and the category of rooms that they want. And then we start to put in all the little pieces. What are you going to do when you're there? Well, we want to do a cooking class, a couple of wine tastings, and we'd love to get on a boat and do the blue grotto or whatever it might be. So we really listen to them, but we give them a lot of suggestions if they haven't been there before. They don't know about the blue grotto.

Garret (14:48.862)

Okay, I'm gonna go back a little bit here because travel, I mean, I'm a little bit naive here, but I kind of thought the travel industry in terms of agents was kind of a dying breed or what you offer a little bit different than a travel agency.

Rodney George (15:09.74)

Well, that's a great question. it's actually one of the points in our five myths. have a white paper called Five Myths About Travel Advisors. And that's one of them that I don't need a travel advisor. I've got the internet. And it's kind of like, always ask people that think, you know, I can do this myself. Well, when's the last time that you did something for the very first time and you did it perfectly? I mean, we're talking about a

a trip that you're going to spend thousands of dollars and you don't want a lot of surprises. Most people don't want any surprises. The one thing that a lot of people don't know is you've run up a cruise. if you pick up the phone and call the cruise line or you call us to book a cruise, the pricing is going to be probably exactly the same. The cruise industry controls pricing like

Apple does. For example, if you want to buy an Apple computer, you're probably not going to find anybody that's discounted because Apple will take away their ability to sell their products. Cruise lines are pretty much the same way. Tour operators that do land vacations pretty much the same way. One of the biggest tour operators in the world refuses to do business with one of the major, major membership kind of stores because they

do rebates back to the customers, which is illegal and really frowned on in the travel industry. But the price of that trip is going to be about the same, if not exactly the same. What we bring to the table are the things to do, the things to stay away from. And usually, because we're part of Signature Travel Network, Signature Travel Network is one of the largest consortiums of travel advisors in the world. And oftentimes somebody will

They'll panic over the weekend because they want to get a particular room and they'll book something and they'll come into the office on Monday or Tuesday and say, hey, I booked this over the weekend. I know there's something you can do to take this booking over. And almost without exception, we're always able to add additional perks, shipboard credits, free this or free that just because of the buying power that we have as a part of Signature Travel Network.

Garret (17:32.22)

What about plain fare though? mean, are there any discounts there or is it the same?

Rodney George (17:41.336)

Airfares, if you're flying outside the country, we use what are called air consolidators, where they go to the airlines and they buy millions of dollars worth of seats on planes. And oftentimes, we're able to purchase flights for our clients that are anywhere from $200 $300 to $700 or $800 less than they are by booking direct with the airline.

Garret (18:08.88)

Okay, because you mentioned first class. I've been overseas a few times, Hawaii even, I know that's technically overseas, I guess, but it's such a long flight. And to be able to do it in business class or first class would have been wonderful, but of course I'm looking at the dollars and cents. How do you bridge that gap? Are you saying that you can almost make it affordable for a family?

Rodney George (18:35.35)

Well, business class is always going to be somewhere between two and four times what it costs to sit in the back of the plane. But most people that are traveling with us kind of have that mentally built into what they're thinking is. Also, there's a lot of cruise lines now that

in the price of the cruise is your business class airfare. And if you decide you want to book your own airfare, they just give you a credit. And the credit is never enough for you to go buy your own tickets. So they're buying airfares even further in advance. There is a disadvantage to doing the cruise air, and that is that if there's a problem while you're flying and a flight's canceled or something,

you have to get in touch with the cruise line. You can't just go stand in line at the airport with everybody else because your airfare was booked with the cruise line. You've got to get in touch with somebody at the cruise line to rebook you. So if you have a hiccup along the way, it can be a little bit of a hassle. So we tell the clients that there's three ways you can buy your tickets. You can go buy them yourself direct from the airline. We can use one of our three air consolidation companies or we can use the provider.

whether it's a cruise or a tour operator, they almost always will have a way to build the airfare in. And there's advantages and disadvantages that we go over with each one of those. So ends up being whatever the client would like to do.

Garret (20:09.916)

Okay. And I'll ask a business question. How do you guys make your money?

Rodney George (20:16.7)

Most of his commissions and the commissions are paid direct from the vendor. It does not affect the price. So if you call up, for example, if you call up Regent Seven Seas Cruises and you book a cruise and then you call me and ask me what my price would have been, the price is going to be the same. You say, well, what happens? What's Regent do with the commissions if they're not having to pay you? They pocket it. It's

You're not going to save the commission by going direct to anyone that I'm aware of in the travel industry. If we have a very complicated scenario where we have 10 or 15 or 20 people moving about and we've got a plan this, we sometimes will charge a fee for our services. But usually that fee, once everything is booked and said and done, we'll usually reverse or return all or significant.

portion of the fee that we charge. The fee more than anything else is to make sure that the people are serious and that we're not going to spend hours and hours of our life planning this trip and for them to walk away.

Garret (21:29.874)

No, that's fair. Okay, so I'm starting to see the economics of it. Because I think a lot of people think that they have to pay a travel consultant X amount of dollars to plan these things for you. If I could summarize then doesn't cost anything extra because you guys are being paid by commission from some of these suppliers. And yet you bring the expertise into knowing what to do, where to do it and how to get some of these other things that maybe somebody wouldn't have even thought of doing.

Rodney George (21:58.84)

Right. As matter of fact, somebody told me, someone with a major cruise line told me the other day that almost 70 % of their business still comes from travel advisors. So you say you didn't realize that they were still out there. A lot of travel agencies folded up their tent back 20 something years ago when the airlines stopped paying commissions because all they were doing was sitting there running airline tickets all day long for a seven, eight, nine percent commission.

Garret (22:08.604)

Wow.

Rodney George (22:28.824)

and they didn't have to give any thought to it at all. I mean, it was a five or 10 minute transaction and they made a few dollars and onto the next person. And a lot of them didn't know how, didn't really know anything about the world of travel that was out there beyond booking airline tickets.

Garret (22:51.014)

Okay, so tell me about this franchise that you're involved in now. You said it's been almost a decade. How does it differ from your previous experience?

Rodney George (23:02.368)

I think the biggest difference is the technology that we have on our desktop to run our business. The director of IT at Cruise Planners is second to none. mean, he's literally one of the top guys in the travel industry. And the things that he thinks of and the way that he puts things together just makes it incredibly easy to do business.

Four of my agents came from a national company. And when they came in to interview with us, and we did a series of interviews because we wanted to make sure that they were going to fit with us and want to make sure that they felt this was a positive move for them. And when we started showing them the ease of generating a proposal, the ease of making a booking, the ease of generating an invoice to send to your client.

they were blown away. And they were with a company that has offices in all 50 states, and yet they didn't have that kind of capacity on their desktop to make life simple so they could get things done efficiently, get it done correctly, and move on to the next client.

Garret (24:19.144)

Well, I would guess if you're talking about team members who have to spend more time, you know, in paperwork and things like that, they have less time to put the energy into the actual planning of the vacation.

Rodney George (24:31.82)

Yeah, seldom will you see a piece of paper on my desk. It's all electronic. Everything's filed and it's on servers that are at multi locations all over the globe. So if one goes down, the other picks right back up and it's all right there. I can access. If you were a client, I can access your records from. From if I'm sitting at lunch with somebody else, as long as somebody at the table's got a phone, I can pull up.

your profile and I can pull up your trip and I can tell you when your final payment is done or when it's due and what excursions you've booked. I mean, with a phone, an iPad, computer, I'm in business anywhere in the world.

Garret (25:13.722)

That's wonderful. You mentioned how you were, know, how many interviews you do to attract and retain your team members. Can you walk me through that a little bit? I mean, what makes an ideal travel consultant?

Rodney George (25:28.162)

Well, I'm looking for someone who, first of all, makes an incredible first impression. I've always operated on the fact, even though I got this wild, goofy shirt on today, that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. And I want people who are smart, who are articulate, and who understand the luxury segment of the travel industry. Had a lady come to us not too long ago.

right out of college and she wanted to be in the travel business so bad she couldn't stand it. But that's not a fit for us. I can't take that kind of risk because I want someone that if a client walks in and they sit down across the desk from one of our advisors, they're gonna know within the first five to seven minutes, this person really knows what they're talking about. I mentioned executive concierge earlier, Garrett.

And once I put a booking together and the client has signed off on it and we've done whatever financial deposits need to be done, I push it across my desk and it goes to one of our executive concierge who then starts to follow up on all the things that can happen between now and when they come home. I'm still available if the client wants to talk to me, but they love working with our concierge because they are hands on.

They're going to take care of making sure that the airfare is taken care of, that the travel protection insurance is taken care of, that the excursions or side trips or anything else they want to do. And they're going to work with that client until they return from their vacation. And then they make, and then they either make or hand to me to make the phone call to talk to the client as to what their experience was. Because we always want to get feedback, good or bad, want to get feedback.

Garret (27:25.512)

You know, you said something I had just written down a question, you took it right out of my mouth. Emergencies, things that don't go well when they're over there, right? Wherever that destination might be. Walk me through some of those things that a travel consultant can do versus mom and dad trying to do things on their cell phone.

Rodney George (27:44.844)

Well, for example, you mentioned Banff and I've got clients that are up there. And of course, you know, there was a big fire at Jasper last week. I think you'd have to been from another planet not to know about that fire, but they got off of a cruise, lasting cruise on the 21st were scheduled to start their trip on the Rocky Mountaineer, which is a great experience if you've never done that the next day. And all of a sudden you had a rail strike on top of the fires.

Garret (27:50.663)

Of course, yep.

Rodney George (28:14.848)

now a rail strike. And I mean, it's just like Rocky Mountaineer. They've had six weeks of dealing with catastrophe after catastrophe. So they call me the afternoon of the 21st after they had gotten off their ship there in Vancouver and said, what are we going to do? The rails, the railroads are on strike. Well, I'd already been on with Rocky Mountaineer and I said, OK, here's what they're going to do.

They're going to take you by train tomorrow morning from Vancouver and you're going to go to a place called Kamloops. And Kamloops is a mandatory service stop for the train. So you're going to spend the night in Kamloops. And the next day you would normally get up and do day two on the train, but the train can't operate on that section of track. So they're going to take you instead of eight hours on the train, they're going to put you on a motor coach, which is six hours, and you're going to go ahead and go to Banff.

You're going to spend your two nights in Banff and you were scheduled to go motor coach to Chateau Lake Louise anyway. So they're going to take you by motor coach to Chateau Lake Louise to the fabulous Fairmont Hotel. You're going to spend two nights there. Then you're to go back to Banff for a couple of nights because that would originally have been the night you would go to Jasper, but Jasper's close. So you're going to do two more nights in Banff and then put you on the train, which now I believe and you're in Canada, so I don't know for sure, but there was a

a binding arbitration thing that happened yesterday afternoon and the workers were ordered to go back to work. I don't know if they went back to work today or not. I haven't checked.

Rodney George (29:56.204)

But we held her hand through that whole process and she was, they were not excited about getting on a motor coach, but they, called me and texted me and emailed me yesterday. my gosh. We're so glad we went to Banff. said, you haven't seen the best yet. When did you get to Lake Louise?

Garret (30:15.77)

No, that I'm trying to think of all the times that it has happened to me where something doesn't go right and you're scrambling if you have cell service and trying to find alternatives and they basically you were already way ahead of them.

Rodney George (30:29.44)

My phone is in my pocket or on my desk or beside my head when I go to sleep at night because I've had clients call me at three o 'clock in the morning that they got to Rio but their luggage didn't make it and they're getting on a cruise ship. spent five days, American Airlines had no idea where their luggage was. I spent five days finding their luggage and then it was hung up in customs so we had to fly.

an employee down to claim their luggage, to walk it through customs and to fly it to Ushuaia. And my client called me and he goes, I have no idea what you did, but our luggage is here and I've never been so happy to see my luggage in my life. And I said, I'll tell you all about it when you get home.

Garret (31:05.596)

Wow.

Garret (31:21.246)

Amazing. You know, one thing that I struggle with in business is being able to duplicate myself. You mentioned, you know, the almost 200 years of experience you have with your team. How do you duplicate what you and your wife brought to the business when you were just by yourselves and you started bringing on these other consultants or you call them consultants or you call them team members? I'm not sure.

Rodney George (31:45.724)

Well, we call them advisors, consultants, whatever. I, know, honestly, honestly, Garrett, I learned more from them than they learned from me. I mean, my number one person in the office, she's been 42 years in the business and she's only 62 years old.

Garret (32:02.812)

Wow, I'm doing some math in my head. Okay.

Rodney George (32:03.552)

Yeah, yeah. And there's nothing about the world of travel that she doesn't know. And she knows how to get things fixed. She knows how to make things happen. She's way better than I am. I'm the out front guy that's making it rain, bringing in country club groups or yacht club groups or whatever like that. And I still do a lot of the personal one on one work, but we just have so much talent.

We've got a lady in our office that ran the sales and marketing for a local boutique hotel here in Naples for 25 years. And she is just killing it because she knows everybody that's anybody because this hotel was not cheap. And they all love her to pieces. And so she's brought in so much business over the last 18 months. It's just crazy. But again, she doesn't know travel, but she's got people that she can fall back on that do.

Garret (33:03.238)

Okay, what's your criteria for bringing on another team member? Is it growth or is it, I don't know, opportunities or maybe a different area that you're not familiar with?

Rodney George (33:14.359)

Well...

We're an equal opportunity employer. Those that do the work get the pay. Every one of our advisors works on their own. They're independent contractors, so they can work from home if they want to. They can work in the office if they want to. If they want to make $100 ,000 this year, that's up to them. We're going to keep things going. We're going to keep generating leads for them. We're going to keep our

the home lights on, but they can work from wherever they want to. The concierge, the executive concierge are the only salaried people that we have. And that's because they can't make commissions unless and until they decide they want to go to training and become a full -fledged travel advisor.

Garret (34:05.374)

Can you delineate between the two again, concierge versus the travel advisor? I'm assuming.

Rodney George (34:11.02)

Well, think of a concierge at a hotel. I mean, they're there to make sure you have a wonderful experience. They know the restaurants to send you to. They know how to get from point A to point B the best way. They know to tell you when it's time to ask the bellman a question. And that's what our executive concierge do. They're there to facilitate once you've decided what you're doing and all the moving parts or most of the moving parts are in place.

Garret (34:14.525)

Okay.

Rodney George (34:40.418)

then they take over and start working on all the details. It's amazing because my clients that have been assigned to concierge, they don't even call me anymore. They call the concierge. Tell Rodney we want to book another trip and we want to do this, but we don't want to do it unless you're going to be our concierge.

Garret (34:58.64)

Okay, I just want to repeat that one more time just cause so I haven't had, cause I thought the consultant, the advisor is planning the entire trip, hotel, airfare, excursions, everything. Why and what does a concierge bring to that experience?

Rodney George (35:18.178)

The concierge makes it all work. For example, the clients that are doing their honeymoon, they want to fly out of Miami. Well, that's not a piece of the puzzle that needed to go into place today because their honeymoon's not until late January. So on the checklist, the concierge knows that she still needs to schedule the car service to pick them up at their home and take them to the airport and to pick them up.

We don't know what their flights are yet because their flights haven't been confirmed yet. So she'll confirm the flights tomorrow and once she knows that piece then she can book the car service. It's the smaller things, the big vision, the trip, the hotels, the cruise ship, whatever it might be. We make those decisions and then the concierge takes care. It's like they dot the I's and cross the T's to make sure it's a wonderful experience for everyone.

Garret (36:12.346)

Okay, I'm guessing that that's not a service that's provided by every single travel agency out there or is it?

Rodney George (36:23.128)

No, a lot of travel agencies are a one or two person shop and they wear all the different hats. And we've we're very fortunate because we've we've grown to the point that we can afford to have that extra level of service that really, really makes a complete difference in the client experience. I'm 72 years old.

memory's not what it used to be. So I've got two young ladies that are in their upper 40s, early 50s, sharp as a tack. They take charge. make great decisions. They just take over and make sure that client has everything that they need.

Garret (37:05.794)

You know, Rodney, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast was because a lot of my listeners are business people, real estate investors, those that value time and know that time is money. What would you say to them when they're looking to book with a travel consultant? What are the things that they should be looking for?

Rodney George (37:29.016)

Well, I too believe that time is money and there are a lot of things in my life that I hire done that I could easily do myself, but I don't have the aptitude or the attitude or I just don't want to do it anymore. I don't want to cut my grass anymore. I used to love to cut my grass. I don't have cut my grass in 20 years. I'll still love the smell of fresh cut grass, but I don't have to do it anymore. I don't need to chase the lawnmower around anymore because my time is much better spent.

face to face with a client. And that's what I love about where our office is. We're in a community. As a of my neighbor, when we first moved in down here 15 years ago, he said, you know, Naples is one of the few places you can move to thinking you're old and rich and be wrong about both. And that's our clients. They don't want to do it themselves so much anymore. Every once in a they'll...

They'll say, you know, I booked a trip myself and I did this and it's a mess. Can you help us? Well, if they're good enough client, yeah, if they're somebody just walked through the door. Nah, I don't know if I want to help you or not, but one of the girls usually does.

Garret (38:43.006)

Okay, what about business people like myself? Do you touch that subsector or is it mainly just vacations?

Rodney George (38:49.912)

Our business is probably 95 % vacations, but we take care of our clients. I had a client the other day and he said, you know, got a mess. I've got a meeting that I have to be at. I've waited till the last minute. I don't want to charter a plane, but I'm looking at chartering a plane. go, just for yourself, that would be nuts. we got him taken care of.

But it really is. It's more of the luxury thing that we find joy in planning. mean, if we have, and we do still have clients that still travel a lot for business and they just let us know well in advance and we booked the trip, we booked the car service, we booked the hotel room and they're taking care of, and that's really almost an executive concierge kind of thing. They can almost do all that stuff.

Garret (39:44.296)

That's wonderful. Okay, well, this has been really great. What I want to do is I like to ask each guest question and it's the same question, but this one actually I think might really hit home. So this is the Investing to Win podcast. How do you define success and what does winning look like for you?

Rodney George (40:08.328)

And my business success is to have.

thousands of not just satisfied but happy clients who are referring their friends and family to us. Our business, we don't advertise, it's all repeat and referrals. And that to me is just the ultimate compliment that we can have is when an existing client says, hey, I want you to take care of my brother -in -law Larry. He's a little bit of a pain in the hind end, but

Once you get through that crust, he's a wonderful guy. He's one of my best friends. Would you, I'd consider it a personal favor if you'd take care of him. So yeah, we will. And what was the second part of that question, Garrett?

Garret (40:56.434)

What does winning look like for you?

Rodney George (40:59.392)

Well, winning for us is always being, well, when I go to our industry meetings, I love it because I'm recognized. And when I go to our host agency meetings, I'm usually making a presentation of some kind. And I love that. I love that. The fact that people know who I am. I love the fact that people come up to me and say,

Hey, I got a couple of questions. Can I buy you a cup of coffee? I love that. That's winning to me. The top agency within cruise planners, and there's almost 3000 agencies, is a friend of mine in Atlanta. And he is a workaholic. He's a fiend. We will never, ever catch him. But because I don't think that I want to work that hard and nobody else in the agency wants to work as hard as these guys work.

But they're the number one agency in the world for a major cruise line. They do more business than any other agency in the world with this one particular cruise line. So they've just got it down to a science and it works for them. And they're both great guys. And we talk quite a bit back and forth sharing ideas with each other. But winning doesn't mean you have to be number one. Winning means that you're enjoying the rewards.

of an excellent effort and an excellent adventure.

Garret (42:27.634)

Well said. And I lied. I'm gonna ask you one more question and we're gonna end with that. Don't spit out your water there. Give the listeners your top five recommended destinations.

Rodney George (42:31.297)

you

Rodney George (42:41.834)

wow. If you have not been to the society, the Marquesa and the Cook Islands, that would be destination number one. It's the most beautiful place on earth. And you're going to love the net. You're going to love number two, because number two is the Western Canadian Rockies. I've been all over the world. There's no place on earth like those two destinations. And I would encourage

Then number three, as far as desk, it's not really a destination, but a way of life. These mass market cruise lines are building cruise ships that are four or five, 6 ,000 passengers or more. It doesn't cost that much more to look at a luxury brand where there's 400, 500 people on the ship. The food's better, the service is better. Everything is usually included. That would certainly be something I would encourage everyone.

if you haven't visited Europe, to find out where all this kind of got started, where our way of life, because our forefathers, for the most part, came here from the European continent. I love Japan, a two -week vacation in Japan, especially if you can get there in April and see the cherry blossoms. And Australia, New Zealand, that would be number five.

If you haven't been down under, you gotta go down under and don't just go to Australia or don't just go to New Zealand while you're that far away. And it is a, it's a plane ride. I'll tell you from, from the West coast of the United States, from the time you leave until you land on the Australian continent, you lost two days of your life. Now, don't worry. You'll find them on the way back. You get them back.

We were coming home from there a couple of years ago and some guy said, you realize that we get home before we leave? I said, yeah. He goes, I don't know if I want to be on that plane or not, but I sure would like to watch it take off.

Garret (44:43.914)

that's great. No, there's a few destinations I've been in there. Australia, New Zealand, that's definitely on my list. I won't say my bucket list, but I used to say that. No, this has been really great, Rodney. I do appreciate you coming on. I think you've inspired a lot of people, myself included, and I can't wait for this episode to be live.

Rodney George (45:04.47)

Well, I just have one thing to say. My friend, Dr. Philip Randall from Atlanta, he's a gerontologist and he always says, enjoy yourself. It's later than you think. I appreciate you. Appreciate you having me on your show. Okay. You take care as well.

Garret (45:15.314)

Well said.

All right, thanks very much. Take care.