Shane Mahoney — Creating Unbelievable Travel Experiences That Nobody Has Created Before

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It works for me. And really, in the end, that's half the battle. Hey, we're talking about really two things today. I've been on mostly a vacation for the last month and we're talking about creating great, great experiences for yourself that bring you back to creativity, that help you rest and recover and restore your soul and let you wander. And so we'll talk a little bit about that. Travel's a passion of mine and hopefully it is for some of you too. But we're also talking about creating great experiences for the people that you work with, whether they be customers or employees or whomever in your world. So great experiences for you and for other people is the subject of our show today. Everybody, my name's Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach, host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast. Our show comes to you every week with something to do with growing your company and the leadership required to do it. We deal with getting the people right, dialing in your strategy and evolving that over time, great execution, optimizing your cash and surviving the whole process as a leader to have some actual fun with it. So all those shows and more for years now@scalingcoach.com or wherever you're getting this, wherever you're watching or listening right now, whether it be on the Apple podcast world or in Stitcher, Spotify or places like that, SoundCloud, I think we're even in if you are on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, all those places. We love being everywhere we can be. And we're in video, if you like that. Or you can listen while you drive, while you run, while you take a long bike ride, while you take that next flight. So all those and more@scalingcoach.com all right, I'm joined now by Shane Mahoney. Shane, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

Is a CEO behind a luxury travel company. He's in Lakeland, Florida right now. Many of you know where that is, Lugos Travel. And he puts together these great custom luxury adventures and we thought we'd let him talk a little bit about what they do and see what lessons we can derive from that for our businesses and for our own lives. So welcome to the show, Shane.

Thank you. Thank you, Bill. I appreciate you having me on the show.

Yeah. Hey, how did you get into the travel business? Or why?

Valid question. I think a lot of people have been asking, you know, over the last 10 years or so, why'd you get into this? Like, this is, this is like an app now. This is a thing like, why would you do this?

Yeah.

And, and so the, the honest truth is it's kind of a funny story because I, I spent 12 years in sales and finance jobs doing pretty much the total opposite of, of what I do now. And I hit 34 years old in my life and I was just like, kind of done.

I just, I had, you know, when you get to 34, it's over. It's all downhill from there.

Yeah. You know, I don't say I've loved being in my 40s, not a problem there, but, but I had just, I reached a point where I was just making money but not really enjoying the quality of life kind of living for the weekend. I don't know if you can relate, you know, but I had, you know, just good at my job and then that was pretty much it, you know, and party and I just wanted something a little bit more. And. So I just, I wanted something more. And, and really, long story short, I, I stumbled into a guy who, who had, who had a ski school in the French Alps. And I thought I was going to be a ski school instructor. Just figured I would just beach, ski bum it for a little while. And so I think a lot of.

Florida guys are into that.

You know, I can't say for sure, but I, I love it. I love the cold that I'm visiting. Not, not really having to live in, but. Yeah, no. So anyway, Bill, you know, long story short, I met this guy and we had a really long conversation about, about doing this, and he suggested that I become a tour operator. And, and it was, it was after a month of research and looking at it that I decided that this was, this wasn't just plan A, this was Plan A, B and C for me. So it just was something that I always wanted to do. I just never knew Existed.

And so what was the first, like, what kind of tour was it? Just skiing? What, what kinds of things did you create?

Yeah, I mean, when early on I didn't, I didn't have a lot of the tools that I have now. I didn't have the experience. I literally came up with my company out of, out of nothing, with no experience in travel at all. But, you know, I did very general things, basically things that people asked me for and earned my chops. You know, I was lucky that my first clients were celebrating their 10 year anniversary and did, you know, like an $18,000 trip, which was a good learning experience. And I recall spending 100% of the profits on making sure they had just the best trip ever. So not the best business move ever, but it got me hooked. It got me hooked.

And how has that grown? Like, what does your business look like today?

Oh, now, I mean, we operate in 17 countries. We have multiple ready to go tours in each of those countries and we operate those throughout the entire year for thousands of people. So, you know, now it's a whole different animal. And we're in the process of scaling up as well. So this is a really good opportunity for me to be able to learn something from you too. So I appreciate being able to be on your show. It's, it's been a journey.

So bring it to life for us. What kinds of trips are you doing? What's the core market? Who's the customer? What? Give us a little some more detail.

Sure, sure. Yeah, I think that would be helpful. So we, we essentially cater to luxury travels, travelers between 35 and 55 or 65 years old. And essentially some of the key things that we do that set us really apart is our booking system is super simple to just show comparison. Pretty much everybody in the world right now can get you a custom, private luxury proposal in about three to five business days. And we can actually serve any of our tours good for any dates of the year, that same material in under five minutes.

And so you've automated this packaging and proposing.

We've completely automated that process so that like, well, it's really to solve problems. You know, if I, if I can get into it, Bill, I feel like.

Is this like, what's, what's an itinerary destination? Like, what is a lug? What does luxury travel even mean?

That's a valid question because I think it means a lot to different people. But I'd say at a foundational level, luxury travel is travel that's set up so that you don't have to do any thinking, problem solving, you have everything laid out and everything is prepared and ready for you and revolves around you. So what our clients get with our proposals is every single place. It comes in two parts and those two parts are the essential tour and the enhancements. And so for the essential towards anything that you would need, whether you've never been somewhere or you've been there five times, okay. We include private English speaking transportation with standard gratuity included anytime you have your luggage, starting from your front door, or anytime it's more than 20 minutes from point to point. So our expectation is if you're just going to grab some dinner, you might just take a taxi or walk. We include four star and up hotels. We always do a minimum one category room upgrade. So we're never doing a standard room. We're always doing a superior or deluxe or better. We include a welcome dinner on your first night, a farewell dinner on your last night, and breakfast every single day. And then if you take the train, we do first class tickets. And in each city that you visit, we do one privately guided tour which includes either early admission or skip the line access to whatever it is that you're going to visit so that you're not spending any time in lines or doing anything that you wouldn't really think was a great idea. And that's the essential tour. That's the whole thing.

Now, is this for individuals, families, small.

Groups, couples, families, small groups. We don't mix groups. So everything we do is on a private basis.

So my wife or me and my family would take a tour. It would be our tour, our connections, our dinners, all those things would be.

If you and your neighbor took the exact same tour on the exact same day and didn't plan to be together, you'd never meet.

Huh? Huh?

Yeah.

So it's your custom private via and, and anywhere in the world, any kind of thing. Or you're like, oh, we really specialize India and Egypt or you know, or is there anything like that?

We have 17 countries right now, including Peru, Costa Rica, Iceland, Spain, France, Belgium, uk, Ireland, Greece, Italy, Tahiti, the Maldives, Egypt, we're adding Japan, Vietnam and a couple more places as well. So essentially you just go to the website and you're like, hey, I want an eight day tour in France for example. Then you find that, and then as long as you like it as a structure, then you can get that proposal right off the bat. And then it's in the enhancements, the second part that you can make it distinctly yours. And so the enhancements come in four flavors and each flavor has three to five curated options. I say curated because we take out the ones that suck, to be honest. You know, like the options like have you ever been to Cabo San Lucas?

I have and I'm about to go back.

Okay, I, I love Cabo. I'm gonna ask a dumb question. Have you ever done the camel back ride on the beach?

Nope.

Yeah.

Do you?

Do you know why you haven't? It sucks because it sucks.

Yeah.

So. So we could offer everything, but that's counterproductive. So I've curated in four categories.

I've done scuba diving, whale watching, jet skiing, things like.

Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tie the, tie a bow on this for you. Especially in Cabo. So our four enhancements types are savor, that's anything foodie related. Tastings, wineries, breweries, Michelin star, dining opportunities, cooking classes, whatever. Second we do is explore. Explore is anything cultural, people, places. The third is excite. And this is where I think you're going to be excited since you're going to Cabo. Anything that gets your adrenaline up. So in some places it's whitewater rafting and zip lining. In other places it could be flying in a P51 Mustang over World War I battle fields, driving a Ferrari on or off the track, or in the case of Cabo, one of my favorite things ever. We can drive 600 horsepower, $120,000 real Baja trucks on a closed five mile loop. And if you like driving, that one's pretty fun. And then the fourth category, the last one we call Pampered. And it's for anybody who already understands that they like the best of everything. It's a one click option to upgrade every single room to a junior suite or a suite, or go from a four star to a five star hotel and there you go. So basically you get part one in five minutes and then in one afternoon, you and your spouse or your loved ones or whoever you're going on the trip with can pick exactly the enhancements that you want. You can pick any kinds, any numbers and then you see the price, you pay the deposit and sign the contract. And then you tell us when you want to go. We don't even care up front.

So. So I picked this whole thing. It gets configured. The configuration is not based on the time or the date. Then no.

What do you mean?

Well, like, you know, sometimes the prices all seem to vary between when, what season you're going and the availability varies. Oh, I'm sorry, we're Booked out on those days, you know.

Yeah. So we actually have proprietary systems to be able to take care of availability problems. But the reality of what the other thing you're talking about is we've taken out some of the problems in the pricing model that a lot of other companies are using, which I call from pricing.

Right.

You're probably familiar with this. It's like from $2,000 you can have this five star vacation for seven nights, right. And then you realize that that is at the absolute worst time of the year and all the other times that you would like to go to this place, it's substantially more. And so I wanted to get rid of that completely because you, you and I know that nobody's going to the beach in February unless that beach is in the Maldives.

I don't know. Marriott would like me to use all my thousands of points in the off season that I never want to go to the, I don't want to go to the ski resort in May.

True, right. So you know, the thing is, is just having you know, the ability to be able to flat take care of that. And you know, at the same time our company is also hedging for pricing changes in the dollar Euro markets and the different markets gas prices. So we're, we're, we're, we've basically priced in. You can tell us whenever you want to go, even Holy Week, even Christmas to New Year's and we will honor that price and deliver the experience.

How do you know? It feels like in the world of travel but like many things, there are many things presented as five star and then you get, I'm sure this is five, I'm not sure what stars they chose for this or like sometimes it seems like a nebulous concept and like, oh yeah, this movie was featured in the movie 10 and it hasn't been renovated since then.

That is a very valid point. You would have to, I wouldn't expect most people to know or to want to care to know why you can trust some places on that rating system and in other places why that's less important. So you know, the thing that I would tell most people is I've been in, I've been in four star hotels that like most people would walking in be like this is a five star hotel. And in Europe the difference between that four star and five star experience could be as simple as that hotel just didn't have 24 hour room service and will take it to a four star even though it has a crazy nice spa and a beautiful, you know, settings and everything else. So, you know, it's also where you can take advantage of a lot of the ways that, that the different star system can be in your favor for getting good pricing on different hotels that are fantastic if you know what you're doing. Um, you know, the same thing, the same five star hotel and say Ecuador or Chile is not going to be quite the same as it would be in Italy, you know, or, or France. So it's just understanding what your experience is going to be. But, you know, like to give you a good idea of like a concrete example of what, what you said earlier, which was like, what is luxury? Right? So I would say this luxury is being able to take care of all the problems that come up with, let's say, going to Peru, going to Machu Picchu. But real luxury is making sure that all of the parts of the experience are enjoyable. So in that vein, when our clients show up in Cusco, a city that is two miles high, we have oxygen bottles waiting for them in their room so that they can acclimate to the altitude at a very rapid and comfortable pace as opposed to just roughing it out. So that's one of the ways, I would say that's a little luxury thing that we do. That's a little step above coca tea right away. Well, you could do that too. This is very possible.

I've heard that's a good thing in Cusco. So how do you know, do you or someone from your team visit and vet all these places to know what you're dealing with and what happens? I assume all of these are individual operators. There's like a tour operator hotel. And how do you connect the dots on these things? If I'm doing what I think of as a luxury tip, I think of kind of being taken care of all the way through.

Yeah, you would be taken care of all the way through. So, you know, for example, like when, when you meet your guide, you're, you're only responsible for being downstairs in the lobby when we tell you to be there. That's everything else is going to unfold for you as, as it should. So does that answer your question?

Well, I guess it's a couple parts. So how do you, how do you know that, like, the guide in that city is a good guide and the guy in that city, you personally check out all these people? Is that why you're in 17 countries, not 100 countries?

When I first started, everything that we did was personally vetted by me. And, and of course, at some point that becomes impossible. I told you I had put my son to bed. He's seven. I can't just be wandering around the world trying different guides. My wife would, would, would, she would divorce me for sure.

Take him everywhere.

I'm taking this son to school every day. And so the thing, the thing about it is, you know, after we've been doing this 11 years, so, you know, Lugos Travel is an award winning global travel group and we book thousands of life changing luxury trips. At the end of the day, what we did is we took a systemized approach of exactly what we wanted for our clients in definable contractable terms. And then we found partners in different countries that could service that with their boots on the ground knowledge. And what we get with that trade off is also being able to have 24 hour support in the country that you're in, which eliminates a lot of the time zone problems that can happen. So you know, if there's a train strike at 8am In Italy, I really don't want to wake up at 2am to take care of it. So we have local representation. Yeah, we have local partners that are monitoring all parts of the tours while the clients are on it. And then we pick up before and during and after with messaging and making sure that everybody's having a good time and everything's running smooth. But the real gem of that is that we're solving problems before the client even knows there's a problem. So to give you that example again in concrete terms, like what does it look like when a train strike happens? Well, we had clients that were being picked up at their hotel, taken to the train station, train over to the new city and then taken to the hotel from there. And so, you know, train strike happened, but we, we have a plan to be able to take care of that. So the car that picked them up from the hotel just didn't go to the train station, they just went all the way. And instead of just being a ride for, you know, six hours or whatever it was that day, we went ahead and planned a two hour stop in a new city. So it was a tour within a tour. And put it together with like a nice stopping point for lunch so that they didn't feel like they were in the car all day. And you know, and then basically it's, you know, doing those sorts of things is kind of what, what makes you.

Have reliable local, regional partners who can take care of things in country or region?

Yeah, 100% in all of our countries.

That's interesting. And then what's the profile of the person who's traveling in this way.

You know, if you talk about demographically, I would say it's people who are looking to connect with their family. I mean, we specialize in connecting and reconnecting loved ones. Because it's my opinion, based on my private life and prior experience, that I think we all end each year with a certain amount of gratitude and happiness about the same success that we've had. And if we had one lament, one thing that we. We wish we could have done better is to spend more time with our family. And so, you know, I think that we invented that process of being able to purchase luxury travel very simply and easily to address exactly this problem. Because it's my opinion that the stress of planning travel, especially international travel, is kind of high. Right. And so you tend to push that away for as long as you can until really the stress is all the way up here. And then at that point, you'll do anything to just take the heat off. So that's where I really saw that a lot of people were taking tours they've already taken before, going places they've been, or for that matter, taking a cruise option where you can just kind of hit the easy button and the decision is over. And so I wanted to combat that and give people the experiences that they want and need to have in their life, to have a good life. And by doing that, we can create ways for families to just connect more and fulfill that mission without having all the stress of planning it. It's kind of like a vacation from planning a vacation.

So your folks are people who probably already travel, are definitely upscale, upper income, and they look for custom, unique experience, right?

Yeah, it's definitely people who want a custom, unique experience. That's a great way to put it. You know, I talked about our four enhancements categories, but we have two more that really fit in any category. And at least one, if not both of them, will probably put an exclamation point on kind of how we take care of our clients. So the first is our photography option. And this was born because I kept seeing terrible vacation photography. It's like arm in arm with something behind you, you know, and like cheesy smile and like. And. And you did that playing what I call the hoping game. You know, where you. You hand your phone to somebody, a total stranger, and you hope that they can focus it, that they don't steal it, that, you know, like, it's a lot of hoping, but it's never a good picture. So instead, what we what we did is we gave people the option to have fantastic pictures and we hire professional photographers in two hour increments and we instruct and train our photographers to spend most of the time in a paparazzi style photo shoot. So we've got them in medium to long range lenses across the street, out of your way, not telling you to pose here, do this chin up, none of that wedding photographer stuff. But it's you with your real smiles and the stuff behind you in a way that like really captures the soul of travel. And when you get back, we give you a photo album like this leather bound with all the pictures inside laid out. And then we also deliver all the digital stills for you to do whatever you want with them. So that's like one way that we think we can step up the experience and put it into somebody's hands that really wants to captivate the memory, capture the memory. And then the other way, and this is going to be really interesting to your listeners, is our custom daily amenities kit. Bill, you seem like you travel a lot. Have you gotten a bottle of champagne in your room? Yes. Okay, were you in France when that happened?

No.

Okay, so follow me on this, right? Ostensibly, I don't know where you got your champagne. Let's say it was Italy. So you paid somebody for an Italy vacation and you got a bottle of champagne in your room. You got a French experience in an Italian vacation is what you paid for. It's a, it's, it's like, it's nice, right? Who doesn't love the champagne? But it's, it's off the target. And so I really identified this as a way that we could really immerse people into a culture and a people with things that are distinct from that area. And so we found that in every area we do business in, there's a local specialty, something that's locally sourced, locally produced, it's a specialty of the area. And we found that our clients, best of their abilities notwithstanding, were still missing out on some of those experiences just because they didn't go into the right store or they didn't go down the right street. They just didn't know. Right. And when you don't know, you're not going to stumble onto it as easily. And so we decided that we are the travel experts for our clients. And so our custom daily amenities kit is locally produced local specialties from every area we do business in delivered to your hotel one item per day. And those could be candles, clothes, candy, jewelry, perfume, cologne, knives, wooden bowls, food, alcohol, you name it doesn't matter what it is. It's a specialty of the area. We have that delivered and we do that for anybody that's listening to this. If you pull any proposal and actually sign the contract within three days, we'll give you the whole trip of custom daily amenities for free.

Oh yeah, so I would, Yeah, I. It's usually my hotel partners, but also sometimes conference organizers and stuff who will do that. So very often when I check into a hotel, there's like, you know, I'm in Santorini and there was a small bottle of Assyco and some local things, you know, some local type stuff in the room and I check into a thing in, in Tahoe and there's a bottle of red wine and you know, so there's often like a, it's something like that in my room on arrival.

Sometimes people do chocolate covered strawberries too and it's like not always local.

Sometimes it's. Yeah, the chocolate strawberries is like, oh, you're on a romantic trip, we know you're here with your wife, so we're going to, you know, do that.

Yeah.

But. But not always on topic. Although a lot of sometimes, you know, I'm in, I forget where in Greece and Peloponnese somewhere and, and so there's Nemea wine there and then a Syracoa and Santorini and things like that. So sometimes more localized to the place. I think it's best when it's like that.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think, you know, and if you didn't know, if you didn't know about Limoncello when you went to there, you know. I know, but you know what I mean, if you don't know, you could miss that experience and.

Right.

And be none the worse for it. You know, you might have still had the time of your life. I think that's the interesting juxtaposition of what happens with that is that you. It's like this opportunity that's there. It's a question of whether you're going to grasp that or not. And if you're booking yourself, finding the research for that sort of stuff is.

Well, I can think of many different contrasting experiences. I can remember a long connecting flight arriving at a hotel in Tel Aviv and they're like, yeah, we don't have a reservation for you, we're not going to help you.

Yeah, fun.

Wait, what? Turns out the reservation, somebody made a mistake, it was in the wrong month. And they're like, yeah, sorry, we're full, we can't help you. And But I ended up going to another hotel in another city where I have some status and they took care of me. So I went to Jerusalem and they were nice and like that kind of thing still not really taken care of. No consideration for the house or that kind of thing. Versus arriving in a place and being welcomed and greeted by name and surprised or sailing through a storm, arriving in a small harbor and then getting off and stumbling into a small Italian restaurant, being greeted warmly, served an amazing meal, and then they're like, oh no, no, wait a minute, you have to try our limoncello because we make it here and it's just the most amazing thing. And then they're like, whatever. And, and you're like, and. And my kids are adults now, but they still talk about, you know, arriving there on Ishia that day and in that experience and how that was very much like a kind of thing that is not normal. Right?

Yeah. But there's a certain magic of travel.

Yeah. That having that more consistently would be a good idea. I was stuck recently in, I landed in, on my way back from Greece in Amsterdam and, and on arrival we look out, we could see across out the windows outside the terminal and we see rows of people dealing with this summer's like travel nightmares and trying to get through security in the lines, that kind of thing. We're like, oh my God, it's out of control here. And then we meet a woman at our arriving gate who said it took her six hours to get from, from the curb into the gate, through the check in and all that process. And we were hearing. And then our flight was delayed for more than six hours and ultimately canceled. And then we stayed there from 11:30 in the morning till after midnight. That connection and being denied, ultimately sent to a hotel. Nobody in that situation seemed to be able to fix it or make any difference at all.

Did you, did you have travel insurance by chance?

I don't know if we did or we didn't. We were on a business class ticket. We had somebody to arrange the travel for us and we had United on the line, but nobody could seem to get their systems to talk to each other. In the end, the United Nation manager helped us. But it feels like some parts of travel today, right now in this immediate post pandemic seem borked like really painfully.

It depends on where you're going and, and definitely what you're doing. I mean, I definitely know that there's some airport terminals that are a little bit overworked, understaffed, and, and that, that is definitely a, you know, a problem.

I heard horror stories of Toronto and I sailed in and through Toronto with no problem at all.

So, yes, then that's the trick is it can be nothing or it can be something, and there's really no way to tell. But having, I mean, you know, to some degree you can tell a little bit ahead, but not by much. But, you know, having, having a travel professional who, you know, if like I book the flights, then I get involved in what's going on with them. But just as a pro tip to anybody who travels and Bill, it sounds like you travel quite a bit, so I would say you might, maybe more than most might consider an annual policy with a travel insurance as opposed to something that's each individual trip, there's different coverages and what they can do for.

You and what like the VIP treatment in the moment. So there are some countries that in the Middle east, when you arrive, they can have professional greeter expediters who will expedite you through customs and immigration, some kind of marhaba or greeting service that will take care of stuff. And, and that is like night and day compared to taking the public route.

Like, we can offer that as an option in 300 airports worldwide. Yes, I mean, you know, we can take that to next levels. So there's other private terminals, private tsa, private. We can have a car pull you up to the flight or pull you up to your plane and then you walk up a separate set of stairs than everyone else to get in. So, like, you know, if you feel like you really want to VIP out, there's ways that we can take your experience and upgrade it somewhat.

Yeah, I've seen some of that happen. I saw once we were held from disembarking and they, they let us, one of the first class passengers off and, and they got off and walked down the steps to a private car and then the rest of us were allowed to go up the jetway and on and. Yeah, and some are greeted and taken care of and that kind of thing. And I said to somebody like, what was that all about? They're like, oh, yeah, that's the minister of whatever from the country.

Yeah, and they're going to go to a private terminal and go through private TSA and like the entire experience is going to be completely different for them than it is for, for you. The nice thing is, is that that's not the most expensive option that can it. That also very much depends on the airport and the country. But that could be from a couple hundred dollars for that experience. To several thousand dollars.

Well, I. So I think. Right. So we're, we're talking a lot about travel and after some. I've had a few delays this year. Right. So. And I'm on about 60 flights I think so far this year now, including four out of country visits. I think I have a few more out of country still to go, but less out of country than normal maybe, but a lot of significant flight delays, being stuck in cities for an extra day here and there so far this year. So we took a driving trip and we did everything spontaneously recently. But I think taking care of yourself and having rich experiences for, for yourself and your team are really important. And then I think that what was interesting to me about our conversation and it's. We haven't been talking about it really directly is what can you do to make your client experiences. Your customers have similar things. What can you do to upgrade them? Whether they ask for it or not or offer. How can you make it more special? We encourage, we work with clients at off site locations a lot. Right. So we whole bunch of those kinds of days a year. And although they're often booking it, we will say, look, here's what matters. It matters to have a view. It matters to have access to outside these kinds of locations, make a difference in creating your overall experience. And we encourage you not don't go skimp, don't find yourself in an interior room at a west end or something somewhere. You might as well be in any city to do that. Right. So yeah, how can we make it a little bit special? But then what are the little touches? Wanda in the background, who you talk to and getting ready for the show, thinks about and adds little touches for our clients. A little suite here or something there, a name card or whatever done. And in a more special way to try to create more of those kinds of touches. Something that's a little fun. That's.

Sure, yeah. Are you asking for an example of that?

Sure.

Yeah. We obviously do many of all of those things. Room upgrades, making sure that the hotel staff knows your name, making sure that you're welcomed. All of those things I would consider like baseline definite, definitely want to have those done. But then in addition to that, how we can make things pretty special. Like maybe, maybe let me anchor the custom daily amenities and how we really roll that program out and what that really looks like as a boots on the ground type of look. Right. So in one of our tours in Scotland, we sometimes let our clients stay into a hotel that's built into a castle on a Cliffside. And they only have, I think, five rooms. So it's a hotel very famous because General Eisenhower used it as a base of operations for a lot of the World War II. Okay. So one of the rooms that we prefer to use when it's available has a window. And through that window is a little, like, grassy plateau, cliffside water. And then out in the water is a little island, uninhabited island. On that island is a very specific green flecked granite, which is only available on that island. And out of everywhere, there is one company that has the mining rights and they make curling stones. And as a result of them making curling stones, there's a little bit of material typically left over. And they sell that, or give it, I don't know, to a local jeweler who makes sterling silver and granite cufflinks and earrings. And we have those delivered to the client on the night that they stay at that place.

So I'm looking at that thing out my window and I have something from that island.

You see that island out there, the little notes? It says, like, this is what's going on. This is where. This is why you're getting this. Like, you will always remember that island in this, you know. But like, we've done other touches where we have made, custom designed 1 of 1 silk scarves handmade in Italy and had them delivered to the hotel with a matching tie for the man. So we've done a lot of custom and design work to be able to make sure that we can get down and dirty. I'm doing a lot of things really special, depending upon the right occasion, because, of course, you know, while everyone might want that level of service, they don't necessarily always want the bill that comes with it. So we cater to a lot of people, a wide variety of people who are looking to do luxury tours and then with a lot of different options to be able to scale things up from there. I mean, I used to say the sky's the limit, but we can actually go a lot higher than that. I mean, there's some crazy things we can start doing. You know, on one of our tours, you can fly in a navy fighter jet. You know, if that. If you're really into speed and you want to. You want to have an aerobatic flying experience in Belgium, we can do that. That's. That's absolutely one of our options.

That's super fun. Oh, it's a big world. Lots of choices out there, I think. So some takeaways for our audience as we wrap up. There's so much possible get creative, have some fun for yourself, for your team. But also then think about what could you do to create more custom, thoughtful, cool things for your client. We'll put your link up there on the screen.

Thank you.

Yeah. So folks can get in touch. ShaneMahoney360.com the company Lugo Travel. And I think there's a lot to think about for self, for clients, for team, for all that kind of thing about making things special, meaningful, adding a little more luxury to it. When I'm greeted, when I'm recognized, when I'm remembered, when I'm treated specially, I feel fantastic. You know, in the terrible thing that I had in Amsterdam later in the night when I was. I completely lost my stuff, my wife was holding on. I was ready to just. It's a good thing there's no weapons. I was ready to take someone down. I, like, literally wanted to punch someone. And so anyway, the station manager for United walks by. He's like, hey, aren't you that couple from the flight earlier? And we're like, yeah, we are. He's like, you know, come here. And like, everything's closed at that point or whatever. But he walks us. He walks us personally and. And he buys us Burger King because that's all there is. And we haven't eaten. And the Burger King was awesome because we hadn't eaten, you know, since before lunch. And it's now past midnight, and we've been standing at a counter and I'm losing. He's like, okay, I'm going to get you a hotel room right now. So he calls and arranges for the hotel room. They've already dealt with all the people who got balanced. Now he's just personally managing it for us. He's sending us off and he's calling make sure and that they greet us nicely and all that kind of thing. And then he's like, okay, you could go lots of different ways. Here's your choices. But ended up taking a taxi. He's like, don't worry about it. It's all taken care of. He, like, pulls out his card, company card, I assume. He buys us the Burger King and gets us in. Like, we're largely taken care of now. United as a corporation was sucking that time, but that one individual did something awesome. Then the next morning, he's like, oh, I recognize you from before. And how did. Did you sleep okay? And he's like, yeah. And he. He starts telling us about his world and all the breakdowns in travel and Schif in particular. And he's like, you know what, we're going to take care of you today. He puts us on the very first two people to get on the plane that day is like you are going on first. Go ahead. Like we'll call everybody in just a minute and like go get in there and get settled. I kind of think recognizing that, like, you know, that's awesome. So what could you do for your clients anyway? I think there's a lot of takeaways here in so many ways to create great experiences for people. I want to thank you for coming on the show. I want to thank our listeners for joining us. If you want more information and get in touch with us, you're going to go and send us an email to info@scalingcoach.com or just go to our website scalingcoach.com it's all there and all those things like subscribe wherever you get this. YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Spotify, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, etc. We like all that and thanks for watching for listening. Hopefully it's been valuable for you. Share it with somebody else. Big thanks to Juana Mitchell, our producer getting things ready in the background and to Verne Harnish, author and creator of the Scaling Up Framework, the Rockefeller Habits, and my friend and mentor in all things Scaling up and the folks at PI Playfly Productions who help us get our show out every week. Thanks again everyone for tuning in. We'll talk to you again next time. Keep Scaling Up.

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