Marketing in Scary Times with Ashton Palmer and Dean Jackson - Genius Network Episode #141

You're looking at this as the umpire and you're realizing without emotion or fear attached to it, that this is what's happening, what's likely to happen to get out of this? And let's align ourselves as part of the solution.

How should your marketing change during these crazy times? Especially if you have a business that has been deeply impacted by gathering and travel restrictions? Learn how to make the most of your marketing efforts in today's episode of the Genius Network podcast. In this episode, Ashton Palmer and Dean Jackson discussed Ashton's untapped opportunities and limitless potential, even though he's got a travel company. They'll also break down a business model that'll work right now and pay off far into the future. If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at next year's Genius Network annual event, then apply today for your invitation to attend. If you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event or to.

Apply, go to geniusnetwork.com Good afternoon, Dean, how are you?

I am good. Here he is.

Thank you so much for making some time today.

Well, this is the perfect, I think, scenario for this kind of setup here. You know, got a real thing that's gonna be affecting a lot of people right now and decisions that people have to make. And I think this will be good to go through the thought process of it. Perfect. Yeah, I agree.

And certainly there's going to be a lot of people that are impacted and so hopefully this can be useful to many people.

Cool. So let's start with. You're telling me about the Ashton Palmer story so far and where we're at right now. I know you've been doing your expedition trips business for a long time, so I'd love to hear the story and how the business works and where we are right now.

Sure. Do you want to hear a little bit about my story as well? Yeah, of course. Yeah. Great. Thank you. Thanks for asking. I grew up in a sort of lower to middle class family in the UK and had a pretty fast paced childhood. You know, my dad was diagnosed with Ms. When I was born, so he was, was pretty sick throughout my childhood and he passed away when I was 11. So my mom was an entrepreneur when she had had myself and my brother, my brother was about three, I was just born. She found out that my father, who was the main breadwinner, was sick and she was going to have to figure out how to do this. And back in the day, this is going back into the early 70s. Of course people didn't think that Single parents could look after kids, especially women. And so the first thing the state said was, well, we'll take your kids and put them into some sort of foster care or adoption and you can figure out. And she said, absolutely not. Probably something a bit stronger.

Right, right.

And she said, I'm going to figure this out. And so she, she managed to scrape together a little bit of money from borrowing from her father who was a working class man. He didn't have much, but he had mortgaged his house. And she was able to scrape together enough money to buy a small bed and breakfast hotel. And I remember the story she told me, she said when she moved in there, she had about $5 to her name and a packet of bacon and a half a dozen eggs. And she ran that hotel for about 11 years until my father passed away and was just an incredible example of a hard working, entrepreneurial woman. I think it really impacted her negatively. But what it meant for me was that my childhood was pretty, you know, real as far as, you know, responsibilities, having a sick father, working mother, certainly not worse off than a lot of people, I'm sure. But it wasn't the happy, rosy kind of childhood that you read about in Norman Rockwell's paintings or see in his paintings, but.

Right.

So I was really wanting to grow up fast. I ended up. I didn't really like school. School never really made sense to me and in fact I ended up leaving school when I was just 16 because I just was not into it. And I kind of left school feeling like I wasn't smart because I wasn't necessarily good at that type of academics and really wanted to get the heck out of Dodge and leave England. I didn't really care for it there. So when I was 17, just about 17 and a half, I left the country and bought a one way ticket to Australia. The one thing that I had always wanted to do was to travel. And my mom was great. She would always tell me, yep, you can do anything that you want, you'll go everywhere. And so I had been left about $1,000 by a grandfather that passed away. It was all the money I had and I bought a one way ticket to Australia. They have a visa reciprocation program so people from the uk. And I was able to work and live and travel in Australia for about a year doing odd jobs. I waited tables, I did whatever I could and really just had some incredible travel experiences and I appreciated that I didn't have any responsibility at the time. Fast forward. I met a girl over there who was American. And we ended up making our way back to San Francisco. And I arrived into San Francisco about 25 years ago with $5 in my pocket and some great travel stories and a passion for travel still. And after a while, we kind of decided we were going to convert that into doing work in travel because I think like a lot of people, you can end up doing something that you're passionate about, which feeds your soul for a while, but then you kind of want to do more with it. You don't just want to do it just for you. And so it was attractive to get into the travel business with the idea of starting our own company. We figured the best way to do that would be to go and work for other travel companies and learn from them while they were paying us. And took a guiding course, started doing some tour guiding around the US which was great for me considering I grew up in the uk So I was able to do a lot of travel through the national parks and see places that I'd only seen on tv. And so it was really a great experience. And that led to international guiding work and eventually working in this small niche of an industry called expedition cruising, which is these small, small ships, one or 200 passengers that go to places like Antarctica and the Amazon. And so after a few years of doing that and traveling from the Arctic to the Antarctic and a lot of time in a lot of places in, we decided to start expedition trips. And that was back in 1999.

And.

Since that time, I've grown the business gradually and my ex wife and I decided to part ways about it just over a decade ago, 11, 12 years ago. So I purchased her out of the business and borrowed money at the time to do that and continue to grow the business. I since remarried. I have an amazing wife, Hilary, who we're so in love and so happy and have just grown the business steadily for the last 20 plus years. Now we have about 23 employees and, you know, we're turning over 20, 25 million dollars a year in sales.

Wow, good for you. That's a real like, you know, American dream story right there.

You know, it really is. And if anyone ever says that there's no such thing, I mean, I'm obviously an immigrant. I became a citizen in 2004 when my first daughter was born. But yeah, I mean, I am so happy to be an American and think it's such a great country and kind of irritates me when people say it's not or get frustrated because there's great opportunity here. And I'm certainly grateful for everything that I've been able to do so far.

That's awesome. Well, tell me about what's going on right now because this is kind of the unique time that we're right at the very beginning, I would say, of the, you know, everybody's right now starting to really go a little bit crazy about coronavirus. And we're two days out from the president banning, you know, European travel. Started yesterday was the ban. Everything is shutting down. NBA cancels the season. Schools are out. Disney World is closed. The happiest place on Earth is closed. There's probably, you know, there's, there's. It's all over the news. So there's nothing for the normal everyday person to believe that they should do but panic about. This seems like. Right. So there. That's creating that culture of uncertainty and. Yeah. So I can imagine that the last thing on people's minds right now is getting on a cruise ship or to. Yeah. So what, what's been, what are you seeing and what's your, you know, assessment of what's going on right now?

Yeah, well, gosh, I mean, I think like everybody, there's a ton of information out there. And I think there's some people. I think I heard Joe Polish say there's some people that are watching the news 24 hours a day or as many hours as they can stay awake. And the reality is that's probably not the best tonic considering that the different news media outlets are leaning this way or that way and owned by lots of different people. But from where I see it, there is a real concern about the coronavirus and everything that I've read, including the information from Joe that was sent and different things. There is a real concern for people in our population who are vulnerable, particularly the elderly and people with weakened immune systems. I think this is, you know, it's not so much the concern for healthy people of contracting the virus, but it's certainly curtailing the spread of it. And that's what's leading to our nation and others really implementing travel restrictions in addition to restrictions on banning large groups of people from gathering that is leading to this, to this response for a lot of people of uncertainty and certainly buying into the fear. And I think that what we need is to have a better understanding of what measures are being taken to protect those who are vulnerable and certainly to, you know, what should people do? And there are many threats to us. You know, if you look to all of them every morning on a long list, you might not ever leave your house but the reality is, at the moment, this is spreading so quickly, and we've seen the nations such as Italy and Germany and South Korea take, you know, and China, of course, take drastic measures to try to curtail the spread.

But I think it's.

It's got a lot of people concerned. Now, from a. From a business perspective, it's interesting because there's definitely a slowdown in many sectors from manufacturing, certainly travel and hospitality, but we're still receiving inquiries from people who are planning travel, who want to go. I think that what we need to do is create a mechanism so that people understand that the environments that they're going into are safe, whether it's going out to eat to a restaurant, or whether it's going on a trip to Antarctica or whether it's going to the movies or the mall. I think we need to creatively think about how can we assure that people are going to be safe not only for themselves, but for their. Perhaps relatives or people that they are in their lives that are more vulnerable. So they don't.

And how can we find. Yeah, like, if you're saying, would you notice? And I'll say for people listening to that. This is the continuation of a discussion that we started in a forum in Genius Network with Joe Polish's group. So we're both in Genius Network. This was a conversation that's been going on in Genius Network, and we decided that we would jump on and record a more cheese less whiskers episode about this because there's a lot of people. And I think this is a nice. This is, I think, a good continuation of the podcast that Joe and Jay Brahm and I recorded last week, too, because we're certainly in scary times right now, and this is having fundamental impact on your business. You're right in the heart of it travel, for sure. And the questions that you're faced with are how there's a lot of uncertainty around this. How long is this going to last? I mean, right now it's an issue. And are we going to get to a point where we go, okay, all clear by back to normal, and then everybody's immediately starting to, you know, to book travel and carry on with the things they were doing before, or is this going to be a long, you know, gradual progression of this? And who knows? I mean, if you think about the. It seems like certainly we're in. We're not going to reach the peak for. Everything I've read is probably, you know, four to six weeks from now being the peak of where the infections start. Turning downwards and we get through the recovery of it. But in the big picture of things, this is an acute onset event that's bringing some impact into this particular situation. And if we were to cordon it off chronologically, like coordinate off in time, are we safe to say that, you know, six months from now the impact of this will be minimal and we'll be back to normal? Is it four months from now? So three months from now, at some point we will get through this, we will get back to normal, and things will carry on. And I think that it becomes the big issue. The questions that you were kind of posing are what do we do right now to kind of adjust or what could be the impact of it?

You know, absolutely. And I mean, first and foremost, yes, we will get through this. And you know, storms always pass. They don't last forever. And so I think really for business owners who are impacted, the question is, what do we do right now in order to make sure that we can continue through the period of disruption? And I think also what, and this is continuing on from your discussion that you referenced in the podcast last week, is what ethical opportunities are there to help, to help people in all different spectrum of society where there is a need for help, and also an opportunity to further entrepreneurship and business, which is such a foundational building block of this country and the livelihood of, of hundreds of millions of people. So, you know, it's.

It's definitely start with. I think it'd be a good idea then to start with, you know, putting your own oxygen mask on first. That's got to be the first thing you've got to solidify and, and do the best thing for your business to survive this so that you can come from a position of security on that. And can you tell me a little bit about how your business works, like the economics of it? I know you do maybe a couple million dollars a month, but where does that money come from and how much transaction volume does that account for? All of the basics.

So we are effectively a specialized travel advisory firm or travel agency, if you want to use that terminology. And so we are working primarily with individuals, some groups, but mostly individuals, couples and single travelers who are planning trips to incredible sort of natural places, the Galapagos, Alaska, et cetera. And so we are booking travel, typically trips. The average time between when a trip is booked to when a person travels is 10 months. And we are realizing our revenue derivative of commission from the booking at the time of departure or somewhere thereabouts. We're building a pipeline and have Been maintaining and building a pipeline for two decades that is about a year forward. Now, here's the good news. The good news is in our business, that means we have a lot of people already booked over the next 12 to 18 months. However, the bad thing, at least with this particular situation, is that with the travel restrictions being put in place, that is preventing many of those people from actually doing those trips. In the immediate response, what most companies are doing in order to stay solvent is they're offering credits to people and saying, you can travel at a later date, we'll hold on to the funds, and we'll go on as normal. So in the short term, that seems like it would work.

The.

The reality is, in our business, we're going to have to get to a point, whether that's 2, 4, 6, however many months in the future to where people's confidence is back to start going about normal behavior. As you say, you know the word normal, or will it be a different reality? So that's kind of how our business works. The average trip cost is about $12,000 per person, so it's definitely a higher ticket item. Our clientele are well traveled, well educated, well informed. They seen things like this before. But to answer your other question, in instances where we've seen the H1N1 SARS, other outbreaks, we have seen that people have stopped behavior, whether it's going to a particular place. But then after a while, once that's under control, people do return to business as normal.

So when you look at this right now, the. How many trips would you book in a typical month, let's say. Or is there a seasonality to it, or is it pretty stable across the year?

It's pretty stable across the year. I'd say we're booking anywhere from 80 to 100 trips a month somewhere in there, some months busier than others for booking and the travel, you know, I would say that January and February, our booking rate was 35% higher than it was the previous year. And it's a lot of people traveling. March, yeah, things have definitely dropped off considerably, but not stopped altogether.

And this is a pretty interesting, you know, opportunity perhaps, you know, because you're saying that it's 10 months that people, you know, typically book out. Is there a. When I look at this, the, the way that you guys make money is through commissions from the door operators, correct? Or do you charge a fee or a member?

No, we don't charge a fee. And it's kind of a common misconception, but. But yeah, so that's how we make our money.

For sure. Okay. So as a broker, kind of if we think about it like a, like a realtor would help somebody find a house, you help somebody find a Bruce or like a travel agent sort of just.

Yeah, just like a realtor. Exactly.

Okay, perfect. And then the tour operators are the ones who are really, they've got the biggest impact on the line here, right in that they've got to put these tours on and imagine that they're stuck with, with vacancies or with, or how do they, are they individual tours or are they sort of group tours that they're running?

They're running group tours, you know, and they're in a bit of a pickle at the moment because their ability to execute these tours is being diminished by the travel restrictions. So in fact, one of our partners and I talked with them yesterday. They've made the decision both from a social responsibility and also in order to help their clients not have to make a tough decision, they've decided to cease all operations till the end of April.

Gotcha. Yeah, I think, okay. There's something there. So when you look at it, the good news is for you that you can continue, you can continue organizing all through. Even though if people are making bookings for the fall or for next year, by now, if you're saying, you know, 10 months, that next year is a. Are the tour operators offering assurances or some kind of, are they doing anything to ease people's minds that they're going to be able to travel or the fear that people are not going to be able to travel?

No, I think, I mean, one of the things, the immediate responses from the tour operators has been to create much more lenient cancellation policies and also.

So.

That people can cancel. For example, normally it would be 90 or 120 days before a trip. If people canceled sooner than that, they would lose their money. A lot of companies have moved to sort of a 30 day model where they've said, look, we, we realize that people need to wait and see, but we don't want to hold their money ransom in with the previous terms and conditions, which were more strict. So that's been one of the responses. So I think. And then the other thing, of course, they're trying to do is to keep people booked on the trips. And even if those trip dates get moved forward, then the cash flow keeps going. I gotcha.

Okay. So one of the things that I was thinking about when we were discussing it in the forum was looking at what I imagine the assets that you have in this are. And one of those being this 20 year base of clients who have taken cruises, that you are expedition trips, that you are the, you know, incumbent expedition provider for them. How many people do you have in what we would call your after unit like that, people who have booked with you previously?

Probably about 20,000, 25,000 households.

And do you, do you, do you do anything to measure what happens with that group year after year or. You know, one of the things that we talk about is measuring something we call return on relationship. And so we look at your. This portfolio here of the 25,000 families that you have that are already your. In your family there. And over the last 12 months, how many of those families rebooked travel with you or referred someone?

Yeah, our repeat and referral rate is about 25%.

Okay, and so that's good to know because part of this is if we take this just to help run normal numbers here, this 25,000 people, how do you communicate with them?

We primarily communicate them electronically.

Yes.

So you know, via our newsletters or marketing pieces.

That way. Okay. And do you also have physical addresses for them?

Yes, we do.

Okay. So do you ever. How often would I, if I were on that list, hear from you in a calendar year? What, what kind of cadence of communication would I experience?

Typically if you were opted in to the electronic communication, you would, you would hear from us about once a month, sometimes twice a month. We are cognizant of not wanting to.

Over.

Contact for fear of. Not fear, but because people might opt out then.

Mm. So that, so 12 to 20 kind of times a year. Maybe you might send out emails. How many of the 25,000 would be opted in? Like if you were to send just to the, just to the after unit, the ones that are. Have done business with you in the past?

Yeah, I would say that would probably be close to maybe 18,000 to 20,000 somewhere in there.

Okay, that's awesome. And if it was, if 25% was repeat and referral, that would mean that roughly 250 or 300 a year.

Mm.

Is that about right?

Yeah, that's back to the napkin. That sounds about right. Yeah.

Yeah. And so if we look at that, then what would be how much revenue would come from just the after unit isolated?

I would say. I mean, if you were to look.

At it like that.

And let's say that, let's say the average trip was $10,000 per person, the average booking being two people. So that would be the sum of, you know, 20,000 times that 300.

So.

Six million, maybe.

Yeah, about right. That sounds. That makes sense if that's. If you're saying it's about 25% anyway. So that seems exactly right, because if it's. If it's 24 million, then 25% is about 6 million. Okay. And so when we look at that, now that this division of your business, if we treat it as a separate unit, right, like treat it separately, with its own objectives, its own sort of timeline, that if we look at that, that there were. And these are all knowable numbers. So I would love to see what that actually works out to be. But if we were 20,000 people and for round numbers to. Did we say 300? Yeah. So, yeah. Okay. So if we were. Let's be conservative on both sides, and we'll call the list 15,000 people, and we'll call it 300 people as the number of transactions. So 300 divided by 15,000 is 0.02%.

Right, right.

Of what we would call your return on relationship. So that's the measure that we look at here. Right. So the goal of the after unit is to manage that relationship portfolio for as much of a yield as we can. Now, we just went back at the napkin and established what the current state of the union is that. That's about. And is that pretty stable, like year after year? About 25% of your business is repeat and referral. Okay. Looking at that, the formula that we've got is that 20 contacts a year by email turns into a. Into $6 million of business annually. And that works out to be about a.02% return on relationship.

Okay.

Okay. So now if we look at this, what would you say would be the distinction between referral and repeat business?

The different. The different percentages? Or would you say. Yeah, like more.

Would you say you get more repeat business or referral business?

More repeat business.

Okay, great. And how do you. How do you measure the referral? How do you know that somebody's been referred.

We track that in our database by referring to.

Yeah. How did you find out about us? Well, Susie raved about the trip. Right. That's really the thing that you have there. Okay, so when you look at this, now, that current model, and it'd be very. It would be valuable for you to.

Actually.

Do these numbers because I'm sure you have access to all of it for the spreadsheets kind of thing, the financials, to be able to see what that actually is. But the part of the equation that would be amazing is to be able to isolate the people who are Power expedition trippers. You know, do you have a series or a segment of your list that are, you know, frequent every year kind of people or, you know, multiple trips?

Yeah, we've definitely done some analysis over the years of identifying those, you know, clients who are frequent travelers. We don't have as great a visibility going back through the years. We have to run the spreadsheets manually, but we do have some visibility.

Well, certainly, I mean, you'd be able to see, yeah, the people, I guess, especially the ones that have booked in the last couple of years, you'd be able to see that they booked multiple ones. Imagine. So part of what I was going to maybe suggest with that, and this is when I didn't know whether you were a packager of these expeditions or a purveyor of them, that the, that you. And it may be that you could give people the opportunity to, to travel your book now, but travel in the future. I'm sure there are some of these companies that are offering pretty good incentives right now for booking. Like, even if it's, even if it's booking for next year just to get cash flow. Right. To get some money going. Are you seeing things like that?

You know, it was my thought exactly early on, and I reached out to all of my top suppliers last week to say, now is the time to be forthcoming with, with your best offers. Because, because I agree with you. And the reality is this, this past week, I think companies were scrambling to figure out how to respond to some of these travel restrictions. And they're dealing with, you know, what do they do with the trips that are leaving next week. But it is top of mind for them as well. And I have commitments from several that want to have conversations next week because my goal is to then obviously be able to go out to our clients and say, look, we've been able to negotiate some amazing opportunities for you. Now, what this does, it doesn't help cash flow in the short term because the deposits that are usually taken to these trips go directly to the companies. We don't, we don't gain any access to that, to that money. I understand.

I'm talking about for, I meant for the travel packagers that they were. They were probably going to start offering things like that so that they could get some deposit money in to shore up cash to get through this period because they are probably being, they're, they're probably feeling it more than you will in that. It's just, you're just selling less of them currently, but you're not, you're not, you're not being stuck with all the expenses of actually putting on the trip for half the people. Right. So your whole. Yeah, so it's not there. I can imagine that that could be a pretty deep, deep thing for some of these, for some of these operators. You know. Now luckily it's been a very lucrative business going, you know, for a lot of years here. We've had a long Runway here of growth, growth, growth for the last 10 or 12 years. Right. Especially. And yeah, so there you would hope that the bigger tour operators are going to be able to weather a short term storm like this and we will. Everybody is, imagine that there's, you know, gonna be some casualties but I imagine by and large everybody will get, get through it, but they've got to tighten their belts and be creative and manage cash really well in that period. Now part of the challenge is not losing twice. Like what happens often is that in a situation like what you're talking about. I noticed that on the, on the forum you had said, here's what we've done so far. We've stopped advertising.

Right.

Because we're doing that. So now if what you're saying is that your average gestation is a ten month period, right. That people are, you know, booking for 10 months out, there's probably a, you know, period where people are researching and thinking about that that might be another several months before they actually get to the point of booking. So that the ripple effect of what stopping the advertising now does is it really affects not so much right now, but the longer term picture. Right. Because you're looking at the, you're looking at it as the challenge or the solution to a kind of acute onset right now issue.

How do you.

I'm going to put the after unit aside for a second and then let's talk about the before unit which is the getting new business side. So what kind of. Tell me about your, your model, your advertising model for getting new business and how that converts and what the economics of it are, how it, how much it costs you to get a new client and all of that.

Yeah. So we've been, we have been in the process of building a new website over the past six months and that's about three months out right now. We were tracking to finish that project at the end of April. The reason I mentioned that is because our current website is outdated and is not mobile friendly. I don't need to get into that. You know what that means.

Right.

And so we have become, and we are heavily dependent on paid advertising through Mostly through search. And so our primary way of paying new clients is through search. And also we have some affiliate relationships with different groups and companies as well, where we also get leads that way. As far as the economics of that, you know, our marketing budget has been at about $30,000 a month. And then on top of that, we also do some revenue sharing with affiliate lead production.

And how much. What do you. What ends up happening with the 30,000? How do you, how do you, you know, kind of break that down of what, what happens from that?

Yeah, so we're managing, obviously major search platform campaigns through Google, Bing, we're doing some social advertising and. Yeah, a variety of advertising, basically.

And do you, Are you sending people to opt in pages or. We are.

We do have landing pages and opt in pages and also to our regular website as well. This is something that we're, as I said earlier, we're working on changing, but that's our current model.

And so do you, how many leads do you generate for that 30,000?

I'd say that probably 200 to 300 per month somewhere in there.

Okay, so maybe. Yeah, $100 per lead. Is that about right?

Yeah, that's about right.

Okay, and what are you calling. Is that a phone call coming in or an inquiry about a particular trip or do you offer any, you know, Galapagos planning guide type of things or what are they out of the. What are you calling a lead?

Yeah, that would be an inquiry. Somebody who is responding and reaching out to us to ask for our help regarding a specific destination.

So, okay, so a phone call or.

An email or a female phone submission.

Okay, and how many unconverted leads do you have right now? Like a list of those emails over.

What time period collectively?

I mean, do you have, you must have. Not everybody that come. That calls in books. Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I would say a lot. Yeah, yeah, a lot.

And so how often would I hear from you if I were one of those?

You probably wouldn't. And you know what's interesting, Dean, is I listened to your presentation about the nine word email prior to this and that was very good advice. And I really enjoyed hearing about the statistics of people responding who had not been contacted.

So.

Right.

But.

But we're in that same situation as the, I guess it was the yacht broker that you referenced.

That. Yeah, exactly. Do you literally have a file called Deadly?

No, no, we don't have. We don't have a paper file, but that's great. We have, we have a lot of records in our, in our Salesforce and also our other system to, to.

So let me. So just, so walk me through. So I just want to make sure that I'm on the right track here. So you're, you're running Google Ads. Somebody types in Galapagos Expedition, right? And they see your ad and your ad says Galapagos Expeditions 2020. What would you say? You know, full service, lots of things to choose from. Click here. Right.

Okay.

That. I mean, what would your. How, how would that go for. For you? What would, Are you bidding on terms like that? Galapagos Expedition?

Yeah, I mean, I think travel in general is, is. Is destination based. You know, people say, I want to go to Antarctica, I want to go to California, I want to go to the Galapagos. So general, general search terms around destinations and certainly also our brand name and other, you know, brands that people are familiar with. So, you know, when I started the company in 1999, the Internet was relatively new and I think people were looking to get to the company of origin, if you will, the tour operator that operates the trip. However, now that we're. The Internet is such a big forest, perhaps people are more keen to find advisors like us who can help them choose the flavor of trip and the brand that would suit them best. So actually, I think we've seen an increase in people's behavior with that. But yes, I mean, ultimately we want people to contact us. We want people ideally to pick up the phone because once we get someone on the phone, you know, we can explain to them why they should buy from us. And you know, nine times out of 10, once somebody gets on the phone with us, they do buy because they realize that they don't have any knowledge on this particular topic. And you know, as much as you could go on YouTube and watch how to fix your electricity in your house by watching YouTube video speaking, probably not the best idea. You know, you probably want to get an electrician. So right when you're making your model is then your.

The, the 23 employees that you have are how many of them are sort of frontline talking to people like that?

Yeah, so we've got nine salespeople in the office and then we also have other people who are supporting planning the travel as well.

Okay. And I would call those your during unit. So once somebody, like once somebody books a trip, like they say, okay, yeah, we're going to do it. That now they're in your during unit. And that's everything to do with planning the trip, booking the trip, organizing the trip, coordinating, keeping everything on track. Answering their questions, you know, nursing it along, getting reminding, you know, getting everything ready. And the period of time that they would be in your during unit would be from the moment they, they book it until the moment they disembark, right? They're home safely again. That's the during unit experience. And there's, there's a whole series of metrics that you would look at in that kind of situation too, to, you know, has a lot of great opportunities to multiply those as well. And a metric that we would look at in your during unit would be your, let's call it your trip multiplier index. And what we would look at is that every time you book a trip, you've got the opportunity to have multiple things happen, right? You've got the opportunity to book somebody to come with them on that trip, right? Other companion people, if you're encouraging them to make it a family trip or to make it a buddy trip or a couple's trip or a church trip or whatever. So many opportunities to potentially expand that into multiple trips. The opportunity to book the next trip before they disembark on the one that they're on now, to make sure that now they're ready for the next. Or even if you extend the during unit into, you know, the first 30, 60 days after they get home from the trip that they booked. But to count that as the opportunity to book another trip, you know, to keep that chain going and then the opportunity for them to refer people who maybe book a trip at another time. And so you look at how many. And I would really sort of formalize this as a proprietary metric to look at. What is your current situation of how many trips does one trip turn into, you know, or is it just that they book that trip and then we send them the, we get everything handled and we send them the trip and they, they go on the trip and we, you know, give them a check in call when they get back, how was the trip or whatever, and that, that. But it's no real orchestration of or measurement of how that becomes leveraged. And so that's another sort of opportunity. But is that something that you have an awareness of or that you have a focus on or measure or celebrate or.

No, no, it's not. And I think that's a very good insight, honestly, because the planning leading up to a trip is certainly a period where we are engaged with our clients. And I think that, yeah, absolutely great opportunity there to, to provide them more offerings.

So. And what do you think somebody who books a trip for, you know, you go through the whole thing, you're planning the thing, then they book the trip and then what story are they telling at cocktail parties and on the golf course and at tea and at work and among everybody that will listen. Oh yeah, we're going to the Galapagos. Yeah, we're going to the Galapagos in June. Oh, yes, it's. I hear it's beautiful, all these things. Their whole conversation socially is going to be looking for opportunities to bring up the fact that they're going to the Galapagos. People who go on expedition trips. It's a different mindset than somebody, you know, going to, you know, the Poconos in a cabin for a week, you know. Yeah.

No, I think that's a brilliant point. And I can only imagine how much our business would have grown if we have 20 years. But hindsight is 20 20.

But right now, the opportunity, I think the asset that you have is the unconverted leads. Right now. Would you think that that number is more than the 15,000 or 20,000 or whatever it is that you have of in the after unit? Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. But the question would be how far back would you go? You know, I mean.

Well, I don't. I mean, you know, it's an interesting thing. If you were to send out a, you know, if they inquired about, imagine the information you would have is that they, the record would show that they called in about a trip to the Galapagos. And if you were to send simply a non word email to saying, hey, are you still planning a trip to the Galapagos? And if it's after more than two years, if you send out a thing and say, hey, did you ever go to the Galapagos, something like that, just to engage with people?

Yeah, I think it's brilliant and I definitely could. I liked what you said too, about how it would be very awkward if you said that to somebody face to face, you know.

Yeah.

And they didn't say anything.

So it is. Right.

A way to get that engagement, I think is it's very common.

Very good. Yeah. So the thing that I think could be a great, you know, opportunity for that is that right now you're basically saying that if somebody calls in now, they ask about and are told about whatever they've inquired and do the most of them book that trip right then on that call or is there some nurturing?

No, I mean, typically people. I'd say that the lead to booking process takes about on average of seven days.

Okay. And. Okay. And then if you do you know or measure what your conversion rate is on the leads?

Yeah, it's at about 30%.

Okay. Wow. And then, then the ones that. Would they just kind of drift away or do. Is there some ongoing. Sort of outreach? Yeah, I mean, we have emails to the after unit.

Yeah, we definitely have a follow up process. I think we, I think it's three or four different follow ups.

That we.

That we follow over a period of time. But then beyond that we don't engage further once we consider that sort of a dead lead, if you will.

Yeah, right, I gotcha. So that seems like a real, that seems like a real opportunity and maybe a bit of a longer term opportunity, but it seems like the, you know, kind of an opportunity that you could deploy right now is to your after units with the people who are planning, who have done multiple trips. Like, I think you might be able to be the solution for a lot of these tour organizers because you've got a, you've got a big list of people already who you're in communication with on some level. And you could build a nice email list of people who would love to know about some of these travel deals that are going to be happening over the next few months. You know, Warren, it's funny how you take this Warren Buffett approach. You know that his basic premise is that they try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when people are fearful. And that the sometimes being prepared for opportunities creates a great win. And I remember at the annual meeting, Warren Buffett does his annual meeting in Omaha and somebody asked him, what's the best way to invest $1,000? Somebody said, right. And he said, consumer durables. And they said, oh, okay, well, what, what's that? He goes, well, watch the newspapers. And when toilet paper goes on sale for 50% off, buy $1,000 of toilet paper and you've made a 50% return on your money on something you're gonna buy anyway. Right. And that's a really interesting approach to it. Right? Like it's something, you're gonna need it, you're gonna buy it, rather than waiting until you need it. Pay attention and buy it when the opportunity is. And so if there's people right now who the majority of people are, you know, people who are doing expedition trips if they've got money already, that there would be a opportunity for them to book something that they're intending on doing, especially if. Some of your clients are people who may book multiple trips a year like that. I mean, I'm just thinking about my circle of Local friends from a country club or my friends here that are retired or almost retired retired that, you know, there's several of them that book that go on, you know, on a pace of two or three of these trips a year. I'm sure, you know, people like that, that they're, that's what they're doing in their retirement is. Yeah, especially early on. Especially, you know, especially early on in their 65 to 75 kind of years. Right. Where they're still mobile and active and whatever else. But that may be different than your demographic for your kind of trips. But if there are people who are going to book a trip later, I think you might be able to preemptively build a nice list of people that you could go to the tour operators and say, listen, I've got, you know, we have 25,000 clients, we have 15,000 clients. I have been in communication with them. I have a group of a hundred people that would love to book a Galapagos trip or book a, whatever, you know, that you could, you could be a solution, you know. Mm, yeah, that could be a solution for you. Like I would imagine if you sent out an email that told the situation to people. Right. Like you're saying in, to. To explain that to people, you know, in a one to one conversational kind of way. If I were sending it to you saying, Ashton, you've probably seen that there's a lot of craziness going on right now about coronavirus and people are travel bans and who knows how this is going to play out. It's probably going to be weeks or months before things get back to normal. And the travel packagers are really being left with a lot of the burden of this because trips are half full and things like that. And they're. Some of them are offering really great incentives for people to book Travel now for 2021. And so saying to people, you know, I don't know what your plans are for next year, but if you are considering trip to the Galapagos or a trip to what would be the big five kind of thing, you know, take the categories kind of thing or you know, if you're the Galapagos or the rainforest or the New Zealand or Asia or whatever, you know, probably not Asia right now, but going up.

Yeah, that.

Having Alaska or Antarctica, you know, those kind of things. If you were to get somebody's, get an interest list among those people and just kind of put yourself in a position where you could be a market maker here, you know.

Yeah, no, I think that's the, That's a great way of looking at the situation from a different perspective. And yeah, I think people would be, especially clients that have, that have done business with us before. That's right. I'm sure they would be quite willing to respond very, very easily to gauging interests like that.

And that's exactly right.

Powerful tool to leverage. You know, it's one thing to say, give me your best offer and I might be able to find some people.

Yeah, right. And that's the kind of thing.

Right.

Like you're, you can go out and do that. And I might use this as a way to segue into more frequent communication because I might say to people, listen, I know you're used to only hearing from us once a month, but I'm going to ramp that up in the next, over the next little while because these are extraordinary times. This is a, you know, twice in the lifetime of our business opportunity. The first was at 911 when travel summer. We recovered from there. And you may have, you may have remembrances of what happened after 9 11. I mean, that probably put a damper on the robustness of people booking expedition trips.

Yeah, I mean, it definitely did. One of the. Yeah, it did. But there was, it was also a time when people, when tour operators released special offers and things like that too, in order to incentivize. And so that's where, you know, it's like there's always going to be people that will be motivated by.

Yeah.

Saving money. So.

Yeah. And I think that there's the thing that the, the offer, the thing about the. Right now, the thing about right now in this moment is that it's all so brand new. It's less than a week before, since the real ramping up of quarantines and isolations and travel bans that the travel companies have not yet had a chance to wrap their mind around it and formulate. Okay, we need to make some special offers here. And that you've. Part of this narrative for you is that as your travel advisor, I've seen this happen twice before. It happened in 2001, it happened in 2008. What's likely to happen now is that the travel companies are panicking and they need to figure out what to do to stimulate some activity. And I may even tell the Warren Buffett story in that kind of a situation. Right. Yeah, you're, you're, this is your reward for doing all the right things. And, you know, you've got a chance now to, to, you know, be. To benefit from that doing something that you were going to do anyway and, and save money doing it. And so I just want to gather your interest around that and let's. I'll keep you posted each week here. I'm gonna keep us apprised of all the situation. And then next week you might say, okay, here's what's going on. I've been talking to the people from the Galapagos and, you know, so there's the kind of thing where we, you know, if you're saying we may be able to get some really good expedition trip clients only. Yeah.

Some opportunities. Yeah.

I've been on the phone with these people, booking, exploring, exclusive opportunities, and that could be a. I mean, you know, there's a way that we said every shot make somebody happy, you know, and that you're in that situation, that you've got to take the point of view that you're looking at this as the umpire and you're realizing, without emotion or fear attached to it, that this is what's happening, what's likely to happen to get out of this, and let's align ourselves as part of the solution and see if we can't market, make our way into things happening.

Yeah, yeah, No, I think that's. That's an incredible insight. Dean and I definitely, you know, we're well positioned to do that having been in the business, in the industry for so long and certainly have great relationships with both clients and our tour operator partners. So definitely something that will be actioned in the very next.

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, Ashley, I can't believe it, but we've been talking for over an hour here. It just seems like we're. It just went by so quick, but.

I think you got.

I think we made a lot of progress there. What did you. What's your takeaway?

Gosh, I've got so many takeaways. I think that, you know, there's definitely some opportunities within our database for us to serve our clients better. Ultimately, it's not just about selling them something. It's about serving them better than we have been both in the inquiry phase. But, you know, for those that haven't made a decision, reaching back out to those people to gauge their interest and certainly reaching out to our database of people who have traveled and who do trust us. It's digging that well where we know there's water, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think that, you know, I cannot thank you just enough for your insights and your generosity. I'm so grateful for your time and just for not only talking through some of these ideas with me.

But.

But I also hope that this might provide others with insight in ways I hope, too.

That's my hope, too. You're not the, you know, there's so many people in this situation right now that are, you know, wondering what to do. And I think that the things that we talked about would be on a macro level applicable to so many different businesses. So I was happy to do it. I'm glad we got to know each other a little bit, and I'm sure we'll stay connected here.

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