We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Casey Carr a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Casey, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you tell us about an important lesson you learned in school and why that lesson is important to you?
In school I wasn’t a bad student, but I wasn’t a good one either. I excelled if I cared about the subject, but mostly I just wanted to be outside, I was a theater kid, and didn’t have a lot of outlets for my energy, until one year I joined the baseball team because I wanted to meet girls. It really was that simple but I discovered a knack for sports, and played everything I could from that moment on. There isn’t much that’s given me more joy in life than playing on a team, but the lessons I learned there are numerous. Maybe the most important was not to feel sorry for myself. I think that self-pity is a destructive and insidious emotion, and it spirals downward. When you are on a team, competing, working hard at practice, being accountable to your teammates, there is no place at all for self-pity. You don’t make excuses. You learn to deal with failure because it’s a constant, and in fact progress is impossible without failure. Playing on good teams where the stakes are high, with teammates and coaches who are leaders and hard workers, you either rise to the level or sit on the bench or quit. Self-pity is a completely useless feeling. The most valuable thing that sports gave me is a voice in my head that says “don’t be such a crybaby” when I get down about anything. It sounds like my old teammates and coaches, and it’s gotten me over a lot of humps.
Casey, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
We are Sharon Carr Travel, Sharon is my mom and we’re a family-run travel agency in Dallas, Tx. My dad actually started the company in 1969 but left early on and it’s really always been my mom’s. From 1971-2001 we hosted a radio program, first on KVIL and KLUV with the great Ron Chapman for 35 years, then with Jody Dean for 13 years after Ron retired, and then with Jeff Miles until the program reached it’s inevitable conclusion in December of last year. We spent 50 years on the air, and radio changed a lot during that time, along with everything else.
We are experts in world travel. There really isn’t any destination or product we are unfamiliar with. Our staff has decades of experience and knowledge to help our clients navigate the complex modern travel processes, as well as customize the perfect trip to suit their wants & needs. Whether you are planning a honeymoon, safari, beach getaway, river cruise in Europe, a villa in Tuscany or a cruise to Antarctica, we are a one-stop shop with a vast wealth of knowledge, and it doesn’t cost you anything to use one of our seasoned specialists to plan your vacation. In fact we often save people money!
People are often mystified that travel agencies still exist, and think of us as some sort of throwback. But they are also tired of booking online with no support. They’re abandoning internet travel and coming back to travel agents in droves. 2022 is likely to be our busiest year ever.
Travel Agents are the frontline salesforce of the entire travel industry. We are constantly traveling, learning about the destinations and products that we specialize in, and we’re truly valuable to our clients.
I am the General Manager of Sharon Carr Travel, and I am most proud of carrying forward my mom’s legacy. She still works at the agency, and is still our north star. We have a genuine affection for our clients, we’re personally invested in them, we care about our their experience, and that attitude starts with Sharon Carr.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
These days there are so many ways to advertise your business, and we have tried a lot of them with varying degrees of success. Internet marketing is pretty valuable, especially the email list that I have curated over the past decade, but social media has been a boon to our industry in terms of connecting with new clients as well as friends of existing clients. Facebook has been the place where we get the most engagement. We’re also a high profile travel agency given our media presence here in Dallas. People know who we are and will reach out just because they’ve heard our name.
But the single best source of new clients for us has always been word of mouth and referral. We’ve been around more than 50 years, many of our clients have been traveling with us for decades, and now their grown kids travel with us. If you do a good job for people, they recommend you to friends & family.
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
I started my production company Globe Trek Productions in 2012 by selling my first film to Uniworld River Cruise Lines. That year Uniworld gave me the entire ship for the inaugural sailing of their new Vietnam & Cambodia itinerary and I sold it out. They gave me a cabin onboard to travel with my group, and I knew since it was a brand new ship and itinerary, that they wouldn’t have any media for it. I suddenly had the thought, “I bet I can make a promo video and sell it to them”. I had studied film in school, and was already making films for more than a decade at that point, mostly for my clients and for kicks. I knew how to shoot travel footage and make it compelling, but I was missing some production value so I bought two pieces of gear that completely transformed my footage: a steadicam rig, and a 50MM Lens. Those two pieces of gear added a cinematic quality to my footage that made it look like I had a whole crew with me.
By the end of the trip I knew I had it. I got home and spent a month cutting it together and sent it to Guy Young who was the President of Uniworld River Cruisesat the time. Guy responded immediately and I remember his words were “I am quite literally blown away” and he offered to buy it on the spot. I had thought that if they offered me $1000 for it I would probably faint, but instead he offered me a massive amount of money. It was far more money than I had ever been paid for anything, and I can still feel my heart racing when I heard the number. I responded and thanked him for his offer, and told him it was a bit less than I would normally be paid for something like this. I made him a counter offer that was about 25% higher and he took it.
I fibbed a little but I don’t regret it at all, in fact they got it at a steal. It’s a great video, and these companies spend much more to send entire film crews out to make them promos. Uniworld took my first film “Timeless Wonders of Vietnam, Cambodia & the Mekong” and pressed it into 50,000 DVD’s which they sent all over the world. Being a filmmaker was a silly pipedream until that moment.
I took that money and invested it all back into camera gear, and Globe Trek Productions was born. I went on to make 6 films for Uniworld River Cruises with my producing partner and former college roommate & teammate Mike Williams, and spent months shooting in Paris & Normandy, India, Russia, Eastern Europe & Egypt, plus other destinations around the world for various tour operators & cruise lines. To date we have won 6 Magellan Awards from Travel Weekly for travel films.
Mike and I also created a local music series with the Dallas Observer called “Busking”, and have been fortunate to work with some of our favorite artists. I wanted to be a filmmaker so badly, so many times I’ve had to pinch myself. I can’t believe it just worked out.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sharoncarrtravel.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/globetrekpro & www.instagram.com/SharonCarrTravel
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/casey.carr50
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/SharonCarrTravel
- Other: Sign up for our email list! This is where I send out new trip details first – www.sharoncarrtravel.com/subscribe