Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Tiffany Burks. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Tiffany, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

There is 2 sides to my business Taj Enterprises, the travel agency specializing in group travel & destination event planning and also the newly added women’s conference. I was raised in the travel industry, my dad has always worked in the airline industry my entire life & my mom in the rental car industry, so I grew up well traveled. As a young adult with a family of my own, I wanted to keep the momentum going for my daughters, so I became a licensed travel agent which allowed me to receive discounts on hotels, the missing piece to my mom & dad’s discounts on airfare & car rentals. I’m very much a planner, so I have always been the one who plans the yearly family trips for the entire family. I’m very detailed oriented & would include fun things like itineraries, room assignments with door decor, restaurant choices with menus, as well as kid friendly activities. Planning group vacations is truly my passion. I did this for about 7 years as a side hobby, never considering doing it full time until I got laid off of my full time job at the hospital after working there for 14 years. I decided to dive into the travel industry full time & see where it goes. To my surprise things started going really well, the thing that made me stand out the most is my agency is a full service concierge putting together a complete package catered to the demographics of each individual group. We plan the entire vacation as well as transportation & transfers, activities, food, amusement parks, excursions, our clients literally just have to show up! I began to plan events with high end DJs & influencers, business was really starting to take off.

When the pandemic hit, business was really booming. I’m not one to watch a lot of TV so I was a little out of the loop of how serious this was affecting the US & the world. My clients began to call one by one stating the world would shut down soon and questioning their vacations. I assured them that I didn’t think they would shut the world down & everything will blow over & their plans should be fine. As we all know, they shut the world & travel down… One by one my clients begin to cancel their vacations, until I had not one group on my calendar. I panicked & did not know what the upcoming months or years looked like for the travel industry.

From here, I birthed the Women Wine & Wealth event, I had a friend in the wine industry who was struggling during the pandemic as was I. I decided that if I were to ever do events & vacations again I would do it with a purpose. Millions of people around the world were affected financially, mentally, unemployment was at the highest we’ve ever seen and domestic violence was at an all time high. I wanted to create a women’s event that focused on every faucet of the whole women which included men (husbands, sons, fathers, brothers ect..) & I wanted to do all this while bringing recognition to small or new wine & spirit brands.

Our first event & conference was set to take place in the beautiful Puerto Rico, May of 2022. We quickly found out that the ramifications of the pandemic was not over and we would need to rethink the location as Puerto Rico may be too expensive to reach our target audience. We move the event to Atlanta, GA as that is where our speakers resided, & the event took off like a rocket. We went from 4 speakers in Puerto Rico, to 23 speakers in Atlanta, GA. Although the planning & execution was stressful, as I’m usually just the planner, however this time I’m the visionary and the planner which was a new playing field for me. The event was amazing today the least! It was a 2 day explosive experience! Over 2 days we will empower, inspire, educate, & offer resources in the areas of entrepreneurship, female health & wellness, mental health, relationship health & so much more! We had celebrity speakers to include Dr. Jackie & Dr. Heavenly of Married to Medicine, Yandy Smith Harris, Claire Sulmers founder of Fashion Bomb Daily, and the legendary Ronnie DeVoe of New Edition & his beautiful with Shamari DeVoe who are marriage ambassadors. Just to see it all come together made it all worth it.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I was raised in the travel industry, my dad has always worked in the airline industry my entire life & my mom in the rental car industry, so I grew up well traveled. As a young adult with a family of my own, I wanted to keep the momentum going for my daughters, so I became a licensed travel agent which allowed me to receive discounts on hotels, the missing piece to my mom & dad’s discounts on airfare & car rentals. I’m very much a planner, so I have always been the one who plans the yearly family trips for the entire family. I’m very detailed oriented & would include fun things like itineraries, room assignments with door decor, restaurant choices with menus, as well as kid friendly activities. Planning group vacations is truly my passion. I did this for about 7 years as a side hobby, never considering doing it full time until I got laid off of my full time job at the hospital after working there for 14 years. I decided to dive into the travel industry full time & see where it goes. Things started going really well.

The thing that makes me stand out from most travel agencies is we are basically a full service group travel & destination concierge company. Solving the the problem of what to do when we get there. We do more than just book trips, we curate experiences catered to the demographic of the group. We handle our clients end to end experience, covering the small details such as transfers, local restaurants, even Uber rides or transportation. We take the stress & worry that comes with traveling to new & unfamiliar destinations.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Doing my first event of my own & coming from behind the background of planning for everyone else. Looking back once he event was over, I learned that everyone on the team is not “for” the team. Meaning, God places people in positions for a reason, a season or a lifetime. Some people are there for the moment and not meant to go with you & that’s okay.

After the event everyone went their separate ways, we went from communicating almost daily as a team to not at all once event production was over. I had to learn that it’s not personal, and look at it as a business relationship.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Planning travel was just a hobby I did for my family so we could experience traveling with our children. I enjoyed putting together the details of the vacations and enjoyed hearing how everything went so well because I preplanned every little detail. After getting laid off my job of 14 years, I decided to try it full time, eventually gaining high end corporate groups and influencers. Business started growing, however I was behind the scenes. During the pandemic, I decided to move to the forefront with my own public event. Women Wine & Wealth & business has sky rocketed with a new audience & stream of income. My biggest milestones are getting laid off, and taking a leap of faith to do this full time instead or returning to corporate america & rebranding during the pandemic.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.WomenAndWineWeekend.com
• Instagram: @WomenAndWineWeekend @itsms_taj
• Facebook: Tiffany Burks; Women And Wine Weekend
• Other: email: Tiffany@tajtravelevents or [email protected]