We recently connected with Nichole Jackson and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Nichole, thanks for joining us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

Scaling my business was a relatively organic process once my business partner came up with the brilliant idea for me to teach others what I knew and give them what I needed during the earlier stages of my career. They needed a mentor, an industry expert willing to teach and someone to lean on. They needed a “Nichole”. It was a natural progression because as a service provider I had to figure out a way to offer my travel planning services to more clients. I’m only one person so the best way was to build a team. We went from 5 new agents in 2018 to training and employing over 70 agents over the past 5 years as well as expanding our service offerings with subsidiaries managed and operated by our ever growing team. To sum it up, we built thus huge team, recognized areas in the travel industry where there was a need and created new business entities to meet those needs.

Nichole, 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?

I am a travel agency owner, I am a serial entrepreneur. I am a Certified Travel Industry Executive (CTIE).. I am an Adjunct Professor at a local community college where I teach students about Travel and Tourism industry. To sum it up, I am a travel industry expert who initially started by professional career as a Meeting Planning Assistant. To say I have come a long way would be an understatement. I think I’m most proud of the fact that most of what I know came from being open to fully submerging myself into my industry and a willingness to seek out information. I’m self taught, although I don’t recommend new travel professionals go that same route. I think it’s important they seek mentorship, partnership and education which is why I created the Travel Education Network. It’s an education platform designed to give travel agents everything I never had.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Everyone and I mean everyone has a story about how COVID impacted their life. Mentally, physically, professionally and financially it took a major toll on me. At the end of 2019 I had just celebrated 10 years in business. I was on a high professionally. I had expanded from being a travel agent to becoming a full service travel agency over the past 18 months. I went from being a one woman operation to a thriving 20+ agent boutique travel agency.

Then in the spring of 2020 everything came crashing to a screeching halt. The crazy part is the work didn’t stop but the money did. We canceled close to 200 bookings in 2020 and had to advocate for our clients, cancel, request for vendors to issue refunds and rebook over and over again. It was exhausting and until clients traveled, there was no money. There were no commissions paid. There was also no PPE or Business relief because my agents are independent contractors so I don’t technically have staff. I fought for unemployment and I fought for resources just to survive. Ironically the fight is what prompted my pivot. I had to figure out creative ways to earn income but I didn’t want to stray too far off the path or too far away from the travel industry because at the end of the day I still believed we (the travel industry would make a comeback. I spent so many nights really perplexed but I knew in order to make it to the other side I had to get creative.

My first pivot was completely unexpected and literally happened over night. I wrote (literally overnight) and self published my first children’s book, The Adventures of Dash Jackson, to promote creativity and imagination to our little ones with a goal of creating a series where children will be able to explore the world through the eyes of a young adventurous traveler.

I became a podcaster. I created a podcast to share travel news, updates and tips on important things going on in the travel and tourism industry and I created a podcast for women to share their stories on how they o the incredible, successful and driven women they were. It was a breath of fresh air and an incredible opportunity for me to really be creative.

As more time passes and clients still remained leery of travel, I realized the need to keep pivoting. After about a year of slow sales and discovering so much would essentially be different as far as the travel industry, I created an educational platform for travel agents to help them get acclimated to the new travel norms and basically provide what no one gave me when I was just getting started. The platform, Travel Education Network was designed to give my industry a boost. After creating a ton of content and a great curriculum I shifted once again, transitioning into a role as an Adjunct Professor for Travel and Tourism at Prince George’s Community College where I currently teach the certificate program, helping prospective new agents gain the knowledge they need to become phenomenal travel advisors.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social media is a gift and a curse. Once you really take the time to venture down the rabbit hole you are stuck. If I had to give advice on ways to organically grow your audience and build a strong social media presence I’d start by saying it is important to be authentic. The minute I stopped trying to be perfect and showed myself from all angles literally and figuratively, my audience grew. I share who I am as a business owner, a mom, a friend, a traveler and everything else in between. Secondly, being strategic in what you post (without losing your authenticity) is critical. Basically, tie it together and be sure everything is there for a reason. If I take my son out to dinner for Taco Tuesday and I post it, I may turn around and post a time I was eating tacos on vacation for Throwback Thursday a few days later. Next, I plan out my travel related content for all my pages. I generated try to map out one month at a time. Another important thing is making sure your content is relatable and not all over the place. I use a category system to make sure my posts make sense. Do my posts provide value? Or show my expertise? Do they convey my experience as an agent? Do they enable new clients to seek me out? Lastly, I engage with and post tons of the content that falls into those categories. I share my clients travel experiences, I follow my clients and I comment on their posts, I ask my audience questions and keep travel at the forefront of everyone’s mind with sales, throwback pics and new resorts or hot trending destinations. This probably all seems elementary but for agents who are not active on social media this simple strategy really helps them grow and expand their audience.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.TravelWithHEAT.com
• Instagram: @NicholeSJackson @TravelWithHEAT @TravelEducationNetwork
• Facebook: www.Facebook.com/TravelWithHEAT
• Twitter: TravelWithHEAT

Image Credits
Photos Courtesy of Travel l With HEAT and Sal Raza Shah