We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Toni S. Jackson , MD. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Toni below.
Toni, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you come up with the idea for your business?
As a child growing up in Jamaica, I vividly remember wanting to go to my high school’s Costa Rica trip and not being able to for financial reasons. I was deeply disappointed and I made a promise to myself that when I became an adult I would make global travel a priority. Many years later when I was in Emergency Medicine residency, I had 1-month rotations in Australia and Singapore and that was when I truly fell in love with traveling. Traveling for me has been one of the ways that I keep myself energized and ready to perform my duties as an ER physician. It is an essential part of my wellness plan. Learning about other cultures truly broadens my life-view and improves my engagement with my patients. My traveling really ramped up when I became an attending and could afford to travel. There was a point in my career where I was visiting 2-3 countries per month. Once I had amassed a significant number of trips and started repeating countries, I noticed that my friends and family started looking to me for travel advice. I am extremely organized and so I saved notes in my phone on what I did each day of every trip. While I was in Guatemala on a girls retreat; one of my friends asked why I was sitting on such a novel business idea. I initially laughed at the thought of making something I truly enjoy into a business; however, after the trip this was all I could think about. I reached out to my best friend Colby Betchold, and I told him about my dream travel business. He built my company’s website and paid for the domain within 24hours of our discussion. The next morning I woke up to a text that said, “The website is live, now you have no choice but to execute this.” If I am honest I was petrified but I quickly learned how to manage the site. As the business grew, I realized that I would be soon ceiling-out by selling itineraries to my friends and started to look for help in the marketing department. I was referred by my friend Nicolas to Chiney K Promotions, a marketing and Public Relations firm ran by Brittney “Chiney K” Powell and it was from that point that the business really began to gain visibility and I realized that I had a niche. Yes, there was a unique market for black travelers but the pool of black, female, Jamaican born, Emergency Medicine physicians, who are also global travelers was so small. I wanted to cater to people who I could connect with from all the permutations that exist within these 5 categories. I wanted to share the love I have for travel with others and hopefully make their journeys that more memorable and organized.
Toni, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I am Toni Shae Jackson MD, MS, BS. I was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. I lived there until I was 15 years old and then I moved to Woodbridge, Virginia (where my father lived at the time). I was 15.5 years old and although I had graduated high school in Jamaica, I was too young to attend college. I re-enrolled in high school at Potomac Senior High. I subsequently received a special invitation from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida at the age of 16 and started college there to study Biology. Attending UM was cost prohibitive and so I transferred to FAU in Boca raton, FL. I ran track and cross country and represented FAU all over the USA while I finished my Bachelors Biology degree. I then completed a 2 years master degree in Biological Sciences in one year, simply because FAU agreed to pay for 1 year of Masters level education while I ran track and field for them. During this time I attended the 2018 olympics in China but did not compete. I then became a permanent resident of the United States and applied to medical school. While applications were being processed, I moved back home to Virginia and taught Anatomy and Physiology and Microbiology to nursing school students at the associate level. I was accepted at University of Florida for medical school and spent 4 years in Gainesville and Jacksonville completing my medical degree. I was then accepted to Emory for Emergency Medicine residency and after 3 years I became an attending physician. I am currently a travel Emergency Medicine physician and have practiced emergency medicine in FL, GA, LA, TX, and AL and held licenses in other states as well. I think that my background has been filled with travel in various forms: running track across the US, international rotations during residency, travel for work as an attending and personal travels for vacation.
I currently offer pre-planned itineraries for 20 countries, with the current plan of adding 1-3 countries per month. In the future I plan to expand to provide the following services:
Hotel planning
Flight planning
One-on-one trip planning services / trip planning consultations
International help-line services (where you can call me while overseas and ask questions if you are in a pickle)
I am extremely proud that I took a chance on this passion project and that it’s doing well. I have been really surprised by the level of engagement people have had with my content. I want my clients to know that purchasing an itinerary from TripsWithToni.com is an organized and detailed map for your next vacation. I also want to make international travel accessible for everyone and so some trips are low budget and others are high budget. But undoubtedly, we have something that will fit everyone.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
I make a pretty decent living as and Emergency Medicine physician and so the capital for the business came directly from my savings account. The time investment perhaps was the most demanding investment I had to make. There were many iterations of the itineraries and I was constantly taking the feedback I was receiving and making revisions. It was a labor of love. The money invested in marketing and launching the site were the large costs: invested with the hopes that the business would become more profitable on the backend. So far, we are on the right trajectory.
What’s been the best source of new clients for you?
Short answer: social media. Long answer: In the spirit of transparency, I am not a social media guru; but undoubtedly that is where most of my clients come from. People see the online content and want to learn more. They are shuttled from these platforms to my website where the itineraries are there for purchase. Additionally, the website contains a growing blog and so even if guests don’t buy any itineraries the foot traffic to the site is good and readers are further enticed by the blog content. The impact of word of mouth cannot be downplayed. My friends who support my business do so with much vigor. They make a deliberate effort to repost all the new content I produce and their support is largely invaluable.
Contact Info:
- Website: tripswithtoni.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trips_with_toni/
- Other: TikTok @TripswithToni
Image Credits
Toni S Jackson, MD