Grace Van Hollebeke: Alrighty everyone, welcome back to another episode of The Intern. Today we have the incredible Lauren Smith, the founder and CEO of Modern Travel, based actually in Canada. Lauren has built an incredible host agency around a very specific idea. Structure and freedom are not opposites. When the back office is clear and every advisor knows how the business runs, advisors have more room to focus on clients and grow their own businesses. Modern Travel has reported 433% year over year growth, but the story behind that incredible number is not simply more advisors or more sales. It's the operating system that Lauren has built to support growth without recreating the same work every time that the agency has grown. Lauren, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. We're so excited to have you.
Lauren Smith: my god, I am so happy to be here. You guys know I'm like genuinely obsessed with all things turn, so I cannot wait for this conversation.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): I don't even know if you know this, Lauren, but I'm so excited to have this conversation because I am just about to be at my one year anniversary of Turn. And you were the first Turn customer that I spoke with when I started a year ago. So our conversation was the first agency advisor that I like ever interacted with in the Turn community. And like I have such like memories of the insights from that conversation. So it's feeling full, super full circle for me for us to be doing this right around my one year. So I'm just really excited that you're here.
Lauren Smith: That's so fun, I didn't know that.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): Yeah. it's
Grace Van Hollebeke: Well, I think that's perfect timing.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): perfect timing. It's perfect. Yeah. So Lauren, we we love to just sort of kick off with like, what's one thing that you're super excited about this week? One thing you're working on or something in your personal life that you're like, this is bringing me a ton of joy and and energy.
Lauren Smith: Yeah, I think the biggest one is we're hiring another support team member and that feels like so I'm it's such a proud moment of like we are taking the business even to the next level and to be able to bring in support to get us there is something I'm genuinely so passionate about because I'm very picky with bringing people in and this just feels like a little celebration.
Grace Van Hollebeke: I think that's probably
Abby Klein (Head of CX): Love that.
Grace Van Hollebeke: the most perfect tee up to our first question, to be honest with you. So I would love to just jump in to talking to you about how you grew modern travel. And so when did you first realize that scaling your business would depend less on doing more yourself and more on how everyone should operate within that business and that structure? So, like more on deciding what everyone should do the same way.
Lauren Smith: Yeah, I think a big part of it for me was I as a business owner, I don't want to be needed in every situation that comes up in the business. So I tried to always build a system or a response or the the makeup of our business around this idea idea of I can be involved if I want to be, but every decision is not weighing on my shoulders. And that it's kind of, yeah, the foundation we've built the business on. And it's something that everyone within the team loves because I'm not pressured all the time to like show up for these admin decisions. I can show up from a creative perspective or where are we taking the business or what are the fun things that we're working on and actually be creative and enjoy what I'm doing and not feel like I'm like a workhorse of constantly needing to be at the helm of the decision making.
Grace Van Hollebeke: Yeah, I mean I I'm curious where did that like instinct come from because I know your history. You were previously an advisor as an under a host, you're brought into the industry and really trying to figure out like how do I become a travel advisor for many years? And then you grew into this business owner and now host owner. But like when you entered travel from the events world a successful experience there depends on hundreds of details being handed correctly behind the scenes. And then you began this travel business during 2020 when there was quite literally no playbook to follow. So like what did event planning and that side of world teach you about creating these experiences for client that for clients that later shaped how you designed modern travel and its operations.
Lauren Smith: Yeah, I think a lot of event planners, and this I might get canceled for this, but they get off on being needed. It's I have to respond to my client at 11 p.m. or my God, I'm constantly in communication with these people. And I just feel like I have the complete opposite mentality of like, I love events for what they do for the transformation. Same thing in travel. I love building the trips and giving people these once-in-a-lifetime experiences, but that I don't want to be working at 11 PM on a Friday night because that doesn't actually like benefit my life. So why can't we set up systems and processes to like make the business run smooth, make my clients feel like they are my number one, which they are, but doesn't require every living breathing moment with me. And I think having that event experience, especially when you're dealing with attendees and sometimes you have multiple events on the go and you have hundreds of people needing something from you. I was like, no, let's just like front load everything. And then that way, again, I can show up and just like be the event planner who's putting together an incredible experience and not the person who's like your assistant at 11 PM. We've pre-front loaded like all that information and it pulled over into the travel side of things because yes, I was an advisor under another host. I had a team at the time and then we had that decision to go independent or to stay hosted. And it was that same internal dialogue of well, I could go and do this and need X, Y, and Z. And this is what it would need from me, or we could just like build it differently.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): It's so it's so interesting, Lauren, your perspective on you know, you you kind of set a hot take there in a way of getting canceled from other event planners of like wanting to be at the helm of your clients. And I I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago, not with an advisor directly, but with one of our partners, where their one of their advisors was like so proud that they spent like 20 hours building an itinerary for For their client, 20 was probably not the exact number, and I'm exaggerating a little bit, but a large number of hours, days, weeks, whatever it was. And we were having this conversation of like, why are they proud of that? Like, it's like I under I totally understand from the perspective of like, I feel like I'm putting in the time, which means I'm investing in you, and like I'm taking pride in the fact that like I made it super detailed and I was and I was super diligent. But at the same time, it's like, but your client got the exact same experience, but the admin that you put into it was significantly more to get there. And so I'm I'm it's funny you said that about being canceled as an event planner because I actually think that's probably a hot take for travel advisors too, who like have this feeling that they have to be spending time on the trip planning to prove their value. Like, how do you think about that as that translates in your work today?
Lauren Smith: Yeah, I mean, I think this is not a an old concept of like you pay me for my experience, not for the hours that I put into it. But I think there's a disconnect between saying that and people actually believing it. And I think, especially in travel, like when I hear my advisors be like, my God, I spent 12 hours researching hotels on this proposal. I'm like, why? Like, why did you do that when there's so many resources and support, whether it's Turn AI or external AI or just anything that you can be leaning on to show up as the Powerhouse to your client and get out of that busy work that you guys talk about as well. I just think it's we need to check our egos at the door and realize there's a lot more powerful stuff we can be do be doing with our time. I just don't think we're there yet. But I I think it's I think it's ego and I think it's a little bit of it's the narrative that we've been convinced is true. Like in the in the event world, you see those memes of people like obviously always walking on their phone, head down, they're never paying attention, they're always answering something about. food and beverage or sponsors, like you see that being glorified. And I look at that and I'm like, I no, I don't want any of that. I want balance and I want to build a business for myself and my advisors. It's actually cool and impacts my life in a beautiful way, not in a burnout way. And I think the industry needs to catch up.
Grace Van Hollebeke: What was like the first, like as you were building this business in the beginning, what was that first like experience that you had where you're like, okay, I can systematize this? Because I imagine as you started building out modern travel, you were like first having a few trips being planned and booked, or you were first bringing in an advisor. Like, when was that first moment for you where you're like, this can definitely be systematized in some way for the business?
Lauren Smith: Yeah, I think there's a couple. I think when we were under the other host, I always have had a team. When we first started kind of our agency, I was doing it to support the event side. And I had my event team that was getting licensed. And I again never wanted to be that roadblock between information. So the first thing we systematized was like our training program to the point where my old host asked for access to it for his team because I was just like, we can make this beautiful and accessible and over the top. And people aren't coming to me asking me, hey, I have an email funnel. What do I do? Or I need an email template or anything. I didn't want people again to be messaging me at night. So we figured out how to build a backend that allowed us to be creative and give all these resources but not be needed all of the time. And then the second one was commission reconciliation. My logistics brain was like, it it's money and it should be flowing and it's not and I don't understand why. So that was the first thing when we became independent that I was like, this has to be systematized. And even my accountants were like, damn girl, that is impressive. And we haven't had to shift or expand our accounting process since day one, because it has just from day one been the thing that I was the most strict about being systematized.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): Wow, that's incredible. I mean, I think we we think about this a lot at Turn as well in terms of optimizing our team's processes and operations in terms of like we're in an age where we shouldn't need to be scrowing the team linearly, linearly with growth. And, you know, same thing with what you're saying, where your accounting team didn't actually need to grow with the fact that you've seen 400 plus percent year over year growth because the processes that you have to actually do that commission reconciliation are, you know, wildly better than they were X number of years ago. I'm I'm kind of curious, Lauren, like. When you think about resources and training that you've built within modern travel, like what do you feel like is your responsibility as the host owner or you know for our agency owners who are listening? Like, what is the responsibility of the business owner to sort of lead in that training? And how do you feel like that translates to either like pairing with partner resources, like what Turn has available, or even like the expectations that you would put on a partner like us to help your teams get, you know, up and running?
Lauren Smith: Yeah, I think this might be another hot take. I think as a host, it's my responsibility to prop our advisors up for the most success possible. I never want my advisors needing to go external to find a resource or a coaching program or a membership. I think that as their host, I'm that's my duty to support them through that. And then when it comes to leaning on partners, I think. Understanding like product specific trainings, I can't stay up to speed on absolutely everything that Turn is rolling out. So that's kind of my my level of expectation. But internally, it's also my job to teach our team how to not just use the product, but actually understand the product and keep that communication and that culture between your product and our agency. I don't want it to be tiered where it's like I have the relationship with Turn and then it's my job. solely to go and implement that to my advisors. It's we share the excitement of what's happening with Turn and obviously share what we can and when new products and stuff come out or new features, but empowering them with the resources that they need to do that and making it easy. Like we have a ton of resources. We hear all the time like it's so much, but making it easy to navigate that I think is so important as a host. And I personally don't book travel. As a host, I look at my clients as my advisors. It's my job to support them in their business.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): I think it's a super helpful perspective, whether it's a hot take or not. Because I think that we see so many agency owners who want to, you know, build the foundations and the structure for their team. And I think they have a little anxiety around like they don't They don't know how and they want to move to turn and they're moving off of these legacy systems. And there's a lot of emotions and anxiety that goes along with that. and then thinking about now I have to train my team on this like entirely new thing, like how am I gonna fit that in in in my day? I think it's like helpful to hear your perspective of, you know, where you feel like that line is between like your responsibilities, the partner responsibilities, how you leverage our resources, but actually translate them into specifically how you want your team to work.
Grace Van Hollebeke: almost see though, Lauren, like I almost could see for anyone that's joining or even like listening in on this, like that the the like systemization and processes, like Abby said, like the Snowflake model makes a ton of sense, but I think for someone listening, they might see that as like restrictive rather than freeing. Like, have you ever seen or gotten any feedback on the way that you set up your business where someone's seen it maybe originally as restrictive and later saw it as like actually a freeing thing to have these processes and systems and resources like H have you come across that and and where?
Lauren Smith: Yeah, for sure. I think a big part where we see it is when we have advisors joining from other teams and they're like, Well, we used to just collect credit cards over the phone before. And I'm like, absolutely not. That is not PCI compliant. And I'm like very strict on that. And there's a bit of a process learning curve when it comes to that side of things or adopting itineraries when things used to just be sent an email. But the way that we Recruit and attract advisors is because we are built on turn. So even though it is a learning curve and it is something that they have to get adjusted to, it's an attractive part of our agency of yes, there's going to be hurdles, there's going to be blocks of what you have to adopt, adapt that you didn't necessarily have to before. But in the long run, they know that's why. I'm also very transparent about how tech forward and rigid our processes are. And in the interview phase, like I'm not going to gloss over, yeah, you can run this business how you want. It's here's the guardrails, how you do that and how we're gonna support you. You can decide if you want that or not, because I'm never gonna put the rest of my team or our agency at risk because someone doesn't want to follow a process, which that could be my hot take. It's that it it happens frequently and it's I think people are craving that structure when it comes to their host.
Grace Van Hollebeke: I think the credit card example could not be more perfect for
Lauren Smith: Mm-hmm.
Grace Van Hollebeke: I mean, we see this all the time in turn. We have, and you know this, we've created some really incredible processes that allow people to collect credit card authorizations securely in a way that protects their business, protects the client, protects the supplier, like across the board is a really systematic and secure way. But a l we lose a lot of people in that initial phase of like, Well, I don't want to use that. I want to collect and store credit cards. And it's like, well, we spent a lot of time in understanding why we have that process set up. so I think initially it can seem really restrictive, but once you realize the why behind it and the opportunities it creates for a really secure business and also a lot of compliance and pay-per-trail for your business, it actually frees you to grow your business in a lot of ways. Love that example.
Lauren Smith: Yeah. We get often times when I am rigid on a process, and I am, and I'm not scared to say that because I'm protecting the agency. Ten out of ten times the advisor will come back and say, I see why you were that way and I'm grateful you were. Thank you for protecting me. And you do as a agency owner sometimes have to be the bad guy and saying, No, we can't bend that way, or no, we can't allow that because of X, Y, and Z. But when you explain it to them and they can see the bigger picture, I think. every single time they come back and they're like, Okay. And everyone laughs it off. They're like, you were right. And I'm like, Thank you. Yes, there's reasons behind this rigid like being so rigid.
Grace Van Hollebeke: I do also feel like we've now framed you as this like super rigid host owner, which is hilarious because you know it it may seem like a negative from the way that we've kind of like talked about the process of it all. And I think the most important undercurrent of all of this is how freeing it is for the advisors joining your host and also as you as an owner to really focus on scaling, which I think is the broader story here. Because I mean your your growth numbers are insane. I like I've literally
Lauren Smith: Yeah.
Grace Van Hollebeke: never seen anything like it. And so what it tells me. Is that its process isn't the enemy of growth and success. It's actually quite literally the opposite for you guys.
Lauren Smith: Yeah. Well, I think I remember when I was younger, my mom said something that clearly has stuck with me that like kids need structure. And I feel like it's the same thing when it comes to a host is like maybe you want to go to bed at 10 p.m. and that's fun for you, but when you're cranky the next day, there's a reason I wanted you to go to bed at eight. And it's so similar in the host space. I remember when I first got into the industry and there wasn't those guardrails, I constantly had anxiety of is this allowed? Can I really have someone's credit card on a post-it note beside my laptop? That doesn't feel right. And it just leaves so much room for like confusion. Whereas when we're so clear, the advisors can follow that path. And yes, we are strict, but we're not like drill sergeants where it's like not fun to work here. It's more like clarity is kind. And being kind to our advisors is like giving them guardrails to to stick with.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): I also think it's just a testament though to, you know, you sticking sticking to your guns. I guess like that's like the only analogy I can I can think of. But really just being like, I have such a strong perspective and passion around like I've seen this work horribly, I've seen it work really well. And like I have this perspective around why this is gonna work and like I'm gonna stick to it. And like I think you actually not wavering when advisors push back, like it'd be very easy, right? Like you're a busy business owner for an advisor to come to you and say, maybe not with the credit card thing. I do think that we're all on the same page that we want to be as PCI compliant as we can there. But on other things, like I'm sure it's crossed your mind being like, I'm super busy today, I'm stressed. Like, do I just let this advisor go do that? And I think it takes like also a lot of like strength and leadership to be like, no, I have to show up with my authentic self and like my perspective and my honesty around why I built this business. And like every single time I'm gonna show up with that commitment and I'm not gonna waver on it, even when it gets really hard.
Lauren Smith: Totally. And I think I didn't have that when I joined the industry. So I almost feel even more obligated to give that to the team. And then I also recognize that we're a team. There's twenty plus of us that are operating on this team. And it's not fair to start bending for one if it's gonna impact another. And then when do you say yes? When do you say no? And it just like allows way too much room for error and mistake. And I just I owe so much to the team. I've had the conversations behind the scenes. If I'm saying no, there's a reason for it. And we've talked to lawyers and suppliers and we've really done our best. We're not just going to come off and say this isn't possible. We've really done our due diligence. And I think, like I said before, like that's really kind to give that structure to our advisor so they also know what to expect and what not to expect.
Grace Van Hollebeke: Love to dig in, like we've we've talked now about structure and how important it is at modern travel, but like can we actually like dig into it a little bit more? Like when you join Modern Travel as a new advisor, that that process philosophy follows you the second you start. So with you and your and your agencies, like you do not hand someone the tools, meaning turn or your learning tools, et cetera, or your technology asking them to figure it out. you are basically helping them from day one. You you've let us know that you help configure the business settings, branding, workflows, and you've even set up what used to be a 10-day challenge is now a 12-week program for these like lessons and and structure and basically onboarding for these advisors that join for that join you guys. So can you take us through kind of a and a new advisor's first days at Modern Travel, what exists for them, what do they have to learn? And what do you want them to feel before they even speak to a client for the first time?
Lauren Smith: Yeah. So for us, it's all obviously systematized and automated that as soon as they join, they get a workbook that allows them to reflect and get really clear on what kind of business they want to have before they even enter our ecosystem. So they're doing a little bit of the pre-work so that they're getting in that right mindset. Cause it's a big decision to join a host. And oftentimes what we had experienced in the past was like you signed up and then you're kind of just like, well, here's 20 logins. Good luck. And we wanted to really hand hold and support. We'll know what actually happens next. What is turn? How do you use turn? What's your first 10 steps in turn? You're gonna see turn and learn and see all these videos. Don't even think about those. Follow this path, and then you'll get to those videos along the process. So we just did a huge overhaul. It's 12 weeks, 60 videos. they get one video basically a day. The whole idea is over the 12 weeks that they can go from brand new to industry to launching and booking their own travel. And we take it so granular that some videos are like four minutes, but that's their only project for that day. Because I don't want them sitting in front of a computer for 45 minutes with 20 things that they have to do. But if they want to do that, great, binge five videos in a row, but we're giving it to them super bite-sized. And it's everything from setting up your business, how to set up business bank accounts, your business structure, taxes, all the way through to how to build up proposal in turn, how to mark a booking as booked, how to charge service fees, all the way through to email marketing, lead generation. Like we go through absolutely every part of your business. And while we might not dive super deep on every single part, at least you've touched literally every facet of your business by the end of the 12 weeks. So you have a freebie, you have an email funnel, you know exactly what you have to do in your business, then you can just go execute. And it's been So fun to see our advisors go through it, whether it's guided through it with us or they've just joined and kind of done done it on their own. Because we get the request for logins, we get the internal chats with them of hey, I'm at this video at this time. I have a question about this. And it's so cool to see them feel empowered to go from either brand new to industry or brand new to our team to booking these massive trips. We have one advisor who like actually blows my mind. how quickly she went from brand new to industry to full functioning business in under twelve weeks.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): How did you like what was working really well about that 10 day challenge versus what maybe wasn't that had you do the shift? I mean, when we were talking about this obviously before we started recording, 10 10 days is way different than 12 weeks. So, like, how did you decide what worked from that? How'd you translate that? Like, how did you decide 12 weeks even was the right, the right number?
Lauren Smith: Yeah, we're constantly looking at our internal support for advisors. Our ops team and I meet all the time saying, what questions are coming up? What suppliers do we need to dig into? What do they need more of? What resources are we can we make for questions that are constantly being asked? That's like again our job to support our advisors in that. So we started to notice that the 10 days was great because it was like literally your first 10 days, how to use Turn, how to get set up. And then they would look at our resource vault and think, my God, I don't know where to start. So our whole idea was, well, why don't we walk them through what we already have and not necessarily need to teach them new? And then as I got into diving more into it, I was like, well, this would be cool to add. Or I think this would be a really valuable piece of information. Or this is something that I don't see talked about in the travel industry, but I knew it from when I was building my other business. And I just kept it a running list. And then I was like, this is more than. 10 days of training. And so then we built like a whole program around it. And what we do is in the videos, we'll teach the concept and then point them to directly where they can find the resource within our agency. So it starts to get them really comfortable navigating our internal system because our internal system is also a little bit different. We built it on one platform, one login. It's where we do everything from videos, trainings, templates, our community chat. They don't have to go elsewhere for it. So it's all this like really cool ecosystem where if someone's asking, hey, where do I find this template? We literally just like tag it and then they can go find the template super easily.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): I think that's good advice for other agency owners as well, though. And like, I mean, what I'm hearing from you is that it's not like the 10 days went away. It was that you had 10 days that was super structured, then you had a bunch of resources that were unstructured, and so you just built on it because they the people wanted more of that walkthrough experience. And I think that's a good way to think about it for others who might be. feeling overwhelming of like, you, you know, if you're listening to this and you're like, I do not have time or the or the skill sets or the whatever to build out a 10 12 week program, it's like, well, it doesn't have to be 12 weeks. Like, what's the first thing that you want people to do on their first day, on in their first week, in their first month, and like almost like taking it in bite-sized pieces. And I'm sure also that you and your team were able to like iterate and retro on that a lot faster throughout that build process, then feeling like this weight of pressure of like what has to be this like the most robust program from day one versus like, no, we're just gonna start small, we're gonna add things over time. Now I see all these gaps as I'm building probably the V two, V three, V four of it. And like it's okay that it changes and like change is good things.
Lauren Smith: Yeah. And in lifetime, it would change. So we would be like I took the 12 weeks to film it. I didn't film it in like a day. I went along with the advisors and said, we're gonna do this together over 12 weeks. I want your feedback. I wanna know what videos you're loving, which videos you don't find helpful. Are we missing the mark on something? Are we missing education that you need? And if they gave me feedback, that was implemented in the next video or added to a training the next week.
Grace Van Hollebeke: Lauren, that is brilliant. Like, not like I as a host,
Lauren Smith: Yeah. Well
Grace Van Hollebeke: I'd be sitting here being like, my gosh, like to record that many hours of content, I must like block out a whole week of just recording constantly and not even know if it's gonna sit with advisors. But instead, like you said, you're just doing it over time. So you truly are doing it on only bite-sized chunks and getting the interview. that's so smart. I love that. Right.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): In live with the advisors so that like they can actually be like, Lauren, that video yesterday made no sense. Got it. I need something else. I need a visual. I need it to be longer. I need a written resource, whatever that is. I I think that's that's great. Also, Lauren, are you still operating? Last time we spoke a couple months ago, you guys were doing this all primarily in Slack, which I thought was really cool. Are you still doing it in Slack? Okay, cool. Tell tell us, yeah,
Lauren Smith: Yes. This is my little secret. Yeah.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): can you can you lift the hood on like what was the Slack decision and like why does that work so well?
Lauren Smith: Yeah, so Slack is my hidden, my little hidden secret. Everyone I show my Slack to is like head exploding because for me, and any I think anyone in the travel industry can relate to this is and it's I think it's a problem Turn is trying to solve is we all have login fatigue. I don't want to be in a Facebook group to chat with my team and then have to log into another platform to get a resource and then watch a video somewhere else. It just felt way too overwhelming. And then also I knew advisors wouldn't actually use the content. So why would I spend hours of my life building resources and content that were going to get used? So we were using Slack as a communication tool for our team. And if you haven't looked into the capabilities of Slack, it will actually blow your mind. We have workflows for when new advisors join. We have each channel is specific to like, let's say we have a WestJet supplier channel. In that channel, we have training videos, resources. Chats, updates, like our own videos embedded directly into Slack. It's all stuck in WestJet. So if a team member has a question on WestJet, they to the WestJet channel and then it's all there. We're also very rigid on if you're replying to something, you have to reply in thread so that it can be searchable. So we have had new advisors who say, My first month with Modern Travel, I used Slack as social media and I just went through every channel. And if I had a question, I would search and it would come up and I could see the whole conversation for that like communication around that topic. And the more we got into it, the more I became obsessed with building directly in Slack. And the advisors, it's a learning curve. I'm gonna be so honest that as soon as they come in, they're like, what is all of this data? But the second they go through the 12-week program, they know where to find things, they know the the etiquette. We have other advisors jumping in to support to point them into the direction of a resource. It's just this really cool community that we've built. And the cool part is we just always have it open. So if they're looking for a resource or they have a question, it's all within the exact same spot.
Grace Van Hollebeke: You know, it's so similar. What we have at turn in a lot of ways, in the sense of we use Slack for like team communication, but we have a strong documentation culture and documenting in public. So what that looks like for us is similar to you. We've got like project channels and things like that. And if you're discussing someone with a team with a team member, it should be happening in public, not in private channels, not in DMs, and it should be happening in public chats that anyone can search or see or join that channel, etc. And what you get out of that is like, I mean, even for example, using like Claude, it can connect to your Slack and then as you're searching and having conversations with it or even within Slack, you can now reference entire chains of communication without needing to go to like talk to that person. And I think that's probably so useful for suppliers, like you said, and understanding updates and you know structures of commission splits and things like that that otherwise you maybe would need to have to go search for for days. So I really, really love that. Can you share also, I remember you talking a long time ago about some of the like workflows that you have existing in there. Can you talk through some of that?
Lauren Smith: Yeah, so we have each we have set you can section things off in turn. outside of the channels, you can put them into categories. So we have categories for suppliers, for content, for clients, more so on the event side. and then operations. And then we have an agents section. So each agent gets their own Slack channel that only operations and them are inside of. And as soon as they join, they get a custom channel with a checklist of things that they Hard to work through for onboarding. And then that way they can ask us what they sometimes might feel is like a silly question. but it's private. It's just the three, four, or five, like whoever's in that, in that chat. But as soon as they join in our group chat, a welcome message gets auto-populated with where are you from? What are you specializing in? Like a bunch of questions. And then right there we reiterate, do this first so that they're seeing it in multiple spots. and then we also have like when someone joins the team. We get notified in Slack. those are a couple of like my favorite ones. I do also want to touch on your comment about Claude and AI in Slack. I think it's so cool and so powerful, but it can also be super overwhelming. So I just want to say for anyone listening, if you the thought of connecting the two stresses you out. We don't have our Claude connected to our Slack based on privacy that we are not allowed to for some of our client contracts. And this all fully operates without any AI. This is our team having set up the structures to run without needing to lean on external AI. And I think that's what makes it even more powerful.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): Do guys use the Slack bot within Slack to search for things or it's just all keyword based because of how organized the channels are?
Lauren Smith: It's all keyword based.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): That's awesome. What what I love about the Slack tip is that I think it can feel overwhelming when you're even thinking about building something like a learning management system, like we're talking about, where it can feel overwhelming to say, do I need to go down this route of like researching all these vendors? Do I build or do I buy? I have no idea how to build an internet or a website to host these things. Like, and Slack is just, it's so simple. It can't to to caveat, I don't think it feels super simple if you've never used it before. But to your point, Lauren, it's like, Let's not overcomplicate it. We're already in Slack. If we just keep building on the capabilities that this one tool has in a centralized forum, like that's gonna be a lot easier for new people. It's gonna be a lot easier for us to update over time. So I just think the Slack tip is so cool because I think it's like this like hidden tip in a way, because I don't think anyone else would really think about building all the operations within their business in what I think at the surface level feels like a chat based based tool. And I would imagine that you have to go through. like a little bit of like a change management and like a habit change for new advisors who come in and let's say they don't use threads. And we've been thinking about this a lot at Turn as we've been hiring a lot of new people. We have a lot of new team members joining. And it's like, you know, for Grace and I, even though I've I've only been here a year, like in my head it's just so obvious. I'm like, yeah, we talk in public channels. But then you have to remind new new team members to be like, don't DM me. We're like anti DMs at Turn because we want everyone to have a lot more public visibility into anything. So like Have you sort of had to do that like mental change management recycle of the information for new advisors who are using Slack for the first time?
Lauren Smith: Every single time. This is something that we reiterate
Abby Klein (Head of CX): Ha ha ha
Lauren Smith: in a our onboarding videos. It's here's the expectation. They get a live walkthrough of how to use Slack. And they're to this day, because also if you're using Slack on your phone, sometimes you think you're responding in thread, but you're not. So we'll just pop in to the thread and tag them and say, Don't forget to respond to here and then delete the old comment. We're like super quick at cleaning it up. And then if their comment's gone, that's up to them to re to re-add it. Because It is such a resource for all of our new advisors. It's not me being mean or a stickler. It's this is a great question and a great conversation. I want this to be searchable in the future. It it's not something that I think you can fully solve in one go. You just have to constantly keep that expectation going. We've even now had other advisors catching it and being like, my God, don't forget to respond here. And I'm like, my God. We joke that like my chickens are hatching and it's the cutest thing ever that they're
Abby Klein (Head of CX): Love it.
Lauren Smith: just so So proud of the process.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): Yeah.
Grace Van Hollebeke: I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. It gives you a lot of structure and also empowers the rest of the team to like encourage the newbies to jump in on that and it makes it exciting, I think, probably for them, which hence the the chick satching.
Lauren Smith: Yeah.
Grace Van Hollebeke: As you've scaled though, you have seen incredible growth over the last year, year and a half since I've known you. Where does that Well, you know, growth is a stress test in a lot of ways. And depending on the stage of the business, it creates fractures in certain places and shows how incredible the system is in others. As you've started to grow, where has the stress test pointed out areas where you've needed to improve or change your processes? Where where have you seen those moments where you're like, I actually need to revisit that? Sounds like the 12 month onboarding, 12 month, the 12 week onboarding
Lauren Smith: Mm-hmm. Topic.
Grace Van Hollebeke: is one, like less a stress test, more of like an option. opportunity, but like where else have you seen that in the business and the systems you've set up?
Lauren Smith: Yeah, I think I I like to build the business to the point where I want to break a system because that shows me there's opportunity to fix it. If the business is not breaking at any point, then to me that's just a stagnant business. I welcome advisors challenging or questioning or pushing us to be better. So that paired with when I look at my weekly calendar and where I'm spending the most of my time, if it's in one area heavily. We're going to fix that. So, like, for example, in Live Time, right now my calendar is so full with interviews. And I'm looking at the business thinking, if I'm doing 12 a week, I can't be spending that 12 hours doing something else. So, how can we build something around that and support and guardrails around that so that it takes me out of it? And that can allow me to focus on other parts of the business without taking the disconnect of how much I love that first connection with advisors. So it's happening right now in LiveTime. And we look at it from an operations perspective of like, okay, can we shift these? Who do we shift them to? What does that look like? What are the expectations? how are we solving for show rates, like all that type of stuff? We're just honestly live time looking at it all. And then it doubles down into like the onboarding. We got to the point where we were just having a lot of questions about I wouldn't say simple things, but like our processes are different. Our Slack is different. And we wanted to solve for that. And so that's kind of a little bit about where the 12 week program came from.
Grace Van Hollebeke: You brought up something that we talked have talked a lot about recently at at Turn as well. And it's there's this article that first round has on their website and it's a philosophy that Molly Graham came up with who it was at Google, Facebook, Quip, etc. And she came up with this kind of like saying of handing over your Legos. And kind of what you just mentioned was I think a piece of that in the sense of as the company grows, you need to be finding things that you need to hand off or empower other people to do so that you can step into a different role or learn to grow from it. And I've actively gone through that process multiple times. Abby, I know Has gone through the the challenge of handing over Legos multiple times just because as the company grows and shifts, you need to learn how to adapt with it. Sounds like that's kind of what you're going through right now. Do you have other people within Modern Travel that also have to give away their Legos? Like who else is helping run the business with you, not just other advisors that are on the team?
Lauren Smith: Yeah, I have operations team. Lara, she's incredible. She kind of heads up. We're s we stay siloed in our world. So like supplier relationships I don't necessarily touch. Lara kind of heads those up. but advisor onboarding has kind of been both of us for some time. And that's where not that there was like a there was just confusion of like who was owning what. So we would both jump in and we would both feel like we needed to support and it just was inefficient to continue. on that path. I think our business works really well when there's ownership on the success of a certain part of the business and handing that off as an owner and honestly as a leader in any area is the hardest thing to just like let your chickens hatch like let them be what they're gonna be. And I it's a trust thing, it's building that years and years of like that muscle. But yeah, it's the hardest part to take yourself out of what you're doing. To put yourself into what you want to do. And I think as an agency owner, I'm not sure if this will relate, but this is what I felt on both sides of the business is I got into events because I loved event planning. But then when you start a business, you stop event planning and you're now a business owner. And the same thing in travel is I loved the travel side of it. And I had not no idea anything about how to build a host agency. But I saw the vision and I believed in it so strong that you go that way. But then you do get a little bit disconnected from the thing that you originally loved because you're busy building this beast and you're dealing with accounting and commission payroll and legal and contracts, and you kind of get a little bit away from like the reason that you started it. And I think that's why so many, at least smaller agency owners, still do the travel booking because that's why you started in the industry because you loved it. But I don't think as a host you can do both effectively.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): What do you what Lego, if we continue with the analogy, do you feel like was the easiest to give away? Like you were like, Thank goodness I don't have to do this anymore. And then what what would which one has been the the most difficult?
Lauren Smith: The easiest for me was the supplier relationships. I just don't have the love for learning supplier platforms and all that type of stuff. someone who's way better suited can take that on and own it and love it. And Lara has, she's incredible. The thing I struggle with is that advisor, the one-on-one. I love looking at someone's business and helping them solve for X and getting them across the finish line. I have to. actively stop myself from getting on one-on-one calls weekly with advisors and it like breaks my heart. I always think, well, can we put office hours in? Can we do this? I can put a training on a Monday night at 8 p.m. And it's like, what are you doing? But it's because I truly love taking a business from nothing and helping them get to this point where they've built an actual business around it. One of our new advisors had a client who wanted the world and we got on a call and we narrowed it down and we built this whole proposal for her. It was like two and a half hours on a call that maybe isn't on paper the best use of my time, but it was so fulfilling. And she got the booking and it was her first big booking. And it was like this big celebratory thing for her because that's huge for her. I struggle to want to let that go, which to grow the agency sometimes you have to, but that's it's like we're pulling me and the team of like, you can't, you have to like I struggle with that.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): Yeah, totally. I mean, it's hard when it's when it's your your baby and you're like, that's where I get the most joy out of my day. But at the same time, if I prioritize only the joy for myself, then like other areas of the business and inherently the ripple effect for for my advisors and your clients, you know, suffer in other ways. But that's cool that you still, you know, are trying to carve out the time to do some of that to still sort of like sprinkle that the Lauren magic on your new advisors.
Lauren Smith: Yeah, and they laugh at me too. Like we'll be on a office hours call and I'm like, guys, look what I built. And they're just like, here she goes again. And then I'm like sharing a new template or a new something with them. And it's truly if I could give up everything else and just focus on creating magic for them, I would. But duty calls and you obviously you can't totally just focus on that.
Grace Van Hollebeke: Lauren, I Could literally talk to you about this forever and we have multiple times, which is why it's so exciting for me every time we talk to just uncover other ways that you're running and growing your business. So thank you so much for sharing it with us. I wanna, you know, make sure we talk about our last part of the conversation, but is there a s a specific hot take that we haven't covered? that you want to share whether it's work related or not.
Lauren Smith: boy. I feel like I have a lot, but my big one I think is the host duties and how it is our responsibility. And I kind of want to separate like small independent agencies with like the big massive host, because obviously the owner of that is not in the nitty-gritty, but I think I have so many conversations with advisors who get hosted and just feel like they're fed to the wolves. And I I just my hot take is that it shouldn't be that. It's our duty if we are as a host, you have a split and you're getting compensated. Responsibility comes with that. And I think the more we talk about it and the more these smaller independent hosts grow, it's a bit of a taboo topic that people don't want to talk about. But I'm like a little bit bullish and thinking you can't just get by on giving them an IATA and a login. You have to give them so much more than that.
Grace Van Hollebeke: Yeah, but I think you've done such an interesting job managing, like providing as much support as possible while also doing it systematically so you can continue to grow. I think there's some people that take that then too far and they're providing overwhelming amounts of support that the business actually can't grow and haven't found a way to do it at scale. So I just think the way you've handled it is so incredibly inspiring in a lot of ways. and so you know, I think we we've talked about this idea that structure can create freedom. Your advisors have truly been able to flourish and grow and be independent. Not because you are letting them just run rampant, but rather because you've taken away a lot of the back office work for them. So I, you know, I just thank you so much for talking about modern travel, lifting the hood on the business and how you run it, and really bringing us inside into seeing how you've been able to successfully grow so much over the last, you know, few years. So thank you so much for spending the time with us.
Lauren Smith: Of course. Thank you for having me. This was fun.
Lauren Smith: my god, I am so happy to be here. You guys know I'm like genuinely obsessed with all things turn, so I cannot wait for this conversation.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): I don't even know if you know this, Lauren, but I'm so excited to have this conversation because I am just about to be at my one year anniversary of Turn. And you were the first Turn customer that I spoke with when I started a year ago. So our conversation was the first agency advisor that I like ever interacted with in the Turn community. And like I have such like memories of the insights from that conversation. So it's feeling full, super full circle for me for us to be doing this right around my one year. So I'm just really excited that you're here.
Lauren Smith: That's so fun, I didn't know that.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): Yeah. it's
Grace Van Hollebeke: Well, I think that's perfect timing.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): perfect timing. It's perfect. Yeah. So Lauren, we we love to just sort of kick off with like, what's one thing that you're super excited about this week? One thing you're working on or something in your personal life that you're like, this is bringing me a ton of joy and and energy.
Lauren Smith: Yeah, I think the biggest one is we're hiring another support team member and that feels like so I'm it's such a proud moment of like we are taking the business even to the next level and to be able to bring in support to get us there is something I'm genuinely so passionate about because I'm very picky with bringing people in and this just feels like a little celebration.
Grace Van Hollebeke: I think that's probably
Abby Klein (Head of CX): Love that.
Grace Van Hollebeke: the most perfect tee up to our first question, to be honest with you. So I would love to just jump in to talking to you about how you grew modern travel. And so when did you first realize that scaling your business would depend less on doing more yourself and more on how everyone should operate within that business and that structure? So, like more on deciding what everyone should do the same way.
Lauren Smith: Yeah, I think a big part of it for me was I as a business owner, I don't want to be needed in every situation that comes up in the business. So I tried to always build a system or a response or the the makeup of our business around this idea idea of I can be involved if I want to be, but every decision is not weighing on my shoulders. And that it's kind of, yeah, the foundation we've built the business on. And it's something that everyone within the team loves because I'm not pressured all the time to like show up for these admin decisions. I can show up from a creative perspective or where are we taking the business or what are the fun things that we're working on and actually be creative and enjoy what I'm doing and not feel like I'm like a workhorse of constantly needing to be at the helm of the decision making.
Grace Van Hollebeke: Yeah, I mean I I'm curious where did that like instinct come from because I know your history. You were previously an advisor as an under a host, you're brought into the industry and really trying to figure out like how do I become a travel advisor for many years? And then you grew into this business owner and now host owner. But like when you entered travel from the events world a successful experience there depends on hundreds of details being handed correctly behind the scenes. And then you began this travel business during 2020 when there was quite literally no playbook to follow. So like what did event planning and that side of world teach you about creating these experiences for client that for clients that later shaped how you designed modern travel and its operations.
Lauren Smith: Yeah, I think a lot of event planners, and this I might get canceled for this, but they get off on being needed. It's I have to respond to my client at 11 p.m. or my God, I'm constantly in communication with these people. And I just feel like I have the complete opposite mentality of like, I love events for what they do for the transformation. Same thing in travel. I love building the trips and giving people these once-in-a-lifetime experiences, but that I don't want to be working at 11 PM on a Friday night because that doesn't actually like benefit my life. So why can't we set up systems and processes to like make the business run smooth, make my clients feel like they are my number one, which they are, but doesn't require every living breathing moment with me. And I think having that event experience, especially when you're dealing with attendees and sometimes you have multiple events on the go and you have hundreds of people needing something from you. I was like, no, let's just like front load everything. And then that way, again, I can show up and just like be the event planner who's putting together an incredible experience and not the person who's like your assistant at 11 PM. We've pre-front loaded like all that information and it pulled over into the travel side of things because yes, I was an advisor under another host. I had a team at the time and then we had that decision to go independent or to stay hosted. And it was that same internal dialogue of well, I could go and do this and need X, Y, and Z. And this is what it would need from me, or we could just like build it differently.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): It's so it's so interesting, Lauren, your perspective on you know, you you kind of set a hot take there in a way of getting canceled from other event planners of like wanting to be at the helm of your clients. And I I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago, not with an advisor directly, but with one of our partners, where their one of their advisors was like so proud that they spent like 20 hours building an itinerary for For their client, 20 was probably not the exact number, and I'm exaggerating a little bit, but a large number of hours, days, weeks, whatever it was. And we were having this conversation of like, why are they proud of that? Like, it's like I under I totally understand from the perspective of like, I feel like I'm putting in the time, which means I'm investing in you, and like I'm taking pride in the fact that like I made it super detailed and I was and I was super diligent. But at the same time, it's like, but your client got the exact same experience, but the admin that you put into it was significantly more to get there. And so I'm I'm it's funny you said that about being canceled as an event planner because I actually think that's probably a hot take for travel advisors too, who like have this feeling that they have to be spending time on the trip planning to prove their value. Like, how do you think about that as that translates in your work today?
Lauren Smith: Yeah, I mean, I think this is not a an old concept of like you pay me for my experience, not for the hours that I put into it. But I think there's a disconnect between saying that and people actually believing it. And I think, especially in travel, like when I hear my advisors be like, my God, I spent 12 hours researching hotels on this proposal. I'm like, why? Like, why did you do that when there's so many resources and support, whether it's Turn AI or external AI or just anything that you can be leaning on to show up as the Powerhouse to your client and get out of that busy work that you guys talk about as well. I just think it's we need to check our egos at the door and realize there's a lot more powerful stuff we can be do be doing with our time. I just don't think we're there yet. But I I think it's I think it's ego and I think it's a little bit of it's the narrative that we've been convinced is true. Like in the in the event world, you see those memes of people like obviously always walking on their phone, head down, they're never paying attention, they're always answering something about. food and beverage or sponsors, like you see that being glorified. And I look at that and I'm like, I no, I don't want any of that. I want balance and I want to build a business for myself and my advisors. It's actually cool and impacts my life in a beautiful way, not in a burnout way. And I think the industry needs to catch up.
Grace Van Hollebeke: What was like the first, like as you were building this business in the beginning, what was that first like experience that you had where you're like, okay, I can systematize this? Because I imagine as you started building out modern travel, you were like first having a few trips being planned and booked, or you were first bringing in an advisor. Like, when was that first moment for you where you're like, this can definitely be systematized in some way for the business?
Lauren Smith: Yeah, I think there's a couple. I think when we were under the other host, I always have had a team. When we first started kind of our agency, I was doing it to support the event side. And I had my event team that was getting licensed. And I again never wanted to be that roadblock between information. So the first thing we systematized was like our training program to the point where my old host asked for access to it for his team because I was just like, we can make this beautiful and accessible and over the top. And people aren't coming to me asking me, hey, I have an email funnel. What do I do? Or I need an email template or anything. I didn't want people again to be messaging me at night. So we figured out how to build a backend that allowed us to be creative and give all these resources but not be needed all of the time. And then the second one was commission reconciliation. My logistics brain was like, it it's money and it should be flowing and it's not and I don't understand why. So that was the first thing when we became independent that I was like, this has to be systematized. And even my accountants were like, damn girl, that is impressive. And we haven't had to shift or expand our accounting process since day one, because it has just from day one been the thing that I was the most strict about being systematized.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): Wow, that's incredible. I mean, I think we we think about this a lot at Turn as well in terms of optimizing our team's processes and operations in terms of like we're in an age where we shouldn't need to be scrowing the team linearly, linearly with growth. And, you know, same thing with what you're saying, where your accounting team didn't actually need to grow with the fact that you've seen 400 plus percent year over year growth because the processes that you have to actually do that commission reconciliation are, you know, wildly better than they were X number of years ago. I'm I'm kind of curious, Lauren, like. When you think about resources and training that you've built within modern travel, like what do you feel like is your responsibility as the host owner or you know for our agency owners who are listening? Like, what is the responsibility of the business owner to sort of lead in that training? And how do you feel like that translates to either like pairing with partner resources, like what Turn has available, or even like the expectations that you would put on a partner like us to help your teams get, you know, up and running?
Lauren Smith: Yeah, I think this might be another hot take. I think as a host, it's my responsibility to prop our advisors up for the most success possible. I never want my advisors needing to go external to find a resource or a coaching program or a membership. I think that as their host, I'm that's my duty to support them through that. And then when it comes to leaning on partners, I think. Understanding like product specific trainings, I can't stay up to speed on absolutely everything that Turn is rolling out. So that's kind of my my level of expectation. But internally, it's also my job to teach our team how to not just use the product, but actually understand the product and keep that communication and that culture between your product and our agency. I don't want it to be tiered where it's like I have the relationship with Turn and then it's my job. solely to go and implement that to my advisors. It's we share the excitement of what's happening with Turn and obviously share what we can and when new products and stuff come out or new features, but empowering them with the resources that they need to do that and making it easy. Like we have a ton of resources. We hear all the time like it's so much, but making it easy to navigate that I think is so important as a host. And I personally don't book travel. As a host, I look at my clients as my advisors. It's my job to support them in their business.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): I think it's a super helpful perspective, whether it's a hot take or not. Because I think that we see so many agency owners who want to, you know, build the foundations and the structure for their team. And I think they have a little anxiety around like they don't They don't know how and they want to move to turn and they're moving off of these legacy systems. And there's a lot of emotions and anxiety that goes along with that. and then thinking about now I have to train my team on this like entirely new thing, like how am I gonna fit that in in in my day? I think it's like helpful to hear your perspective of, you know, where you feel like that line is between like your responsibilities, the partner responsibilities, how you leverage our resources, but actually translate them into specifically how you want your team to work.
Grace Van Hollebeke: almost see though, Lauren, like I almost could see for anyone that's joining or even like listening in on this, like that the the like systemization and processes, like Abby said, like the Snowflake model makes a ton of sense, but I think for someone listening, they might see that as like restrictive rather than freeing. Like, have you ever seen or gotten any feedback on the way that you set up your business where someone's seen it maybe originally as restrictive and later saw it as like actually a freeing thing to have these processes and systems and resources like H have you come across that and and where?
Lauren Smith: Yeah, for sure. I think a big part where we see it is when we have advisors joining from other teams and they're like, Well, we used to just collect credit cards over the phone before. And I'm like, absolutely not. That is not PCI compliant. And I'm like very strict on that. And there's a bit of a process learning curve when it comes to that side of things or adopting itineraries when things used to just be sent an email. But the way that we Recruit and attract advisors is because we are built on turn. So even though it is a learning curve and it is something that they have to get adjusted to, it's an attractive part of our agency of yes, there's going to be hurdles, there's going to be blocks of what you have to adopt, adapt that you didn't necessarily have to before. But in the long run, they know that's why. I'm also very transparent about how tech forward and rigid our processes are. And in the interview phase, like I'm not going to gloss over, yeah, you can run this business how you want. It's here's the guardrails, how you do that and how we're gonna support you. You can decide if you want that or not, because I'm never gonna put the rest of my team or our agency at risk because someone doesn't want to follow a process, which that could be my hot take. It's that it it happens frequently and it's I think people are craving that structure when it comes to their host.
Grace Van Hollebeke: I think the credit card example could not be more perfect for
Lauren Smith: Mm-hmm.
Grace Van Hollebeke: I mean, we see this all the time in turn. We have, and you know this, we've created some really incredible processes that allow people to collect credit card authorizations securely in a way that protects their business, protects the client, protects the supplier, like across the board is a really systematic and secure way. But a l we lose a lot of people in that initial phase of like, Well, I don't want to use that. I want to collect and store credit cards. And it's like, well, we spent a lot of time in understanding why we have that process set up. so I think initially it can seem really restrictive, but once you realize the why behind it and the opportunities it creates for a really secure business and also a lot of compliance and pay-per-trail for your business, it actually frees you to grow your business in a lot of ways. Love that example.
Lauren Smith: Yeah. We get often times when I am rigid on a process, and I am, and I'm not scared to say that because I'm protecting the agency. Ten out of ten times the advisor will come back and say, I see why you were that way and I'm grateful you were. Thank you for protecting me. And you do as a agency owner sometimes have to be the bad guy and saying, No, we can't bend that way, or no, we can't allow that because of X, Y, and Z. But when you explain it to them and they can see the bigger picture, I think. every single time they come back and they're like, Okay. And everyone laughs it off. They're like, you were right. And I'm like, Thank you. Yes, there's reasons behind this rigid like being so rigid.
Grace Van Hollebeke: I do also feel like we've now framed you as this like super rigid host owner, which is hilarious because you know it it may seem like a negative from the way that we've kind of like talked about the process of it all. And I think the most important undercurrent of all of this is how freeing it is for the advisors joining your host and also as you as an owner to really focus on scaling, which I think is the broader story here. Because I mean your your growth numbers are insane. I like I've literally
Lauren Smith: Yeah.
Grace Van Hollebeke: never seen anything like it. And so what it tells me. Is that its process isn't the enemy of growth and success. It's actually quite literally the opposite for you guys.
Lauren Smith: Yeah. Well, I think I remember when I was younger, my mom said something that clearly has stuck with me that like kids need structure. And I feel like it's the same thing when it comes to a host is like maybe you want to go to bed at 10 p.m. and that's fun for you, but when you're cranky the next day, there's a reason I wanted you to go to bed at eight. And it's so similar in the host space. I remember when I first got into the industry and there wasn't those guardrails, I constantly had anxiety of is this allowed? Can I really have someone's credit card on a post-it note beside my laptop? That doesn't feel right. And it just leaves so much room for like confusion. Whereas when we're so clear, the advisors can follow that path. And yes, we are strict, but we're not like drill sergeants where it's like not fun to work here. It's more like clarity is kind. And being kind to our advisors is like giving them guardrails to to stick with.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): I also think it's just a testament though to, you know, you sticking sticking to your guns. I guess like that's like the only analogy I can I can think of. But really just being like, I have such a strong perspective and passion around like I've seen this work horribly, I've seen it work really well. And like I have this perspective around why this is gonna work and like I'm gonna stick to it. And like I think you actually not wavering when advisors push back, like it'd be very easy, right? Like you're a busy business owner for an advisor to come to you and say, maybe not with the credit card thing. I do think that we're all on the same page that we want to be as PCI compliant as we can there. But on other things, like I'm sure it's crossed your mind being like, I'm super busy today, I'm stressed. Like, do I just let this advisor go do that? And I think it takes like also a lot of like strength and leadership to be like, no, I have to show up with my authentic self and like my perspective and my honesty around why I built this business. And like every single time I'm gonna show up with that commitment and I'm not gonna waver on it, even when it gets really hard.
Lauren Smith: Totally. And I think I didn't have that when I joined the industry. So I almost feel even more obligated to give that to the team. And then I also recognize that we're a team. There's twenty plus of us that are operating on this team. And it's not fair to start bending for one if it's gonna impact another. And then when do you say yes? When do you say no? And it just like allows way too much room for error and mistake. And I just I owe so much to the team. I've had the conversations behind the scenes. If I'm saying no, there's a reason for it. And we've talked to lawyers and suppliers and we've really done our best. We're not just going to come off and say this isn't possible. We've really done our due diligence. And I think, like I said before, like that's really kind to give that structure to our advisor so they also know what to expect and what not to expect.
Grace Van Hollebeke: Love to dig in, like we've we've talked now about structure and how important it is at modern travel, but like can we actually like dig into it a little bit more? Like when you join Modern Travel as a new advisor, that that process philosophy follows you the second you start. So with you and your and your agencies, like you do not hand someone the tools, meaning turn or your learning tools, et cetera, or your technology asking them to figure it out. you are basically helping them from day one. You you've let us know that you help configure the business settings, branding, workflows, and you've even set up what used to be a 10-day challenge is now a 12-week program for these like lessons and and structure and basically onboarding for these advisors that join for that join you guys. So can you take us through kind of a and a new advisor's first days at Modern Travel, what exists for them, what do they have to learn? And what do you want them to feel before they even speak to a client for the first time?
Lauren Smith: Yeah. So for us, it's all obviously systematized and automated that as soon as they join, they get a workbook that allows them to reflect and get really clear on what kind of business they want to have before they even enter our ecosystem. So they're doing a little bit of the pre-work so that they're getting in that right mindset. Cause it's a big decision to join a host. And oftentimes what we had experienced in the past was like you signed up and then you're kind of just like, well, here's 20 logins. Good luck. And we wanted to really hand hold and support. We'll know what actually happens next. What is turn? How do you use turn? What's your first 10 steps in turn? You're gonna see turn and learn and see all these videos. Don't even think about those. Follow this path, and then you'll get to those videos along the process. So we just did a huge overhaul. It's 12 weeks, 60 videos. they get one video basically a day. The whole idea is over the 12 weeks that they can go from brand new to industry to launching and booking their own travel. And we take it so granular that some videos are like four minutes, but that's their only project for that day. Because I don't want them sitting in front of a computer for 45 minutes with 20 things that they have to do. But if they want to do that, great, binge five videos in a row, but we're giving it to them super bite-sized. And it's everything from setting up your business, how to set up business bank accounts, your business structure, taxes, all the way through to how to build up proposal in turn, how to mark a booking as booked, how to charge service fees, all the way through to email marketing, lead generation. Like we go through absolutely every part of your business. And while we might not dive super deep on every single part, at least you've touched literally every facet of your business by the end of the 12 weeks. So you have a freebie, you have an email funnel, you know exactly what you have to do in your business, then you can just go execute. And it's been So fun to see our advisors go through it, whether it's guided through it with us or they've just joined and kind of done done it on their own. Because we get the request for logins, we get the internal chats with them of hey, I'm at this video at this time. I have a question about this. And it's so cool to see them feel empowered to go from either brand new to industry or brand new to our team to booking these massive trips. We have one advisor who like actually blows my mind. how quickly she went from brand new to industry to full functioning business in under twelve weeks.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): How did you like what was working really well about that 10 day challenge versus what maybe wasn't that had you do the shift? I mean, when we were talking about this obviously before we started recording, 10 10 days is way different than 12 weeks. So, like, how did you decide what worked from that? How'd you translate that? Like, how did you decide 12 weeks even was the right, the right number?
Lauren Smith: Yeah, we're constantly looking at our internal support for advisors. Our ops team and I meet all the time saying, what questions are coming up? What suppliers do we need to dig into? What do they need more of? What resources are we can we make for questions that are constantly being asked? That's like again our job to support our advisors in that. So we started to notice that the 10 days was great because it was like literally your first 10 days, how to use Turn, how to get set up. And then they would look at our resource vault and think, my God, I don't know where to start. So our whole idea was, well, why don't we walk them through what we already have and not necessarily need to teach them new? And then as I got into diving more into it, I was like, well, this would be cool to add. Or I think this would be a really valuable piece of information. Or this is something that I don't see talked about in the travel industry, but I knew it from when I was building my other business. And I just kept it a running list. And then I was like, this is more than. 10 days of training. And so then we built like a whole program around it. And what we do is in the videos, we'll teach the concept and then point them to directly where they can find the resource within our agency. So it starts to get them really comfortable navigating our internal system because our internal system is also a little bit different. We built it on one platform, one login. It's where we do everything from videos, trainings, templates, our community chat. They don't have to go elsewhere for it. So it's all this like really cool ecosystem where if someone's asking, hey, where do I find this template? We literally just like tag it and then they can go find the template super easily.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): I think that's good advice for other agency owners as well, though. And like, I mean, what I'm hearing from you is that it's not like the 10 days went away. It was that you had 10 days that was super structured, then you had a bunch of resources that were unstructured, and so you just built on it because they the people wanted more of that walkthrough experience. And I think that's a good way to think about it for others who might be. feeling overwhelming of like, you, you know, if you're listening to this and you're like, I do not have time or the or the skill sets or the whatever to build out a 10 12 week program, it's like, well, it doesn't have to be 12 weeks. Like, what's the first thing that you want people to do on their first day, on in their first week, in their first month, and like almost like taking it in bite-sized pieces. And I'm sure also that you and your team were able to like iterate and retro on that a lot faster throughout that build process, then feeling like this weight of pressure of like what has to be this like the most robust program from day one versus like, no, we're just gonna start small, we're gonna add things over time. Now I see all these gaps as I'm building probably the V two, V three, V four of it. And like it's okay that it changes and like change is good things.
Lauren Smith: Yeah. And in lifetime, it would change. So we would be like I took the 12 weeks to film it. I didn't film it in like a day. I went along with the advisors and said, we're gonna do this together over 12 weeks. I want your feedback. I wanna know what videos you're loving, which videos you don't find helpful. Are we missing the mark on something? Are we missing education that you need? And if they gave me feedback, that was implemented in the next video or added to a training the next week.
Grace Van Hollebeke: Lauren, that is brilliant. Like, not like I as a host,
Lauren Smith: Yeah. Well
Grace Van Hollebeke: I'd be sitting here being like, my gosh, like to record that many hours of content, I must like block out a whole week of just recording constantly and not even know if it's gonna sit with advisors. But instead, like you said, you're just doing it over time. So you truly are doing it on only bite-sized chunks and getting the interview. that's so smart. I love that. Right.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): In live with the advisors so that like they can actually be like, Lauren, that video yesterday made no sense. Got it. I need something else. I need a visual. I need it to be longer. I need a written resource, whatever that is. I I think that's that's great. Also, Lauren, are you still operating? Last time we spoke a couple months ago, you guys were doing this all primarily in Slack, which I thought was really cool. Are you still doing it in Slack? Okay, cool. Tell tell us, yeah,
Lauren Smith: Yes. This is my little secret. Yeah.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): can you can you lift the hood on like what was the Slack decision and like why does that work so well?
Lauren Smith: Yeah, so Slack is my hidden, my little hidden secret. Everyone I show my Slack to is like head exploding because for me, and any I think anyone in the travel industry can relate to this is and it's I think it's a problem Turn is trying to solve is we all have login fatigue. I don't want to be in a Facebook group to chat with my team and then have to log into another platform to get a resource and then watch a video somewhere else. It just felt way too overwhelming. And then also I knew advisors wouldn't actually use the content. So why would I spend hours of my life building resources and content that were going to get used? So we were using Slack as a communication tool for our team. And if you haven't looked into the capabilities of Slack, it will actually blow your mind. We have workflows for when new advisors join. We have each channel is specific to like, let's say we have a WestJet supplier channel. In that channel, we have training videos, resources. Chats, updates, like our own videos embedded directly into Slack. It's all stuck in WestJet. So if a team member has a question on WestJet, they to the WestJet channel and then it's all there. We're also very rigid on if you're replying to something, you have to reply in thread so that it can be searchable. So we have had new advisors who say, My first month with Modern Travel, I used Slack as social media and I just went through every channel. And if I had a question, I would search and it would come up and I could see the whole conversation for that like communication around that topic. And the more we got into it, the more I became obsessed with building directly in Slack. And the advisors, it's a learning curve. I'm gonna be so honest that as soon as they come in, they're like, what is all of this data? But the second they go through the 12-week program, they know where to find things, they know the the etiquette. We have other advisors jumping in to support to point them into the direction of a resource. It's just this really cool community that we've built. And the cool part is we just always have it open. So if they're looking for a resource or they have a question, it's all within the exact same spot.
Grace Van Hollebeke: You know, it's so similar. What we have at turn in a lot of ways, in the sense of we use Slack for like team communication, but we have a strong documentation culture and documenting in public. So what that looks like for us is similar to you. We've got like project channels and things like that. And if you're discussing someone with a team with a team member, it should be happening in public, not in private channels, not in DMs, and it should be happening in public chats that anyone can search or see or join that channel, etc. And what you get out of that is like, I mean, even for example, using like Claude, it can connect to your Slack and then as you're searching and having conversations with it or even within Slack, you can now reference entire chains of communication without needing to go to like talk to that person. And I think that's probably so useful for suppliers, like you said, and understanding updates and you know structures of commission splits and things like that that otherwise you maybe would need to have to go search for for days. So I really, really love that. Can you share also, I remember you talking a long time ago about some of the like workflows that you have existing in there. Can you talk through some of that?
Lauren Smith: Yeah, so we have each we have set you can section things off in turn. outside of the channels, you can put them into categories. So we have categories for suppliers, for content, for clients, more so on the event side. and then operations. And then we have an agents section. So each agent gets their own Slack channel that only operations and them are inside of. And as soon as they join, they get a custom channel with a checklist of things that they Hard to work through for onboarding. And then that way they can ask us what they sometimes might feel is like a silly question. but it's private. It's just the three, four, or five, like whoever's in that, in that chat. But as soon as they join in our group chat, a welcome message gets auto-populated with where are you from? What are you specializing in? Like a bunch of questions. And then right there we reiterate, do this first so that they're seeing it in multiple spots. and then we also have like when someone joins the team. We get notified in Slack. those are a couple of like my favorite ones. I do also want to touch on your comment about Claude and AI in Slack. I think it's so cool and so powerful, but it can also be super overwhelming. So I just want to say for anyone listening, if you the thought of connecting the two stresses you out. We don't have our Claude connected to our Slack based on privacy that we are not allowed to for some of our client contracts. And this all fully operates without any AI. This is our team having set up the structures to run without needing to lean on external AI. And I think that's what makes it even more powerful.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): Do guys use the Slack bot within Slack to search for things or it's just all keyword based because of how organized the channels are?
Lauren Smith: It's all keyword based.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): That's awesome. What what I love about the Slack tip is that I think it can feel overwhelming when you're even thinking about building something like a learning management system, like we're talking about, where it can feel overwhelming to say, do I need to go down this route of like researching all these vendors? Do I build or do I buy? I have no idea how to build an internet or a website to host these things. Like, and Slack is just, it's so simple. It can't to to caveat, I don't think it feels super simple if you've never used it before. But to your point, Lauren, it's like, Let's not overcomplicate it. We're already in Slack. If we just keep building on the capabilities that this one tool has in a centralized forum, like that's gonna be a lot easier for new people. It's gonna be a lot easier for us to update over time. So I just think the Slack tip is so cool because I think it's like this like hidden tip in a way, because I don't think anyone else would really think about building all the operations within their business in what I think at the surface level feels like a chat based based tool. And I would imagine that you have to go through. like a little bit of like a change management and like a habit change for new advisors who come in and let's say they don't use threads. And we've been thinking about this a lot at Turn as we've been hiring a lot of new people. We have a lot of new team members joining. And it's like, you know, for Grace and I, even though I've I've only been here a year, like in my head it's just so obvious. I'm like, yeah, we talk in public channels. But then you have to remind new new team members to be like, don't DM me. We're like anti DMs at Turn because we want everyone to have a lot more public visibility into anything. So like Have you sort of had to do that like mental change management recycle of the information for new advisors who are using Slack for the first time?
Lauren Smith: Every single time. This is something that we reiterate
Abby Klein (Head of CX): Ha ha ha
Lauren Smith: in a our onboarding videos. It's here's the expectation. They get a live walkthrough of how to use Slack. And they're to this day, because also if you're using Slack on your phone, sometimes you think you're responding in thread, but you're not. So we'll just pop in to the thread and tag them and say, Don't forget to respond to here and then delete the old comment. We're like super quick at cleaning it up. And then if their comment's gone, that's up to them to re to re-add it. Because It is such a resource for all of our new advisors. It's not me being mean or a stickler. It's this is a great question and a great conversation. I want this to be searchable in the future. It it's not something that I think you can fully solve in one go. You just have to constantly keep that expectation going. We've even now had other advisors catching it and being like, my God, don't forget to respond here. And I'm like, my God. We joke that like my chickens are hatching and it's the cutest thing ever that they're
Abby Klein (Head of CX): Love it.
Lauren Smith: just so So proud of the process.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): Yeah.
Grace Van Hollebeke: I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. It gives you a lot of structure and also empowers the rest of the team to like encourage the newbies to jump in on that and it makes it exciting, I think, probably for them, which hence the the chick satching.
Lauren Smith: Yeah.
Grace Van Hollebeke: As you've scaled though, you have seen incredible growth over the last year, year and a half since I've known you. Where does that Well, you know, growth is a stress test in a lot of ways. And depending on the stage of the business, it creates fractures in certain places and shows how incredible the system is in others. As you've started to grow, where has the stress test pointed out areas where you've needed to improve or change your processes? Where where have you seen those moments where you're like, I actually need to revisit that? Sounds like the 12 month onboarding, 12 month, the 12 week onboarding
Lauren Smith: Mm-hmm. Topic.
Grace Van Hollebeke: is one, like less a stress test, more of like an option. opportunity, but like where else have you seen that in the business and the systems you've set up?
Lauren Smith: Yeah, I think I I like to build the business to the point where I want to break a system because that shows me there's opportunity to fix it. If the business is not breaking at any point, then to me that's just a stagnant business. I welcome advisors challenging or questioning or pushing us to be better. So that paired with when I look at my weekly calendar and where I'm spending the most of my time, if it's in one area heavily. We're going to fix that. So, like, for example, in Live Time, right now my calendar is so full with interviews. And I'm looking at the business thinking, if I'm doing 12 a week, I can't be spending that 12 hours doing something else. So, how can we build something around that and support and guardrails around that so that it takes me out of it? And that can allow me to focus on other parts of the business without taking the disconnect of how much I love that first connection with advisors. So it's happening right now in LiveTime. And we look at it from an operations perspective of like, okay, can we shift these? Who do we shift them to? What does that look like? What are the expectations? how are we solving for show rates, like all that type of stuff? We're just honestly live time looking at it all. And then it doubles down into like the onboarding. We got to the point where we were just having a lot of questions about I wouldn't say simple things, but like our processes are different. Our Slack is different. And we wanted to solve for that. And so that's kind of a little bit about where the 12 week program came from.
Grace Van Hollebeke: You brought up something that we talked have talked a lot about recently at at Turn as well. And it's there's this article that first round has on their website and it's a philosophy that Molly Graham came up with who it was at Google, Facebook, Quip, etc. And she came up with this kind of like saying of handing over your Legos. And kind of what you just mentioned was I think a piece of that in the sense of as the company grows, you need to be finding things that you need to hand off or empower other people to do so that you can step into a different role or learn to grow from it. And I've actively gone through that process multiple times. Abby, I know Has gone through the the challenge of handing over Legos multiple times just because as the company grows and shifts, you need to learn how to adapt with it. Sounds like that's kind of what you're going through right now. Do you have other people within Modern Travel that also have to give away their Legos? Like who else is helping run the business with you, not just other advisors that are on the team?
Lauren Smith: Yeah, I have operations team. Lara, she's incredible. She kind of heads up. We're s we stay siloed in our world. So like supplier relationships I don't necessarily touch. Lara kind of heads those up. but advisor onboarding has kind of been both of us for some time. And that's where not that there was like a there was just confusion of like who was owning what. So we would both jump in and we would both feel like we needed to support and it just was inefficient to continue. on that path. I think our business works really well when there's ownership on the success of a certain part of the business and handing that off as an owner and honestly as a leader in any area is the hardest thing to just like let your chickens hatch like let them be what they're gonna be. And I it's a trust thing, it's building that years and years of like that muscle. But yeah, it's the hardest part to take yourself out of what you're doing. To put yourself into what you want to do. And I think as an agency owner, I'm not sure if this will relate, but this is what I felt on both sides of the business is I got into events because I loved event planning. But then when you start a business, you stop event planning and you're now a business owner. And the same thing in travel is I loved the travel side of it. And I had not no idea anything about how to build a host agency. But I saw the vision and I believed in it so strong that you go that way. But then you do get a little bit disconnected from the thing that you originally loved because you're busy building this beast and you're dealing with accounting and commission payroll and legal and contracts, and you kind of get a little bit away from like the reason that you started it. And I think that's why so many, at least smaller agency owners, still do the travel booking because that's why you started in the industry because you loved it. But I don't think as a host you can do both effectively.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): What do you what Lego, if we continue with the analogy, do you feel like was the easiest to give away? Like you were like, Thank goodness I don't have to do this anymore. And then what what would which one has been the the most difficult?
Lauren Smith: The easiest for me was the supplier relationships. I just don't have the love for learning supplier platforms and all that type of stuff. someone who's way better suited can take that on and own it and love it. And Lara has, she's incredible. The thing I struggle with is that advisor, the one-on-one. I love looking at someone's business and helping them solve for X and getting them across the finish line. I have to. actively stop myself from getting on one-on-one calls weekly with advisors and it like breaks my heart. I always think, well, can we put office hours in? Can we do this? I can put a training on a Monday night at 8 p.m. And it's like, what are you doing? But it's because I truly love taking a business from nothing and helping them get to this point where they've built an actual business around it. One of our new advisors had a client who wanted the world and we got on a call and we narrowed it down and we built this whole proposal for her. It was like two and a half hours on a call that maybe isn't on paper the best use of my time, but it was so fulfilling. And she got the booking and it was her first big booking. And it was like this big celebratory thing for her because that's huge for her. I struggle to want to let that go, which to grow the agency sometimes you have to, but that's it's like we're pulling me and the team of like, you can't, you have to like I struggle with that.
Abby Klein (Head of CX): Yeah, totally. I mean, it's hard when it's when it's your your baby and you're like, that's where I get the most joy out of my day. But at the same time, if I prioritize only the joy for myself, then like other areas of the business and inherently the ripple effect for for my advisors and your clients, you know, suffer in other ways. But that's cool that you still, you know, are trying to carve out the time to do some of that to still sort of like sprinkle that the Lauren magic on your new advisors.
Lauren Smith: Yeah, and they laugh at me too. Like we'll be on a office hours call and I'm like, guys, look what I built. And they're just like, here she goes again. And then I'm like sharing a new template or a new something with them. And it's truly if I could give up everything else and just focus on creating magic for them, I would. But duty calls and you obviously you can't totally just focus on that.
Grace Van Hollebeke: Lauren, I Could literally talk to you about this forever and we have multiple times, which is why it's so exciting for me every time we talk to just uncover other ways that you're running and growing your business. So thank you so much for sharing it with us. I wanna, you know, make sure we talk about our last part of the conversation, but is there a s a specific hot take that we haven't covered? that you want to share whether it's work related or not.
Lauren Smith: boy. I feel like I have a lot, but my big one I think is the host duties and how it is our responsibility. And I kind of want to separate like small independent agencies with like the big massive host, because obviously the owner of that is not in the nitty-gritty, but I think I have so many conversations with advisors who get hosted and just feel like they're fed to the wolves. And I I just my hot take is that it shouldn't be that. It's our duty if we are as a host, you have a split and you're getting compensated. Responsibility comes with that. And I think the more we talk about it and the more these smaller independent hosts grow, it's a bit of a taboo topic that people don't want to talk about. But I'm like a little bit bullish and thinking you can't just get by on giving them an IATA and a login. You have to give them so much more than that.
Grace Van Hollebeke: Yeah, but I think you've done such an interesting job managing, like providing as much support as possible while also doing it systematically so you can continue to grow. I think there's some people that take that then too far and they're providing overwhelming amounts of support that the business actually can't grow and haven't found a way to do it at scale. So I just think the way you've handled it is so incredibly inspiring in a lot of ways. and so you know, I think we we've talked about this idea that structure can create freedom. Your advisors have truly been able to flourish and grow and be independent. Not because you are letting them just run rampant, but rather because you've taken away a lot of the back office work for them. So I, you know, I just thank you so much for talking about modern travel, lifting the hood on the business and how you run it, and really bringing us inside into seeing how you've been able to successfully grow so much over the last, you know, few years. So thank you so much for spending the time with us.
Lauren Smith: Of course. Thank you for having me. This was fun.
