Tools for Travel Entrepreneurs

Welcome to this strategic travel entrepreneur. My name is Rita Perez. Hello. I've been a travel Advisor for over 10 years and am navigating this winding road of entrepreneurship with you. I created this podcast because I wanted to share all the things I've learned from leaders both in and out of our industry that I really wish I would have known way back then. But alas, the important thing thing is I'm aware of them now and I want you to be too. Ready for this week's show. Let's jump in.

Hello. Hello, travel advisors. Thank you so much for coming onto this episode of the podcast. This is going to be a loaded episode. I want to break it down a little bit, but I kind of also just want to give a general overview of some of the different Sims systems that there are. And really more than systems, I'm going to call these tools. So these are tools, some are free, some are pay that you can utilize for your travel business in so many different aspects of travel business. So let me see.

I think we're going to go like in a hodgepodge. I have a couple things, kind of like in a paired grouping of similar things and like travel related things and then other things that help us just to be a little bit productive. I don't know if you had seen my stories from Monday, but I do a lot of stories on Instagram, so if you're not following me there, make sure that you're following me because I, I like to give a lot of like my insights, open my brain and my feelings up a little bit on there. And something that had come to mind was we don't really like fully talk about the travel business operations that we really just talk about being a travel advisor. And then I know we're starting to get talking about like being a travel business owner, but I think what everybody thinks of immediately like as a business function, which it is, but I think it's almost getting too much emphasis even from myself that marketing is like such a huge thing in our business, which marketing is what we need to get clients. But there's certain types of, this is a bigger conversation. So I'm going to try and talk about these. So many systems or tools that are out there to utilize in terms of the different operations.

So in terms of sales, in terms of lead generation marketing, foundations, which I, I feel like foundations are like brand values, health boundaries, your financials and your business goals. Like what, what certain levels or, or things you want to be hitting in your goals. What do you want to be doing for your in your goals, client experience both onboarding and off boarding, HR related skills such as hiring team members, fulfillment systems and tools which that's what we are talking about today and then mitigating risks and contracts, insurance, seller of travel, all that. So there's obviously so many components to being a travel business owner and having tools and systems in place is just one of them. So right off the bat I want to discuss. So this is going to be a very informational. We're not going to be breaking anything down or going into the nitty gritty. I will a resource that if you're wanting to get some more training at the end and this is going to be with a resource that I have an affiliate link for.

So if you're wanting to utilize something to get you a little bit more of a deep dive than what you can get probably through some other channels, I will be offering some sort of code for you at the end. So stay tuned. So first off I definitely have to talk about so travel industry specific. That's CRMs and itinerary builders. Those are the two things that. Well you know CRM, everybody has a CRM. So all, all sorts of businesses there's CRMs. I will say there are two CRMs that are not travel specific but I know there's many service providers in the travel industry that do utilize them specifically on the supplier side and like the support business side.

So you know, for, for this business take the helm. The virtual business solutions. I utilize Honeybook for all my invoicing so like all my, my virtual business solution type things that I do like I do a lot of social media for clients and I'll be offering a social media service as well. I do all my invoicing and things in Honeybook for that aspect. Dubsado is very similar to that but I feel like Dubsado is a little bit more advanced and it wasn't very easy for me to learn so I didn't go with it with that route for travel business purposes. If you're a supplier I think you should probably go with one of these because I feel like the other CRMs really are made for travel advisors. Now this could be a little bit different and if you think I'm wrong, please call me out. I want to hear what your voices are because I think a lot of things are kind of changing so that they're going to be just travel specific basics.

So if we're talking Strictly just a CRM, TravelJoy I really think is the no TravelJoy and Test Travel E solutions are the two main big players in customer relationship management. So, so what do these types of products do? They are customer relationship based. So you have contact information you can put like special dates inside of there. I do a lot of my invoicing. I have some task lists, terms and agreements and all that is set up within my Travel Joy system. It just makes me look like a really great professional. I'm able to make these especially for the groups that I have really great group landing pages so that if people, once I have all the information set up, people can go ahead and book themselves into a cabin. Now book themselves is more like a placeholder.

And then once I have their placeholder, I can take care of all the details in there. But yeah, that is what travel choice for and that is what Travel E Solutions is for. So that those are two travel specific CRMs. Then on the other side of it we have itinerary builders, which makes us look like real bad booties in the travel environment. And I know I used to do a lot of stuff via Excel, via Word Docs, and now with these programs we don't have to rely on that. It just makes things so much easier. The process is so much easier, makes it more streamlined and we look like super pros. And I know the big one in the travel industry is Travify.

I have used umapt. I wasn't impressed with their lack of group capabilities. Tech is always evolving, so just because somebody doesn't have it now doesn't mean that it won't be available later on. Access is another one that I have heard about. And then I will have to say that TravelJoy just recently implemented something called Smart proposals which I have dabbled in using. I do like smart proposals. I think it makes it so much easier when we're trying to talk about the scope of something I like that clients are able to approve and then we can build invoices off of that. And then I can use an itinerary builder to kind of give all the nitty gritty details.

I think down the line traveljoy will have some sort of more robust itinerary builder feature, but I'm not sure. Time will only tell. Again, tech is ever evolving now. You know, for me, I would have loved to use something like Travify with my Travel Joy, but I just could not right now justify the expense of having two of those, like two big, big things. If I was doing a heck of a lot more fit work, then yes, I would have invested in that. But that's just not the case right now. But what I have invested in, there's a couple new CRMs that are coming onto the market that are both CRM and itinerary builder and financials because I know a lot of people don't like traveljoy because it's lack of financial information. That's why a lot of people do like test Travel E solutions because it's more robust in that aspect and if you have independent contractors.

But okay, going to the but again there's two solutions that I have seen of so far and I just like saw something in a forum too that somebody else is trying to create something. There is Planet Easy and Revolution Travel CRM that are really looking to pave the way in becoming a real or really robust platforms that you can get both things, your CRM and your itinerary builder right now. So I really love the Revolution Travel CRM. I did a demo with them recently. I really liked it. Again, pricing, it's, it's a little bit. So all of these, there's no free version. You have to pay something for them and they're all different.

I feel like they all teeter between like $30. I think umapt is even more cost effective. I think umaped is 20, $20 a month average I feel is around $30 a month. And then the more expensive plans like are upwards of like $50, $50, $60 a month. So Revolution Travel CRM, even though I loved it, the pricing was out of, out of budget right now. You know the thing with a lot of these up and coming is that they're not as robust in their cape in their payment capabilities, specifically PCI compliance like Travel Joy is. And that's why I stick with Travel Jo Travel Joy. I know that it is in the works for both of these companies.

Planet Easing Revolution Travel CRM. So again we'll see what happens. So I so like I was saying, I needed some sort of itinerary builder though, but I could not afford like shelling out the amount that Travify charges. So Planet Easy, what I love about them is that there's different tiers so I went on their low tier because I just really need the basics. I love using Travel Joy for my CRM and my invoicing and putting trips together, but it is not as robust as putting itineraries together. And that is what I do with Planet Easy now. And there's no app with Planet Easy but you can like have downloadable printables with Planet Easy and that's what I really like about it. And there's some Auto population.

When you add certain things I think it's still a little because I feel like we're still in beta and when things are in beta they're in trial and error. So things aren't perfect but they're getting there and they're constantly adding improvements. So stay tuned to the future of that. But yeah, so right now I personally use Travel Joy and Planet Easy and Planet is Plan It Easy, not Planet like Earth Planet. So those are CRMs and itinerary builders. A great platform for that. So this episode, just keep in mind this is about awareness. This is not going to go full blown into details.

This is just awareness of what is out there. Things that I have personally used, things that I know about. And I just want to give you some feedback. So all the other things I'm going to mention to you are not travel business specific, but they are entrepreneur specific. And so first off let's, let's go ahead. Let's just keep diving right on in. Is a calendar management system and I know some people use Acuity. I personally love using Calendly and why I started using Calendly was because.

Well, and especially this summer when I became full time entrepreneur I needed my calendar not to be cuckoo. And I remember in the very beginning I was kind of like I'll take calls whenever on any day. And now I have limited call like to take calls through an actual someone calls my phone I can always answer the phone. Like this is not kind of like that those strict boundaries. It's if I need to set an appointment with someone like a discovery call or some of you have worked with me to implement some templates and that's how we make calls is through my calendar link to have a discovery call and then we get something set on the calendar. Same thing. If it's like any consults that you want with me, business strategies strategy sessions that you want with me. I use this for both of my business so both this take the helm business and my travel business and it helps me to keep my boundaries.

I only take calls for a couple of hours on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. It helps keep track of scheduling like I make sure. So I I have a couple trips coming up in December. I blocked it out in my calendar. So you can't schedule anything on my calendar while I'm gone thankfully. So Calendly and Acuity, they both have free versions. I have upgraded to paid version because there are only so many limitations. So if you are just going to be more one on one client work you can do Whatever that you would like.

With Zoom on the free account, I believe I started paying for Zoom. Sorry for Calendly. I started paying for Calendly when I started doing some networking sessions with other business owners and I needed to have two people on the call. The free version doesn't give you. You can only talk with one person up to 40 minutes. So that is why I upgraded to the paid account of Calendly. Now, Zoom kind of came into this conversation because I started talking about Zoom because I can integrate my Zoom account with my Calendly account so that when somebody schedules a call with me, they can either schedule a video. Yes, a video call via Zoom or just a regular telephone call.

And that's why I have Zoom integrated now. Zoom was another one. I used to have the free version for the longest time. But again, Zoom has its own limitations and me wanting to be a little bit more robust, especially in the second business that I had, I had to upgrade recently. So you can always Google like the different charges and rates. But I think Calendly and Zoom for the basic travel business are going to be really, really great options. So Zoom is video calls. If you wanted to do webinars.

And like, this is how I conducted my, what would you call it, like cruise night via Zoom with potential clients that were interested in sailing with me on a river cruise through Zoom. Now for something like that, you will need the paid account because you're going to need more than 40 minutes to talk to. Well, depending on how you want to run the show. But I blocked it out for a month. When you're thinking about things that you want to invest in pay, make sure you also take into consideration that return on investment. Are you going to be using it enough to justify that? Okay, so let's move on to. Well, now that we're talking about video type services. So there were a couple of things.

Video services. So in addition to Zoom, you can also use Google Meet. I haven't used Google Meet too much. I think Microsoft Teams is the other one. If you're using teams. I feel like everybody kind of knows how to use Zoom now. So why is it even important for me to attempt Google Meet or using Microsoft Teams? So I stay with Zoom. Then we have things that you can utilize to kind of brand any, like live type video.

So Streamyard I just recently invested in. I've heard of Descript and Descript there is a free version. So Streamyard has a free version, but you get the Streamyard branding. Same thing with descript there's a free version, but you get the Descript branding. I think it all has to do like with the type of clientele that you're serving. Also if you have a higher end clientele, I feel like it looks a little cheap if you are using like the branded stuff of those companies instead of your own branded items. So that's my own personal opinion. I know descript.

So in Streamyard, if you have the paid version, you get the recording so you can download it and upload it anywhere. So if you're having one of these private webinar sessions, you can download that recording and then upload it to a Facebook group or a Facebook page or YouTube to have more eyes on that video than just whoever attended. Descript kind of takes things to moves it up a notch because descript will also transcribe those videos. So if you wanted to do like on LinkedIn, LinkedIn videos are very popular, but only if they have the videos because a lot of people on LinkedIn are obviously watching like while they're doing work and they can't listen in on these videos. So that's where it helps to have those captions. Captions are also just helpful in general to be more ADA friendly, especially with people who cannot hear you. At least they can read things from you if you don't have descript. Another platform that I'm looking to personally at myself right now is Otter.

Otter is a transcription service. I think it does. It has a couple other bells and whistles, but especially like when we're getting into the focus of content and repurposing content you're going to want, especially if you're doing a lot of like what I'm doing right now, you're listening to me on a podcast or you might listen to me from a video. So you have this platform. But what if I want to repurpose this to a weekly email article? Or what if I want to repurpose this into a blog post or a LinkedIn article or however it is. Or what if you want to make these captions on social media posts? That is something that Otter can help you do by taking the audio and making it into words for you to repurpose talking video editors. You know, I use Film Forth. I am not a Mac person, so I don't know what the Mac version is.

But film 4th is what I use to just really basic editing. Right now on my Windows computer I've used PowerDirector and I've paid PowerDirector. I think it was like only five bucks a month and that I got through Google Play through one of my apps on my phones. I took it off because I really wasn't using it. And now that I have this free film forth, I can edit videos that way. I've heard Filmora is a really good editor, I think on your Apple. If you have Apple Phone or Apple products, they have really great editors too that you don't have to pay extra for. If we're talking social media wise, Inshot is another really great app.

I haven't used it. Inshot is really used for things like editing your reels and if you don't want to use the Instagram platform to do that, I know a lot of people use Inshot instead. This is a free one also. I again don't use it, but I've heard really great reviews. Some other video type things would be Loom and Loom. You can get a free version. I think it caps you at maybe like 25 videos and it caps you at five minutes for free. Something that I recently invested in, in the past couple years, maybe last year it was is something called Screencast O Matic, which is very similar to a Loom but a lower cost option if you're going to pay.

And it does pretty much the same thing. I liked it because Loom, its editor was really buggy to me and so I would edit a couple things and then it would glitch and my edits wouldn't appear. So I got very frustrated, was looking for an alternative and I have really liked using Screencast O Matic. So that's another one. It is a low cost investment. They do have a free one. But if you want to invest in that, that is another option for you. Especially if you're going to be doing a lot of explanations of itineraries or communicating with clients.

You may run out of 25 videos pretty quick depending on how busy your business is. All right, so those are video. That was a lot of video tech there. We're going to go back to project management. So project management helps to keep you on track with things many of you know. Trello probably Asana. I have been using ClickUp Stay tuned because I will. The person that I purchased a ClickUp course to learn about ClickUp is going to be offering again.

So stay tuned for more information on when that comes out. I really like ClickUp so I think I've talked about this a little bit too. So before I like go into it too, there's another one called Notion. Now Notion I would say is more of a database than project management. Systems. But those are kind of like the four most popular, I would say, to keep track of projects and where you're at right now. I feel I have a great foundation that I've been able to build for my client experience. Experience.

So when a client comes in, all the things that need to be done during their journey with me, I have that built up in my ClickUp. What this does for me is I know what I'm supposed to be doing every day instead of being like, okay, so today's Friday. What is supposed to happen on Friday? I can import due dates, I can import who is a task assigned to. I find project management very needed, necessary if you want to grow your business. Because if you're thinking about growing your business, you're not going to be the only one in your business. You and it's easier to in the beginning to lay the foundations in your project management system before getting too deep and heavy and in the weeds. And so for that I'm very, very happy that we've kind of like had this little downtime in order to be able to implement something like a ClickUp. For myself, the due dates have really helped me again.

It just helps me stay on track of the things that I should be doing. The next phase of me using ClickUp will be to implement strategic planning, marketing and financial type things. That is the next phase I needed to really put in something that I knew solid processes for and that I could immediately start utilizing so I could see the benefit of using a project management system system. So if I needed to go out of town and somebody needed to cover for me, they would get information through my ClickUp on like what, what's outstanding or some of the details of the clients that I'm working with. Whenever I add on people as independent contractors or employees to my business, I will be able to more easily tell them everything's in ClickUp instead of having to kind of like write everything down, write the product processes of what I do. It's all written in my project management tool already. So it will be. The learning curve will be much reduced and I don't have to waste too much of my time and energy to train them on something because these processes are already written in ClickUp or whatever project management tool you have.

There's free versions of all of them and then there's also paid versions of all of them. Currently I'm still on the free version of ClickUp. Social media scheduling the next kind of things are going to be very marketing based social media scheduling. There are so many out there. Planoly later Facebook Business suite, Tailwind, hootsuite, taskbirdie. So many out there. I think you really need to know the foundations of what social media platforms you want to be on and, and then pick a scheduler that is going to work for that. Also knowing that certain schedulers, they benefit you in time investment.

But when you're talking about the algorithms for certain social media platforms, they do not like these schedulers. So you will get much better reach if you upload directly into the system. And one of those I will say is LinkedIn. So I know that the reason that we do these scheduling or utilize these scheduling systems is because we want to save time and effort. So what I would do instead for something like a LinkedIn is have and you can utilize this in your project management tool like have your calendar with your topics, your captions, your pictures or whatever. Make sure that it's already set on the back end. So when you know that On Tuesday the 16th, you have to do this post, you can go ahead, copy paste everything and just auto post so it makes it easier and you're not starting from scratch each time and you're still going by some sort of strategy and plan. So I am mostly focused on outside of LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram and even like I could probably X out Facebook.

I really am heavy on Instagram and because of that I schedule my stuff in Facebook business suite or maybe it's, maybe it's Meta Business suite now. I don't know the new name change, but yeah, so I've, I've been scheduling because it is a native scheduler and it shouldn't really affect my reach because I'm posting in a native scheduler. Other I've also used later and I've really appreciated that. Tailwind, I believe is more for scheduling Pinterest posts. And obviously if you did not know, Pinterest is a weak point for me. It's not something that I really focus on. I've dabbled in a couple of pins that I posted, but I haven't gotten any real traction. So again, it's not something at the forefront of me.

And you have to again figure out you have to like lay your foundations and where are your people at, where are they spending time at and do your scheduling as needed according to that. Then we go on to Canva and, and I know that there's smaller alternatives out there to Canva, but I think Canva really has the monopoly here in the graphic template creation branding. And so yes, you can create your social Media graphics. But even more so there, like if you want to create, I mean you can do so much with Canva. If you want to create like templates for like photo templates for your CRM systems, you can create it so it looks like nice and fancy and then move it into your system. Like Travel Joy is like headers for each of your invoices or itineraries and all that flyers or postcards. You know, I do a lot of, you know, I, you. I utilize Mailbox Power and that is my how I send out my birthday cards, my holiday cards, my monthly postcards, any sort of direct mail.

That's how I send that out to my clients. And I brand everything first in Canva, download the PDF, PDF piece, the jpeg. I download that onto my computer and then I upload it to my mailbox power. Because the mailbox power, like design center really isn't my favorite. It's not like user friendly like Canva is. And that's why I still always go to Canva. So Canva, again, you have the free version, you have the paid version. I'm still currently skirting by on the free version.

Maybe if there was a paid version, like a Black Friday discount, I might invest in it. But we'll see. We'll see. So that is Canva then. Oh my gosh. Another area of things that I have tried so many out is with email marketing and these are autoresponder systems. I know that probably you're like, but I can just send an email from my email. But it's not the same.

And especially if you want to track data and tracking data meaning how many people have open like your open rates, your click through rates to see like what things are people really loving to hear about and that you can rinse and repeat. Because really when we're talking about all this content, it really is a rinse and repeat game so that you can keep some of your clarity and sanity and not always focused on having to create new, new, new. You can create new, but by using the old. Wash, rinse, repeat. Let's do this. So some of the most the strategic travel entrepreneur is brought to you by Mailbox power. Harness the power to attract and nurture your clients through something many entrepreneurs have forgotten. The mailbox.

Create beautiful custom campaigns and automate annual mailings for birthdays and holidays. And with a pro account, get access to mailboxes not currently on your mailing list that are just waiting for the travel service you offer. Visit my Mailbox Power affiliate link in the Show Notes to Get started today and support this podcast. Robust and most popular that are out there are convertkit. Convertkit I had tried to get into, it was just a little too clunky and the emails didn't look really nice. I actually started out with Constant contact and I steered away from constant contact because again I thought it was a little clunky. Even though it was really easy to start building like emails, campaigns, automations, workflows, landing pages. So I did like Constant contact for that.

But I changed over recently to Flow Desk and I love Flow Desk. Out of all the ones that I have still tried, flodesk is my favorite. They recently went out of beta. We'll see if they have any Black Friday discounts. But love, love, love flodesk. Now the downfall with flodesk is that these stats aren't that great. There are stats but they're not easy to come by. Like with other platforms it's just not as robust.

But if you need something just to create your. If that's your priority to create the emails, make things easy, streamlined, get your Automations all set. Flodesk is wonderful. Other things that I have used so ActiveCampaign is another very, very robust and I think for people who are doing a lot of like tagging, segmenting, that's probably the favorite. It's either ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit. Then there's a couple other freebie ones that you can start. So like Constant Contact is paid. Most of these are paid, flodesk is paid.

So the ones where you can start out free and then once you get start building your list you can start paying for it are Mailchimp, Mailerlite and AWeber. So I've used, I use Mailchimp. Well no, I have used Mailchimp. I don't like Mailchimp and I've heard like open rates aren't really that great with mailchimp. I just don't like it. It's not, it's not easy to use or at least not my brain. My brain easy. I did like AWeber, but I thought Aweber was a little clunky and they do this whole double opt in thing that I don't really like.

It's kind of like a force double opt in and then the one that I have been loving and if you're on my email list you get emails from here is Mailerlite. Mailerlite I would say is very similar in ease to Flow Desk. There is kind of like some, some learning curve. The emails aren't as pretty as Flodesk but I just love the ease of use with Mailerlite. So if you are trying to find something that is a free version for now I would recommend going with Mailer. That is my pick. But if you can do paid, flodesk is my pick. And if you need something a little bit more robust stats wise and doing all the tagging, segmenting and tagging and segmenting really is to differentiate different groups of people.

So like who has signed up for this lead magnet who's going on this trip? There are some capabilities in flodesk, but I know it's not as robust as what other people are like online business owners mention about other things and you know, we're not wearing online business, but we're also product service. We're in a, we're in a very, we're positioned very unique in this entrepreneur world. I don't think we need all the bells and whistles, but other, other brands may need that. Okay, so so much. Okay. Websites, blogs for the longest time. So my first website ever was on WordPress and that was because the web person that I was using with at that time said that it was very easy to be very simple for me to keep up with. I really didn't do much after he set it up for me though.

Then the next website that I utilized was with wix. And Wix I think is easy to use, but WIX is horrible for lots of other things. WIX is not good for SEO and SEO is like the major one that comes to mind. So you know, I made a big investment with a WIX website a couple years ago and never saw any return on my investment because of the lack of functions and capability. And when I say SEO too. So like how, how search engines pick up your website is through the words that are on your website and the keywords that that it picks up. And there's something about like the back end of WIX that kind of like jumbles up these keywords and all that. I don't know.

I just heard from a lot of the big players in the online business space. WIX is not the one that you should be going with. The two big players that you should be moving forward with are Showit and Squarespace. I think a lot of people really love Squarespace because it is really easy and simple to set up. My new website right now is with Showit and thank goodness I hired somebody on because I think Showit is a little bit complicated to like set up. Like once you get in it and it's set up, I Think it's easy to make updates but showit for me seems a little more complicated because of how customizable it is. And that's what I love about my website. I don't feel like my website is cookie cutter.

Like I really feel my web designer did a really great job putting it together for my travel business. I don't think there's anything wrong with Squarespace and talking about Squarespace. Squarespace is a little bit more robust because you can do a lot more things. It's got like some e commerce features and it's got some email marketing features. Now I have utilized for a client of mine in the, in the support business space some email marketing in Squarespace. It's okay, it's not great. So if you are trying to save money, I think it's an okay way to save money. But it's not my favorite.

Like I would much prefer that you had something like mailerlite, mailchimp, activecampaign one of the other ones not directly with Squarespace but that is a bonus or a perk if you are on the Squarespace platform. Okay. Some lesser known. Oh, I'm just gonna put like honorable mention here. QuickBooks because you do need Quickbooks for financials. Other things that I can see for financials would also be like Excel Spreadsheets. Spreadsheets, really? Spreadsheets is. Is what financials, that's how.

That's their love language is spreadsheets. Lesser known type things are podcasting and audio. So if you are wanting to have your own podcast or even just record audio of yourself, edit it and maybe send it off to a client as kind of like a voicemail almost the two biggest ones and free ones. So if you are a Windows user, it's going to be Audacity or Audiotonic. That's. That's what I currently use and that's free. And then for Apple users it's GarageBand. And then if you are actually having a podcast, there's different platforms to host.

So you need an editor and then you need to host because your podcast needs to live somewhere. So different hosts out there are Libsyn, which I currently have my travel business podcast on Libsyn. I have a love hate relationship. The stats are not good with Libsyn. Libsyn has been really, really slow for me recently and the thing that keeps me on Libsyn is that when I tell it to, it will auto post to different platforms like Twitter. So I don't really do much with Twitter but if it'll auto post I'll go ahead and I'll take the auto post. Same thing. It will auto post for me in LinkedIn.

And LinkedIn is one of. It's a very important platform to me and my business. So I like that it avoids me having to take separate steps. But if it keeps like being glitchy, I'm going to switch it to where I currently have this podcast and that is Buzzsprout. And I really loved buzzsprout. I love that they have like a three month, almost like trial period that you can use it for free and then you need to upgrade to some sort of a plan. If you decide not to upgrade to any sort of plan, you just like lose all the podcast episodes which while you've put in the work, why would you want to lose your episodes? But that, that is Buzzsprout. And buzzsprout is phenomenal with helping you get set up in the different directories and also phenomenal with what was the stats.

Stats. They do really great with stats. Another one if you're looking for something free is Anchor. I personally did not like using Anchor. You know what I need to look at now is how I can record audio on my phone without having one of these apps available because I like to do some podcast or maybe I. We'll see. We'll see. That might be for another one.

I'm thinking about taking my laptop, so maybe that can be avoided. Anyways, last two things that I want to talk to you about are about communication. So when you are adding team members or working with independent contractors, you want communication to be professional. But obviously you're not on the same intranet because we're not one of those corporate, corporate companies. So you may be doing a lot of communication via email or text message or like Facebook message. But I mean those will work for now. Yes, if you needed something, those will work. But if you're wanting something a little bit more professional, more streamlined, a hub, a central hub where everything that business can be, there's two things you can utilize.

One is Slack and Slack is like an instant messenger for business. The other is Voxer and Voxer is like walkie talkie for business. And those are both free apps that you can use. I haven't really tried using them. I have them. There's been a couple of events that I've gone to that people have asked me for my Voxer and so that we can communicate with Voxer, but I haven't used them yet. So I can't tell you too much about it. But those are really great alternative platforms.

And this especially helps too, like, so that you don't have to friend somebody. WhatsApp I feel is a little still too personal. But I know a lot of people still use WhatsApp for business. I just know I don't want to do that. That's how I communicate with my international friends. I'd rather use Slacker, Voxer. Okay. So those are a lot of the tools that are out there.

And I hope at least that I've been able to explain some of the basics of how you can utilize those in your travel businesses. Again, this is not like the nitty gritty. I don't think that this is like the be all end all list, but if you were ever curious on all the things, this is all the things. So you may need to listen to this a couple of times to pick up on some things. I would really love your feedback. Like, what sort of systems do you want to hear more about? Is there something currently in your business that you're like, I really need help with this, but I don't know if there's a tool out there now, something that I didn't write down on these lists that I just thought of thinking about. That was an app called todoist. Todoist.

And it's a free app. And that was really, really helping me to stay productive. And I know todoist can integrate with ClickUp. And then there's one other thing, but I'm not sure what it is right now to like make it like a super duper, like ultra project management, like productivity. But I can't remember. But if you're not quite ready for a project management or project management system seems really, really daunting to you. Todoist might be the way to kind of get yourself implemented or starting to use some sort of system to keep you on track. I still have a couple things still in my todoist.

You can add dates and like subtasks. So I think it's really a really nice, powerful system for that. But okay, I'm gonna get off this really long soapbox of a lot of the different tools that you can use in your travel business. Again, I would love your feedback. Which tools kind of stood out to you? Which do you want to hear more about? Because I think these are. These are. These are so beneficial in helping you move the needle forward and making things easier in your life as a travel business owner. Oh.

So the resource that I was going to provide you, I have an affiliate link. This is a paid membership. If you are interested in. So because I first started this take the helm business as kind of like wanting to be some sort of virtual assistant for travel entrepreneurs, that's really not the direction that I see myself in now. But I have access to certain resources via affiliate links that you can still utilize. So if you are kind of like, well, I want to try this out, but I don't even know. And I need someone to help me out, but I can't afford to hire somebody. And none of the videos that I'm seeing online anywhere are being really helpful.

There is a resource. It was built for virtual assistants, but it is like a tech library of sorts. And it is incredible. The monthly membership is $47 and they're always coming out with new tutorials on different tech that you use. So again, this was created for the virtual assistant, but to help you kind of like wait until you really, really need a virtual assistant. These are tutorials in here that you can utilize again. $47 a month. Let me go over some of the tutorials that are in here.

So they have active campaign acuity. Airtable. Airtable is another very popular project management tool. Asana Branding 101 Branding and Design Buffer is a social media tool. Calendly Canva Chatbots. Chat is something that is like. I'm starting to see it on the horizon. I'm starting to hear more about Chatbots.

So that may be one to listen to. Click up, click up for client management, Clubhouse Community management, like for Facebook groups, Convert kit, copywriting, Dubsado, email marketing, Facebook ads, Facebook management, which that may be more va. I'm not sure if you'll really need it. There's a Flow Desk course, Google Analytics, Google Suite, HoneyBook, Instagram, LastPass, which LastPass is a tool that you can utilize to secure all your passwords. But if you're working with a virtual assistant, it gives them access to your passwords without really giving them access to your passwords. LinkedIn, loom, mailchimp, mailer lights, Pinterest. I'm just kind of like scrolling through here. There's a QuickBooks, Slack SEO 101.

I have taken that one and that one was really good. Squarespace, Streamyard, Tailwind, Trello, Wave Apps. Wave Apps is a way to invoice clients. Oh, webinars 101 that may be helpful if we want to put on like cruise nights. WordPress, YouTube, Zapier. That's another tool that I didn't really talk about. Zoom, Zoom Webinars. So Zapier is a tool that can Integrate.

Now I need to see if Travel Joe will open up to be able to allow to integrate different tools. So you see we have. There's tons of tools to use but none of these tools, unless they have it built in, communicate with each other. So what? In my dream world, I would love for someone to fill out a client form in my travel Joy and then automatically be added to my mailing list in Flodesk and mailing list and mailbox power. Currently there is no way to do that other than like actually me physically doing that. So that is, that is what things like Zapier or Integrity or into Integromat. Those, those different things, they integrate different platforms. Now the downside is like I don't.

And I think this may be on the horizon for some of the travel CRMs or itinerary builders. But I know I don't think it's on for travel. So I'm gonna have to ask Alan. I'll have to ask in the chat feature but that would help out so much because again this is all about saving your time and making things streamlined for you. And if you can connect certain things to talk to each other without you having to do an extra step. So like hallelujah. So, so amazing. So check out if you are wanting to get some of these courses.

It is a monthly membership. You can cancel at any time or you can pay for the year. It is my affiliate link so I do get a kickback, full disclosure for you on that. Any affiliate link that I have, I do get a kickback on that. But I wouldn't be promoting things that I don't think are worthwhile or would be helpful in your travel business. So a link if you want to kind of get different tutorials of different text so you can kind of sift out which ones you want or if you have been using a tech like Flodesk and haven't been able to figure out XYZ and don't want to pay private one on one hours with someone. Take the tutorial from there and it should be able to help you out or at least get you closer to where you're going. So we're gonna, we're gonna wrap this up finally.

I hope you have enjoyed this episode. You may have to listen to this a couple times. Thank you. Thank you so much. This, this was a chock chock full and I don't even know what to say. My brain is so fried with tools. So you guys have a wonderful week. Thanks for tuning in and I'll see you next week.

Thanks for joining me on the Strategic Travel Entrepreneur. Please subscribe and leave the show a rating on your favorite podcast platform. Oh, and don't forget to take a look at the show notes for important information and links. See you next week.