Travel Advisor Sarah Groen on Female Entrepreneurship and Surviving Burnout

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As the daughter of an immigrant parent, Sarah Groen said she always felt that she was expected to succeed.    

And, thanks to her “failure is not an option” mindset, she found success swiftly in her early adult life — from positions in oil and gas investment banking to co-founding her own startup and working as an executive for Uber.  

However, in 2018, Groen found herself burnt out from the corporate world and in need of a new venture. She applied to the mentorship program at Brownell (one of America’s oldest travel agencies) and Bell + Bly Travel — a luxury agency where clients are often spending upward of $1,000 per day — was born.  

Since joining the travel industry, Groen has won Virtuoso’s Most Innovative Travel Advisor award for 2021 for her work during the COVID-19 pandemic (which includes recording some 100 episodes for her newly launched podcast, Luxury Travel Insider, where she interviews authorities in the luxury travel space about the latest updates and trending destinations).

In this episode of Humans of Travel, Groen reflects on the moments she fell in love with traveling (during a trip to Germany at age 15, and then again during two study abroad tours in college), and what it was like paving the way as a female entrepreneur in largely male-dominated industries prior to her career in travel.  

She also speaks about how she’s had to adapt and change a few of her workaholic tendencies, and shares advice for travel advisors looking to break into the luxury space.

The Details
Bell & Bly Travel

In This Episode

1:08 - Meet Sarah Groen, owner of Bell & Bly Travel.

5:05 - Groen reflects on her childhood, family dynamics and the pressure she felt to succeed.

8:55 - Groen speaks about her foray into the corporate world and the challenges of entering a male-dominated industry as a young woman.

13:25 - Learn about Groen's study abroad scholarship program for business students at the University of Texas at Austin.

18:40 - Groen speaks on entrepreneurship and burnout during her time in investment banking and at Uber.

22:12 - Groen looks back at her decision to start a travel agency and join Brownell's mentorship program.

29:55 - Groen offers advice to advisors looking to break into luxury travel.

32:12 - Learn about Groen's podcast, Luxury Travel Insider.

Episode Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated. It has been edited for clarity.

Emma Weissmann: Hi everyone and welcome back to Humans of Travel, the podcast from TravelAge West magazine where we have honest conversations with the MVPs and rising stars of the travel industry, while getting to the heart of who they are as people, and what makes them human.

Emma Weissmann: I'm your host, Emma Weissman, the digital managing editor at Travel Age West, and today I'm actually joined by a fellow podcaster. We have Sarah Groen with us, the founder of Bell & Bly Travel, and the host of the Luxury Travel Insider podcast. Sarah is truly a force to be reckoned with, and an experienced entrepreneur. Since graduating from Stanford's business school, she's worked in investment banking, she's been an executive at Uber, and on the travel side she's been to nearly 100 countries. She's also managed to not only keep her travel business alive during the pandemic, but she made money and gained new clients, which we'll hear about in just a bit. Sarah, it's so great to have you with us today, and I can't wait to learn more about you.

Sarah Groen: Thank you for having me, Emma, I'm excited to be chatting.

Emma Weissmann: Well, I wanted to start with … I know you're a relatively new travel advisor, and you started the agency in 2018, but you've built quite a solid career over the last three years. So, I'd love to hear about where your love of travel began. And I know you have a story to share about when you were younger and wanting to explore the world. So, let's start there when you were a child. What did travel mean to you?

Sarah Groen: Yeah, it's a great question, and I don't know exactly what it meant to me then. I just know that something about it  intrigued me. So, my mom actually found and gave to me a few years ago an autobiography that I wrote in first grade. The teacher had given us these actual books, right? And we were supposed to draw and write about ourselves, to tell about our lives. And I wrote things like ‘I like to talk Spanish, and  I love to travel the world. I think I said something about China. And I had never traveled and definitely didn't speak Spanish in first grade. It was really fun to see that so many years later. Then, I think I told you I went on a trip when I was 15 and spent time with family in Germany for the entire summer, and that was what really gave me the travel bug. 

Sarah Groen: But one thing that we didn't talk about when, when we chatted before this was, was it? I mean it was  definitely a theme throughout my life, I did finance and I did all this other stuff, but when I applied to business school, I went to Stanford, and there's a famous question for the application. It's notoriously hard to get in, and the question is what matters to you most and why, and you know, I was like, well I can't write about family because  everyone is going to write about family, and you have to be really different to get into Stanford. So, I wrote that essay about travel. I stayed up all night one night, I remember to five or six in the morning writing about it, and actually trying to think like, ‘well it's travel and I know it's travel, but why, what's the reason?’ And kind of trying to dig that out and wrote an essay about it that I ended up being pretty proud of, and I think maybe it got me in, and it's so funny because then it took me 10 years or you know, or so after going to Stanford to even get into the travel industry.

Emma Weissmann: Oh my gosh, that is funny. Do you remember anything about your essay that you think stood out? I'm very curious to hear about that.

Sarah Groen: Yeah. I think I, what I found out at least what stood out for me, right? Because it was a self-discovery process as well. I'm not sure what the, what Derek Bolt, the head of admissions, thought about it, but for me it was, it was the fact that travel makes me feel small, in a good way. It reminds me to be humble. It reminds me that there's so much else out there going on in the world besides my one story, like what's happening to me and my life is not central. It's just a tiny speck of what's happening, right?

Emma Weissmann: Isn't that wild when you think about that and just how small we truly are? It is very humbling.

Sarah Groen: Yeah. And then later on, like this summer, I went to Utah and did a bunch of road tripping and all this stuff, and you think about the time continuum. So, it's not just everyone else in the world right now, but what about the last billion years and the dinosaurs and all this stuff. You can get a little esoteric if you let it.

Emma Weissmann: Yeah. And it's interesting that you decided to write that essay about travel, and you have touched upon this trip to Germany when you're 15, when you were growing up, did your parents really encourage travel? I would love to hear a little bit about your family, and just who they were and and travel fit into your life and into your childhood, as well.

Sarah Groen: Yeah. I mean not a ton … we grew up playing tennis, and we would travel around for tennis tournaments and that kind of stuff, but we didn't do a whole lot of travel, which I think was common. I wouldn't say we traveled less or more than anybody else until I took that trip to Germany. Then, that was really, really different. I mean, I think my parents probably did it on purpose right? To give me a greater sense of what was going on in the world, and just to have a life experience. And then on the flip side, my cousin from Germany came and actually studied a semester at my high school the year after that. So yeah, I wouldn't say anything more or less than anybody else. It just so happened, I had family in other places and that was really helpful.

Emma Weissmann: Oh, that's great. I would love to hear about your family dynamics growing up. You have a brother, and what your sibling relationship was, what your relationship was with your parents, and the types of things that they did prioritize when you were growing up.

Sarah Groen: My dad was an immigrant, right? So he is from Pakistan or India. His older sisters were born in India. His parents were born in India, they moved to Pakistan for work. My grandfather was a lawyer. I think before the partition happened and then ended up having to stay there afterward. So, it's kind of , you know, my dad had left as soon as the rest of his family had left. His one brother went to Germany; that's why I ended up in Germany. And another one came to school here in the U. S. His sisters were older than him and had come to the U. S. first, and he was kind of the last son there to help everybody get over here to the U.S. Then, he converted all his degrees, became a lawyer here in the U. S., joined the Navy, was a Jag and the Navy and yeah. So, we grew up in Corpus Christi because there's a big Navy base there. And when I was born, my dad got out of the Navy; well, he didn't get fully out, but he went into the reserves as they call it. So, he was kind of part-time with the Navy and started his own private practice. So, we wouldn't have to move around. So, I think it was important to my parents to have some stability for us, and kind of be in one place. So that's one big thing in terms of our relationship.

Sarah Groen: I think we all had a really good relationship, and I think, you know, my brother is about five years younger than me, so we had the awkward phase where I was too cool for him but he really wanted to hang out with me. And then when I was older he was too busy in high school, and I really wanted a relationship with him, but it's sort of evened out now. He actually lives across the street from me now, which is which is really fun. And then I'd say the only other big dynamic in our family that I think influenced both of us and how we became what we are is just having an immigrant parent and all of that comes with a lot of pressure to succeed, right? I didn't feel it was pressure at that time, but I had really strict parents and they expected us to make really good grades and expected us to do really well. and I think you know it served us great for awhile; now, I'm now I'm a little bit of a workaholic … but it was it was great so we did well and both had, and have, a good career.

Emma Weissmann: I am wondering when you were applying to school — and I know your undergraduate you went to U. T. Austin — did you always know that you wanted to go into finance and in the corporate world? And did you ever feel a little bit discouraged or was it challenging for you to be entering such a male dominated field at the time?

Sarah Groen: I always knew I wanted to do business; I was always fascinated with it. Even when I was really little, I would go to the grocery store and be like ‘oh wow, … everybody is giving them money’ … how do I do this? So, I always was interested in business. Then I had a cousin, he was several years ahead of me who is an executive in different biotech companies and such now. And so I kind of had her as a mentor, but I didn't know what in business I wanted to do. And I definitely didn't think about dynamics of the corporate world and politics and all of that. It's funny now, because after I graduated and took jobs in finance and all of that, when I finally started doing my own thing, my dad said, ‘you know, I been waiting for this because I knew you could never work for anybody else long-term.’ It’s just kind of funny, so I definitely needed or it was obvious at least to my parents that I should be an entrepreneur, but you know it was great to do those other roles first because they really prepared me for this. 

Sarah Groen: In terms of your question about male dominated …I mean, I kind of think when you were 22 you just don't really know what's going on. And so, I just jumped in. I did oil and gas investment banking, that's pretty much the most male dominated that you could get. Especially then totally, I was the only female on the floor who wasn't an executive assistant. And yeah, there were weird things. I would be the one who would get asked to get a coffee, an executive or the CEO would get on the elevator with me when I first started and ask, “Oh, who's assistant are you?” And it looks like small things that are not a big deal when you're there, but looking back on it, it's every one of those things is a small little cut, right? And it's just an additional work for you have to do versus other folks. So, I had a great time in in those roles and learned a lot.

Emma Weissmann: Now, when you look back and you look at your experiences and you see that you were treated differently — It's really fascinating to look back and see how you were treated as a woman, especially in a world where women were expected to have those positions — assistants and secretaries in the lower level — with lower- level positions. But you have had so much since then, and we're going to dig into all the different parts of your career. But before we do that, I'm going to shift back to travel a little bit because we talked about this Germany trip when you were 15. You also studied abroad when you were in college, you were in Vienna and Singapore, and I want to hear about that time in your life. What were you learning? Did you have any memories or lessons learned during that time that have stuck with you?

Sarah Groen: Yeah, I mean I think the summer in Germany was amazing because it was my first time, right? So that's what really got me hooked and gave me the super interest in travel, and I think it was just seeing how different things were in the rest of the world than they were at home. And then that experience made me really want to study abroad. So I did study abroad twice, and I think from, from those experiences, what I like to think I took away is the ability to rely on myself.  You know, of course I learned a lot about the world, and I learned I learned a lot about different countries and destinations, and that's all great for my business now right? But what really it taught me was that I can get around I can do things myself, I can figure things out in in X, Y, Z place. If I have a final and I need to be back in Vienna tomorrow, and the train employees are on strike and I can't get there like that, I have to figure out another way to get there, right? So that kind of stuff happens because I just went backpacking all around Europe and traveled all around Southeast Asia. It was a great time in life to have to be put in front of lots of many challenges, right? Nothing crazy, but a lot of things to figure out. 

Emma Weissmann: Yeah, that's something that's so great about travel. I mean, it teaches you lessons that you'll never learn in a classroom environment or you won't learn in school and you really have to know how to be resourceful and depend on yourself. Like you said, it teaches you to come into your own and your individuality, I think, really shines when you're put in an uncomfortable position like that. When you're just somewhere and you're unfamiliar with the environment and the community around you, and you're forced to just adapt.

Sarah Groen: Yeah, for sure.

Emma Weissmann: So, let's talk about how these experiences are what ultimately led you and your husband to set up a scholarship program at UT-Austin. I would love to hear how that came about and what that means to you both.

Sarah Groen: Yeah, I always loved the experiences that I got because of traveling, and I always thought they should be available to more people and not just because I, you know, had these difficult situations and overcame them and learned, but because I truly think travel promotes tolerance and I think it makes the world a better place. The more people go out and travel, the more people who actually fundamentally understand the fact that we're all the same. We all want our kids to be healthy, we all want ourselves to be healthy, we want to be stable, — those values are the same for human beings. So, I always just wanted people to be able to travel more, and I thought about a bunch of different ideas and stuff as I was younger and in my career. And then when I finally started Bell & Bly Travel, I thought ‘OK, I have to find a way for the company to be able to give back and, you know, it's tough starting a new travel business — it's not a career that's going to make you a billionaire. I thought, you know, I'm not really patient enough to wait for the business to have enough money to be able to support a team and to be able to give back a huge amount to a scholarship. So, Alex and I decided to do it personally. We created this personal endowment to fund study abroad scholarships in perpetuity for students in the business school, which was the school out of which I studied. And then what I've laid on top of that is that I'll have Bell & Bly Travel actually give $100 to the scholarship every time we get a referral from an existing client, so that our clients can kind of play along in the fun and feel like, you know, they're referring a friend who's getting a great trip, but also, they're going to giving back in some way. 

Emma Weissmann: Yeah, no that's wonderful. We kind of alluded to this earlier, but you said that there have been times in your life where you considered yourself a workaholic. And, I mean, I think a lot of us struggle with that, but you said to me before that you would often be up before the sun rises, and then you'd be back home after your husband was already asleep. What happened where you kind of thought, ‘man, maybe I need a change for this?’

Sarah Groen: Yeah, well I mean that period was … I've always worked a lot, but a lot of times it was the function of my job, right? You're an investment banking analyst right out of school, you're expected to work at least 80 hours, so if not, you're not doing the job right. But that that story was particularly from when I was an executive at Uber launching and running Uber Eats in Houston and Phoenix, and we were just launching new product all the time. And it was like, we had a launch date, and the entire city of Houston was waiting on us to launch Uber Eats. If you, if you don't get it figured out the morning when it's supposed to launch, that's not very good. Being in a startup drives that type of environment. It was, of course, also the culture at Uber, which, you know, we can do another show on sometime.  

Sarah Groen: I was in a position where the roles I took on were kind of high pressure, and so it's just always normal for me to work that much. But when I was exiting Uber, the thought in my mind was okay, ‘I'm old enough now … I cannot work this much for somebody else.’ if I'm going to do it, it's got to be for myself, right? I want to be putting equity into my own thing, and really liking really, really, really making sure that if I'm working that much, I like all those hours that I'm putting into it. But now, you know, having the business … now that it's my own thing, I kind of struggled with like, ‘OK, wait, nobody is telling me to work this hard.’ I need to close the computer go inside, and have dinner. So, it is like I'm trying to break the habit of getting out of … that old world, and I'm the one in charge of saying how much business we take on, so I'm directly responsible for how much I work now. So now, it's up to me to kind of learn the skills to balance life and kind of put some other aspects of life first.

Emma Weissmann: We're actually going to take a quick pause to hear a word from our sponsor princess cruises but when we come back, let's talk about that and the transition into travel.

Emma Weissmann: Welcome back to Humans of Travel. I'm here with Sarah Groen, luxury travel advisor, a podcaster, former executive and just all-around badass. So, Sarah, let's talk about your transition into the travel industry. Because at one point prior to opening Bell & Bly Travel, you considered a few other ventures — even buying a FedEx route, I think, is one of them?

Sarah Groen: Yeah, so like I said, after I left Uber, I knew I was gonna do something on my own. But I really did a mental calculation. I went to school with a lot of people who did tech startups and who are really successful. And a lot of them who did tech startups and who weren't, right? You hear about the successes, but you don't hear about the millions of people who have tried and haven't succeeded. So I said to myself, do I want to do that, and have a really small chance of making a billion dollars someday? Or do I want to rely on myself and what I know is my skill — which is operations and operating a business — and build a good solid business that can, you know, have a very good chance of giving me a good lifestyle? So I went down that route, and [looked for] either a medium-size business to buy or starting sort of, you know, a “lifestyle” business I guess. You know, from the startup world, we would call most of what we do as travel advisors in the travel industry, a lifestyle businesses.  

Sarah Groen: I looked at everything. I looked at FedEx routes to buy, I looked at a wedding venue until I was like, ‘What are you thinking?’ … I'm not gonna spend my weekends with bridezillas and their moms. 

Emma Weissmann: Oh, that sounds awful.

Sarah Groen: I looked at a big family entertainment center project with 50,000 square feet inside with trampoline park and ninja warrior and all that kind of stuff. So I looked at a lot of different things and I just kept thinking to myself … can I see myself spending 80 hours a week on this, and not being miserable? And the answer kept being ‘no.’ There was something else, you know, calling me or waiting for me, and it wasn't any of those things. It was a frustrating time because it was, you know, if you're a type A person, and you've put a lot of your identity into what your career is. I had people calling me, [saying] ‘Sarah, I can get you a job here, do you want to do this? What about you join this venture capital firm?’ All these things that sound really cool, but I had to be really strict on myself to stay the course to be like, ‘no, I said I was going out on my own to do something. I've got to stick to it till I find what it is.

Emma Weissmann: And how did you find travel and the idea to open up your own agency?

Sarah Groen: Well, I did start by planning a few trips for some of my classmates. You know, I love to travel. I've been to 100 countries. And I planned a trip in business school for 40 people to go to Russia, and Condoleezza Rice came with us. It was kind of a thing that you had to do to graduate. So, I had always kind of been somebody who people would come to, to ask travel questions to, which I know that's a similar story for so many travel advisors. So, I just started doing on the side. I knew nothing about the industry. I didn't know what an IATA number was. I didn't know you could make commission on anything. I just took my friends’ credit card numbers and used them — of course, they trusted me right? — to use them to make the bookings. I did their itineraries in Excel just like I would do my own before then. So, it's kind of just doing that on the side while I was running this parallel search, looking for a business to buy or to start.

Sarah Groen: When one of them, that I had worked on for a year, which was actually that family entertainment center, deal fell through after working on it for so long, it was almost kind of a real low. Like, gosh, what am I going to do now? 

Emma Weissmann: Like, what’s next for me? I'm sure you're thinking at that point a year into it.

Sarah Groen: Yeah, exactly, what am I going to do now? So, I had already kind of been planning to travel. So, I thought, well maybe I maybe I should look into this, and see if there's any legs here. So, I did just about five minutes of research on the internet and found that there was an entire industry of travel advisors out there. I found Brownell Travel and applied to their mentorship program from my phone on my back porch, and they actually decided to call me back, which is great. 

Emma Weissmann: And the rest is history.

Sarah Groen: Exactly.

Emma Weissmann: Were you under the impression at the time that travel agents didn't exist anymore? I know that's a really common perception among consumers.

Sarah Groen: I was, and if I did think that they existed, I thought they existed in a way that was not putting the client first. Right? So, I thought maybe they existed in a way where they only cared about commissions on certain things, and could only book certain types of travel and that kind of thing. So either I thought they didn't exist, or the ones that did exist I didn't think were a model for people of this day and age.

Emma Weissmann: I want to hear about Brownell’s mentorship program, because I know that you started off by applying to that. What does that encompass?

Sarah Groen: So yeah, so I applied to it, and it turns out it's actually quite difficult to get into. Like I said, I did it from my phone, and Rebecca Wilson who was running the program at the time, gave me a call and was like, ‘You have a really interesting background, and I just wanted to chat with you, you know, kind of how hard it is to get into the program.’ Maybe she was alluding, I should redo my application. 

Emma Weissmann: Maybe you want to take a second pass on this.

Sarah Groen: Yes, which is exactly what I did. But no, it was great. I mean, Brownell brings you into the mentorship program, but you're expected to start your business from day one. You go to Birmingham and do a week of intensive sort of training and learning how at least the Brownell systems work. But we were kind of expected to come in with our own business plans  and then go off and start selling and start building a business. Of course, we had lots of weekly check ins on different topics and sort of a curriculum that we followed for a year, but it was all in tandem with building the business, which of course is totally the right way to go. The best way to learn is to be doing.

Emma Weissmann: Yeah, that's very cool. And the name Bell & Bly, where did that come from?

Sarah Groen: Yeah, so that I came up with before I knew anything about the travel industry, and I didn't know that most advisors named their businesses after themselves, which I'm glad it's not named after me. But I was trying to come up with something that was alliteration. I had already known about companies like Abercrombie and Kent and that kind of stuff. I thought that name sounded cool, but I wanted it to be women. So, I started to do a little bit of research and I found two female explorers from the late 1800s, early 1900s: Nellie Bly and Gertrude Bell. Gertrude Bell is kind of known as … the female Lawrence of Arabia, but I feel like that's selling her short a little bit. Why do we always have to be the female version of a man, right? So, she was just one of the world's foremost experts on the Arab tribes at the time that she was just traveling and visiting, and was actually conscripted by the British military to help with some of the things they had to do in terms of drawing borders and selecting different plans to run the different Middle Eastern countries, which is crazy. And then Nellie Bly was an American journalist who worked for one of the papers in New York, and at the time the book “Around the World in 80 Days” had just come out, which was fiction, and she thought, ‘I think I can do it faster than that.’ So she set off to try to go around the world faster than 80 days and wrote about it. I think she did it in 72.

Emma Weissmann: That's awesome. And when you had, so you had your name before, the agency. But when did the decision to specialize in luxury travel happen?

Sarah Groen: Yeah, it's a good question. I mean you know going into affiliating with Brownell, I mean you know that Brownell itself does luxury travel. But what I didn't maybe necessarily know was what luxury travel means, and how high those budgets are. When I when I started the business, I thought, ‘I'm going to take all these travelers who love travel and help them go to places they've never even thought of before. Like Uzbekistan and some places, random places I've been, you know? 

Sarah Groen: But yeah, I mean you know getting into the business right? Nobody wants to go to Uzbekistan, and for the most part all you take is what your clients are bringing you, which I did for the beginning. And then I started to realize — because I love business, so I track a lot of things — we're not really profitable until you get to a certain budget level, in my opinion, if you are valuing your time properly and you're counting a dollar amount toward the cost of your time. It's not profitable until you get to a certain budget level. So, thinking about the business kind of melding my two passions — travel and business — really kind of led me to the decision to focus on the high end of luxury.

Emma Weissmann: Yeah, no that definitely makes sense. And your clients are booking often a minimum of $1,000 per day on the, on the tours that you're planning. What do these trips have in common? And tell me about if there are destinations that really stand out? Or activities? How would you characterize a Bell & Bly trip?

Sarah Groen: That's a good question. And I think, you know, any travel advisor is always going to say it depends. I think that's the favorite phrase of our industry, but you know what characterizes about my travel trips first is our clients. We don't specialize in the destination, we specialize in the type of client who are, you know, C-level executives, venture capital investors, private equity investors, investment bankers, the kind of person who is very, very busy, right, Doesn't have the time. So right off the bat, we're adding value, because we are saving them tons of time. And if you think a trip takes, could take 40 hours to plan, you know, an executive like that, that 40 hours is worth so much more than whatever your fee is, right? So, it makes sense. I'd say first start there with the type of person, and then because of the budget levels, I think all of our clients are looking for, ‘wow’ moments, and looking for something really special. They don't have that much vacation time, or that much time to spend with their kids away from, you know the emails and the calls and that kind of stuff. So, it's really maximizing their time on the ground, whether that is being super efficient with logistics — so we're not doing trains were getting private drivers between the cities in Italy — or whatever, and maybe stopping for some really interesting cool activities on the way, right? So, you're not losing a full travel day. So, maximizing time but also maximizing those wild moments. Almost none of our trips have any group element to them. It's usually private, with a really hand selected private guide.  

Sarah Groen: And I think we also wrap around a lot of services for the client, in addition to what we're doing with the trip, right? We try to make it an experience from when they want to start working with us to when they get back from their travel. So, we want them to be excited about the trip even after they book it. If they have six months, you know, can we send them recipes that they can cook with their kids from their destination? 

Emma Weissmann: Yeah, and keep the advisor and your agency top of mind for them long after they return home. That’s great advice. And I'm curious — for those travel advisors who are looking to get into the luxury space, but they may not be there yet — do you have any advice for them?

Sarah Groen: Yeah, so it's a tough nut to crack, I think. But not to say that it can't be, you know.

Sarah Groen: I say I cheated a little bit … coming in because I had some of that network coming into the business. But, I think what's really important is that in any business — and I always would give this advice to startups that I mentor to — you really have to understand your customer or your client. What is it that gives them pain in the startup industry? They call it pain points. What's their pain point? Is that the executive who just doesn't have literally any time to plan anything? Or is it something that’s gone bad on a trip before? … So really understanding the pain points of your particular type of clients. So, studying that that group of people that you want to work with, I mean, it doesn't just have to be, you know, executives. Maybe your focused on, you know, wealthy celebrities or influencers or athletes or doctors or whatever it is, right? It's just kind of understanding them at a deeper level and then tactically, I mean the way to do that, there's lots of books out there so you can read that kind of stuff — like, how to work with luxury clients — but you have to get out in front of them, right? So, try to join organizations that they, your target client, is going to be part of. Just to get to know them and not to necessarily be selling, but just to understand them. And that can be tough, right? Not everybody can just go join a country club or something, but there are ways. Here in Houston, there's the Houston Women's Chamber of Commerce that is not expensive to join and has, you know, some of the top business leaders in Houston as a part of it. So just kind of thinking strategically about how to make relationships with your target type of client, and then really understanding them.

Emma Weissmann: Yeah, and you mentioned too that there's a lot of resources out there, there's books you can read, and that’s actually a perfect transition into the podcast that you have, that you started during the pandemic. Because if people listen to the podcast, they're getting access to the insiders of the luxury travel industry. So, let's talk about that, because you're almost up to 100 episodes, which is truly impressive. How did you with the idea for your podcast? And let’s chat a little bit about, for those looking to dabble into the past episodes, maybe one or two that stood out to you?.

Sarah Groen: Sure. So I it's funny because when I joined the industry and I started to go on educational trips or site visits, that kind of thing, I would hear all these incredible stories that the sales team would tell us that the tea cozies … were hand-knitted by the chef's grandmother or whatever it is, right. All these really fun, quirky, interesting details that I knew for sure that no one is telling the traveler, right? I mean, maybe a really good travel advisor takes notes on every single thing they ever hear and then they tell their clients. But I wanted to find a way to tell those stories. Now, of course, starting a business from scratch is a really intense thing to do, and I just hadn't had time in 2019. It was so busy for all of us, right? So I didn't quite have the time, but I always sort of had the idea. So, when COVID-19 came through and we didn't, you know, necessarily have as much to do after we went through the wave of cancelations, I thought, you know, I actually have a little bit of time now to kind of put this in motion. And I love podcasts. So podcasts were my jam in terms of what I like to listen to … and I just felt like it was the right medium for me. 

Sarah Groen: I set myself a goal and I was like, ‘I'm going to have an episode launched by X, Y, Z time in 2020.’ And I did, it's just kind of snowballed from there.

Emma Weissmann: And you had two per week for awhile, right? You were really going for it.

Sarah Groen: Yeah, so in 2020 I had so many people say yes to come on the show, but I started to feel really bad because I would be like, ‘OK, your episode will come out in three months,’ because we had such a backlog. So, I moved to two per week just because I didn't want guests to have to wait so long to hear. And then, you know, then we got really, really busy. So I was like, which month can we scale back to one a week, and still hit 100 episodes in 2020? And that was how we chose August.

Emma Weissmann: Oh, that's awesome. Well not a bad problem to have, you know, just an abundance of guests wanting to be on your show! And are there a couple episodes that you can point some of our listeners to that are especially memorable for you? I can also link them in the show notes for them to take a listen.

Sarah Groen: That's a really hard one because you know, there's something for everybody. I don't play favorites … I love them all. Well, I just had an episode with Wendy Perrin last week, which was really fun for me because I've always admired her. So that was very cool. When I first started, I was obsessed with having Liz Biden on the show, the owner of Royal Portfolio, and I remember thinking there's no way she's gonna say yes, and she said yes! And I was like, what? Oh my gosh! Sir Rocco Forte came on the show. So, I was like, oh my gosh, you got to talk to a knight. Cool! The Sven Lindblad show was really good. I don't know. They're so good. Ben Bressler from Natural Habitat was really good, and there lots of great hotels on the show. Hotel owners are the best, right? Because they have personally picked out everything in the hotels and they can tell you the story behind every little thing. So, I'm sorry I cheated. I don't have a particular favorite. 

Emma Weissmann: You know what, I’m going to link the full page of episodes, and then people can go and just pick and choose what they want. But you did a great job teasing to the show and it sounds wonderful, and we'll make sure to have that listed for them there. You know, you have these things going for you and I'm curious, what is next for you? What is your next chapter look like?

Sarah Groen: Ooh, that's a good question. We took on a lot during COVID-19. So the current chapter is, okay, let's normalize and be able to keep up with the podcast. Be able to keep up with our clients, that kind of thing. I've hired a lot recently actually. So,   we're really dedicated to continuing to give the level of customization and service that we set out to give, even though we're getting slammed with requests. So I think, I mean, I think for me, it's trying to figure out the balance between needing to hire and capacity … what trips do we take on? How are we going to grow in a smart way instead of instead of just in a 'we'll take everything' way.

Emma Weissmann: That's the problem that I think a lot of agencies are facing now, now that travel is coming back and a lot of people have left the industry. And we just did a study actually, our magazine recently, part of our Need to Know research series, that showed that although people have a really positive perception of this career, there aren't a lot of people coming into the industry right now and there's not a lot of agencies that aren’t hiring. … I think people are a little bit in this ‘wait and see,’ you know, the pandemic is abating, but it's not gone yet. And are we going to hire everybody back? Are we going to deal with all this influx of requests? It is something that I think a lot of people in the travel industry are grappling with right now. 

Sarah Groen: Yeah, it's going to be tough. I just sent a newsletter out that was basically like, ‘You need to get your decisions made for 2022 and call us now.’ And in January February (2022), we're going to prioritize people who give us the most lead time, and our existing clients. Something is going to happen. We're not going to be able to keep up with it all. So, we're going to have to, like you said, just figure out a way to work smarter.

Emma Weissmann: Yep, work smarter, not harder. And I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say that we can't wait to see what comes next for you and for those of our listeners who want to connect with you or learn more about you, where can they keep up with you?

Sarah Groen: So, like you said the show. So Luxury Travel Insider, anywhere you get your podcasts. Our website is BellandBlyTravel.com, and on Instagram I'm at @Sarahgoesglobal.

Emma Weissmann: Awesome handle. Okay, great, well we will link all of those in the show notes. And for everybody listening, please rate, review and subscribe to Humans of Travel to stay in the know for when we release new episodes. And if you know a great Human of Travel, like Sarah, that you think has a compelling a compelling story to share, please shoot us an email at letters@travelagewest.com. Sarah, I so appreciate you coming on to the podcast and sharing your story with us and I wish you best of luck in your journey ahead.

Sarah Groen: Thank you so much, Emma. This was so fun.