Travel Masters Podcast
Founded by travel goddess and CEO of Small World Big Fun, Cindy Minor and sales training expert Morris Sims, The Travel Masters Learning Community (click the link and join us there too) is here to help you grow in the world of travel and achieve greatness!
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Travel Masters Podcast
Transforming Visibility into Victory for Travel Professionals Dr. Richard Kaye PART 1
Discover the secrets of skyrocketing your travel agency’s visibility with insights from the multifaceted Dr. Richard Kaye. From engineering to chiropractic, and finally to the realm of public relations, Dr. Kaye’s journey is a testament to the power of reinvention and visibility. His story unfolds with personal anecdotes of breaking through the media clutter, getting featured in prominent newspapers and on television, and how these experiences reshaped his career and life. Learn how to make your name known in any industry from a man who transformed his retirement move to Taos into a new chapter of professional success and personal fulfillment.
We promise you’ll walk away with actionable strategies to transform your business relationships and reputation. Dive into the art of turning a best-selling book into media gold and the nuances of pitching yourself to radio shows. Dr. Kaye shares the critical importance of aligning with the right media outlets and crafting content that resonates with audiences. We also examine the dynamics of exceeding client expectations to convert them into passionate advocates for your brand, ensuring they spread the good word online and off. This episode is packed with valuable insights and real-life stories to help you stand out and thrive in today’s competitive landscape.
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Welcome to the Travel Masters podcast. We're here to help travel advisors and travel agency owners get what they really want from their business. I'm Morris Sims and I'm going to be your host for our podcast. I'm an ex-chemical engineer turned life insurance agent. I got to tell you selling life insurance was a lot more fun for me than being an engineer. After a few years, they asked me to teach other people how to do what I was doing. And well, long story short, we wound up in New York City for 20 years. That was quite a change for a young Alabama boy. I retired after 20 years as the vice president and chief learning officer, where my team and I trained over 12,000 agents and their managers to be independent business owners and sales professionals. Now I'm not one to stop working, so I started my own business and I was blessed to find a sweet spot with travel professionals that I was able to help. Now I've got several travel agency consulting clients and I'm the co-founder of the Travel Masters Learning Community, where we provide opportunities for travel professionals to become more effective, efficient and to get what they want from their business.
Speaker 1:On this podcast, I'm going to be interviewing guests that I believe are going to have a message that can be of help to you. Our travel professional community and I'll do some solo episodes as well with some other stuff that I really think can help you in your business. So, with all that said, hey, let's get this party started with today's episode. What do you say? Welcome to the Travel Masters podcast.
Speaker 1:Dr Richard Kay is our guest today. Dr Kay began as an engineer and went to a chiropractic school and became a doctor of chiropractic medicine and had a great career doing that and then decided to become an expert in public relations. And then decided to become an expert in public relations and helping people become more visible and get out and be in front of folks and be a part of the real world out there and for business people to get our businesses out where they can be seen. So, dr K, I'm not going to try and murder your introduction any further. I'm going to allow you to tell us a little bit about who you are and how you got into this world of publicity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, thanks. First of all, thanks for the opportunity to share some knowledge, wisdom and experience, and our goal today, ladies and gentlemen, is for you to grow your business. No matter who you are, no matter what it is that you do, you can be the best in the world. Is that you do, you can be the best in the world. And if nobody knows about you, you're sitting in your office and you're wondering why you're not generating enough money to take care of better financial care of yourself and your family. My goal for you today is to learn some new skills that you can go out and use immediately. I have nothing to sell, so you're safe. You don't get four ginsu knives if you buy a package today. No sales pitch here. And, morris, you're old enough to remember that you don't get four ginsu knives except ginsu knife.
Speaker 1:Cut through a tin can or your spare tire.
Speaker 2:Yeah, whatever it is. So I want to share a story with you of how I started my chiropractic practice. I drove from New York to San Diego. There were 300 chiropractors in town. How the heck do you start or grow any business? Ladies and gentlemen, we're all in very crowded fields, no matter how special and unique we think we are and we are because we've got our own gifts it's a crowded space.
Speaker 2:So I got myself invited to be a guest on the morning television talk show in San Diego. I turned and I'm going to tell you how to do these things. It's going to sound like it's about me, and it is only because I'm the metaphor, and look at it through that lens. It's about me and it is only because I'm the metaphor, and look at it through that lens. I got invited back every month for probably about a year. I got an article in the San Diego Tribune and I got an article in the Los Angeles Times. Now, you all know the expression. It's not what you know, it's who you know. Correct, morris? You know that? Oh, absolutely, ladies and gentlemen, let's take that a step further. It's who, what you know, it's who you know.
Speaker 1:Correct, morris, you know that, oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Ladies and gentlemen, let's take that a step further. It's who knows you. So remember, I'm visible now because I got newspapers, I was on the radio, I was in magazines, on television. I got a phone call one day from the producer of the ABC News in San Diego. The essence of her question was who are you? We're seeing your name, we're hearing. Yeah, that's it. They knew me. I mean not personally. Well, now I got a 6.30 news segment. Shortly after that I get a phone call from the producer at PBS. The essence of the question was the same who are you? Well, now I got a PBS segment about me. I was no longer one of. The question was the same who are you? I know, I got a pbs segment about me. I was no longer one of the 300 other doctors in town. I was probably the most visible because my name was all over the place. Yeah, you're in travel business. I don't care if you're hvac, if you're a tailor, it doesn't make a difference. People have to know who you are. And you know.
Speaker 2:One of the questions that you asked and how did I wind up here in Taos, from San Diego, I came out to visit A friend, invited my then wife and me out, took us out to where he meditates. We fell in love with the land. He said it's for sale. We bought 80 acres and said someday we're going to be here. Well, someday happened, shut my practice and moved out here, retired, I gave up. I think I had about five or six licenses in different states, gave them all up. And now I work with people and you mentioned a word or two words and I want to make a distinction, ladies and gentlemen. Let's talk about what the distinction is between PR and publicity, pr, public relations. You hire someone or you do it, make phone calls, send emails, send faxes yes, people still use faxes and you write a catchy headline and you pray to God. Someone says I want to run with this story. Now, a couple of weeks ago there was some pretty devastating weather going on in this country. No matter how dynamite your press release was, it probably didn't get picked up because there were other headlines. Or if there's war, so much war in town, your stuff gets missed because there are bigger stories.
Speaker 2:Advertising is you buy space. You buy it on radio, television, newspapers. Maybe they'll make a difference. You buy space. You can measure the ROI return on investment because you got an ad. Did you make money on the ad? What we do and this is what this conversation is about is publicity. This is guaranteed placement.
Speaker 2:What would it mean to you if you had an article in a big city newspaper, where you've got a feature? You are featured in a big city newspaper or a big city magazine like the Los Angeles Tribune. What does that do for you? Now, I mentioned that I had an article in the Los Angeles Times. People well, a few did, but very few people drove from Los Angeles to see me in San Diego Morris. It's leverage, though. It says, hey, the LA Times wrote about me 30 years ago. I still leverage it Now what I'm talking about. It doesn't mean that it gets business. It says, hey, this is important. We have clients right now in Kenya. We take people to Kenya with us. Do you make money in that? No, 20 bucks. How many books do you sell there? 20 bucks is a month's income for these people. What would it mean? I mean what would it mean? I mean it's nine people, it's not a big cohort, but to have video of you teaching 4,000 students meeting with the politicians, that's leverage, and that's what publicity is about. Lisa Nichols is engaged. Just now we're working with Lisa to promote her.
Speaker 2:Some of the things we do for higher-end people are you get them interviewed at the Nasdaq studio. You're in a business. Most of you, I believe, are travel agents. You're a travel agent. What would it mean to you to be interviewed at the Nasdaq studio and have your picture on the Nasdaq jumbotron in Times Square? No one points and says, oh, I'm going to do business with that, but it's leverage. It says people are paying attention and noticing you being again featured in big city newspapers because they call us. They need writers, they need articles, they need people to be featured, otherwise they got nothing to sell, nothing to talk about. Now Morris and I had a conversation and thank you for remembering about getting on radio. What value is it? Well, morris, let me ask you have you ever heard someone interviewed on the radio and say how come them and not me?
Speaker 1:Oh, regularly, regularly, Dr K. I'm a frustrated 1970s disc jockey who never got on the air, so I'm on the Internet.
Speaker 2:Oh, I see, I was a disc jockey in Boston many, many years ago.
Speaker 1:We have too much in common, Dr K.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I was one of the screaming New York rock and roll disc jockeys. You know those fun days, absolutely yeah, you read about someone in the newspaper. You said why them, why not me? Yeah, again, it's not what you know or who you know, it's who knows you. And now, ladies and gentlemen, you know me, we can do that for you and it's guaranteed, because they come to us. And if you, we just had a request who's got a story about near death experiences? And we had a bunch of people submit articles and we get them in.
Speaker 2:And before I talk about radio, I want to talk about a book, a best selling book. Many of us have said, hey, I want to have a best selling book. Why should I just want a book? Well, there are three kinds of publishers the big houses, the randoms, the puttnums, the really big ones. They're going to ask you what's your marketing budget? Surprise, the word publish simply means make available to the public. He may read. The book.
Speaker 2:Morris is you and me as an individual. We can go write a book, pray to God that it reads well, that it's laid out, that it's grammatically, that it's attractive, and then we can go on Amazon and publish it, and maybe someone in our family, if we're lucky, will read it. Then you have what we do. We can help you go straight. People say, hey, I keep writing what we do. We can help you ghostwrite.
Speaker 2:People say, hey, I can't write, we'll help you ghostwrite. We lay it out, we edit it, we fine tune it, we split, test the covers to make sure that it's visually appealing. We guarantee number one bestselling books. There are a bunch of people out there who do that. We get you on stages. We get you the media attention that goes with it, which again gives you the publicity and the leverage to say I'm a best-selling author. Morris, if you wanted to get on a radio program and there's 12 other travel agents or business coaches or funeral parlor directors, it may be a different story. And you're competing against these people and you have a book and they don't. Who do you think is going to get interviewed?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 2:Makes all the difference in the world. So let's take a look at radio, because I said we're going to talk about that. If you listen to a talk radio program and if not, you may want to start listening. Ladies and gentlemen, you may take a few notes here. Find a station that matches you. Now, I'm not a sports fan. I couldn't even tell you who played, let alone who won, in the last Super Bowl. Ok now, when I was in San Diego, I had season tickets to the Chargers. Now it's not my thing anymore, so I'm not going to listen to a sports show. I'm going to listen to an entrepreneurial, to a business program. You're many of you in the travel business. Find a talk show. There's myriad out there.
Speaker 2:When I used to do this, morris, you and I are old enough to remember the Yellow Pages. You had to go through the Yellow Pages to find it. Now, what are you going to find? Don't bother pitching the host. The host is the last person to make a decision on what's called terrestrial radio or television, but it's the same principle here. Find the producer. You don't have to go to the yellow pages anymore. How do you find the producer? It's called the internet. The internet is how you're going to find the producer. You're going to pitch them and we're going to talk about the mechanism. I'm just going to give you the 50,000-foot view first. You're not going to tell them how wonderful you are. Nobody cares what you do. Nobody cares what you do, morris. We all want the same thing. What's in it for me?
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Now, ladies and gentlemen, we totally transparent. When I approached Morris about the potential for me to be on this program, I didn't tell him what a wonderful guy I am my wife and kids, and we just adopted a cat. He used to be a dog person. What I told Morris is what you, the listener, is going to get out of this. That's the only thing that a radio television podcast summit host. What's the audience? Are you going to deliver value? Don't go on and spew all your stuff. Nobody cares. So you're going to pitch and I'm going to give you more details in a few moments about what the audience is going to get out of it. Now again, make some notes here, if you like. There are.
Speaker 2:A typical talk show interview on radio is about 20 minutes. There are typically do the math three guests an hour. A typical talk radio show is three hours a day. These stations typically have three different radio talk show segments during the day, three different hosts. If you're doing the math now, multiply that times five days a week, times about 50 weeks a year, excuse me, allowing for vacations, 6,750 guests are needed every single year, and that's one station. They need you more than you need them. They need you more than you need them. The last thing a talk program needs is dead space. So if you live in a city or drive time to a bigger or it doesn't even have to be drive time you don't have to go into the studio anymore. When I used to do this, you had to go into the studio.
Speaker 1:Right right.
Speaker 2:Morris is in Texas, I'm in Taos, new Mexico. We can do this stuff. So what are you going to pitch him? When you pitch again overarch, what is the audience going to get? What is the audience going to come away with? So, ladies and gentlemen, you just got in the last five, six minutes, some valuable information about how to do this. Now I'm just going to give you some more details. When you pitch somebody, your job is to make it easy for the host. Your job is to make the host not have to work, not have to work.
Speaker 1:Breaking news October 8th through the October 10th, travelify is conducting a virtual sales workshop with some of the best experts in the world of travel sales. Listen up, here's the lead of the whole story. You ready? I'm one of them. That's right. On Thursday, october 10th at 2 pm, I'll be conducting a live engaging that means you get to be involved workshop about the sales process and how you can help people decide to book their trip. The whole workshop is just chock full of great speakers and they're going to be talking about all sorts of ways that you can become a better professional salesperson. Google Travel Masters Workshop Sales Workshop 2024, and you'll find the registration page that lists all those experts that you're going to be hearing from. Now here's the fun part you get to go to that site and choose which presentations you want to register for. So take a look at just Google Travel Masters Sales Workshop 2024, and you'll find the page okay, and you got to go. You got to just take a look at it and see what's on there, because I tell you what it is an amazing lineup. On October the 8th, jennifer Whalen's going to talk about setting up a scalable sales workflow. Stephanie Grease is going to be on. Stephanie is from Travelfy and she's going to give you a step-by-step tutorial the art of storytelling. Penny Cooper is going to do that one. I can't wait for that one myself.
Speaker 1:Building a strong personal brand. Look, people have always said it depends on who you know. No, it have always said it depends on who you know. No, it doesn't. It depends on who knows you. Boy, I didn't say that well, did I? Let me do it again it depends on who knows you, and having a strong personal brand will help that work, along with what Rita Perez is going to do about how to network and expand your travel business reach. There's a lot going on here. Price isn't the only factor. Glenda Beagle is going to talk about that, which is just so vitally, vitally important.
Speaker 1:It's all sorts of great stuff how to build a high converting landing page or website, some real, practical information, and then, on October the 10th, at 2 pm, central Time, the professional sales process how to help people decide. Yep, that's me. You've heard me talk about it before, but this is going to be different, because it's going to be better. It's going to be more engaged, which means we're going to be having conversations as we go through it. So give it a look. I tell you what. I think you're going to really love it. And I know some people over the years have always kind of turned up their nose when I say the word sales.
Speaker 1:But this is not salesy sales. This is professional sales where we simply want to help people get what they want. There's nothing salesy about professional travel sales. We simply want to help our clients have the trip and the vacation and the time that they really want to have the experience that they really want. That's the way to say it, isn't it? So please join us for the whole workshop. But hey, if you can only choose one, well you know what I'd love for you to choose 2 pm Central Time on Thursday, october the 10th. I can't wait to see you there Now. Best wishes. Let's get back to the show.
Speaker 2:If you have a book, send it to them or give them a link to a PDF. Let them know it's on Amazon where you can get it. I didn't give that to Morris because my book is not germane to this. My book, which is available on Amazon, is called the Secrets of Creating Customers for Life. We all need that. We don't want to have to keep churning for new, we want repeat business. Now the travel business. It's easier to have repeat business because you're going to do a good job and you're going to serve them.
Speaker 2:What we do in our business, which is top talent agencies, will always under promise you and we will always over deliver. If you screw a client in today's culture it's so easy for them to go online and trash you. I would rather, if you become a client of ours, for you to go online and say man, they promised me this and they gave me five, ten times this. You got to go use them. It's toptagencycom is the website, by the way Top T Agency, because I want you to fall in love with us. See, we're all in the same business and that is serving people. You want to take someone from a suspect. Everybody wants to travel In my business. Everybody wants publicity in my business. Everybody wants publicity to. A prospect means we're having a conversation to a client and that's where most people end. But you want to turn them into raving fans. So they say I choose you, yes.
Speaker 1:Come back next week for the conclusion of our conversation with Dr K and Morris. Have a great week.