Transcript
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One thing that I want to let everyone know, because this is obviously a financial literacy podcast how much does it cost to work with you?
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Good question.
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The best part is it actually costs you no extra.
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Exactly, and this is probably, you know, the biggest thing that people don't realize is that when you book any kind of vacation, your travel vendor even just you mentioned Expedia.
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They are building in a travel agent's commission, so there's no catch to working with a travel agent.
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The catch is actually when you don't work with one.
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Welcome to the Sugar Daddy podcast.
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I'm Jessica.
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And I'm Brandon.
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And we're the Norwoods, a married millennial couple, here to help you build wealth so you can live the life you've always dreamed of.
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Brandon is an award-winning licensed financial planner with over 10 years of experience and millions of dollars managed for his clients all over the US.
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Don't worry, we leave all the intimidating finance mumbo-jumbo at the door.
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Stick with us as we demystify the realm of dollars.
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So it all makes sense.
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While giving you a glimpse into our relationship with money and each other, we are so glad you're here.
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Let's get started.
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Hey babe, what are we talking about today?
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Today we have our amazing Disney planner and travel agent and friend, courtney Gibson, with us.
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We thought that it would be amazing to share her wealth of knowledge with our audience.
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I know so many of our listeners have families and kids around the same age as us or as our kids, and Disney is hot on everybody's mind because it's the most magical place on earth.
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But we also know that it's really expensive, and so we're going to get into all the details of Disney how to do it right, spoiler, hire Courtney and go into some of the basic or most commonly asked questions that people have around planning Disney, maybe Disney on a budget, and how to really make it a magical experience for your family.
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So welcome, courtney, to the Sugar Daddy podcast.
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We're so glad to have you.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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Yes, of course.
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So I'm going to get into your bio and then we'll get into your first money memory, because that is how we start every episode with our guests.
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So this way, people know exactly who we're talking to.
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Courtney Gibson is a senior planner with Pixie Travel Company, an authorized Disney vacation planner.
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Her favorite thing to do is to travel and make memories with the people she loves, and she is passionate about planning stress-free vacations for her clients that allow them to do the same.
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So, courtney, what is your first money memory?
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I loved this question and getting to go kind of down memory lane and when I thought about it, the first one I had was from my fifth birthday party.
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I had a father who, from a very young age, was trying to instill a lot of concepts of money, preparing my sister and I for the real world.
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So that was always a part of just everyday conversation.
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But for my fifth birthday party he got this idea that there would not be party favors that kids would just, you know, get as they left the party.
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Instead, they had to earn those party favors.
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And so what he and my mom did was they set up a store with all of the party favors on a table and everything was labeled with different amounts of money, you know.
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So if you want a bouncy ball, it's 25 cents.
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If you, you know all the different things.
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Then throughout the party everybody played their games, musical chairs, whatever, and you were earning money and at the end you had to go to the shop to pay for your party favors.
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So you know it was like oh, hey, Johnny, you want that.
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you know, little toy Should have done better in musical chairs, so it was a lesson for everybody.
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You know and that was a lot of his life, you know, my life growing up was he was always looking for ways to engage us and make it fun, which I really appreciate, that we had those funny experiences.
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I mentioned another one, you know he did a stock market game with us when we were very young.
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We chose businesses that we could follow.
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Disney was one of mine, which is a little foreshadowing Coca-Cola was the other I don't remember the other two and he had us track them in the newspaper.
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Every day we would have to get up.
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He'd made us notebooks.
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I think I was eight, my sister was five.
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We had to track them and if they went up he would pay us at the end of the week, and it was.
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You've never seen two little girls more invested in the stock market.
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So it was great.
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Oh my gosh, I am obsessed with both of those stories.
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I love that he made your party guests pay for their party favors.
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I love that.
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I actually just saw something on Instagram it's very similar about Easter and people putting dollar amounts in the Easter eggs, like little dollars, like you might have, like a quarter or a dollar, like fake money.
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But then, instead of every egg having a little toy, you would set up a store to say, okay, now you can come and buy this, this and that with you know whatever you got in your Easter egg.
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So I don't know, that might be something we're doing next year.
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But the stock market and then looking at the stock in the newspaper, right, I mean that's incredible.
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And then my other thought around that was I mean you don't control the stock, so you getting or not getting money based on how it performed is really interesting, because you don't control that at all.
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But how incredible that he exposed you guys to that at such an early age, because you know they say you form your money habits around the age of seven.
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So how do you feel like?
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Well, first, what did your dad do for a living?
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Good question.
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So my dad was in publishing.
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I grew up in Nashville and he was in the publishing industry.
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Okay.
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So, nothing to do with money or finance or no.
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Now he did.
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Later in life.
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He did get his MBA and that was something he had always wanted to do.
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As he sort of moved up in the publishing world he took on more of a financial role, but in the beginning it was not.
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Wow.
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How do you feel like that impacted you from a young age?
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Obviously you remember this very vividly.
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What do you feel like like stuck with you and how has this helped shape you now that you're a proper adult?
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Right.
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I think probably the biggest thing overall was that we did not spend money we didn't have.
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So it was all about teaching us how to save, teaching us how to enjoy things within the money we had.
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From the time I was in middle school, my parents would give me an amount of money that was my clothing budget for the entire year.
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Part of that was so they didn't have to deal with the drama of I want this name brand shirt, but part of that was from that age I was having to make decisions about okay, here's the money I have Now, where is it going to go?
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And I think now, as an adult, that has benefited me, as I have been in different professions that you know have not necessarily always been rolling in the dough, always knowing how to live within our means.
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So that's been wildly beneficial, as we see you know other friends who maybe are falling prey to credit card debt and other things to have just learned from an early age how to stick with the money that you have.
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No, I totally agree with that, because I always tell Jess, one of the biggest things that shaped how I view money was once we got to a certain age and we obviously knew that Santa Claus wasn't real.
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We get a few gifts here and there just to open up another tree, but my mom would give us money and then we would my brother and I like to buy clothes.
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So then, instead of just buying us a bunch of clothes, she gave us a certain amount of money and then we had to, you know, determine how much we want to spend on different items.
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You know, do you want to buy this one shirt?
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That's $50?
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Do you want to buy two shirts for $25.
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And that's literally pretty much how I still operate.
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It's very much how you operate.
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Also, now we need to put a disclaimer in for anybody listening to this episode with their kids in the car, because you just said like a really big thing.
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I mean, I find it hard to believe that anybody's listening to this with kids in the car.
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Well, okay, touche.
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I can't listen to a podcast where I actually want to listen to with our kids in the car.
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I know, I know, all right.
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Well, I love those stories.
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I have one more follow-up question then we'll get into all things.
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Disney, when you had your birthday party and your dad set up the store, did the kids love it or were they like why are we having to buy our goodie bag gifts for the end of the party?
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In my memory.
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I remember them loving it.
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I know that I loved it, like I thought it was the greatest thing, and maybe that's now the you know the lens through which I'm like, yeah, everybody loved it.
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I don't know I might have gotten in the car I'm like that was the worst.
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No, I mean because I mean going to the store is a whole nother experience, right?
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So even if it's like, oh, you didn't do well in musical chairs so you can't get that bouncy ball, I mean like that's part of the experience.
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Like if you go to the arcade and you don't have the right amount of tickets, I mean it's the same concept.
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So I love that.
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Shout out to dad, that's fantastic.
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That's right Good job.
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Yeah, so for anybody listening a little background Courtney and I actually met, talking about not rolling in the dough.
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Courtney and I actually met while teaching middle school and we've been friends ever since.
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That feels like literally a lifetime ago.
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I mean, we were well, I wasn't married yet, but we definitely did not have children, and so now we have two, you have three.
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It's like we have a whole new literally new lives, you know, and then also new careers.
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So tell us about how you.
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I know you've had a little, you've pivoted since teaching a couple of times, but what got you into this travel agency realm and what do you love about it?
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Yeah, so out of teaching I was also in.
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I went to the literary side of publishing and was doing that working from home.
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And then we just began when my daughter who's now in middle school when she was three and my youngest was eight months, we started taking trips to Walt Disney World with my in-laws, and it was a time of life when Hunter now he's eight, but when he was a baby I was up countless hours of the night nursing, being up with he was our kid who would not sleep.
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And so during that time in preparation for this first big family trip, I was like deep diving into everything.
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You know, the time that you don't normally have to maybe research all these things.
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I now had, you know, from 2 am to 5 am with this person who didn't sleep, and so we had been to Disney previously.
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But we noticed this incredible difference on that first trip as a family with our two small children, because I had put in literal hours and hours and hours of research and we laughed throughout the trip.
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My husband, adam, would say, oh my gosh, like who knew that these restaurants were so incredible and how you know?
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And it was like, oh, because I did, you know, all of this research.
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I planned this out, you know, the best trip.
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And so when we came back from that trip, we became sort of Disney evangelists.
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You know, to our friends it was like, did you know Walt Disney World can be awesome, you know, and we had just been so surprised that this was not just a trip for our kids.
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We knew that my three-year-old daughter was going to love it.
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You know, she was at that just perfect age where, you know, speaking of things we believe in and don't believe in, princesses were real, mickey and Minnie are real, you know everything.
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And so there was obviously this magic of seeing her experience all of that on this first trip and we laughed she's very, very chatty was back then as well, but with every princess her mouth was just open, you know, staring and couldn't say anything because just she was so speechless in the awe of the royalty.
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But what we were not prepared for was how much we enjoyed ourselves and how much it really felt like a vacation.
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And I think that that's something that maybe is still if you're not kind of in the Disney world where people are talking about that's something that maybe is still if you're not kind of in the Disney world where people are talking about that something people may not realize that it can actually be a really nice vacation.
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And so we came back and, just with friends, I started telling them.
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If I heard they were going, it was like, oh well, let me help you, right, let me help you tell you everything.
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Here's where we ate and here's how you should structure your park days.
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And that just became something I was doing for friends, you know, just for free.
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At the time I did not even realize that was something that I could make a business out of.
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It was in 2021 that we had just gotten back from another trip and a lot changed at Walt Disney World from 2020 to 2021.
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So even people who had gone before now there was this new learning curve, all these terms, genie plus early park entry things they're thinking what?
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What is this?
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What's the timeline.
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So I was meeting with other people and I had this flexible job in publishing.
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But my husband one evening, when he heard that I had met another friend, you know, for lunch to walk her through her Disney trip, he was actually the one who said I bet you could actually make some money from this.
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Leave it to Adam to be like let's make some money.
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That's right, If you're going to take time off your real paying job to go do this for free.
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Let's see if we can turn this into a business.
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So that's how it started out.
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I signed on with Pixie Travel Co, which is an earmarked gold travel agency based out of Atlanta, and in the beginning my thought was it was going to be something that I was doing on the side to my publishing job.
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Very quickly it just snowballed into.
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Now it's my full-time job, time job, and it is genuinely something that brings me so much joy.
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I never would have guessed you know, you just can't predict where life's going to take you right that this is what I would be doing.
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But it is so fun to me to get to show families how they can enjoy Walt Disney World, disneyland, disney Cruise Line, regardless of what type of vacationer they are with, whatever their budget is.
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All of those things I love being able to get to know my clients and then be able to plan a vacation that fits within how they like to travel.
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Well, you are doing that beautifully.
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I will say that, having worked with you for the cruise that we went on in March.
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But I think what you said, too, this goes back to something we say so often on the podcast, which is, if you're looking for a side hustle, what are you already doing?
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What are you doing that is bringing you joy?
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What are your friends coming to you for?
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For help and advice?
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And that's exactly what you said.
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Right, you were already doing it.
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You were meeting with friends over coffee.
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You were giving them your binders full of information and all the things.
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That's the perfect way to segue into something part-time or, to your case now, something full-time.
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So I think that's a great example too.
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One thing that I want to let everyone know, because this is obviously a financial literacy podcast how much does it cost to work with you?
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Good question this is the best part is it actually costs you no extra.
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And this is probably the biggest thing that people don't realize is that when you book any kind of vacation, your travel vendor even just you mentioned Expedia.
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They are building in a travel agent's commission, so there's no catch to working with a travel agent.
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The catch is actually when you don't work with one, because then you're going to be all of these services and this help on the table.
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So what happens is, if you guys had booked your Disney cruise on your own, you would have paid exactly the same price as you paid when you booked it through me.
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But Disney just keeps the travel agent's commission, whereas when you work with a travel agent, you're actually helping a small business, you're supporting a friend and you get all of these complimentary planning services that I'm able to offer because I'm getting that commission.
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So it's a really beautiful thing and it made it a nice transition.
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You know it would have been difficult, um, if all of the sudden my friends were coming to me and it's like oh, I used to give this advice for free, now I'm gonna need you to pay but to be able to still offer that.
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And actually now, because I'm not working my other job, I have even more time to give, create resources, and it's so wonderful and it's my favorite thing to be able to share that there's literally no catch.
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You're leaving money on the table when you don't use a travel agent, and that goes for anything, so keep that in mind.
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Yeah, I must say, because, as someone who does planning for a living, I don't plan any of our vacations Zero.
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No, he does not, I'm a vacation princess, where I just show up and Jess has done everything.
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And in this scenario, luckily a lot of the stuff was able to be done by Courtney, which took a lot of things off the justice table.
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And first thing I said when Jess brought up was like oh, how much does it cost?
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It's like that's my favorite price, favorite number yes.
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So just in case anybody tuned out, it costs nothing to work with Courtney and I will tell you the value that she brings is invaluable.
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Yes, and there are zero catches to this.
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This is not some fee that's going to show up later on.
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It absolutely costs you nothing out of pocket to work with her.
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Yeah, but it will make your experience so much better.
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So we're going to get into that.
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Courtney high level.
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What is a travel agent?
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For anybody listening who has maybe never heard the term or has never worked with a travel agent, or thought that they went extinct.
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Yeah, that's true too, Exactly Because there's so many you can do everything online yourself now.
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So yeah, that's a good call out.
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And I think there has been a little shift.
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That is a great point.
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And you know, you see a couple of terms interchangeably.
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You know you think about back in the day when you used to go to a physical travel agency and now you are thinking, wait, I don't need to do that, I'll just book it myself online.
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And so, even though it's, you know, officially travel agent, you'll see a lot of times the terms travel planner, because really, what a travel agent is now doing and where I see is the value yes, they are helping you actually physically book the trip.
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If you do not book your trip through them, then they can't help you.
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You know, every once in a while, people will hear, oh, travel agents are free and so they'll book a trip on their own and then come to me wanting the services and it's like, oh, no, I only get paid when you book the trip through me.
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So you do.
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But the first thing you know a travel agent can do is actually help you narrow down a destination.
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If you're looking within Walt Disney World, narrowing down, okay, what resort?
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You know, making those kind of maybe traditional things you think about in terms of booking on your own.
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But you have what I like to think of myself as a travel advocate of I'm on, I'm getting to know you, your budget, your interests and so, even from the very beginning, working with you to help you make sure you're choosing the exact right resort, right vacation package.
00:19:53.286 --> 00:20:01.737
But that's really where my job starts, and so if you think, okay, I could do this on my own, I could book it online, you're absolutely right.
00:20:02.198 --> 00:20:08.644
What you're, then, missing out on is someone walking you through the whole process, and that's why I really like the term travel planner.
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That's the term that our agency chooses to use, because we're walking you through every step.
00:20:14.644 --> 00:20:19.030
So, from handling payments, from keeping up with this is another one of my favorite parts.
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If a promotion comes out, if a sale comes out, we can retroactively apply that to your trip.
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You're not having to, you know, keep up with all of that.
00:20:28.519 --> 00:20:38.871
And then, depending on the type of trip, actually, you know, booking dining for you, booking all of your experiences, things that go beyond that initial okay, got it booked.
00:20:38.871 --> 00:20:44.383
Flight reservations here we go, following up all the way through when you're on your trip.
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You know clients who are in the parks have access, you know, to call me, text me, can give recommendations, walk them through everything, so it's really the entire time you have someone on your side who's a resource.
00:20:58.266 --> 00:21:01.099
Yeah, I could tell that it made like everything on her.
00:21:01.099 --> 00:21:16.049
So she booked, she helped us do our Disney cruise trip and obviously, like I said before, I'm not really part of the planning process to begin with, but I can tell you that I saw a difference in how Jess was from a stress standpoint, because everything that she would have done was offloaded off her shoulders.
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And as soon as we got there you know, from getting to the airport, getting there and everything like that everything was taken care of and you didn't have to worry about anything.
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We knew exactly what to expect, you know, and some because there's just certain things that we didn't know.
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Obviously, as first time people going on a Disney cruise, that was extremely helpful to have from Courtney.
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Yeah, and what I will say just to give everybody a background on how Courtney and I worked together.
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I basically said I recognize for us this is going to be a trip and not a vacation.
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A vacation to me and I'm hoping this will change as our children get older and I'm hoping this will change as our children get older but right now, a vacation is me and Brandon, you know, at a pool, at a resort, on a beach, without the kids.
00:21:59.971 --> 00:22:05.827
A trip is, you know, what we did for the Disney cruise, which was lovely.
00:22:05.827 --> 00:22:09.465
I cannot say enough good things about it.
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I did not feel completely, you know, relaxed and rejuvenated coming back, but the joy in our children, you know, absolutely made it worth it.
00:22:18.823 --> 00:22:26.461
But here's what I told we also are fortunate enough that we are in a place financially where we can take our separate vacations and do our trips with our kids.
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So I want to preface that we are fortunate and we understand that part.
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Yes.
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So basically, what I told Courtney is you know, this is going to be the first plane, plane flight, plane ride for the kids.
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You know they love sleeping in a hotel.
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I basically was like I don't want to do a rental car, I don't want to do car seats, I don't want to pack anything except for clothes and sunscreen.
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You know, I want, I want, this to be as easy as possible.
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How do we do that?
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And she was like great, say less.
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We will, you know, make sure that you fly in the day before you'll stay at this hotel.
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You'll do all your registrations in the hotel lobby.
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You never have to leave.
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The hotel literally was attached to the airport.
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So again, you're not getting on a shuttle, you're not having to do Ubers and car seats, and I mean it was seamless.
