S6 E65: Disrupting The Travel Industry with Wanderful's Beth Santos

Get the show’s transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] YD: Welcome to the Travel Media Lab Podcast. I’m your host, Yulia Denisyuk, an award-winning travel photographer and writer, entrepreneur, community builder and a firm believer that every one of us can go after the stories we’ve always wanted to tell with the right support, encouragement and structure. I’m on a mission to help women storytellers everywhere break into and thrive in the travel media space.

If you’re ready to ditch your fears to the side, grow your knowledge and confidence, and publish your travel stories, you’re in the right place. Let’s go!

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:39] YD: This is a very special episode for me. I've been a fan of Beth Santos and the work she does with her Wanderful community for years, before I ever became a travel journalist. I came to the first ever Women In Travel Summit in Chicago in 2014. That's the annual event that Beth and her Wanderful team put together. At the time, I was still in my corporate job feeling stuck and not seeing a way out. When I met Beth and her community at Wits, it suddenly felt like there was a path forward for me. There were other women who felt like me, who felt like they wanted more out of their lives, wanted a life full of trouble, and that was the inspiration I needed to keep going, keep quietly working on my dream until one day, a few years later, I quit my job and became who I am today.

The conversation that Beth and I had and that you're going to hear today it went by entirely too quickly. In it, we discussed important topics like being a mother and travel entrepreneur. What risk has to do with going after our dreams, what becoming a godmother to Azamara cruise line meant to Beth. Congratulations, by the way, Beth. Why Wanderful is not a traditional travel startup and so, so much more.

Beth is a wonderful guest and speaker and she shares many stories in this episode, including the time she went to live on a to island nation off the coast of West Africa, or the time a potential investor into Wanderful asked her to make an impossible choice. We also discussed why we shouldn't really compare ourselves to Beyoncé, and many, many other things. In short, you don't want to miss this episode. While you're at it, do check out Wanderful, the platform that best created that group from a blog into an international platform and collective of travelers and travel content creators on a mission to make travel better for all women and their allies and everyone involved. You can find out more information about Wanderful at sheswanderful.com, and we'll also link to it in our show notes.

Finally, before we get started today, I have an announcement to make. This August, I'm running a two-day workshop series called Getting Started in NFTs. The two workshops will be on August 10 and August 17. Both of them are Wednesdays and in that time, we're going to cover all the basics you need to know to get started in the space yourself. Check out the link in our show notes to register today or go to our homepage, travelmedialab.com to learn more. And as a special thank you to our podcast listeners use code NFT10, that's all caps, N-F-T-1-0, NFT10 to get 10% of your registration. This code expires on Sunday, July 31. So, if you're interested, don't wait, register today. All right, let's get into this episode with Beth Santos.

Well, Beth, welcome. Welcome to Our Podcast. I'm so, so excited that we were able to find the time and for you to come and share your incredible story with us. I am fan-girling over here, totally.

[00:04:20] BS: Thanks, Yulia. I’m so thrilled to be here.

[00:04:23] YD: Awesome. Awesome. Thank you. Congratulations, by the way on being named Azamara godmother. That is like, so cool. What a cool concept. Tell us about that.

[00:04:33] BS: Thank you, oh my gosh, it has been the most exciting, interesting journey I have to say. I mean definitely a standout moment in my professional career but honestly, my life. I mean, it really started a few months ago. I think it was last year at this point and I got an email from Azamara saying it was actually from their PR firm saying, we want to have a conversation with you about potentially being the godmother of our cruise ship. I remember reading it, it came in through my website and I was just like, “Okay, I don't know.” I reached out to my mom and she was like, “It's probably spam. Just ignore it.” Both of us were kind of like, “Is this a real thing? I don't know.” And I didn't know a lot.

I'll be honest, I wasn't an experienced cruiser. I didn't know a lot about what it was to be a godmother of a cruise ship. So, all of those things were kind of like, why me. And then the more I researched it, the more questions I had because godmothers of cruise ships, they're celebrities. I mean, Kate Middleton was a godmother of a cruise ship. Pitbull has been a godmother of a cruise ship. Celebrity just named their most recent godmother and it's Simone Biles. So, I'm looking at this and it's like Kate Middleton, Pitbull, Simone Biles, Oprah, Sophia Loran, and then like Beth Santos, and I was like, “This couldn't be real.”

So, I get on the phone with them, and they're like, “No, we really want you.” As I started to learn more about as Azamara as a company, I started to understand why. It's a woman led company. Their leadership is primarily women and people of color. And they wanted to do something just a little bit different. The way the cruising has been, there's a lot of tradition involved and the godmother of a cruise ship, what tends to be – traditionally it's like the ethical compass of the ship, and kind of the guiding direction of the ship moving forward. That's kind of like the traditions on it.

Now, it's just kind of a PR moment. It's like, let's get a famous person to make a speech, and hopefully, the media will be excited about it. And they said, “We just want to do something different. We want to partner with somebody who's really actively doing the work in this space, and who sort of represents where we want to take this industry and this business”, and they're like, “We just really want to bring you and we're just really admire the work that you've done with Wanderful.” The best part, I tell, this is becoming a long story, but I promise it's good. The best part is I actually declined initially.

[00:06:56] YD: I love this story. I was going to ask you, because I love that story and I want you to tell it. 

[00:07:00] BS: It's so good. Well, it's like, I declined initially, there were a number of issues with scheduling. As much as I will move mountains for really cool opportunities, one of the things that was a challenge, there were two things. One was that I had a family vacation planned with my entire extended family in honor of my dad, who just had planned his retirement, and then the other was that the day my ship, the ship was supposed to depart was my daughter's fifth birthday. There couldn't have been a more important time to really invest in family, then after two years of our pandemic, and kind of realizing, I've lost people in my family. A lot of people around the world have lost people important to them, family is very important. So, I said, “I'm not going to leave my daughter on her fifth birthday. On top of that, we have this family vacation.”

I get off the phone, and my husband is like, “Call them back.” He's like, “Are you crazy?” He's like, “There's no way you can say no to this.” We called up my dad, he ends up rescheduling the whole family vacation, but there's still this issue with my daughter. And I think it says something about a business when, when we talk about inclusion, and that's at the heart of what Wanderful does. I know we're going to go into that, but we talk a lot about gender inclusion, what does that mean? And I think, when you ask somebody to participate in this role, when you come from like a DEI lens, sometimes you feel like, okay, I made the invitation, I did the work, I extended that to that person. If they say, no, it's not up to me. The ball is now out of my court.

So, when I said no to them, I think any company could have very much said, “Hey, we put in the effort, we asked who we wanted to, it didn't work out, whatever.” But they actually, a week later, got back to me. They were like, hold on a minute, they got back to me a week later, and they're like, “Okay, we figured it out.” They basically planned an entire trip for my whole family. They flew my two daughters out, my husband out, my mother-in-law to help take care of them. They all got put up in beautiful Fairmont in Monte Carlo. They got tickets to the christening. They got like a black car to meet me where I was so that we could do like my daughter's fifth birthday in Monte Carlo with her and then I would show up a day late, they'd have a black car, come pick me up. The ship would literally pick me up like on the way. I was the only person that this cruise ship picks up. Picks me up on the way, I go on this three-day voyage, I make a couple speeches, I get back and my family's there. And it's like the amount of work I mean, I had literally gone all the way up through the C-suite and the effort alone said to me, this is a company that I need to be working with.

Because for you to go through so many mountains just to manifest something that you really believed in, that said a lot to me. Yeah, so I went to Monte Carlo. I went on this like extremely beautiful, luxurious trip in this gorgeous room with a butler and a fresh bouquet of flowers and a big bottle of champagne, and I got to wine and dine with people, and I went wine tasting in Italy. I mean, just the most amazing trip you can imagine. Now, I get to say that I'm the godmother of a cruise ship and I got to smash the bottle of champagne over the new ship. A portrait of me is hanging on the ship for like the lifetime of the ship. I made a speech in front of hundreds of members of the travel industry. It felt like a Cinderella moment, honestly.

[00:10:26] YD: I bet. I bet. And so well deserved. I'm like looking at your – really, like looking at your career, I mean, I'm not surprised that when they look at who would be a candidate in the travel space, who aligned with our values, it would be best. I mean, I think now hindsight, it's obvious that it should be Beth.

[00:10:46] BS: Thank you. I appreciate that. Well, it was funny, because when I was on the ship, I see things very strategically. I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a CEO. So, I see all this stuff. And I remember, they have all these journalists from around the world and nobody was asking me any questions, which at first, I was kind of like, well, that's a little strange. Why is nobody asking me? And then I sort of thought people are probably not going to ask Simone Biles her opinion about the future of the travel industry, because she doesn't work in the travel industry. She doesn't have a lot to say.

I on the other hand, I work and breathe and live in the travel industry, I have a lot of things to say about what our industry can and should be. And so, I called up the PR firm, and I was like, “Can we schedule this? I don't think the journalists know that they should ask me questions and I have answers for those questions.” So, we set up this whole like godmother hosted cocktail hour, and I just went up to people and I was like, “You probably don't know what Wanderful is. Let me tell you what it is and why what we're doing is important and what you need to know and why you should publish something.”

[00:11:43] YD: I love that, that tenacity. I love it. I love it, because actually, that's one of the things I wanted to get into, which is, I think one of the key qualities that entrepreneurs in any space but especially in a female entrepreneur in the in the space, as volatile as travel can be sometimes especially right now. That's one of the things you really need is that tenacity. And that, you have to speak up for yourself. And really, you have to put yourself out there. There's no other way around it.

[00:12:10] BS: Yeah, you have to. You absolutely have to. There's this really interesting like narrative about that, that I identify with a lot, and somebody had brought it up, and I do not remember who it was. But it was this concept of speaking of godmothers is actually concept of like the fairy godmother issue with fairy tales. To make this really concise, they were saying, one of the big problems with fairy tales nowadays, is that the lesson that we're teaching our girls is that if you're a good person, fundamentally inside your heart, you're a good person. Somebody, usually some sort of fairy godmother is going to notice that and they're going to speak out on your behalf, and they're going to give you something that you deserve the whole time because you were a good person, and you deserved it. There's a lot of problems with this, because we're teaching our girls that they don't need to speak up for themselves. They don't need to advocate for themselves, because if they just continue being good people, somebody's going to notice along the way, and that's not going to happen. People aren't going to just notice and speak up for you. People are busy. We're in our own thing. You have to – I'm not saying you have to like brag all the time, but you have to advocate for yourself, and you have to feel comfortable doing that. I think that's something that's not naturally embedded in us. So, I think about that a lot, about this need for really just advocacy and tenacity and standing up for ourselves.

[00:13:33] YD: God, I love that so much, Beth, because we talk about this a lot in the Travel Media Lab community, especially for people who are just starting out or trying to break into these publications or starting their careers. There's this idea sometimes that somebody will notice me. Now, if I just show up, I put a great work on Instagram, let's say or wherever somebody eventually will notice me. What I always say is that, “Well, it can happen, people might notice you, but why leave it up to that chance?” Because again, people are so busy, everybody's in their own kind of thing.

So, put yourself in front of people, make that chance higher, because no one else is going to advocate for you the way you do. And it just resonates with me so much. I think, especially, for you right now in this stage of your life as you're now raising two daughters, you're probably thinking about that, right? How do I raise them so that they are they're their own advocates?

[00:14:28] BS: Yeah, absolutely. I'm thinking about that all the time. I mean, probably too much where I'm looking at them, and they tried to do something. Like just this morning, my daughter wanted to wear her hair to school where she had like, one side of her hair in a braid and one side of her hair just like poofing out along the side. My husband was horrified. And he was like, “No, you have to” –and I was just like, “Let her express herself. This is who she is. She's not hurting anybody. Let her be bold. Why should we be the people who are knocking her down? Society is going to knock her down enough.”

But I mean, it's just yeah, I do I think about that a lot. And you're right. Just think about like a basic example, think about all of the – every time you turn on the radio, I feel like everyone has a moment where they're like, “Why is this person famous? Their stuff is horrendous.” And then other times you go to this amazing concert, and you're like, “Why is this person not famous?” And at the end of the day, there's incredible talent out there. But we can't leave it to just pure raw talent to be the thing that speaks for us. We have to speak out for ourselves and make those connections and advocate for what we're doing and explain to people why it's important and needed. Sometimes those things do need to be explained.

[00:15:40] YD: Yeah, for sure. I mean, everyone listening to this podcast right now, if you don't already know, Beth, please, which I'm sure you actually do, if you're in the travel media space, but please check her out, check out her socials, check out her website, check out Wanderful because I think you're such a great example of how to be that advocate for yourself and for others, by the way, for many, many mothers as well. We'll get into that as well. I want to definitely get into your work with Wanderful.

But two things, first, one is like when you were telling the story about this email popping in your inbox from Azamara inviting you or wanting to talk to you. I think about like, because I've gotten some kinds of emails like that, right? For example, National Geographic emailing me, all of a sudden, they want to work with me or something like that. And you're like, “Oh, my God.” It just feels so good to have that feeling that the vision you had for yourself or this, let's say, less than traditional career path, that we're all sort of carving out for ourselves. There are these moments where the universe is nodding back to you and saying, “Yes, yes, you're on the right track. people want to work with you. Opportunities are lining up for you.” It's just such a special moment to behold.

[00:16:51] BS: It really is. I think you're right there. It is really validating honestly, because I do I think, we're talking about yes, you have to advocate versus, yes, you have to speak up. But I mean, it's really exhausting. It's exhausting to be in that position all the time to constantly I mean – when we're – I was just talking to a member of the team about this, because I was saying, so in the last I know, we weren't going here, but I'm going to bring it up anyway. Last year, my husband and I bought a café, because why not? We have plenty going on. Why not just add a café as well. So, we bought a neighborhood café. We partnered with our business partner, Kelly, who's a chef who's also managing the cafe and is like, the number one person where like, not even numbers two and three were like number 11 and 12, down the line. But it's interesting, because I do the marketing, and I do the finances for the café. And running a café has given me a whole different perspective on running Wanderful, which is a digital business, which has works in a market that is constantly rebuilding itself. And it's given me insight, because café’s, those are, I don't want to say it's an easy business, of course, there's a lot of things to consider. But we all sort of as a society, understand the business model of a café and fundamentally agree with how it works. A cup of coffee costs, whatever, four bucks. If you charge eight bucks for a cup of coffee, nobody's going to buy it. We all agree that it shouldn't cost that much.

So, there are kind of rules that have been established already. But Wanderful, we're actually making those rules as we go along, and a lot of these new businesses nowadays that focus on something related to the digital world, we're actually building the market as we go. And there's this additional amount of work that's involved with that in not just doing the job, but advocating for why the job needs to be done in the first place. And I was telling the team this when we bought the café, because I was like, I feel so much more confident about my ability as an entrepreneur, because for the 10 years that we've been running Wanderful, I've always in the back of my head been like, “Am I just dumb? Why is it so hard?”

I think, we kind of realized, this is a really hard business to run and a lot of people who are in that the space of innovation and technology and whether you're a tech focused company or not, if you're kind of in the new, the new world of business, it's half of the job is just arguing for why the work we're doing is important and then creating we're constantly building things in packages and we're explaining why this is an issue. Why is women and travel an issue? It takes like so much a mental and emotional work and it's worth every minute, I love it. But it is a hard business to operate in. And I don't think we give ourselves enough credit as entrepreneurs in just the amount of work it takes to have a vision and to communicate that vision before you're even getting into the process of like selling your products and services.

[00:19:48] YD: Beth you just made some self-healing work for me too, because I was feeling that as well with what I'm trying to do with the Travel Media Lab, and exactly that. It's hard, and you have to explain like why does this has to exist? Because people don't know, it’s like the first time they come across it.

[00:20:05] BS: And why should somebody pay for it? And who should pay for it? And how much should they pay? And what's the business model? All of those things. I mean, again, you work in a business where it's like, okay, whatever a bag of coffee beans costs $40 for five pounds, you use that to make however many cups of coffee, you sell the coffee. I mean, the economics are built out for you. You don't have to be like, “Okay, what if we create a membership program where we serve certain numbers of cups of coffee?” You don't have to think about that stuff. But I think yeah, with Wanderful, we're constantly like, “Okay, well, maybe we repackage this as membership. Or maybe we have a business focus.” It's really exciting to be able to innovate. But yeah, I think that it's hard. I don't know. It's hard. It's hard. We do hard stuff, because that's what amazing people do.

[00:20:52] YD: I love it. I love it so much. I know, right? Well, I want to take a moment and actually go back a little bit to the origins, the origins of Beth, in the travel space. I know that eventually that leads to the creation of Wanderful itself. So, I've read somewhere that you've studied abroad in Portugal, which is sort of where your roots are in, and that you were interested in diplomacy in foreign relations, which made my heart flutter a little bit because that was me, too. That was me too. That was the path I was going to go down as well. But then you move to São Tomé and Príncipe, the island off the coast of Gabon, in Africa. I had to look it up where that is, because I was like, “Wait, what?” That's where the idea for Wanderful was born. But what brought you to that island nation? And were you always a traveler from the beginning? Or how did that whole origin came to be?

[00:21:43] BS: Yeah, I mean, I think, I traveled enough growing up. I wasn't an extensive traveler. My parents weren't in the Peace Corps. It wasn't anything like that. I was just an American kid that moved a couple times growing up, because my dad had various jobs, and we did one family vacation to Portugal, when I was in fifth grade. That was my first time really out of the country. I had been to Canada before and Mexico, but as a two-year-old, but anyway. It was my real kind of first time out of the country. 

So, I had done some travel. But I'll be honest, I didn't love to travel. I didn't love moving around a lot. I really loved my extended family. I hated leaving them. So, every time we would go visit and then leave them, I would like cry as a kid and be like, “Why are we leaving?” So, I didn't. And then Portugal when I studied abroad, you mentioned that my dad is Portuguese, so I have Portuguese roots, and I had been really curious about this culture that I had been raised in, as second-generation Portuguese, who would go and visit my grandparents and it would be stepping into Portugal. They're still very connected to where they were from, and my dad's first language was Portuguese growing up, but he couldn't speak it back. He understood it first language but couldn't speak it back and never taught it to me.

So, I had these kinds of complicated feelings growing up about like, my identity, and I had people always telling me, even like Portuguese, I mean, I'll be like, you're getting me to be totally honest right now. Even America doesn't know what to do with Portuguese people. In some places we’re considered Hispanic, because we're part of the Iberian Peninsula, in other places we're not. The Department of Transportation puts us in Latin x Hispanic category. So, whenever they ask how do you identify, and there's the box, I always have this moment of like, “Well, I don't know.” And then I've had people who are like, “You're Brown, and you need to own your brownness.” And then I've had other people like, “No, the Portuguese were”, which they were, the colonizers, like the ones who were inflicting the most harm and kind of where sort of landed on this decision. But I think identity has so much to do with how other people perceive you too, that it's kind of an un-ignorable fact.

So, I had kind of all these confusing feelings. I studied abroad in Portugal. I loved it and hated it at the same time. I mean, it changed me in so many ways. I was so filled with culture shock, which is, I actually think it's kind of funny now, because for me now, I've been to Portugal so many times now, and I speak the language really well. For me, Portugal is like visiting New Jersey now. Before, Portugal was like visiting Mars. It felt like completely different, but I felt so changed and so connected to my family, and I came to know them and it felt like this – it sounds so stupid, but it's like this part of myself that I didn't know was there. I felt that part of the opening up and I got super involved in the Portuguese community.

Again, I was only there for a year but my Portuguese got so good. It's not that good anymore, but it got so good to the point that locals did not know that I was not from there. I had a perfect accent in a year, and I mean, I think that just goes to the fact that I heard it my whole life. So, I was just able to – so, I ended up moving to DC. I got a job at the Embassy of Portugal. I was actually coordinating parties for the president of Portugal at the Portuguese embassy in DC. This very kind of like high, fun kind of job. I, in typical DC fashion, met a friend of a friend at a picnic who used to run the Peace Corps in this country called São Tomé and Príncipe, which is a Portuguese speaking country off the west coast of Africa, like you mentioned. It’s two island nation. It had less than 200,000 people in the whole country. So, second smallest economy in the world. Main exports were chocolate and fish and coffee.

He said, “If you're ever looking for something to do, I still have this nonprofit.” I've stayed in São Tomé. He ended up moving there and the I don't know, I think maybe the ‘90s and then just stayed. Actually no, he moved before the ‘90s. The Peace Corps pulled out in the ‘90s. He stayed. He started this local nonprofit. He had a house with extra bedrooms. He would take volunteers and give them three meals a day and free lodging. I had a friend who had just stayed with him, so I knew he was like a legitimate nonprofit founder, not just like creeper who was like, “I have an extra room.” He just said, anytime you were looking for something to do, and I at 22 years old was like, “Sure, why not?” I speak the language. I don't have anything else really going on. I don't know what I want to do with my life. I was an art history major in college, that didn't really get me anywhere, although I did love it. So, I just moved on a whim to sell to São Tomé. I raised money. The flights were like $2,000. They were expensive, especially at the time. Raised money, flew over there, sight unseen, showed up my first day, the founder, and then I promise I'll stop monologuing. But this is another really good story. The founder –

[00:26:32] YD: You have so many. I love it.

[00:26:36] BS: The founder meets me the day of – it’s this tiny airport, he lives like a five-minute drive away, picks me up in his car, we go to the house, he says, “Hey, I know that you speak Portuguese, there's this thing going on at this middle school, why don't you go down and check it out.” Again, never been anywhere in Africa in my entire life. Show up at the school and there, the principal is waiting outside the school building. And he says to me, “Good, I've been waiting for you for hours.” And at this point me at 22. I'm like, I literally just flew here on like a 24-hour flight from the US. I had no idea anybody was waiting for me, let alone for hours. What's going on? He takes me into the school building into his office, which is the only locked building in the school, and they're behind him are 100 mint condition laptop computers still in their boxes. “We received this donation from your friends.” They were not my friends. I didn't know who they were. They were other Americans that had donated laptops. And he just assumed that we all knew each other.

He was like, “We don't know what to do with these.” And there began my whole journey in São Tomé, which was learning about one laptop per child, which is an initiative out of MIT that was trying to develop a $100 laptop that could be deployed by the tens of thousands into the developing world. They had been the recipient of 100 of these computers, and they were horrified because they didn't have tech support. They didn't speak English and the computers were in English. They didn't know how to use them. They were afraid of what might happen to a child with a piece of valuable technology in their town. And they just kept them in the principal's office for weeks. And for two years on and off, I ended up kind of just being like, well, we got to do something with them. I mean, we can't just like leave them here. There's got to be a learning opportunity here.

So, I developed this whole laptop program that I ran for, like 100 kids. And there's many more things to say about that experience, including the good and the bad of being a 22-year-old woman volunteering overseas. But that's where wonderful all began. Because here I was living hyper locally. I mean, in a place where you're in – teaching at a local school. I got my motorcycle license to get to school every day, et cetera, living hyper locally, and realizing that there was a real lack of support for women who are traveling on their own, and not just a lack of information, but just lack of people saying like, “Yeah, go do it.” And encouraging each other. So, I started to write about those experiences and I started a blog. That blog is what has become wonderful today.

[00:29:04] YD: What an origin story. I mean, we all have origin stories, but this one, I think beats a lot of them.

[00:29:11] BS: Yulia, you're getting all the good stories out of me today.

[00:29:14] YD: I love it. I love it. Well, two things here. One, is I think it was an interesting way to showcase a huge problem with support to the developing world where you're bringing in this huge shipment of laptops, and then there's a mismatch between the goodwill that wants to help these people and then the reality on the ground and what they actually need and how they're actually going to use that technology. I think there's so much of that happening. And of course, I'm not very versed in the social entrepreneurship world, but I do, I am interested in and I'm looking at it from time to time and that just hit me when you were talking about that story that like, “Okay, there's these 100 computers that these people really have no use for, at least in the original form.”

The other thing I was thinking is that I can see now how your ability and capability to run not only run wonderful, but to grow it to what it is today, plus all the other things you're doing, by the way, which is not only the café, but also consulting this nation marketing organizations and clients and Bessie awards and Wits, right? All those things. I feel like I saw the origin in that 22-year-old girl who sort of jumped right in into the situation where a lot of us would have probably freaked out, to be honest.

[00:30:32] BS: I had somebody tell me once it was a ski instructor after a day of horrible, horrible skiing, and he said to me, “You're really not a physical risk taker, but you are an emotional risk taker.” And I was like, “You're 100% right about that.” I don't know, maybe I lacked the gene that makes me nervous about doing stuff with my career. But yeah, it is funny. I was just connecting with an old friend the other day, and we were kind of reflecting on how hindsight really is 2020. And how, if you had asked, even 17-year-old Beth what she was going to do with her life, I don't know. I would probably have told you that I wanted to be a singer or something.

But now, I look back, and I was like, I was actually doing all that stuff. When I was a teenager, I had started a group of friends and we had like a Yahoo group that we all use to meet, and we had like a name, and I would plan parties for them. And then I was like, “Oh, my God, this Yahoo group that I started for my high school friends, that's Wanderful today.” I mean, I literally have just been doing the same thing my whole life. It's just taken new iterations. I think, I don't know, I've just kind of gone with it and just sort of – I don't even know – I didn't even think of myself as an entrepreneur until I went to business school. Because I didn't see it as like, let's solve a problem with a business. It was just like, let's create a thing that we need, because it sounds like fun. I don't know. It's turned into a whole bunch of wacky and exciting adventures.

[00:31:58] YD: I think what you said about risk really resonates with me, because I feel this way. I feel like my risk tolerance level is really high and I think you kind of need that if you're going to go do some of these untraditional things that your parents are going to disapprove, that might not give you stability for a while. There needs to be something that, say, “You know what, let's just go do it. Let's just jump right in and try it.” I love that. I love that. I think, what you were talking about with Wanderful, the question I had for you, which I think you kind of answered already, actually was that, it started as a blog, as this means for you to share your experiences. And then, of course, where it grew today, 45,000 plus members around the world or these events, chapters, Wits, et cetera. And the question I had was, was there like a defining moment where you're like, “Oh, this is what Wanderful is going to be.” Did you have a vision for what it is today, basically? Or was it more like, let's start building and let's see what happens with this thing.

[00:33:03] BS: I don't think I ever could have had a vision for what it would be. Because to the point we were talking about earlier, we have created this as the market has evolved. We have created the market that we operate in. And when we first started, when I sat down and put the pen to paper, if you will, I was on my computer tied to my blog, put the finger to the keypad of my blog, you can only see so many steps ahead, right? I wasn't like, “Oh, one day, this is going to morph into an international community with meetups.” Of course, there's big pictures along the way. But I it would be a misstatement to say like, “Oh, I knew what this was all going to be.” I think that that also kind of differentiated me.

So, I did end up going to business school. I worked in the nonprofit world for a while. As I was just making – Wanderful was just a blog. I was super interested in in social enterprise. So, I went to business school to study social enterprise. And then at one point, I decided to also major in entrepreneurship and innovation. I think if there were like any purposeful point in my life, maybe that was it, when I was kind of like, “Well, wait a minute. Maybe this blog is actually a business and maybe we could be monetizing this in some way.” I just started thinking about things like that a little bit differently.

But being in business school, I mean, they teach you how to start a business, which usually means, you're supposed to start with problem generation, which is like, what is the problem I'm trying to solve? And then you do a whole bunch of this is all like the lean startup method process, right? You do a bunch of interviews with potential stakeholders, and you identify, “Okay, well, what are their issues with it?” And then you put it on postcards, and you stick it on a wall and you figure out, “Okay, what are the connections?” And then you create a solution based on that. We didn't start that way because we actually started knowing who our customer was very deeply, but not really being able to pinpoint one problem that they were solving. In that way, Wanderful, never has been like a startup in the traditional conventional definition because, we never solve just one thing. We were more of a community from the beginning, and we innovated stuff for our community along the way, and we almost became ‘intrapreneurs’ in that way.

So, it was interesting in that sense. Wits, we had just started on a whim, because we started as a blog. We saw other people were starting blogs. We wanted to put together a party. I don't know. I had just planned my wedding. I was like, how hard could a conference be? And we just decided to do it. Again, yeah, total just risk, not even concerned about risk. That's where Wits came from. And then it went really well and we were like, “We should do another one.” So, same with Wander Fest. We were just like, “There's no festivals focused on women and travel.” That's insane to me.

Essence fest is one of the biggest festivals out there and it's focused – there's Burning Man. There are so many different types of events, but there's nothing that actually focuses on travel, that's not in like a convention center. So, we just kind of created it and I think it has been sort of just trust, not like trusting your gut, because I don't think it's like, we just sort of pulled it out of thin air. But I think it's starting community first and listening to those needs, and making suggestions and trying ideas and being willing to just test it and bringing people around you that are also willing to sort of go along with your wacky ideas and know that it might not work and things are going to be really confusing, but that's okay, because we're all having fun. And that's kind of how Wanderful has like cobbled itself into the conglomerate that it is today.

[00:36:36] YD: I got. I love it. I love that you're calling it a conglomerate, totally. But it was something that you said there, it really struck a chord with me, because that's how I feel when I think about Wanderful. It is a community, its camaraderie. And really, that I think probably the primary need that you were feeling with this community is the needs to be recognized, and it needs to have that space for you and other women around you who are absolutely in love with travel, but who don't have that space to come home to basically. That's kind of how I think about it. So, it makes sense that of course, it's not like traditional startup in the sense that you're solving some sort of need. It's a community first and foremost, and then you innovate around that, which I really love how you put it and yeah, again, it's actually helping me too, to think about even Travel Media Lab again, and what I'm trying to do here, because it's the same, right? It's about having that home for you.

[00:37:33] BS: Absolutely. Well, I think it is definitely that. And I think, it's been kind of fun building this alongside. I mean, a large part of our community is creators, and so I feel like we are, we're kind of like, in the same business as the people who are in our community. We're building a community, and they're also building a community, and we're helping them do it, and our community is them, and their community is somebody else. So, it's been kind of interesting being in that space too, where we're a community. But we also kind of feel the unique responsibility of being leaders in that community. There’s nothing that really explains that better than Wits, for example, which I just – we've been doing some hiring for our sales team, and I will say to them, I'm like, “This isn't just a regular sales job. This isn't just, hey, we're going to give you a list of tables to sell at this event, and you just sell them.” I mean, every table you sell at Wits, because for people who don't know Wits, it's a content creator event where we talk about issues in the travel industry. We talk about how to build your community, how to build your platform.

So, we have content creators attend and travel. But then we also have members of the industry, and we do like networking between them, kind of one-on-one networking opportunities. We have this whole exhibitor section where the brands can be there, and they kind of exhibit on why creators should work with them, et cetera. So, I tell them, every time we sell a table at this event, you're not just making a quick buck for this brand to come and sponsor, you're opening a door for the 500 people who are at this event, to now pitch the sponsor, so that they can now build a partnership. It's like, there's this other level to that of we're in the space advocating for ourselves. But in the process, we are advocating for the 500 people behind us, and why they're also important to be invested in, and hopefully we're generating warm leads for them. It's cool. It's really cool.

[00:39:32] YD: Yeah. You guys are really thought leaders in the space and I just love all the talks that you produce. You have some really interesting conversations, of course, especially in the DEI space. I mean, some of the conversations that you've recently brought, you have fireside chats, I think and other things. So again, for our listeners, if you don't already know who Wanderful is and the Wits, and by the way, next year, the Wits is in Puerto Rico, which we just announced, which will be really cool, really cool to see you there. But I want to talk a little bit now about a few other things. And my gosh, how is the time flying?

[00:40:05] BS: It's all of my storytelling, Yulia.

[00:40:06] YD: I know. We have to bring you back first for round two, because I want to hear more. But I wanted to ask you, you mentioned a couple of times, this idea of building Wanderful and what it is today. How was it doing that as a female entrepreneur in Travel? We've had a guest on the podcast, Julian Morris, you might know her. She's founder of Hitlist app, and she was also talking about fundraising primarily, and how she had to jump through so many more hoops than her male counterparts when fundraising, and it was just so frustrating that that was happening. So, I'm curious to hear sort of how your experience went?

[00:40:48] BS: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, we went through some initial fundraising of our own, but then we actually decided that's not the path we want to pursue. So, we're paying our investors back. When I was doing that, I remember I was pregnant and I was talking to a prospective investor, who was a woman, and she had said to me, and was also a mother and had said to me, that I needed to make a choice if I was going to be 100% invested, and being an entrepreneur, or if I was going to be 100% invested in being a mom.

I was like, “Oh, I kind of feel like I have to do both. There's not really a choice here.” But I think that that, and I won't hold it against her, because I think she was trying to prepare me for the world that she herself felt like she was in. I don't think that she was necessarily saying this from a place of like, you can't do this. I want to prepare you for the hardship that I have had to pursue, because I think our society is just not set up to support women who are entrepreneurs, women who are building businesses, and I do think that there's a lot of sexism. I mean, there are Harvard studies that say that a woman would say something, and a man would say something, and they might say the exact same thing with the exact same words, and they're perceived differently by people. 

[00:42:06] YD: I mean, we don't have to go far, we just look at the pay gap. That tells us all we need to know about –

[00:42:11] BS: Yeah. That stuff is already there and there was a speaker at an event called Travel Con few weeks ago, who was just talking about how, and I got this through a second source, but was talking about how she would pitch brands, and then she actually created a fake email address of like, a fake coworker with a male name, and had him pitch stuff. And he actually got more sponsorships than she did. So, there's just this obvious bias that's in there. And I think, we get really frustrated by it, because we see it every day. I mean, we'll get a lot of people who will be like, “Oh, I'm not really interested in supporting” – they won't say it this way. But they're essentially saying, “I'm not interested in supporting women's initiative, because I don't want to go for like a smaller market.” They're like, “I'd rather go coed”, which is like the bigger market than the women, which then we're like, number one, having a niche is good. Number two, women is not actually a niche. Women in travel is 85% of the travel industry. So, like you're hitting 85%.

Number three, just because I'm a woman content creator, it doesn't mean that my audience is women. So, all of the 500 people who are attending Wits, their audiences might be various audience. So, it's just like –I'll tell you this, and then I'll shut up. But I had a sales professor once who told me what I think is possibly the most important advice I've ever gotten in my business and professional career, which is people think that they make decisions based on logic. That is not true. Everybody makes decisions based on emotion and they back it up with logic. I think about that all the time. Because I think about how, before I talk to somebody, sometimes they've already made up their mind on – if they want to sponsor this initiative or not. And I think psychology has a lot to do with that and then when they come back to you, they'll say, “Oh, whatever, it's not in our budget, or we're looking for a different audience.” I know, I can feel in my bones that that's them sort of justifying a decision that they made a long time ago, and that can be really, really frustrating, as a community that's trying to advocate for amplifying, not just women, but other traditionally underrepresented voices in travel.

For us, we think that's a no brainer. There should be – I mean, if you could spend, the same amount of money and reach a new audience, or reach an audience that has a naturally higher engagement level or reach whatever the argument is, I mean, you should absolutely be going for it. But I think a lot of people just sort of do what their colleagues do or what their peers in the industry do, and they don't take a second to think about, or they don't want to jump out of their comfort zone like we do, and they're not really – they are a little bit more risk averse. And I feel like we're constantly fighting back against that as an all women team and having to kind of – yeah, I think it's super frustrating. Does that mean that we should stop? No. It's actually one of the reasons why we've been calling the Women In Travel Summit, Wits more, very specifically because we want men to be coming to Wits. We want everybody to be coming to Wits, because we believe that issues of amplifying women and people of color and other underrepresented communities should be an issue that all of us are fighting to resolve, and not just some of us. So, men should be as much part of that conversation of what do we need to be doing and how can we help, and how can we fix this as, as the people who are affected by it should be.

[00:45:26] YD: Yeah, I love that so much, and I remember you talking about that afterwards, with this time, and it resonated with me so much, because I absolutely agree. And in fact, we talk a lot about us creating our own tables, well, that's all well and good. But until we involve, the larger structures, still, nothing is going to change. So, I think that is crucial, what you're saying that we need to involve everybody in this process.

But I actually want to sort of go deeper into the other side of this, which is what that potential investor mentioned to you, which is, you have to choose whether you're 100%, this or 100%, that. I feel like, definitely the time is changing, too. We don't necessarily have to choose as much anymore, right? We understand that we can play different roles, but at the same time, and this is actually happening in our community, so that's why I want to touch upon this as well. A lot of our members, they're really struggling actually, with juggling all those roles too. When we talk about a lot is you need to have a structure of support, you need to have somebody who buys into your vision on what you're trying to do, and supports you in there. Because yes, sometimes it is really hard. So, my question to you is actually, first of all, Beth, do you ever sleep? And second, how do you juggle all of that? Because you have a lot of businesses and projects that you're working on, and you've been so successful. So, how has that worked for you?

[00:46:55] BS: I hate that question.

[00:46:55] YD: Give us the magic pill, Beth. Give us the magic.

[00:47:01] BS: It's like, I've thought a lot about this question, because I do get it a lot, and I think, it's a fair question. If I looked at myself, I would be like, “Oh, how does she do it all?” But also, it's just so aggravating because I see the bigger picture of the challenges that I'm up against, as a parent, with limited childcare. I have a fantastic, wonderful husband, who also works a lot and travels a lot. So, we struggle with childcare, and all of these things that do make my life harder. I feel like I'm not doing it all. I'm barely surviving. There are days when I feel like I'm on top of the world, and there are other days when I'm just like a mess. I'm like, “Why is this so hard? This is so frustrating. I don't know why this world is set up this way.” And I think about my friend who lives in Brussels who has free childcare and stuff, and it's just like aggravating and it makes me mad, that here I am, working extra hours so that I can pay for somebody else to watch my child, because I can't.

So, I'm not I'm not doing it all and I'm not balancing it all. But I will say that, I have – when I actually became a mother, I think I stepped in – I said this to you earlier. I was like I stepped into a different gear, but I really think I did and if anything, I think being a parent taught me this amazing skill of prioritization, but like at a whole different level than I had before. Because I was I was in positions where I physically could not do the work that I wanted to do because I had a crying baby or I was nursing. Moments when I physically was unable to do the thing and had to figure out a way around it, and kind of learned how to really prioritize what do I need to be working on? What needs to be delegated? What can be delegated? What can somebody else do? How can I communicate that as effectively as possible? And to constantly have this bird's eye view of am I just doing busy work or doing stuff that needs to get done?

I think that's honestly the key, is like having a really clear understanding of what needs to be done by me, versus what can be done by somebody else. What can be delegated? What can be taught? What automations can be created? What technologies and tools are there out there? I think having a support network is essential. I think I'm very privileged to be in a place where we have two working parents who are making a salary, who can afford childcare, and a mother-in-law who can come in and help from time to time. I have not been to a grocery store in probably two years because I just order all my groceries on Amazon Prime, and I realized that that's a little bit more expensive. But the time save is important and so there –do I sometimes get bruised produce? Yes. But like that's the sacrifice. Those are the choices that I make in order to make this work.

And I think for anybody there's – so the last thing I'll say and then I'll shut up, but I feel like really passionate about this, which is, we have to make decisions about what works for us and what doesn't work for other people. We have to also stop placing judgment on people for the decisions that they do make. I think that that is incredibly important. I mean, we're all faced in times of our life when we're caregivers, and I think I'm very privileged in the sense of being an entrepreneur. I talk a lot about how this is a really hard industry. But in other ways, being an entrepreneur is like the best job when you're a parent, because you don't answer to anybody else. So, if I have like a crying baby, and I'm pitching somebody on like a sales sponsorship, and they have an issue with my crying child. Whatever, I don't need you. I can say that, right? Because this is my business and I'm going to do this my way. I understand that it's harder sometimes when you're working for somebody else, and you have to kind of like put on this air of professionalism, or make the child be quiet in some way, or whatever. I think that my team has given me freedom to be who I am openly, and just to click openly – there have been times where I'm on a call, and I'm, like, openly struggling to do my life. They give me the space and the permission to just struggle through it. We have to give each other permission to just struggle through stuff because the extra effort it takes us to mask that or to find our way around it, that takes time and energy too, and that's where a lot of this this time is lost, is us just trying to look like we're managing it so well.

[00:51:34] YD: I love it. I love it, Beth. First of all, like I love – thank you for being vulnerable and open and honest on the podcast, because it's exactly right. For me, it's like bringing your full self to all areas of your life, which is what we're not doing actually, when we're trying to maintain some sort of facade or some sort of – if a child is crying, we need to put them away or whatever. So, it sounds like your team and working at Wanderful is a really great environment, when you're able to bring that full self and struggle through whatever moments are happening. You're doing that. It's really incredible.

What I wanted to say also, is that what you mentioned earlier about prioritizing, and also busy work, that is crucial, actually. But that also comes with placing importance and priority on what you need to accomplish, what you want to accomplish, your vision, your dreams, your goals, and prioritizing those things. Because if you don't prioritize them, no one else will, as well, especially when you have a hundred other demands on your time and your attention, from everything. So, that's just so, so, so important. I love that you mentioned that, because again, we talk about this a lot in our community. Finally, I recently heard this thing. You know how we all have to-do lists at the beginning of the week, right? I need to do this, this, this, this week. Well, I heard it on a podcast actually, recently, this guy he was recommending, in addition to a to-do list, why don't you also do a not to-do list this week. Actually, the things that I’m not going to do this week to free up that time, which we don't do that. We tend to just add more and more and more because we think that we're like made of rubber and we keep stretching, but no, we're not. We need to prioritize really well.

[00:53:17] BS: Yeah. And that's the power of no. I think about that a lot more too of just being okay with saying no to things and knowing that when you're saying no to something, you're saying yes to something. I've also started using the magic phrase of not now, which I have really enjoyed using which is – it's just saying like, yes, I want to work with you. Yes, I want to explore this collaboration. Yes, I want to do this thing. But right now, my dance card is full, my tables upset. I don't have the capacity. But I would like to do this later. So, I'll say to people, like I can't prioritize this right now. However, I would like to do it later. I think that for me who's like constantly wanting to please people, really a helpful way of saying, “I'm not saying no forever. I never want to do this. I'm just saying that I have to prioritize other things in this moment.” And that's totally fine.

[00:54:06] YD: Yeah, that's, that's a really beautiful way to put it. So, it was helpful to hear that Beth also struggles. We all struggle. That's a good reminder to all us. We all struggle. We all juggle too many balls, and that's the journey, that is life. That is absolutely okay. And the more we talk about it, the less pressure I think we all have to feel like we need to be perfect, and we need to be in perfect balance all the time. I’ve been really overwhelmed the past few weeks with all my projects and everything that's happening. So, it's so refreshing to hear that from you. I really appreciate that.

[00:54:39] BS: Even the godmother of the Azamara award on where it gets overwhelmed. Send it to the papers. You’re right, and I think, I won't go off on this. But I think a lot about how like social media and stuff. It all plays into that. And again, I’m a mother. I mean, this conversation full circle because as a mother of girls, I worry a lot about that. I know what social media is doing to our girls. I know that hospitalization rates from self-inflicted injuries are higher than ever before, and I know that this constant pressure to be perfect, to have this perfectly curated life, to look like everything is going great, that is fundamentally destroying us. If we continue to subscribe to that, we're just going to keep perpetuating that. And for like, the sake of the next generation, I don't want that that to look like somebody's reality where people are asking me like, “Oh, Beth is able to do a million things. Why can't I?” I'm just like losing my mind all the time. Do I love it? Yes. But everybody has their own levels of ability, and everybody's sacrificing something along the way, and it's okay for us to have moments where we're just feeling like overwhelmed. And then to find solutions to get out of it.

[00:55:53] YD: Yeah. I love that so much. As you were talking, what came to mind was this whole thing, you've probably heard this before that Beyoncé also only has 24 hours in the day just like you and she’s able to do Beyoncé. I always want to say, but wait a minute, Beyoncé has a huge team of people. You can’t just do Beyoncé on your own.

[00:56:13] BS: Right. You cannot be Beyoncé on your own. Oh, I like that. That should be like a bumper sticker. Beyoncé is not a solopreneur. 

[00:56:21] YD: Nothing against Beyoncé. She's amazing, right? The businesses she’s built and everything. But yeah, like when we make those false comparisons, that's where it's hurtful, right? Because you're like, why can't I be like Beyoncé? Why can't I build this business? And like, “Well, do you have a team of 25 people working on this project with you? You don’t.”

[00:56:39] BS: Exactly, exactly. Well, and I think it also, it's encouragement, because I think that, when you look under the hood sometimes like that, it actually gives you a little bit of a path forward, where like, “Oh, wow, this person actually has hired a social media person to help her with her strategy and planning. Oh, that's how she's consistently putting out really good stuff.” It's not like, we're like pulling off the mask, and showing us for who we really are. But to your point, it helps us sort of think about, “Okay, I don't have to do all of this. There's amazing talent out there.” I just hired a marketing assistant, because I've just got so much happening, and I see the opportunities that I'm losing, and I know that I don't have the time to be thoughtful about everything I say, and I need somebody to give me direction sometimes. So, I hired like a Beth Santos marketing assistant. I think that that's – yeah, to recognize that other people do stuff like that, and to have the luxury to do it, I think it takes time to get there too. But it does help with that prioritization a lot. Because then you can say, I'm going to give this to somebody who's better at this than I am and then I'm going to focus on the stuff that's me.

[00:57:46] YD: Yeah, totally. I hired the virtual assistant this year, and it's been life changing. Shout out to you, Chris. If you're listening, I love you. You're amazing. So, this is wonderful. I want to start wrapping up because goodness, what an hour already has passed. But I wanted to ask you so with all these, again, amazing accomplishments that you had, a lot of the projects that you've worked on, that you're building on now, what gives you the most joy right now, in this moment? What's sparking your joy the most right now? It's a hard moment, to be honest. I should have from a qualified that it's a hard moment to find joy in, just overall, in this year, it's been so hard for so many of us and here I am like, what is sparking joy?

[00:58:32] BS: What brings you joy? But I think, well, and honestly, there have been – so I have been working more than usual and I think maybe other people are experiencing this where all of the things that were put off the last two years are now happening in 2022. I feel like I've always had a pretty good balance with my work life. I make sure that I sleep, I have time with my family. I do feel like I do it all sometimes in a good way, like, get it all done. I do believe that 2022 has felt overwhelming in a lot of ways. I think a lot of other people are feeling like that as well. Because again, all of the stuff from 2020, all the stuff from 2021, that was pushed professionally has been pushed to 2022. And now we're in the place of like doing the 2022 stuff and all of the other stuff on top of it, and everybody's socially awkward because we've been by ourselves for two years. So, we're like managing everything that's going on mentally.

So, initially I was going to say something to you, knowing that I'm creating a supportive community and that everybody's enjoying Wanderful brings me joy. But honestly, I think what brings me joy after two years of being on Zoom is like going outside and making sure that I'm prioritizing. Yes, being in front of a screen is essentially my job. Yes, I still love working from home and the flexibility that that gives me, but I have had to start taking a step back and being like, “I need to walk away from my computer and I need to go for a walk and be out in the fresh air, and do some chalk with my daughters, and make a meal and not look at my phone once.” I think I've had to be a lot more intentional with myself about that, and it's those moments – I have this amazing vegetable garden that I've kept going during the summer the last couple of years, which is like the smell of like a good tomato. I mean, that kind of stuff really brings a person joy and I've really been relishing a lot in the natural world more than I think I ever have before.

[01:00:30] YD: I love that. I love that so much because you're right. I mean, we've just spent the last two years on Zoom, and I think the exhaustion level too, is starting to be like really high. I mean, everything's coming to seems like coming to fruition now in 2022, but also, we're operating in the new cycle has been just really horrible this year. I mean, when has not been? But it feels like every single thing is a just a disaster.

[01:00:58] BS: It does. It does feel that way.

[01:00:59] YD: I might need to like rethink how I asked that question going forward. Because like, “Oh, what brings you joy?”

[01:01:04] BS: No, but it's a good question to ask. Because I think like you have to find your moments of joy. To the point of prioritizing, that's something we talk about a lot at Wanderful is like a lot of the people who join Wanderful, they just joined because they love to travel. We have to encourage that. We have to encourage you to do stuff purely because you love it, not because you're going to get a raise, not because it's making you into a person that your mother in law likes. Whatever it is, sometimes we just need to do things because they bring us joy, and that's why we do them, and we invest in those things. Because they make us feel like we're better people and they make us happy. So, I think that's a super important question to ask.

[01:01:46] YD: Love it. Love it. Well, Beth, it's been a very fascinating hour. I do feel like we need to bring you back for round two, because there's a lot of things that I wanted to ask you. I didn't get to ask you, but I also want to be respectful of your time. So, I want to close this conversation with a question that I often close our podcast with, which is what does it mean to be a woman in travel who is stepping into her brilliance today?

[01:02:11] BS: What does it mean to be a woman in travel who is stepping into her brilliance? It means everything, I think. It's because women are the backbone of travel. We are the ones that make all the decisions 85% of the decisions we've said in the consumer space were the women who predominantly work in hospitality. We are the women who traveled more out of any other gender demographic. So, when we step into our own place of brilliance, I think we are activating the power that we already have, that we might not have realized that we have. I think that we're giving permission to other women to step into that place as well, and we're going – we're not just – we are serving as examples and we are paving pathways, and we're giving people that permission, just by nature of giving ourselves that permission. I think that that example is the best thing that we can give to the women that follow us.

[01:03:17] YD: I love that. That's so beautiful. Thank you, Beth. That was a wonderful, wonderful way to do that. I wholeheartedly believe that as well. You never know how you impact, how you touch other people, and especially when you see an amazing, accomplished person as you who is doing all those things, and other amazing women that I know in the travel space, that's why it brings me so much joy to bring you guys on the podcast because yeah, everybody who is listening today and who is going to come in and look at what you've done, Beth, and your work, you're accessible. In some ways, you're just like us. We're all the same. And we're able to do these things and that's the inspiration. right? You don't have to again be Oprah or Beyoncé, we can be these incredible women who are making an impact in the space, and that's just so beautiful to see. So, thank you so much, Beth, for coming today. I really enjoyed our conversation and I hope you go outside now and enjoy the outside.

[01:04:10] BS: Get some of that fresh air. Thanks so much, Yulia. It's been a real pleasure.

[01:04:14] YD: Amazing.

[OUTRO]

[01:04:17] YD: Thank you so much for listening today. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Beth. And if so, I want to ask you to please take a minute to support our show. You can do that by leaving us a rating or a review on the Apple podcast app or by sharing this episode with your friends, loved ones, or posting about it on social media. It really, really helps us to get discovered by more listeners that would find our show helpful and it means so much to me. I read every single review yet and I take them very seriously because I want to create a great show for you.

So, if you have been inspired by something you heard today, in our conversation with Beth or in any other episodes of our show, please take just one minute today to support it by leaving us your rating or review. That's one of the best ways you can help us out. I want to remind you that this August, I'm running a two-day workshop series called Getting Started in NFTs. The two workshops will be on Wednesday, August 10, and Wednesday, August 17, at 11 o'clock Eastern time. And in that time, we're going to cover all the basics you need to know to get started in that space yourself.

Check out the link in our show notes to register today or go to our homepage, travelmedialab.com. As a special thank you to our podcast listeners, use code NFT10. That's NFT10 to get 10% of your registration. This code expires on Sunday, July 31. So, if you're interested, don't wait, register today. Thank you again so much for listening to our show, and I will see you next week.

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