ASTA Honors Hill With Entrepreneur Award
by Richard D’Ambrosio /American Society of Travel Agents is honoring Hill with its annual Entrepreneur Award.
Meredith Hill understands the ups and downs of being a small business owner. Fifteen years ago she followed her passion by quitting a lucrative Wall Street career and started her own travel agency. She almost lost her business – and her way.
Then she realized, she didn’t know what she didn’t know, and she made a personal lifelong commitment to never falling victim to that trap again.
Reviving her travel company led to Hill finding her true passion, helping other agents achieve their goals. And for her passion and perseverance, the American Society of Travel Agents this week is honoring Hill with its annual Entrepreneur Award.
Hill could have kept her successful, high-powered job as a bond analyst on Wall Street. Her work, colleagues and customers were intellectually stimulating, and she felt rewarded for her effort. But there was something clearly missing from her professional life.
In 2000, “I had zero passion for what I was doing,” Hill said. She took a six-month maternity leave after the birth of her first child and ruminated. “I decided to leave it all behind.”
In 2001, she quit.
Hill’s husband was from Zimbabwe, and as a result the couple had extensive experience traveling to Africa, and a large network of contacts there. So, Hill started Hills of Africa Travel, Inc. She threw herself into her new business, absorbing all of the information she could – mostly from travel suppliers. After five years, the business wasn’t making money.
“I wasn’t getting the right direction,” she realized. “Suppliers were educating me about how to sell their product, but I was getting zero information about how to successfully do all the other things I needed to do, like how to attract a client.”
She decided to look outside the travel industry. “I spent three years on a massive journey to consume solo entrepreneur information. I attended seminars, purchased books. With what I learned, I turned around my business.
“Sales grew eightfold,” she recounted. “I was attracting lucrative clients – millionaires and billionaires.”
Hill educated travel agents on how to sell Africa and what her business offered. “When I was speaking to agents, they kept asking me things like ‘How did you grow your business so quickly? How do you attract high net worth clients?’ No one was teaching them the same things that no one was teaching me. I knew it was time for someone to do this,” Hill said.
This epiphany led to Hill pursuing her ultimate passion, presenting entrepreneurs, especially travel agents, the toolkit and inspiration to succeed at their business. In 2011, she founded the Global Institute for Travel Entrepreneurs (GIFTE).
“If you look at the history of travel agents, the disruption that changed everything at the beginning of the century, you can see why so many agents are failing. When agents were part of larger agencies on Main Street, you didn’t have to worry about a lot of things, like marketing. You controlled access to inventory before online travel agencies launched.”
But when agents moved into their homes as independent contractors or sole proprietors, “they brought their ‘employee’ mindset with them, not their entrepreneurial thinking.”
This created legions of “accidental hobbyists. So many agents are not making money doing what they love. The good news is, with the right tools and the right mindset, they can succeed.”
Hill teaches agents to see themselves principally as experts. “There’s a demand for expertise. If agents can just market themselves as experts, they can put themselves back on the playing field.” Today, GIFTE serves 400+ members through travel business courses and coaching programs.
Once again, pursuing her passion led to Hill’s next venture, The Gifted Travel Network. She talks about how GIFTE taught one agent how to build a business strategy for a bridal show. Thirty days later, that agent secured a new client and booked a $30,000 destination wedding at Sandals.
“Sandals had no clue that booking came from this agent. Yet, if GIFTE had gone to Sandals to sponsor a workshop, they’d ask, ‘Who are you?’
“At the same time, our students were commenting on the support of their existing host agency, or asking us which host agency was best. We never had a great answer,” Hill said. “We realized we needed a host agency to track our sales and to provide the entrepreneurial support agents weren’t getting.”
In June 2013, with Vanessa McGovern and Jennifer Cochrane, Hill founded Gifted Travel Network (GTN). Within three years, the business has grown to more than 170 independent contractors and generates $7 million in annual sales.
So what’s next for Hill? Ever the entrepreneur, she is working on a number of projects to assist other business owners and grow her own. For example, she is developing a travel agent training program specifically targeting millennials and growing awareness of an existing travel MBA program to non-travel agents.
“We’re looking to groom a very young class of millennials who want a laptop lifestyle,” she said.
Looking back, Hill knows that her professional and personal paths demanded she fulfill her passion, to take the leap from Wall Street to entrepreneur. “I have the most amazing life today because of that decision (in 2001). I’m a mom. I have three kids and get to attend my daughter’s tennis matches, my son’s soccer games. I have the freedom to be creative, to be a part of helping others be successful. I get to learn every single day. I’m grateful. I have it all.”