Starting a travel business used to mean one of two things. Either you had years of industry experience behind you, or you took a deep breath, paid for a full franchise and learned everything at once.
The Lite Mentorship Programme was built to offer a third way, and it has quickly become one of the most popular routes into the industry we have ever offered.
To explain how it actually works, we spoke to Ben, who heads up the Lite programme at Not Just Travel, the consumer brand our consultants trade under. Ben is well placed to talk about it, because he started exactly where a lot of people reading this are now.
From no travel experience to running the programme
Ben joined Not Just Travel around thirteen years ago with no travel background at all.
“Thirteen years ago I joined Not Just Travel, probably like a lot of you, I’d never been in travel before. I brought it in alongside an existing business, and the idea was it was almost going to be like a side hustle. But after a few months experiencing the travel industry and how fun and exciting it is, myself and my now wife set about plans to get rid of the other business and do this full time.”
He and his wife built a successful franchise of their own before moving into head office roles. Ben has since supported consultants at every stage, from their first day out of training through to those running multi-million pound businesses, and now coaches and mentors the team of travel mentors who look after Lite members. In other words, he has lived the exact journey a Lite consultant is about to begin.
What the Lite package actually is
The simplest way to understand Lite is that it lets you earn while you learn, with an experienced travel consultant guiding you the whole way.
“The key benefit with the Lite package is you can almost earn as you learn. You’re being coached and mentored by an experienced travel consultant, someone who’s built a multi-million pound business. If I’m honest, that should be money can’t buy, because that’s just a massive thing.”
Here is how it works in practice. As a Lite consultant, your job is to have conversations, tell people about your travel business and invite them to give you a try. When someone is ready to book, you pass that enquiry to your travel mentor, who handles the research, the booking, the payments and the paperwork. You hold the relationship. They do the heavy lifting.
That split is deliberate, and it means you get very good at the single most important skill in travel before you take on anything else.
“You’ve got the full time to fully concentrate on what is arguably the most important part of starting a travel business, which is getting customers. If you’ve got no customers, you’ve got no business. This gives you a free run at getting very good at that starting point.”
Bridging the credibility gap
One of the cleverest things about the Lite model is how it handles a worry almost every new consultant has. Why would anyone book with me when I only started last week?
“Last week you might be an accountant or a florist or a plumber. Now this week you’ve got a travel business. As you’re telling people about it, in their mind they might be thinking, well, you were a florist last week, what would you know about booking holidays? The good thing about the Lite package is you can bridge that credibility gap, because you’ve actually got an experienced team working for you, looking after your clients from day one.”
Your travel mentor is not just your coach. They are your sales team. Paul Harrison, our co-founder, describes it as having a highly skilled employee you do not have to pay for, and it is genuinely hard to find anything comparable anywhere else in the industry.
Who it is for
Ben is clear that Lite suits a particular kind of person especially well. Anyone who is a little cautious about risk, anyone short on time, and anyone who wants to ease into the industry at their own pace.
“If you’re someone who’s got time constraints, this is ideal. You don’t have to put a massive amount of time into this business, you just have to be consistent with it. A little bit of consistent time each day, or at the weekends, and you will get a successful business.”
Because your mentor handles the research and admin, you are only doing a portion of the overall work in those early months, which is what makes it so manageable alongside an existing job or family life.
The support you get from day one
Nobody is handed a login and left to get on with it. The onboarding is handheld from the moment you join, starting with the NJT Learning Centre, a set of pre-induction modules and videos, followed by a live one-day induction that Ben runs himself.
“It’s live, it’s all in person, it’s not you sat there watching videos, it’s very interactive and you can ask lots of questions. The idea is we give you lots of different ways to find customers, because when you ask people what they’re most worried about, a lot of them say finding customers.”
The pre-induction training is not weeks of work either. Ben estimates the whole thing takes three to four hours, broken into short videos and small tasks, so even someone joining close to a training date can be fully prepared.
After induction you are assigned your travel mentor, who picks up the coaching from there. You also get access to the Vision business system to manage your contacts, bookings and commission, a personal marketing website that acts as a verification tool for potential customers, a friendly Lite Facebook community, and further training modules that keep unlocking throughout the life of your business. In-person training events around the country are being rolled out too.
Choosing the travel mentors
The travel mentors are not simply the top sellers. They were chosen with real care.
“It wasn’t just a case of who are the top sellers, let’s get them in. They’ve got to be able to transfer their knowledge and how they built a business across to you. It’s okay having someone with a multi-million pound business, but if they struggle to coach and get that information across to someone else, that’s no good.”
The mentors were also selected for their strong conversion rates, which matters because the leads you pass over need to turn into bookings, and for their ability to adapt to different people and learning styles. As Ben puts it, whichever mentor you are paired with, they will give you the same expertise and the same service.
What makes the partnership work
Ben’s advice to new Lite consultants is refreshingly simple. Be a sponge.
“These are massively successful travel consultants who’ve built multi-million pound businesses. They don’t get there by fluke. So be like a sponge. Come on, tell me what I need to do, I’ll take it all on and I’ll action what I’m being coached on. The guys who go like a sponge absolutely fly.”
He is quick to add an important caveat. This is your business, not theirs.
“We’re not your boss, your travel mentor is not your boss, this is your business. But listen to them, take on board what they’re saying. If you’ve got an idea, run it past your travel mentor, because the chances are we’ve already tried it. We can say yes it works, do it this way, or don’t waste your money. We take the pain out of it.”
The other ingredient is regular communication, a quick five-minute check-in or a short weekly call, with the onus on you to stay in touch, because it is your business and you want it to succeed.
Real results from real Lite consultants
A few months in, the results speak for themselves.
“Some of the bookings I’m seeing coming in, ten, fifteen grand bookings, loads of them. Our biggest booking to date from a Lite has been fifty three grand. Someone in their warm market, they told them about the business, said give us a try when you’re ready, and it came to a fifty three thousand pound booking.”
Beyond the numbers, Ben says the change in people is just as striking.
“I speak to them now and they’re like a different person. There’s so much more confidence. Seeing their journey has been absolutely brilliant.”
A stepping stone, whenever you are ready
Many people use Lite as a stepping stone to our full Elite package, and you can upgrade whenever you like, with no time limit and everything you have already paid taken into account.
“There’s no time frame on when you can upgrade, you can do it as soon as you want. But if it was me, I’d build my customer base first, because now when I move to Elite I’ve got a customer database straight off. I’m going to hit the ground running.”
Whether you upgrade in a few months, a few years, or decide Lite suits you perfectly as it is, the choice is entirely yours.
Getting started from just £995
You can now start on the Lite package for a deposit of just £995 with a flexible payment plan, rather than paying the full amount upfront, which means you can begin building your business and pay as you go. You keep your income, you build at your own pace, and you have an experienced mentor beside you from the very first day.
With peaks season, the busiest booking period of the year, running from Boxing Day onwards, there has rarely been a better moment to get started. Beginning your training in the autumn gives you time to find your feet and make the most of your first peak.
