Sarah had been at the same company for 17 years when she finally did the thing she’d been thinking about for over a year. She resigned, trained as a travel consultant in June, and within her first month she had made 8 bookings worth £75k .
She still sounds a little surprised by it. That first week after training, a former colleague rang her out of the blue. “I’ve got two inquiries for you already.” One was a trip to New York the following week. Sarah was up and running before she’d even launched on social media.
The niggle she couldn’t shift
Sarah loved where she worked. She’d moved through different roles over 17 years, most recently as a business operations manager running a small resourcing and planning team, and she liked her colleagues. But something wasn’t sitting right.
“I’d had a niggle for quite some time that I wanted to try something new. I loved the team I worked with, but I just couldn’t shift it.”
The moment it crystallised was the summer holidays last year, juggling childcare around work with six-year-old twins. “I had so much guilt that I wasn’t able to take more time off with them.”
She describes a morning not long ago that sums up why she made the change. A trip into town with the twins, a bit of crafting, then back home in the afternoon to catch up on emails and get back to a few clients and suppliers. “Having just myself to answer to is amazing. It’s just so nice having that flexibility.”
Taking the leap
Sarah is the first to say she is not a natural risk taker. So this was a big move.
She had started looking into her options months earlier, and spoke to a travel consultant she’d booked her own holiday with the year before. That consultant had nothing but good things to say, so Sarah requested an information pack and gave herself time. A lot of time. From first contact to actually starting, it was well over a year.
What finally tipped her wasn’t a hard sell. It was the complete absence of one.
“I chose The Travel Franchise purely because that whole process before signing up was so pressure free. I dealt with Ivrie mainly and he was so supportive. You’d think it would be quite salesy, and even when I spoke to Paul, there was no pressure of sign up today. That lack of pressure really reinforced that I was making the right choice.”
She decided that rather than squeezing it into evenings and weekends around the children’s classes and parties, she wanted to give it her full attention. So she resigned, did her training in June, and threw herself into it. Intense, she says, but fantastic.
A flying start, all from people who know her
Here is the part that tends to reassure people most. Sarah hasn’t launched on social media yet. Every one of those early bookings came from her existing network, people who knew her and simply thought, we’ll book with you, why not.
A former colleague. The local childminder. One of her gym instructors. A friend’s family member who knew exactly what they wanted and just sent her the link.
“All the bookings I’ve made so far, I know them apart from one person. It’s just been friends and family, people who knew what I was about to do and waited for me to finish training.”
It’s the clearest possible proof of something we say all the time. You are not starting with nobody. You start with the people already around you, and it builds from there.
The bookings she’s proud of
Sarah quickly found the part of the job she loves most, and it isn’t the quick, easy holidays. It’s the detail.
One of her first big bookings was a genuine once-in-a-lifetime trip, a back-to-back cruise paired with an Indian Pacific train journey across Australia. She worked with one of our suppliers to build in the hotels either side, and she took real care over every choice.
“The whole reason I did this is because I love researching hotels and places to go. For that big booking, I only booked places I’d love to stay in myself. My client wanted club room access rather than a standard room, so I made sure they got exactly that.”
Then there was the family who needed a very specific kind of kids’ club, one that wouldn’t split their three children into separate age groups, or the kids simply wouldn’t go. As Sarah found out, that’s rarer than it sounds.
“When you start digging into the finer details, a lot of kids’ clubs split by age. But I found them something that ticked all their boxes, and clarified it directly with the hotel. The thing I always want to do for my clients is give that attention to detail.”
That care is the difference between booking a holiday and building a customer for life. It’s also why people come to her for the trips they can’t just sort themselves. As she puts it, when her husband’s friend wanted Sri Lanka, “that’s not something you can do on Jet2. They need somebody like me. And I’ve been to Sri Lanka myself, so I can give them that extra value.”
Never on her own
Something Sarah didn’t expect was how supported she’d feel.
When you join The Travel Franchise, you’re paired with a business consultant who becomes your guardian angel from day one. They’re people with years of experience across the travel industry, there to help with whatever you need, from loading your first booking to building a business plan and growing your customer base.
For Sarah, that early handhold was Paula.
“She was my gentle handhold in the background, always so calm and collected.”
When a supplier mix up left Sarah thinking she’d lost an enquiry, Paula talked her straight through it.
“She just said, don’t worry, here’s what we’ll do. Reassure your client and come with a solution.”
As consultants grow, they move to a different business consultant who’s better suited to the next stage of their business, which is exactly where Sarah is now.
“It’s like a comfort blanket, having somebody assigned to you who will help your business grow. It’s amazing that you provide that.”
What she’d say to anyone thinking about it
Sarah is honest that it isn’t effortless. It’s commission only, so the work you put in matters, and social media still scares her, which is the one thing she knows she needs to tackle next.
But when it comes to advice for anyone sitting where she was a year ago, agonising over whether to take the leap, she doesn’t hesitate.
“I didn’t want to regret not trying. I could easily have stayed in a job I wasn’t unhappy in, but I had this niggle I couldn’t shift. Researching holidays for people doesn’t feel like work because I enjoy it so much. If somebody wants to work on their own terms, don’t hesitate.”
The freedom is what she keeps coming back to. Time with her twins. A morning crafting in town, then work in the afternoon. Nobody to answer to but herself.
“The freedom I feel from not having to answer to anyone is great. People want to go on holiday. It’s just about getting them to trust you, and to know they can book with you.”
Could this be you?
Sarah spent 17 years wondering, and just over a month actually doing it. In that first month, with no social media presence and nothing but her own network, she made 12 bookings, handled a once in a lifetime trip across Australia, and found a version of work that fits around her children instead of the other way round.
She’s not a risk taker. She overthinks everything. She still gets nervous. And she did it anyway.
If any of that sounds familiar, it might be worth finding out what your own start could look like.
