We’re thrilled to present the latest addition to Afluencer’s content lineup – our podcast series featuring insightful conversations with influential brand owners. In this inaugural article, we have the privilege of introducing Shelby And Joel Frenette, the visionary founders of TravelFun, as our esteemed guests.
Meet Shelby And Joel Frenette: The Minds Behind TravelFun
Shelby And Joel Frenette, the innovative minds driving TravelFun, takes center stage in the Afluencer podcast series. With a wealth of experience in the world of influencer marketing, Shelby And Joel share captivating insights, challenges, and triumphs that have shaped his brand’s journey.
Podcast Premiere: Delving into the TravelFun Universe
Join us in exploring the enchanting world of TravelFun through the eyes of Shelby And Joel Frenette themself. We’ve embedded the riveting YouTube podcast video below, offering an exclusive glimpse into the transformative power of influencer marketing.
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Key Takeaways
00:00 🏖️ The founders of TravelFun, Joel and Shelby Frenette, met while working on cruise ships and later founded their company, showcasing the possibility of love and professional partnership.
01:41 📱 Social media has become a vital marketing platform for small businesses like travel agencies due to its cost-effectiveness and ability to connect with audiences effectively.
04:27 💬 Social media should be viewed as a communication tool to nurture relationships with customers, building trust and rapport over time.
07:12 💼 Effective social media marketing involves creating curiosity, building connections, and avoiding overly promotional approaches.
10:18 📉 Many travel agencies focus on making sales rather than building relationships with potential clients, hindering their growth in the long run.
14:43 🔄 Travel influencers and travel agents can complement each other, with influencers creating content to promote destinations while agents sell travel packages, presenting opportunities for collaboration.
17:46 💡 The era of superficial influencer marketing, solely based on likes and followers, is fading. Brands now seek influencers who can genuinely convert followers into customers.
18:00 💼 The TravelFun program offers a 25% commission for every sale made or 25% off for individuals becoming travel agents, attracting both influencers and those interested in travel.
18:43 🌍 Travel influencers are shifting focus from accumulating likes to showcasing their ability to make sales, marking a significant change in the industry’s dynamics.
19:11 💼 Travel Fun seeks influencers interested in luxury travel experiences, offering equal commission rates regardless of trip cost.
20:32 🌟 The TravelFun team values kindness, diversity, and hard work, creating a collaborative and eclectic environment.
22:38 🤝 TravelFun seeks team members who are kind-hearted, hardworking, and willing to learn, fostering a diverse and supportive community.
23:33 🤖 Travel influencers interested in collaboration can reach out to TravelFun via their website or social media channels for potential partnerships.
Transcription Insight: A Peek into the Conversation
Gain an insider’s perspective as we burrow into the transcription of our engaging conversation with Shelby And Joel Frenette. Discover the strategies, anecdotes, and wisdom that have fueled TravelFun’ success, all captured in this in-depth transcription.
In Conversation with Shelby And Joel Frenette, Founders of TravelFun:
Brett:
Welcome to our Influencers podcast, where we connect small businesses e-commerce with micro influencers and people who can help promote and sell their products in their businesses. Today we welcome Joel and Shelbie Frenette, the owners of Travel Fun Dot Biz. Welcome you to. And before we were getting on the camera, we got a story we need to divulge in terms of how this all came to be.
My first question is how you joined the travel industry. You mind giving us that background? Maybe Shelby kick things off?
Shelby:
Sure.
Joel:
Part of good.
Shelby:
Things, Brett, the more in-depth story is on our website Travel Fund app is under about us. But the fun story of it all is I used to work on cruise ships, and so did Joel, and we met working on board the Love Boat back in 19 while we were mad about that.
Joel:
It was 1999. Yeah.
Shelby:
Long time ago. Yeah. And we ended up working on board beside each other. He was the butler. I was then the fitness director, and then I became cruise director after many, many years. But we actually lived and worked on board and fell in love and then got married and have a kid and the whole nine. So it can be done.
Brett:
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Hey, it only sounds old because there’s a different number. And when I ever say 19 something to my kids, it’s right there.
Joel:
Generic adjective century. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Brett:
Different century, different millennia. Their jaws dropped. They’re like, How are you, dad? You still get up the stairs, okay? For someone being that old, I’m like, Well, yeah. I try to stay loose and power through. That’s right. That’s awesome. So tell us about your social media prowess. You just won some awards for best Social Media training, best travel agent training program in the US.
So obviously, this is you know, I spent a lot of time on this podcast and in my day job with influencer, right, talking to small business owners. And it’s a struggle today because the normal marketing channels, they either don’t work as well as they used to or they’re very expensive. And these are tough conversations I had with them, right?
So like I’m like, okay, well, let’s go over the landscape. Not even just trying to sell you our platform. We’ve got Google AdWords, which is extensive Facebook ads, which is very expensive. We’ve got SEO, which you could check back in five years and see if you got traction. So very difficult. And everyone’s trying to get social media to work and nobody knows how to do that.
You won these awards. Can you tell us a bit about your your journey on the social media side and what you see that’s working today especially?
Shelby:
Yeah, I’ll I’ll start with just the originating how we got into social media. But then I’d love Joel to come in because he is like, I teach computer genius and he has all the right information that will streamline what your answer. But originally when social media was invented, because I did start in the cruise director arena so long ago, it became a really organic crossover for me because I’m always on stage explaining, you know, directions, events and it just became a platform that I was really able to connect all of our cruisers.
I also worked in groups of huge groups, so basically it became a platform that I was able to get my word out to instead of, you know, repeating myself 500 times. They only had to repeat myself 100 times. So it was a very a very organic crossover to social media. And I was in social media as social media director before.
That was a thing before that was actual an app job. So I started to see very early on in social that this was more than just sharing your head photos and your kids photos. But this was a marketing platform because I got conversions right away and I thought, my gosh, this is not this is like literally for small businesses having television commercials because you are getting their time and their attention and it’s free.
And so I very early on saw that, and that’s where all of our social media trainings came through. So I just happened to be I wouldn’t say right place, right time because I was just working. But it was just that the inception of social media happened when I was already fully into travel as a cruise director on cruise ships.
And then Joel, is it genius? And he was able to make things into courses and really like small bite sized courses. So I’ll let him take it from here. But that’s the way it started for us.
Joel:
Yeah, I prefer it Ninja but that it. That’ll do it. Thanks for the Segway. Yeah. I think with social media what’s really important and what keeps getting lost in translation is that it’s just a communication tool and you get to communicate with more people. I mean, back in the days you would have believably face to face handshake conversations, your door to door and talk to people, but you only see so many people in a day.
You only talk to so many people. And through social media you can just quickly have conversations with one on one. Conversations with 100 people. Yeah. And you nurture those conversations and you see what you had conversed about last and you pick up where you left off, whether it’s a day or two or three days later when you chat again, it’s the same conversation taking place.
So you really nurture a relationship and you know, through social media, you get to see their images, their photos, their family, what they’re up to. You get to know them and they get to know you because they get to see what you’ve been up to and they see your post. And so you’re breaking down these barriers of I’m trying to sell you something because if you do it right, you’re making connections and communicating people and they trust you because they know you and they’ve gotten to know that your.
While Joel travels to Europe every summer, he’s worked on cruise ships, maybe he should be the person to contact about Italy. Oh, he lived in Italy. Oh, yeah, I remember that. And so then you become the go to person and that your circle of influence that you want to be you want to be the go to person. You want to be the subject matter expert in whatever you’re professing, you’re you’re selling, right?
So we sell travel, but we are professionals in travel. We’ve been doing it for me all my life. I’ve been traveling and so that’s how I can share that with people as opposed to sending them a brochure, paying for a TV commercial. And the other thing that’s essential with social media is pick an industry like travel. Margins are tight.
The very small I’ll say, for example, if you make 10% on a sale, but it costs 4% to process the credit card, you’re not left with much. And if you’re splitting that commission with an agency and and the agent and you’re talking two or 3% and then you’re going to spend any money on ads, no, you’re going to have to, by definition, find a way to market for free or cheap and sell it.
You use social.
Shelby:
Yeah. And Joel has lived in Italy. That is a true story. He’s been to how many countries now?
Joel:
Now we’re looking at 90, 19.
Brett:
90 with a zero. Wow. Yeah, yeah.
Shelby:
Yeah. He keeps track. I don’t even keep track. I’m not like that. But. But I always, when I do my social training and when I started to really get into educating people on how to work social media, one of my biggest directions is not just how to get seen, but how to be, how to be loved, really, how to be loved and how to be cherished and really build connections and rapport with people.
I do not ask anyone for a sale they want to buy from me, and that’s because they I have something that they want and I don’t give them everything. And I’m really big in curiosity marketing in the psychology about curiosity marketing, but not being spammy and like making people work so hard either, you know? So there’s a balance and we have that recipe figured out.
And then Joel is able to make sure that all of the trainings that we have are in bite sized pieces and we are we are legitimately helping people build their businesses because with social media and all the gurus out there, most of the time, just like in dance, for example, I also teach dance. And I’m not a professional Fred Astaire dancer, but I have a big background in fitness and dance.
And when I teach dance, people love my teaching and the reason they do is because most people are not going to go to Dancing with the Stars and they don’t have to worry about pointing their little toe or looking in that direction. They just want to not step on everybody’s feet. But the gurus get so over them, like abundantly over themselves are teaching people social that they forget that there’s a lot of basics being missed.
And then people, especially agents, aren’t able to figure out how to be successful because they’re literally being trained to be something like Dancing on the Stars, when really they should be trained the way I would train them, which is here’s these steps and these work. And so we’re able to break it down for the agent, and that’s why we won these awards.
And we’re super proud of helping the travel industry as a whole, because as a whole, the travel industry was hurt so, so deeply from COVID. And we love travel and we’re working. We’ll be at the ASTA conference, the legislative flying in Washington this September. We are part of the branch up, which is one of the biggest social media platforms for travel agents that’s ever existed.
It’s a brand new consumer based travel agent to consumer based platform, and I’ve been asked to be on the board for that. So we’re we’re really have our thumb on the pulse of what actually works for agents. And that’s why we got a Magellan award, which is huge. It’s from Travel Weekly. And Travel Weekly is one of the biggest, most respected magazines in travel that we have.
And we were recognized in their magazine and we got an award. It’s too high up to show you, but that was really exciting. And then we also were recognized in Lux Life, which is an article tourism award for our training for travel agent training. And then we had a couple articles and press releases. Joel Which one is I can’t remember exactly which those being.
Joel:
Most recently you were in Frommer’s.
Shelby:
Commerce.
Joel:
And Frommer’s and your travel market report. And it really.
Shelby:
Was a cool one because I remember looking in the Frommer’s book when I was with him, our first trip in the booklets, you know, because they didn’t have Internet really.
Joel:
Back then. I think it’s all digital now. Like, I don’t remember the Frommer’s guys from way back in the day.
Shelby:
I still have a couple I have a couple up in there and in the bookcase. But I thought, Wow, we really made it, honey, I’m being quoted in front. So that’s been that’s been it’s been an exciting time.
Brett:
That’s excellent. So I’m the travel agent. I thought you had some really good points in there, too, about the kind of struggles and challenges that they face today. What do you see in from the biggest obstacles for a travel agent in terms of growing their business?
Shelby:
I’ll start, but I think the biggest part of growing their business is the fact that way too many agencies are focused on how to put a sale in rather than how to sell. Our program is completely different than any others, and I know people say that all the time, but if you knew me at all, you’d know I don’t.
Over exaggerate. If anything, I undersell myself. And our program really is the only one I know of that focuses on how to sell on social First, because I’m more concerned about getting you clients than I am about how to figure out. I can. I can teach him. He can take a teach a monkey how to put in a sale and any suppliers back office.
And frankly, you know, when you are with a host agency, you can just phone them and just give them our agency number and you can put the sale under us. It’s really not that complex, but most people need people to sell to and they underestimate the work that it will take to get a client and actually be a get up, build that rapport with them and have them be the go to person that they go to and they overestimate how, you know, how hard it will be to put in the sale.
So often I see with most other agencies they focus on training you how to put a sale in, but they’re not focused on the people you need, the people that want the sale. That’s the most important, but that.
Joel:
Is a big.
Shelby:
One. Yeah, that’s how our program definitely changes.
Joel:
I would say another struggle that that I see from travel agents. It’s a small business owners in general is they’re getting ready to get ready and they have this hesitation or fear to take the first steps. And it’s normal. It’s human, right? But I’ll just train people to like stop training. At a certain point, you’ve learned enough. It’s it’s just communicating.
Make it make it happen. Right? You do 80% of it, right? 80% of the time you’re going to be great. But if you wait until you’re 100% ready, you’ll never get anything done. So it’s more about pulling the trigger, taking the first steps and if you got some family members, make some phone calls, message them. Don’t worry about waiting until you have all the answers because you’ll never have all the answers.
And don’t worry about training. ALL Yeah, and travel is messy behind the scenes and the portals and the logins and everything. Don’t worry about waiting until you’re certified and everything. Just. Just get going.
Shelby:
Yeah. And we have a team. That’s the other big difference between what we do and what everyone else does. You’ll find most agencies, because it’s a commission based business. You know, most agencies are sort of like realtors, very cutthroat. Like it’s not it’s not a collaborative effort. And when I design when we designed this company, it was very important to me that somehow we were going to figure out how to collaborate because I didn’t want to be in I didn’t want to be leading an environment that was cutthroat.
So we have a very collaborative team and we have specialists in all areas and we lean on each other. So, you know, with the new people, they don’t know everything and there is no way you can possibly teach them everything with them making any money at all. So if this isn’t this is a on the job learning, you learn while working and you’re not going to have all the answers.
But you know what you do have a thread with, you know, 25 of us in there of the hire, you know, the more experienced people to be able just to be like, Oh my gosh, what was that? Did we did I get this wrong and need someone to go? Yeah, yeah, no, we got this. You need to take a call.
Let me get on a quick call with you. So there’s constantly people there to help you. So you’re not just like the one and only and hoping that, you know, you can get a manager to chat with you in the next two days to figure out your problem because you’ll lose that sales. So we have a really collaborative team and you must be fun to be with us that we like.
We don’t want everybody. We do have to be fun or at least get by. Is being fun and we have a fun team. We have the funnest team. Honestly, we went to a Nest fest, which is one of our the travel conglomerate Travel Savers is with Nest and we’re with Nest and we had the most fun team on board.
It was we had to we had beach balls and we had beach blankets and we had this party time on the beach. And you can definitely tell our team is more jovial than most. So we do have that going for us, too.
Brett:
All right. So walk me through travel.
Joel:
What should.
Brett:
We do? A little Venn diagram. We got the fun, we have the travel agents, we have the travel influencers and creators. Can you walk me through how you see this all fitting together today, including the beach balls, if you can, and then into the future going ahead? Like what does this all look like three, four years from now?
And the travel industry, right, from the content creation to the agents. We’ve got this. We’ve got this. What what are the moving pieces? What is on the way out? What’s going to kind of wear the synergies at you to add some great insights? I know before we hopped on and I would love to go through this with you.
Shelby:
Go ahead, Joel. You take that one.
Joel:
Yeah. What was interesting about affluence and the travel influencer aspect of it is that you’ve got you’ve got this whole industry around travel, blogging and wanting to travel the world and get paid to travel. You know, it sounds very spam. You want to get paid to travel. Well, you do actually. You want to travel, and there’s nomadic lifestyle and laptop lifestyle and all these key buzzwords.
But you know, back in the day, I was a bartender with a, you know, back to my clothes and I just fly somewhere and find a job bartending. And I would travel and I go one place to the next, and I could travel and do that with this, as a travel influencer, you’re able to travel and be in resorts, and then as a travel agent, you can sell that resort.
I mean, I could literally be on a cruise video about the cruise, sell the cruise and or commission to stay on the cruise.
Shelby:
We really have done that. That’s been full of stuff.
Joel:
You stay in a resort, you’re filming, you’re you’re posting content, You’re you’re talking about, you know, interviewing people at the resort, the staff, the amenities and everything describing it. And that’s put in content. And then you’re traveling, so you’re selling travel and you’re promoting you’re living that lifestyle at the same time. So since I grew up watching the Love Boat on TV and I didn’t know that 20 years later I’d be on the actual Love Boat, but I always knew that I had that travel bug and I wanted to go out and explore.
And so if you’re like that and this makes it happen, I mean, there’s a few industries out there that allow it to happen, but definitely being in the travel industry allows you to travel almost at will.
Shelby:
Yeah, Yeah, for sure. They give great discounts to travel agents in the industry and to ask where it’s been and where it’s going. I want to be really authentic about this because I’ve seen it where it’s gone and where it’s going. Where it used to be was really anyone that had enough means to get out there and had some free time was able to be a travel influencer, and especially if they just did some crazy face in a bikini.
They got lots of likes and if they got lots of likes travel companies when they didn’t, when this was all happening, you know, they were like, Oh my gosh, we need to get in front of that. Let’s pay them. We’ll pay them Well, go there. We’ll pay them. But what they didn’t realize and I did know this because I know how hard it is to convert someone to actually buy travel from you.
Is that all? The legs didn’t matter. Legs aren’t sales at all. And now everybody knows that. And that’s really obvious. And so you could have you could be a great influencer, You could have a lot of followers, you can have a lot of legs. Do you have a lot of people that buy travel or you just have people that dream about buying travel?
Because nowadays the money hits, you know, the rubber meets the road and money matters and you’re not going to be able to ride that wave. You know, you’re not going to be able to get these stipends that you used to get just for posting two times a day on your time, on your timeline and a couple of stories.
It’s just not happening that’s going away. What they really want is to see people convert people or in this case, what we have for you guys is 25% for every sale you make, which is quite a lot of percentage, especially for this travel agent program or you can get 25% off yourself and become a travel agent and then you can dual do it.
And we have a lot of people that are doing that to people that didn’t expect themselves to be travel influencers, but they know how to use a camera and they’ve watched enough for the last ten years. They get it and they have a following and then they get their little niche and so they go and they do their trips and then they film their trips and then they sell their trips and then they do that.
And so it’s not worrying about, oh my gosh, is someone going to pay me? Do I have to showcase that I’ve done this or done that? Did I have to pay to get some likes to showcase that I’m important? It’s not like that anymore. You really are in a different arena because then those days are gone and the days of, you know, showcasing that you can make a sale is really where it’s at.
And I, I think it’s a great opportunity for travel bloggers around the world and influencers too, especially the ones that are serious that really do want to get paid for travel and haven’t figured it out yet. This could be exactly what they need for them. And if you’re fun, you can be on the team.
Brett:
I was about to say serious but fun, right? We’re going to enjoy and share a vehicle. So what types of specifically influencers are we looking for to work with? Travel fun. Travel fun. Any other checkboxes then that we.
Shelby:
Need to really luxury? I love to. If you’re into luxury, that always works because you get paid just the same. If you sell a $10,000 trip as you do, if you sell a couple thousand dollar trip, you know, but you work on commission. So you do the math.
Brett:
Right? Right. Bigger percentage. Bigger percentage makes sense.
Shelby:
We’re really you know, we’ve been at this for a long time. As far as travel goes and building teams and such. And at this point, we are willing to be open if you guys are willing to do the work like I still coach people and I want to coach people because it seems it makes me feel valuable, like my team values me.
And that’s really amazing. Like they with other agencies, you know, they don’t have that connection with the owner. I really do take we do team meetings, I take group time. I don’t give one on one time often unless you’re a high performer. But of course, in the beginning I certainly do get some one on one time and then we have our team trainings once a year.
We’re going to Marco Island in September and we’ll do a big team team building event and we’re I’ll get to know everybody that I don’t know. And then they they make friends too. So we’re not I wouldn’t say we’re not trying to eliminate people at this point. That will happen probably in 2025 because we’re in a really big growth year since last year was the first, you know, unrestricted travel.
But this year I would like to just see what the universe brings us. And if they’re really passionate about travel, I truly want to do this and really want to make the dream come true. And they really willing to do the work and be coachable, I would I am open to bringing on at least a couple more, you know, really serious and fun people that likes it.
Joel:
It’s been surprising to when I go ahead, I thought we’d have a we would attract the same type of people we are and we’re attracting very eclectic, different groups of people with different interests, which is, you know, high point are hikers and, you know, someone’s hiked the Himalayas and it’s really it’s a great, diverse crowd of people. So it’s really fun at this point to be active through travel with people who have different interests.
Then some people like River Cruises and some people like resorts and all inclusives and some people like, you know, the fancy, all inclusives and others just like the backpack and travel on their own. It’s really a great mix of different peoples coming together. And we don’t.
Shelby:
Have a lot of clients like we are not. And I think that is speaks to Joel and I and who we are. You know, we are very eclectic people. You’re not going to fit us in a box for sure. We’re very kind people. We’re very nice people. So I would say, number one, everyone on our team is kind hearted and I can’t teach you that.
And that’s something you come with. And I do I do actually say no to people that I don’t think are the right fit in a very nice way. And I just think this is and we are not the cheapest. I always tell people we’re not the cheapest, we’re the best. And my time is my knowledge is way worth it.
You know, I get the Cliff notes and I try to make everybody’s time so valuable. I have the Cliff notes for a lot of things, and you can go to an agency for less money, but you’re not going to get anywhere near the support. And the Cliff notes really make your life a lot easier and fun. But we’re an eclectic bunch and I’m on our last big team meeting.
Tim Cruise. I thought it was really fun. I said, You know, Joel, every single one of our people is a part of me. Like there’s a piece of of them in me like I am that I’m a little bit of this and have a little bit of that. And it’s just so cool because a lot of times teams become clones, right?
So if it’s, you know, it’s going to be the chiseled guy that’s like at the beach, it, you know, doing weights every day, you’re going to have ten of those. And like, the girls are all looking the same, only dress a little differently. Like not our our team is seriously all over the place with age demographic interests, but they’re all kind, they’re all hard workers and they’re tenacious.
You know, they’re doing their best to be their best is the kind of people we have on the team. And they’re they’re not looking for us to do everything for them. They want to learn. They are willing to put the work in to learn. And, you know, they’re they’re just they’re tenacious. They’re good people. So that’s who we’re looking for to build our team as well.
But maybe you’re just an influencer that wants to slap up the affiliate link to you want to do any of that, That’s fine. You know, it’s not going to it’s no skin off our nose if you just decide to just promote it and hopefully you get some people that are interested, that’s fine too.
Brett:
Well, that’s great. Well, thanks so much. It’ll get you out of here on this one. For our influencers who want to join the team, how can they reach out and connect with you and collaborate with you?
Shelby:
Go ahead, Joe.
Joel:
Travel Fund, Our best influencers. That travel fund, that is.
Shelby:
Influencers that travel fund this and I’m Shelby Frenette. I’m all over social as a solo travel expert and of course Joel for all over social you can all always DM’s I still answer my own messages most of the time. Any new ones anyway. And we are really lucky to have such a nice collaboration with you. Thank you for your time.
I’m Shelby. You are fabulous.
Brett:
Awesome. Thanks so much. Shelby, Joel. All right, Teen Ninja, Thank you. Thank you to appreciate it. Travel fun that is. We’ll get the collab link under the show notes here as well. Thanks again. You too.
Joel:
Thank you.
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