Adventure Travel with Monika Sundem - Adventure Life

Area/Topic
Worldwide, Adventure Travel, Tourism Business

Monika Sundem
CEO
Adventure Life

As a Pacific Northwest native I grew up playing in the mountains and lakes of the Cascades. I now enjoy living near Glacier National Park and am learning how to master the adventure called 'motherhood'. I have been an Adventure Lifer for over 18 years during which time I've worn many hats from operations to trip planning to marketing. I have traveled the world, but hold a special place in my heart for Latin America in particular. I love opportunities to interact with indigenous and local cultures and always glean valuable lessons as a result of off-the-beaten travel. I feel honored to be a part of creating similar life-changing moments for our travelers and grateful to work with the dedicated and amazing team at Adventure Life.

https://www.adventure-life.com/

Summary
Monika Sundem, CEO of Adventure Life, shares her journey from bookkeeping to leading a travel company. Her passion for Latin culture and travel inspired her to join Adventure Life. She emphasizes the importance of personal connections and building relationships with clients. The company transitioned to a fully remote team, which has its challenges in terms of training and communication, but also offers the flexibility to hire the best candidates regardless of location. The team's collective travel experience and ability to customize trips based on clients' preferences are key factors in their success. Monika Sundem, the CEO at Adventure Life, discusses the importance of human connection in travel. She emphasizes that it's the people, both the staff and the travelers, that make the experience meaningful and fulfilling. Monika shares personal stories of connecting with travelers and forming deep connections with them. She also highlights the value of cultural connections and the joy of interacting with locals in different countries. Monika acknowledges the challenges of running a travel business, including the weight of decision-making and the responsibility towards employees. Overall, she emphasizes the significance of human connection in the travel industry.

Takeaways

• Passion for Latin culture and travel led Monika Sundem to join Adventure Life
• Building personal connections and relationships with clients is crucial in the travel industry
• Transitioning to a fully remote team has its challenges, but also offers flexibility in hiring
• The team's collective travel experience and ability to customize trips are key factors in their success The people, both staff and travelers, are what make travel experiences meaningful and fulfilling.
• Cultural connections and interactions with locals enhance the travel experience.
• Running a travel business comes with challenges and responsibilities, including decision-making and the well-being of employees.
• Human connection is essential in the travel industry and contributes to memorable experiences.

Learn more about the Big World Made Small Podcast and join our private community to get episode updates, special access to our guests, and exclusive adventure travel offers at bigworldmadesmall.com.

Transcript

Jason Elkins (00:00.831)
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Podcast. Today we've got Monika Sundem. She is with Adventure Life. She's actually the CEO of Adventure Life and she's been gracious to give us a little bit of time today to have a conversation and Monika, welcome to the show. Happy to have you here.

Monika Sundem (00:19.83)
Thanks Jason, glad to be here.

Jason Elkins (00:21.919)
Yeah, so we spoke a few weeks ago and kind of I learned a little bit about your story and I think that you've got a fairly interesting story, although a little different than maybe some of the folks that are working in this business. So I look forward to kind of digging into that and learning a little bit more about Adventure Life, a very well known name in the business. I'm sure many of our listeners have come across your organization or worked with you on some level. So anyway,

Let's just jump right in. How did you get from where you were, from where you were, and from where you were to where you are now? Tell us your story.

Monika Sundem (00:53.206)
Sounds good.

Monika Sundem (01:00.296)
Yeah, you know, it largely was by accident. We'll just, I don't know, sometimes a lot of us end up where we're at a little bit by accident. So it really just was driven by pursuing my passions. So I started out, I was in bookkeeping, going down an accounting bookkeeping route and had just majored in Spanish and just loved Latin culture, was really inspired by a few international trips I took.

Jason Elkins (01:09.759)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (01:29.814)
before in high school and during college. And so really just majored in Spanish because I don't know, I wanted to speak Spanish. I had a lot of people asking me, what are you gonna do with this degree? Like, I don't know. I'm sure something will work out. So.

Jason Elkins (01:39.519)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:48.447)
You figured it out. I'm curious about your trips. I actually don't want to gloss over that because I suspect those first few trips were probably obviously you mentioned them. So they had something to do with what's going on. So.

Monika Sundem (01:53.206)
yeah.

Monika Sundem (01:56.854)
Pretty impactful. Actually, one is, this is the, Guatemala was my first. This is Lake Atitlan behind me, was my first.

Jason Elkins (02:05.087)
Yep, for those that can't see, she's got a beautiful painting of Lake Atitlan and I see all three of the volcanoes. That's a favorite spot of mine as well, so very cool.

Monika Sundem (02:09.398)
Yeah.

Monika Sundem (02:14.326)
I purchased it from a local artist on the streets of Santiago de Atitlan when we were there, again, later on in life. So it really inspired me. I actually went on a building missions trip with my church youth group when I was maybe 16 even, and just had a great opportunity to connect with a lot of locals in some of the Highland towns that we were helping them build a kind of a...

and youth center for their town. And I...

Jason Elkins (02:46.911)
Did your family encourage you to go on that trip or what was, how did that come about?

Monika Sundem (02:51.318)
No, you know, no, I, it was all me. I just got it in my head that it would be great to go and wanted to see the world. I don't know. It was a little ambitious as a teenager, perhaps that translated to adulthood as well, but, I just wanted to go. So no, I had a fundraise to raise enough money because I was not from necessarily a wealthy family. So had to do a lot of garage sales and rummage sales and everything to be able to raise the funds to go.

Jason Elkins (03:21.567)
Were your parents supportive of that? Because I can imagine some scenarios where parents are like, no, I'm not going to let my daughter go to Central America.

Monika Sundem (03:21.91)
So, bye.

Monika Sundem (03:28.086)
Yes, they were supportive. Absolutely. It was through a church youth group that I had spent quite a bit of time with so they knew the leaders well. And this was something that they had regularly did every three years. So it was not just this thrown together, hey, let's go do this. It was very well organized and structured and there was a year of planning prior to it and you had to apply to be allowed to go because I don't think they wanted a bunch of teenagers going who weren't going to.

keep in line. So in hindsight, I see some of that happening. So but it, you know, I think that's probably where my love of Spanish also took root is just the inner I mean, we got to work alongside a lot of Guatemalans there, there were a lot of Guatemalan teenagers helping build this site. So the opportunity to try to communicate and try to interact and share our lives was.

It really touched me on a deep level and just being able to, you know, I don't know. I think everyone has this moment of just your eyes being open enough. People in other cultures are just like me in so many ways. Like there really are very few differences. And so just seeing that bridge between two cultures, I think really just lit a fire in me that I wanted more of it. So I actually went abroad multiple times to Nicaragua throughout high school and college years as well. Started.

Jason Elkins (04:32.703)
Yeah. Yeah.

Monika Sundem (04:51.35)
helping with translating on some of those trips as well. And so I think that's just where it bred and ended up transitioning out to Montana. My husband and I were starting a ministry together out here in Montana. And again, I was doing the bookkeeping accounting thing. That was what I was in. And just saw this little ad in the newspaper for this little company called Adventure Life that talked about if you love Latin culture.

then maybe we're the right fit for you. Just, I don't know. And I didn't need a job at the time. I wasn't looking for, I was actually looking in the classifieds. This is back in the day when we looked in the classifieds for a job. I think about that. I'm probably dating myself here, but that was so long ago. I was looking for a friend because I had a good role. I didn't need a job and I couldn't forget about that little ad. Like, maybe I can do something with this.

Jason Elkins (05:27.999)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (05:45.27)
passion that I feel. And so that's how it all got started. I just started as kind of like the lower end data entry operations person who helped make sure all the paperwork was right and really got excited about being able to help other people go experience other cultures. So.

Jason Elkins (06:02.911)
I'm curious, a couple of things. So when you started there, the ad you described was, are you passionate about Spanish culture? Okay, so Latin culture. Okay, Latin, yep.

Monika Sundem (06:14.486)
Latin culture specifically, like do you want to help other people see the world? Are you inspired by other cultures? Something like that, then you might be a good fit. It was really well written ad, like yeah.

Jason Elkins (06:23.423)
Yeah. Now the first six months in the role, because I heard you saying a lot of administrative, a lot of data entry type of stuff. Do you feel like your passion for Latin culture really tied to that role or is that a role that somebody could have done without having the passion for Latin culture?

Monika Sundem (06:30.838)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (06:40.982)
No, no. I mean, the actual day -to -day work had very little to do with that. But being in the environment of it, I mean, our office in those days was decorated with stuff like this, or, you know, tapestries or things on the wall. So it kind of made you feel like you were getting a little taste of it every day. And then the conversations with our travelers for getting excited for their trip and then oftentimes even sharing about what they experienced when they got back.

Jason Elkins (06:45.983)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (06:54.335)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (06:59.999)
Okay.

Monika Sundem (07:10.39)
was really inspiring, really motivating. I think that more than anything, like the connection with our other workers there who all were passionate about travel, but then also with our travelers who came back with incredible stories was it made you feel like you're doing something worthwhile and it had a purpose, you know, beyond just the paper pushing or the data entry. So it did fulfill that somewhat. I quickly moved into a sales role, I think within like three or four months, the GAL, I was assigned to Central America.

Jason Elkins (07:27.263)
Mm -hmm, mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (07:40.374)
operations and the gal who was doing, my little light loves to do this to me. I was assigned to Central America operations and the gal who was doing the sales ended up resigning within a few months of me coming. And I was asked to quickly just scooch into the sales role then since I had already traveled to Central America. I apologize.

Jason Elkins (08:07.551)
Right, right. No, that makes sense. I'm curious.

Monika Sundem (08:09.11)
since I had already traveled there so much. So I stepped into the sales role and was very nervous about selling someone something. I've had adverse reactions to sales people and just certain relatives who have never really necessarily wanted to connect with me, but always wanted to sell me something. And so I didn't want to be a salesperson. And

Jason Elkins (08:12.319)
Right.

Monika Sundem (08:35.99)
I really resisted stepping into that role, but our CEO or founder, Brian Morgan at the time was like, I think you'll find it's really different. Like most people contact us already know that they want to travel there. And now it's just a matter of you putting together the logistics and inspiring them of what might be fun. And I did find that that was a really good fit. Like I didn't feel like I was hard selling anyone on anything. It was a, what are you interested in doing? And then here's everything I know we can put together and let me try to match it together and make a great trip for you.

So it became very fulfilling very quickly in that way.

Jason Elkins (09:11.007)
Did they, I'm curious, what was the official title of the role? Was it sales or planner or at the time, do you remember?

Monika Sundem (09:17.078)
You know, I think we did call ourselves sales agents back then and we did it. We did rename ourselves a few years after that. I do recall we did call ourselves operations agent and sales agent, I think, at the time. But then again, as you said, no one wants to feel like they're being sold on going to Guatemala. Like that's not something you should sell someone on. Like you should inform them about what they might.

Jason Elkins (09:20.895)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (09:31.487)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (09:40.639)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (09:43.51)
you know, be getting into and make sure it's a good fit for what they're hoping to accomplish. But you don't really have to sell people on travel. They usually either know if they want to travel or not. And it's just a matter of getting them into the right experience for what they're looking for. So.

Jason Elkins (09:55.679)
Right. That resonates with me a lot. At one point in my career, I was promoted to sales manager and I did not like the title at all. Yeah. You know, it's like.

Monika Sundem (10:06.358)
the title, right? You don't want to feel like you're being the, I don't even know what it is, the pusher, the person who tells someone they need something that they don't need. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (10:15.775)
Yeah. And I'd always up until that point, I guess I was a sales person because therefore you need a sales manager. I don't know, but it was, but yeah, it was tour operations, it was travel. And it was, it never, ever felt like that. I was, I was like, this is amazing. I get to chat with people all day about their trips and help them plan trips and hear about their trips. And it never once occurred to me that I was actually in a sales role until I got promoted.

into a new position that they created called sales manager. I'm like, I don't like this. This doesn't feel right. The reality is it didn't change anything. But I remember for a couple of weeks, I was kind of embarrassed to have it on my signature block. I was because I was still interacting with clients. I didn't want them to see the word sales anywhere related to anything I was discussing with them. So, yeah, I can.

Monika Sundem (10:47.062)
I'm like, yeah.

Monika Sundem (11:02.294)
Absolutely. I've had the same feeling about the word and did not, I was not okay with it. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (11:07.775)
And it, yeah. And I can tell you that I did go into real estate sales for a while. And that was like gouging my eyeballs out with a pickaxe or an ice pick. And that was, that was when I was like, this is sales. This is different, you know, and my personality didn't change, but the requirements of the role definitely felt like they changed. And, and, you know, I was good at it only because I get myself in front of enough people.

Monika Sundem (11:30.87)
store.

Jason Elkins (11:35.711)
that actually wanted what I had that I never really felt like I had to sell anything. There were other people in real estate that were real salesmen that they, you know, they didn't have to talk to as many people as I did. So, but anyway, he, I'm, go ahead.

Monika Sundem (11:46.486)
Yes. When I find that, you know, being a good salesperson or, you know, I ended up doing very well in the role. And I think it was just that I was very good at asking questions. Like you just have to be really good at asking questions and hearing what someone wants and then recommending something that would be a good fit. And it's kind of like common sense that way, I feel like. So.

Jason Elkins (11:56.415)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (12:08.575)
Yeah, it just seems like a conversation that it's like, okay, I have some cool stuff, but I don't know what you like. So I'll ask you a few questions and figure out, you know, what are you trying to accomplish? What do you, you know, why is that important to you? And, and a good traditional salesperson also does the same, but it's when you're, when you're quote unquote, selling something that you do and want to do, and they're excited about, you know, traveling and.

Monika Sundem (12:11.638)
Yes.

Monika Sundem (12:16.15)
Yeah, we gotta put it together, yeah.

Monika Sundem (12:29.302)
Sure. Sure.

Jason Elkins (12:37.951)
cultural experiences. It doesn't feel like sales. It just feels like, wow, and they called me. This is great. I get to help them. So I'm curious because I think that this is so, what we're discussing is so connected with connections, human connections. And I heard you say when you went on your first trip, you kind of realized, wow, these people are...

Monika Sundem (12:41.078)
Mm -hmm, mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Monika Sundem (12:56.15)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (13:03.199)
more like me than they are different. It's the differences that can make it very interesting. I get that. But really people are people. And I'm curious, was there someone on that first trip that like if I said, tell me about someone on that trip that impacted you or had an impact. Is there anybody on that first trip?

Monika Sundem (13:21.91)
You know, I don't remember names so long ago. I could probably look up in my old journals and recall that there were a couple of young boys who, they were probably, they were young, they were probably 12 or 13, but who were very interactive, just very like typical boys, like anyone you would see back home, just wanted to connect, would play games with us. You know, once we got to know each other, like throw a ball at our backs and they just.

wanted to interact that way. And I remember just thinking, they're, they do the same things. And, you know, I could see their lifestyle and see what, how they live. And I think I'd always had in my head that you can't be happy if you don't have a lot of material resources. And so to see happiness on their faces, I don't know, I heard this saying that, you know, happiness doesn't come from what you have. It comes from a state of gratitude.

Jason Elkins (14:04.735)
Yeah. Yeah.

Monika Sundem (14:17.462)
that if you have an attitude of gratitude and contentment with what you do have, that's what determines happiness. And so I really think I got to see that in that time there is that these people are genuinely happy. And I think that that revealed to me, so the differences have to do with how they live, material possessions, some things like that, but a lot of the other things, family mattered to them, playing mattered, hanging out and being with other friends mattered.

It's all the same things that matter really at the end of the day to me. So I think it was very, it was very eye -opening for me, especially as a young person being born. I was raised in Redmond, Washington, so got to see Microsoft build my city pretty much. And it was really, I think, good for me and humbling to be taken out of that environment and see, see what I see. So elsewhere. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (15:01.919)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (15:09.823)
Yeah, yeah. And I think that kind of, I say our culture, I'm just gonna say maybe North American, United States is we're kind of fed this, I'm not trying to be, I'm not sure where I wanna go with this, but growing up, I remember kind of the line was that isn't America great? And it is, I'm proud American and.

Doesn't everybody else wish that they could live here? And this is such a great place. And yeah, I think when I first started traveling, I kind of thought that everybody outside of the U S was miserable and wanted to be in the U S and, and I quickly, you know, I had some memories younger on as well, where I met people that were, you know, I went to Australia and met some, you know, I was 12 and some kids around my age and we went and chased sheep and did things that Australian kids do.

And they were so happy. And then at one point later on, I went to Cuba. And of course, you know, my mindset, everybody in Cuba must be miserable. That's what I thought. Right. Until I went there and the couples walking down the street, holding hands, kissing, right. You know, and just the, it was like Havana was like the city of love. It was like, you know, people are still people and they've got their relationships and their connections, regardless of what, you know, kind of what the political.

Monika Sundem (16:28.15)
Hehehe

Jason Elkins (16:37.823)
economic things going on. Yeah, so I would, I kind of felt the same way. That was, that's cool. Okay, so then kind of the same question for when you started at Adventure Life, when you're like, okay, I'm, wow, I'm working in the travel business now. Were there any colleagues or anybody there on the team that just like kind of that you remember as just being like, okay, yeah, this, yeah, a mentor or somebody like that, any memories of that?

Monika Sundem (17:07.83)
You know, the whole team really mentored me. We were a very small group when I joined. I think there was maybe 12 or 13 of us in a small little house. And then we got to start growing. And then we grew to eventually where the founder built a building for us, you know, specific to adventure life. And so that was fun to see it grow and expand. But I do have fond memories of just all of us stuck in the, we call it the living room, stuck in the living room together in our cubicles. So.

Jason Elkins (17:37.055)
huh.

Monika Sundem (17:37.462)
There were multiple mentors that I had on staff. I actually, one of them still with us, she's our finance director. She jokes about, she used to train me. She was the first one to train me when I first started. And she was convinced that I wouldn't last a day because we joke about it now, but because she would be showing me what to do and I'd just be like, -huh, -huh, -huh. And I wasn't taking notes and I wasn't, so she thought this is just going in one ear out the other. She's not going to last.

I just, I have a kind of photographic memory. So if I see something visually, I pretty much can put it to memory on one go. But she invested a lot in me, but did it thinking that I wasn't going to pan out because she thought, man, this girl just isn't writing anything down. So it was funny to look back on, but she has been a tremendous asset to us and just a wonderful human being. And then,

Jason Elkins (18:15.615)
She just assumed you were just out, space it out, whatever, yep.

Monika Sundem (18:36.215)
The founder himself, Brian, has invested quite a bit in me as well as I started to change roles and move into different things. I think sometimes I used to drive him nuts with ideas. I would go to him and say, we really should do this. And like, I remember when we didn't have Nicaragua tours and I'm like, you really need to develop Nicaragua tours.

He would at one point, I think he just said, I don't have the bandwidth to do it. You can go do it if you want to. And he would invest in me and like how to, how to actually do it. And if you will probably just appease my, my requests to let me go do my project. But I really always was excited to tackle something new. And so he always took the time to really show me how to do it. Which, which is ongoing today. He and I still connect on a.

Jason Elkins (19:03.903)
huh.

Jason Elkins (19:15.007)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (19:28.342)
quarterly basis here about various things. So yeah.

Jason Elkins (19:32.351)
All right, that's a, it's very cool. One of the things you mentioned and I could kind of almost visualize it as you're describing, like in the house, in the living room, you know, and all of you in there overhearing each other's conversations. I'm sure one person's on the phone with a client and another person's on the phone with a vendor. And what an amazing environment to just, it's immersion. It's like learning Spanish, right? It's like going to Guatemala if you want to learn Spanish or whatever.

Monika Sundem (19:41.814)
Yep.

huh.

Monika Sundem (19:54.294)
Mm -hmm.

Yes.

Jason Elkins (20:02.047)
because you're just surrounded by it all day, every day. You can almost not not learn. So now I think I know some things about adventure life that maybe I'm wrong, but most of your team now is remote, is that right?

Monika Sundem (20:07.67)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (20:17.942)
I was just going to bring that up, which is the biggest loss we have of now being a fully remote company. Yeah, we had shuttered our office space, actually rented it out to another company. We have a small, tiny office space we retained for physical inventory and a copier and things like that. But we only have two people who use that space and the rest of us are fully remote now. And it's ironic because...

Jason Elkins (20:19.679)
Yeah!

Monika Sundem (20:44.758)
Did COVID do it? Yes, but we were already moving in this direction before. We had already had a big push in 2018 and 2019 to move all of our systems to the cloud so that we could start to expand to become a remote company. And when COVID -19 hit, we were able to start to expand our remote company.

Jason Elkins (20:59.903)
What was the drive behind that? What were you trying to accomplish when you started to say, let's get ready to go remote?

Monika Sundem (21:07.35)
Missoula is a very small college town where a lot of people come there to college. That's where the company was based. They come to the college, they maybe start their career and then they move elsewhere, decide they want to go somewhere else. So the pool of hires, back then it's really changed in the last 10 years. So back then the pool of hires that we had at our fingertips was pretty limited. And then try to throw in there, trying to find someone with a lot of international travel experience that made it even more limited. So.

There were people that we wanted to hire who were outside of Montana and we just didn't have the capacity to do that. And.

Jason Elkins (21:42.975)
Was there, I'm curious and you share whatever you're comfortable sharing, but was there, could you ever imagine a situation where adventure life would be based out of Pasadena, California or Providence, Rhode Island, or was that just not an option?

Monika Sundem (21:58.134)
No, I mean, we're, I don't know, the founders, Montana, so no way he's leaving Montana. And there are a number of reasons why it hasn't really crossed our mind to ever be based in a different state. I mean, there's a lot of favorable business practices in Montana compared to others. So we did think about though, just hiring, you know, one or two, we weren't thinking to have the whole office be remote quickly.

Jason Elkins (22:02.847)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (22:10.175)
I understand. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (22:15.903)
Yeah.

Monika Sundem (22:28.214)
I don't think that was the plan at all, but we wanted to be able to hire someone from another state if they were a good candidate and had applied at that. Yeah. And at that point we had started to receive applications for that kind of, I mean, remote work was kind of starting to be a thing for certain industries and travel company, some travel companies were already fully remote at that time because of the nature of our industry. Of course it makes sense for me to hire someone in South America if I'm selling South America trips. Like there's a lot of.

Jason Elkins (22:35.519)
It just didn't want to live in Montana because it does get cold there.

Jason Elkins (22:46.207)
Hmm?

Monika Sundem (22:57.718)
benefits to that, including being close to inspect your own product. So we had thought that way before we had come across individuals we would like to hire, but we weren't able to do it. And then I actually ended up giving my notice in 2014 to move to ours North out of Missoula. So I'm actually based up in Palaceville near Glacier Park. And my husband took a job up here that required us to move. And I was not able to be retained because we were not fully remote.

So it, there were some other reasons too, like we had a difficulty retaining some of our staff who needed to move for business or for family reasons. We had another key employee move to Minnesota for a family reason as well. And it was very difficult. We had found workarounds at that point with our existing systems, but it was sometimes unreliable connections into our network and there were issues with it. So.

Jason Elkins (23:28.063)
Okay.

Monika Sundem (23:54.87)
We had decided it would be smarter to just be cloud -based and then that would give us the flexibility to do what we wanted at that point.

Jason Elkins (23:55.038)
Right.

Jason Elkins (24:01.663)
Right. Now that makes a lot of sense. I was actually speaking with a company, I won't mention any names, but about doing some sales work for them. And as a South American, Latin American specialist, and I'm living and traveling in South America. They're like, well, we can only hire you. You can't, you have to work from the U S you can, you get two weeks, you get two weeks vacation.

Monika Sundem (24:25.718)
Yes, doesn't that seem silly?

Jason Elkins (24:29.439)
And then you can go anywhere you want, but when you work and you have to be in the U S and I was like, well, there's no way I'm going to give up traveling South America so I can live in the U S and sell trips to South America. It just did not make sense. It was like, I'm here. So, so that was a, that was a short conversation. so what are the challenges realistically, because you don't have that complete immersion. And when I.

Monika Sundem (24:40.054)
to sell trips to South America.

Monika Sundem (24:45.366)
Yeah.

Monika Sundem (24:50.038)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (24:57.407)
You know, I led a team we I mentioned earlier as a sales manager. I led a team where we were basically in a big cubicle and we learned so much from each other. So what's the biggest challenge to not? You don't have that anymore.

Monika Sundem (25:03.734)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

It really is that, that the learning and the training has been slower and because you're not surrounded by it. We used to strategically, when we were all in one office, sit certain people next to other people. We would do musical desks all the time, depending on what new hires we had brought in to get people sitting by the person that would be the biggest asset to them in their training. And we just have to be a lot more strategic about it. We can monitor each other's calls. So...

Jason Elkins (25:19.295)
Mm -hmm, yeah.

Jason Elkins (25:35.743)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (25:35.894)
The way you try to get that is you can have actually some of these systems let it ring to the new hire whenever so -and -so is receiving a call as well. So that you can hop on and hear their call with that person to try to learn and get that input that way. If you're in the middle of writing an email though, you don't always hop on. It's very different than sitting there writing your email and then just hearing it in the background. So it has been a challenge. We've actually just recently tried to switch to

Jason Elkins (25:45.119)
Jason Elkins (26:01.215)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (26:05.942)
doing in -person sit -ins with each other, essentially where we'll fly in one veteran and we'll put a new hire and they'll work alongside each other for a couple days or even up to a week to try to give them that when they first start out. And then at that point, a lot of it really just has to do with that new hire being hungry to learn. The resources are there.

Jason Elkins (26:27.359)
Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. Because if they're not.

Monika Sundem (26:31.318)
You can monitor, you can reach out and we give them a mentor team. They can reach out and get all the information they need and some use their mentor teams more than others. So, it just has to do with desire level.

Jason Elkins (26:42.975)
If you were going to send it, if you're going to send a message to the next new hire that you bring on to the team, working remotely to help them adjust to that, what would you say? Like the next, next new hire is listening to this conversation. What do you want them to hear before they accept the job?

Monika Sundem (26:57.142)
Mmm.

Next new hire, yes, it would be to build real connections with your mentor team very quick and early. Because there kind of gets this point, you know, once you're a month or two in where you kind of feel like you can't reach out more because you didn't establish that relationship early on. And then it gets a little awkward. And so building like a personal connection, we talk a lot about spending time asking each other how your day's going.

Jason Elkins (27:17.471)
Yeah. Yeah.

Monika Sundem (27:28.854)
You know, when you switch to a remote environment, there's the temptation there to just get down to business whenever you're chatting instead of taking the time to actually have that personal chit chat that you might have around the coffee pot if you were in an office. So in some of our meetings, we try to have time for just personal chit chat. We do happy hours once a month where the goal is just everyone goes into the meeting to just talk about life and you're not supposed to talk about work. You just need to share what's going on in life because we need those relationships to be there.

So we strongly encourage as well video calls. So people video call each other through our chat program all the time to be face to face, to not just be sending chat messages to each other the whole time, but to actually connect face to face as much as possible in a remote environment. So those are some of the small ways we're talking. I don't think it's better. I mean, I don't think it'll ever reach the level that you can reach when you're all in an office together.

Jason Elkins (28:14.271)
Yeah.

Monika Sundem (28:27.67)
But there are a lot of benefits to being remote as well that we're reaping. And so it becomes this balancing act of which is more important than others. And a lot of the people on our team, honestly, would not be on our team if it weren't for remote work. So we wouldn't have been able to hire them. So we have a really, really strong team because of that change. It's just that we have to make sure we're not failing to connect. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (28:42.079)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (28:52.767)
Yeah. There's like, I'm fascinated by the whole subject, obviously is someone that works remotely and travels. And I think it's probably enough for a whole nother episode of the podcast. So we're going to, we're going to, we're going to table that right now. And when I start a remote working podcast, we can come back and, and continue the Conver, the conversation. And I guess somewhat related, somewhat related, but not quite.

Monika Sundem (28:59.638)
Mm -hmm.

It probably is. Yeah.

Monika Sundem (29:10.422)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (29:21.983)
As far as hiring people and finding people to come in and bring value to the team, I'm always curious, like, like you, your first job at Adventure Life, you didn't, you traveled, you traveled a bit, but you weren't looking for a job in adventure travel. Do you tend to look for people to bring onto the team that have a lot of travel experience or is it better sometimes to bring someone in?

Cause I've heard so many people say things like, our best, our best team members were school teachers or, you know, or, or whatever from outside the industry that just come in, they have that, that natural ability to try and help people educate people or whatever. So I'm curious, do you generally hire, hire veterans or what are your thoughts on that?

Monika Sundem (30:08.566)
You know, it's a real toss up. I joke that one of the most common denominators is that we all were servers. We all learned how to multitask under pressure and with a high customer service expectation because your tips were on the line. And I have found the people skills from servers are critical in the role, which is interesting, especially when you're talking to people over the phone.

Jason Elkins (30:17.503)
Yeah.

I've heard that, yep.

Jason Elkins (30:32.831)
Yeah. Yeah.

Monika Sundem (30:36.246)
which makes it harder to connect than in person. But you know, we've hired some who've been very successful who had extensive travel experience. So absolutely, we of course, the clients always want to know, have you been there? That's a frequent question we get asked and we want to be able to say yes. Usually, the answer is yes if they got routed properly, but sometimes the answer is well, no, I haven't been there. But there are like five other people on my team who have, who have.

Jason Elkins (30:36.639)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (31:04.031)
Hmm.

Monika Sundem (31:04.598)
because we have this collective knowledge base of our whole team. We actually just did a, we counted how many countries we all had traveled to collectively last year and it was some crazy high number that we, I think we were all shocked because there are points where we all feel like, well, I haven't been to that country, therefore I don't know if I can speak to it, but there's someone on our team has been and maybe has lived there even, a lot of us have lived abroad. So it's...

Jason Elkins (31:29.023)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (31:30.358)
It's one of those things of, again, the resources are at your fingertips if even you don't have the personal expertise. So I have hired people who have not had extensive travel background because of that collective knowledge base that we are able to offer. However, we do try to get them traveling right away. So it's invaluable to be able to say, yeah, I've been there and let me describe the color of the building that you're going to walk through when you first land on the ground. And there's a lot of travelers, the reason they're

Jason Elkins (31:48.447)
Great.

Jason Elkins (31:58.687)
Puts people at ease, doesn't it? Yeah.

Monika Sundem (32:00.374)
Yeah, and the reason they're coming to us is maybe they don't feel fully comfortable planning it all out, or maybe they don't have the time to do so, but they're wanting to go through someone who has that expertise and on the ground experience, and we are able to offer that collectively and then some. I mean, if we were to calculate how many times all of us have been to certain places, it would be crazy to count. So.

Jason Elkins (32:27.551)
Yeah, absolutely.

Monika Sundem (32:27.958)
So yeah, it goes both ways. I think the more important thing in terms of who I hire is their ability to connect with people. Like, you know, we're in the travel industry, but we're in the people industry more than that. I feel like this is a people industry, especially what we do, custom and tailor -made travel. It's not that I'm selling you a package trip and here you go, take it or leave it. If you didn't like it, go somewhere else. We are customizing every experience to what they want. So we need to understand what makes them tick.

Jason Elkins (32:43.647)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (32:57.398)
Like, do you like to hang out at a pool or would you prefer to be at a beach? Do you enjoy being in hot weather or do you prefer to be in maybe higher altitude rainforest where it's a little bit cooler and not as humid? You know, you need to know what would make them excited when you design their trip. So it really has more to do with like this kind of exchange, asking a lot of questions, getting to know what would be good for them. And the fun part is when it's like a family of four and...

Well, the dad wants to do this, but the mom wants to do that and they do not align. And then you have to figure out how to make everyone happy. But most of the time people usually know roughly what gets them excited. You know, one of our favorite questions is what was the best trip you've ever taken and why? Like what were the components of that trip that really made it stand out in your mind? Because then that gives us a really good idea of what makes them tick. So, and how to design it.

Jason Elkins (33:52.895)
Yeah. And it's kind of a little bit of psychological type assessment and that too, especially when you've got the family dynamics. And I was speaking with someone actually earlier today that said he likes to ask what was the worst part of your last vacation? You know, or what's the worst trip? What's the worst trip you've ever had and why? Cause you can learn so much. Cause people remember the negative stuff. Like it's so much easier for people to describe.

Monika Sundem (34:03.766)
I'm sorry.

Monika Sundem (34:09.27)
that would be a good question too, absolutely. Yes. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (34:22.463)
negative experience than it is a positive experience. So I thought that was pretty brilliant. I'm going to be using that one in the future, I'm sure. But yeah, OK. So.

Monika Sundem (34:23.67)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (34:27.606)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (34:37.439)
curious. Got quite a few quite a few curiosities going on here. What do you so at this point in your career, what are what do you get? What do you get out of this? What's what's what gets you out of bed in the morning?

Monika Sundem (34:51.414)
You know, that's a very personal question. No, the answer is my dog's nose in my face. No, my dog's nose in my face telling me it's time to let her out. But no, it's the people. Collectively, our whole staff is like, you know, the reason we get out of bed in the morning and go to work and keep doing this doesn't...

Jason Elkins (34:56.671)
What?

This is PG.

Jason Elkins (35:05.599)
Hahahaha

Jason Elkins (35:11.167)
Yeah.

Monika Sundem (35:18.646)
even necessarily have to do with travel, although that's like a nice perk and the icing on top. It's the people that we get to experience it with. So my own family, my own family at work, if you want it, my expanded work family, if you want to call them that. I mean, most of us, I think on our staff would say it's the people we work with that make it amazing. And then add to that, it's our travelers. I mean, we have a lot of alumni travelers that send us pictures when they get back and share with us.

Jason Elkins (35:30.495)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (35:46.966)
how awesome it was and we've really forged some real personal connections with some of them and I really treasure that. So it causes this whole thing to feel very purposeful. I think if we were, you know, I look at other, not to knock other travel companies out there, but I look at other travel companies out there that just have a mammoth amount of travelers they're serving every year in set group departure tours and get them in, get them out.

Jason Elkins (35:58.783)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (36:14.71)
I think it maybe takes away from the ability to really connect that way when it's just kind of like a mass production. So we handle a lot fewer travelers, but we get to know them a lot more intimately. And I think that makes it feel a lot more fulfilling. I remember this one time, actually, one of my travelers, when I was in sales, she had lost her husband and her brother, and I believe her son, on that Antarctica flight out of Australia that went down.

Jason Elkins (36:29.951)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Monika Sundem (36:43.766)
to and ran into the mountain. This was back in like, goodness, I think even the eighties or something. I'm probably butchering it. And she just wanted to go back. She wanted to go back on an Antarctica trip to be there on the day that they died on the anniversary of the day and wanted to find some sort of cruise company that would maybe even allow her to get off the boat and be near that spot on that day. And I remember us just going to bat for her to try to get that done for her. And I remember just feeling a very personal connection to her. Like,

Jason Elkins (36:48.927)
Well.

Jason Elkins (36:57.663)
Monika Sundem (37:14.102)
I am so honored that you're asking me to help you with this. And it's those kinds of connections that really, I think, stand out in all of our staff's mind. Like some of our travelers are really amazing. They have amazing stories and we get to help them do home stays too with local families, which changes their lives forever. And I just think there's no comparison. So that's why I say too, I'm in the people industry. I'm not necessarily in the travel industry. So.

Jason Elkins (37:17.791)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (37:39.807)
Yeah, it really is. I think, you know, I've had this conversation with a few people. It's like you can take me to the most amazing place in the world. But if there aren't there's nobody around to connect with when I'm there, I just I don't know. I don't think I could enjoy it. You know, without that connection, I mean, it's I just like I wouldn't even go. I mean, if you said, OK, if I think what's on my wish list.

Monika Sundem (37:56.246)
Completely. Completely agree.

Jason Elkins (38:07.935)
I would still like, at some point, I would like to go to Russia. But if you told me, OK, Jason, you can go to Russia, but you can't talk to anybody, you can't even make eye contact with anybody, yeah, you can't make eye contact, you can't share it with anybody, you're just on your own, people will be there, but they're not going to see you. You're just going to be invisible. I could go to Google.

Monika Sundem (38:13.206)
Me too. Yeah.

Monika Sundem (38:18.838)
Yeah, you can get off and see the landscape, but yeah.

Jason Elkins (38:35.007)
Google Maps and you do Street View if I want to do that, right? Sit on my couch and do that. That's just, yeah. So it really is about the people. I really don't understand why else you would travel. Why would you travel if it's not about connection? I don't get it.

Monika Sundem (38:38.806)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (38:45.526)
That's.

Monika Sundem (38:50.07)
Well, you know, I wondered though, if this is just a me thing, because, you know, this is just how I'm built, because I'm the same way. I really love to interact with culture and other people. And I think I mentioned to you earlier that when I went to Antarctica, it was really lacking. And I went at a time post COVID when you couldn't interact with anyone at the research stations or anything. So you really, it was landscape. It was beautiful landscape. Can't, you know.

Jason Elkins (39:06.975)
Mmm.

Monika Sundem (39:18.934)
I can't lessen how dramatic and amazing it is. So everyone should go, yes, at least once. But I felt a lack of ability to connect with the local culture and penguins don't count. And I've actually discovered that about myself. I'm really just, I don't enjoy trips that don't have a cultural connection element to them. It's just not who I am, I think.

Jason Elkins (39:29.343)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (39:44.351)
Yeah. Yeah.

Monika Sundem (39:45.302)
And I think different people are built differently because I think other people are very much nature and landscape will get me out there in the middle. I don't want to see a single other human soul. I just want to be the only one on the trail. And for some people that really does it for them. So I do think different people are built differently in that regard.

Jason Elkins (40:02.463)
I would still make the argument that it's about, it's still about connection. I'm going to go out here. Connection of some sort, like connection with, like the person that wants to go camping in the woods for a month to test themselves, like, or like the reality shows, you know, where they go camping. I shouldn't call it camping. It's survival shows, whatever. Okay. They're connecting, I guess, with themselves.

Monika Sundem (40:09.142)
Connection, agree.

Monika Sundem (40:19.894)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. No, it's like surviving and yeah.

Jason Elkins (40:28.511)
I've spent enough time connecting with myself. I personally want to connect with other people, but even if it's nature or mountains, hopefully I've got companions. Like they don't necessarily have to be the locals be my preference. Typically don't tell my friends and family that I prefer to connect with the locals, but you know, hiking Kilimanjaro with, you know, a few.

Monika Sundem (40:39.222)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (40:45.91)
Totally.

Jason Elkins (40:54.239)
family members, friends, maybe even strangers. I'm sure there's a lot of connection there, but regardless, like without some sort of connection, I'm like, there's just, I don't, I kind of don't get it myself, but we're all different, aren't we? Yeah.

Monika Sundem (40:56.47)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (41:06.358)
I don't either that, yeah, I agree either with your own travel companions or with the people you meet, but I was sent early on when I stepped in that sales role, I was going to take over South America sales and I'd never been to Costa Rica. So I went down there on an inspection trip and went all over Costa Rica with our driver seriously visited probably 30 different hotels. So it was truly an inspection trip. Like the goal was not to go down there and have fun. The goal was to see what we're doing and then be done. But I connected with my driver.

Jason Elkins (41:26.591)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (41:36.223)
Yeah, yeah.

Monika Sundem (41:37.334)
My driver was so hilarious, told such funny story. And I remember just feeling like if I think back to that trip, I remember my driving, not any of the rest of what I did. So it's interesting that way. And again, I was like, maybe I'm just built that way. But I do think it's those moments that really make something stand out. And that's repeatedly the feedback we get from our travelers is that their guides are what makes or break the trip.

They can go on an amazing trip and have an awful guide and it ruins the experience or they can go on what I would call very basic, you know, we did a real mid range out of the blue trip for them to help them go, but their guide was amazing and they just sing our praise. So I do think it's the people that do make it stand out.

Jason Elkins (42:24.639)
Yeah. And that for me, that could be in my travels. You know, if, if, if, if somebody could somehow download the top memories of the last six months traveling around, you know, Columbia or Latin America, every single one of those memories is going to be a conversation really. And I'm, I'm working on my Spanish. It's getting pretty good. I can pretty much have a conversation with people, but it's, it's sitting on a park bench.

Monika Sundem (42:38.198)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (42:43.35)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (42:50.527)
You know, drinking a Coke, just look around and some teenage kid walks up and sits down next to me because he obviously I don't look like I'm from there and he wants to have a conversation with me about whatever, you know, and I have this really cool conversation with this teenage kid that I would never talk to in the US. We just wouldn't have a reason to, you know, and he tells me about, you know, his family and this and that are just people on the bus. You know, I like riding the bus. I don't want to. I mean,

Monika Sundem (43:07.67)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (43:15.702)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. I do too.

Jason Elkins (43:19.903)
I don't dislike Uber and Uber can be great because there's a driver and I have a lot of great conversations with the Uber driver. But I'm also I'm just much more inclined to get on a bus. And sometimes that means I'm standing up for, you know, 30 minutes going around the corners. But when you're bumping into people, guess what? You're creating a connection. You know, there's that look on your face. whatever. And I just I wouldn't like and I guess where I'm going with this is I think that people that value that connection.

Monika Sundem (43:22.87)
Sure.

Monika Sundem (43:32.278)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (43:38.678)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (43:48.863)
are much more likely to work in this business because this business is all about connection. If you don't like people and you don't value human connection, it seems like a really bad job. You'd hate it. You would just, it would, yeah. So anyway. All right.

Monika Sundem (43:51.606)
Yeah. Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (43:59.221)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (44:04.502)
Absolutely, yeah. We put a lot of emphasis on that, that like, you know, there are a lot of different kinds of people out there and they all are so amazing and worth knowing. And if we can all have a curiosity and wanting to ask questions, get to know people, we find that we have a lot more in common than we do different. And that's inspiring and exciting and helps us to bridge those gaps so easily, sometimes so easily.

I had my son accuse me of being too friendly the other day because I was talking to this gal in line and he was just like, you're so friendly mom. And I'm like, yeah, like, is it gonna rub off? Like, yes, that's how you have to be. Because why else bother being on the planet if you're not going to connect with the people who are right in front of you and standing next to you? So.

Jason Elkins (44:32.415)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (44:54.687)
I agree. And so there's that just in everyday life at the grocery store, whatever. And then it's like a whole other level when you go to another culture, because yes, they're so similar in so many ways, but there's, it's, it's really, you know, I remember connecting with a guy in Guatemala, actually Lake Atilan, which is appropriate as I look at the photo behind you and this, I can't remember which of the one, which is a little, I think it was Panahasha.

Monika Sundem (45:02.614)
-huh.

Monika Sundem (45:16.438)
-huh.

Jason Elkins (45:24.223)
And he was a Japanese guy about my age. He owned a motel or a hotel. There's a difference here. He owned a hotel that I was staying at. And he spoke no English. My Spanish was pretty choppy. Obviously, I don't speak any Japanese, but he's a Japanese guy. Grew up in Japan. He'd been living in Guatemala for 10, 15 years, something like that. And he was born and raised in Nagasaki. You know, and I was born in Nagasaki.

Monika Sundem (45:36.566)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (45:51.318)
Mmm.

Jason Elkins (45:53.599)
Born and raised in the US. There's a connection between Nagasaki and the US that can't be denied. And, you know, he grew up, his family was from Nagasaki. That was his, you know, ancestral home. And here we are sitting in Guatemala and he brought out the photo journal. We're speaking in Spanish and he's showing me pictures of his family. He's showing me pictures of his son who was in military school in Guatemala. He was very proud of his son.

Monika Sundem (45:55.446)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (46:10.542)
Hmm.

Monika Sundem (46:20.886)
Mmm. Mmm.

Jason Elkins (46:21.951)
And, you know, it's shown me the pictures of his graduation and, and we had this amazing connection between the Japanese middle -aged guy, the American middle -aged guy in Guatemala, speaking Spanish. And it was just like, so freaking cool, you know, to, to, to have that. And I wouldn't have got that if I was sitting at home or at the grocery store back home. So that's, I just, there's so much value in doing it. And you're not going to do that on a cruise ship either. I'm just going to say that.

Monika Sundem (46:48.63)
I completely agree. No, it doesn't. I know. Well, and we have so many, we do expedition style cruising, like so smaller ships, like 300 or less, which makes it a little easier to connect. But even on that, sometimes I feel like, I don't know, get me off on land with the locals. But I don't know what that is, but in me. But no, I find that when you're in a culture, even if you can't speak the language, it's like,

Jason Elkins (46:51.839)
Not knocking Chris jumps, but.

Yeah, that's different. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (47:10.783)
Yep.

Monika Sundem (47:18.87)
A smile says a thousand words. It's really all you need. A smile, body gestures, you can communicate quite a bit with people even if you don't know the language.

Jason Elkins (47:21.567)
yeah.

Jason Elkins (47:29.119)
You know, that's interesting. And I'm not sure a lot of people specifically, maybe they live in the States and haven't traveled outside the States. I suspect a lot of Americans, not just Americans, people that haven't traveled to another culture where they speak a different language. I can't go there. I like literally I can't go there because I don't speak the language or the, or the only way I can go there is on a big cruise ship. So when I get off, I've got.

Monika Sundem (47:43.894)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (47:50.518)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (47:55.574)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (47:58.559)
bunch of Americans with me and I don't have someone there might be able to speak. But the truth is, I mean, I came to Columbia, I've been traveling full time two and a half years. I came here with a one way ticket two and a half years ago with zero Spanish and Colombians aren't really particularly known for speaking a lot of English. It was fine. You know, I mean, I said some funny things and I did some funny things. I had some funny misunderstandings.

Monika Sundem (47:58.774)
Help.

Monika Sundem (48:12.662)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (48:17.718)
Nope. Yeah.

Monika Sundem (48:24.342)
and you learn as you go. Yup.

Jason Elkins (48:26.687)
But you know what, if you can look a person in the eyes, you probably can figure out how to communicate. It's like, I'm hungry. Use hand and arm signals. People are, and they wanna help if you try.

Monika Sundem (48:34.07)
Absolutely. What?

Yeah. And especially today with Google Translate. I mean, almost everyone has Google Translate. You can get by and gestures. And like, I remember one time, I don't remember where I was, but I was trying to buy something and I was all by myself. I didn't have anyone who could interpret and I didn't know how much it was. And so I just literally held out all my money and just trusted the shop owner to like only take what the value, the item was worth. And I'm pretty sure they did, which was...

Jason Elkins (48:44.111)
yeah.

Jason Elkins (48:59.551)
Yeah.

Monika Sundem (49:06.518)
helpful and they just laugh like, yeah, let me do it for you. So you can get by, you can figure it out. And then it's kind of a, I don't know, a notch on your belt later, like, look at that, I survived. And I was actually talking with some colleagues of what did we used to do before we had cell phones and Google Translate, and you could call an Uber even in another country. And we used to get out the maps and you used to just fudge your way through it. That's

Jason Elkins (49:13.791)
Yeah.

Monika Sundem (49:34.358)
how you used to travel. So we could do that again. It makes it kind of exciting.

Jason Elkins (49:38.911)
It does, and I mean, that's part of why I like taking buses. I generally don't really know where the, honestly, I don't, oftentimes, oftentimes I don't know where the bus is going when I get on, but I'm walk, I know that where I want to go is that direction, rough, and that bus is going roughly that direction. So there's a pretty good chance it's going to get closer than I am now. So if that means I get on and three blocks from now, it takes a sharp right turn and.

Monika Sundem (49:43.958)
Mm -hmm. Where do I get off?

Mm -hmm.

roughly that direction. Yeah. -huh.

Jason Elkins (50:07.007)
and I realize, okay, it's no longer going the direction I get off. It's no big deal, you know, and it's, or just sometimes just get on a bus and go until it stops and get off and walk around. And especially since we have things like Uber, you can't get that lost anywhere really. I mean, you know, if the bus gets to the end of the route and stops and you're like, okay, I don't want to be here. Okay. Get an Uber, you know, you can, and as long as you know the address or you're staying.

Monika Sundem (50:07.318)
and then you get off.

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Monika Sundem (50:22.55)
Mm -hmm. You really can't. No. No.

Monika Sundem (50:31.99)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (50:36.735)
It's not that hard. Yeah, so I just encourage people like if your story is I can't go because I don't speak the language, maybe dig a little deeper. Maybe there's another reason you're not going. But don't let that be the reason. Don't let that be the reason. So.

Monika Sundem (50:37.334)
you'll get there eventually, yes, especially today.

Monika Sundem (50:49.942)
Sure. Sure. I think it has more to do with stress level of like, you know, for a lot of people, they don't have a lot of time off if they live in the US, live and work in the US and they want to maximize it and they don't want to be stressed out while they're on vacation or maybe they don't want their wife to be stressed out while they're on vacation of how they're going to get to their hotel. So that's where I find.

Jason Elkins (51:00.895)
Hmm?

Jason Elkins (51:11.583)
Fortunately, they can call your team. Right?

Monika Sundem (51:13.526)
Exactly. That's where I feel like a lot of the kinds of people who I think use a service like ours is because they just want it to go smoothly. They don't want to have to be standing in the middle of the road wondering which bus is going to get them there, but they do still want the experience of experiencing the culture as if they were out on their own adventure. So, and...

Jason Elkins (51:22.015)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (51:34.591)
I'm happy you said that because I'm not saying that you have to go jump on a bus and not know where it's going in order to fully experience Costa Rica or any of those places.

Monika Sundem (51:36.726)
Yeah.

no, no, no. Yeah. No, I... People should do that even if they go with their guide. It is an experience. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (51:46.943)
Yup. It's, and actually just having someone, yeah, having someone else along can be, it can be a, either more complicated depending on the person or, you know, I was in Columbia for three months. It never got on a bus until my, my kids, my daughter and my son came to visit me. And I'm like, okay, I got to get on a bus and I got on a bus with them for the first time. And it was nerve wracking because, because if we get lost, then, you know, I've got a teenage son and.

Monika Sundem (51:49.846)
Yeah, I remember my first chicken bus experience.

Monika Sundem (51:55.99)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (52:16.447)
a daughter and like, yeah, I was going to feel a lot of responsibility, but just having them with me somehow gave me a little bit of more confidence and okay, we're going to do this. And if it goes bad, we're going to have a good memory. Well, hopefully a good memory. We're going to have some sort of memory. And so, yeah, so.

Monika Sundem (52:16.534)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (52:32.438)
Yeah, I remember my first chicken bus experience in Guatemala. I thought I was going to die.

Jason Elkins (52:38.207)
yeah.

Monika Sundem (52:40.054)
I mean, this was like 20 years ago or more, but it was like, they are going 40 miles an hour around these roads with no guardrails on a cliff. And I just remember being like, don't look at it, don't look at it. But I've survived. I've done buses like that so many times and I've been fine. So they do them every day.

Jason Elkins (52:55.483)
I love that. I was a little later in life before I had the first chicken bus in Guatemala, but Jackson was with me, my son, and we get on this little cooperative van or whatever. And yep, sure enough, there's a woman with a burlap sack with four or five roosters in it. And then, and there's the family right behind us and the little girl is throwing up the whole, it was three and a half, four hour bus ride.

Monika Sundem (53:03.734)
Hahaha.

Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (53:16.342)
huh.

Monika Sundem (53:22.71)
Mmm. Mmm.

Jason Elkins (53:24.223)
She was throwing up the whole way. The chickens were right there. And it was, yeah, it was, it was fun. And, and I was, I loved it. Cause I was like, you know what? My son's 15. He's on a chicken bus in Guatemala at 15. Yeah. And I'm, I had traveled a lot, but he's traveled a lot more than I have by the time, you know, he's 17. He's been to 10 countries. I, you know, I was probably at mid twenties before I got there, but anyway, it's, these experiences, there's so many great experiences out there.

Monika Sundem (53:35.126)
Yeah, he's seeing real life. Yeah, yeah.

Monika Sundem (53:42.998)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (53:53.663)
What's the downside? What's the thing that like, because I'm sure you get people all the time, like, my God, Monika, you're living the life, you're living the dream. This is amazing. The work you do. And I want to dig just a little bit. We don't have to go too deep, but what's the thing that people don't realize about the business that you have to convince your friends and families that no, this is a job. It can be challenging at times. So what is it?

Monika Sundem (54:17.654)
Right.

You know, I mean, the travel is a lovely perk, but even the travel sometimes I feel a little jaded on because I have four kids. I have life at home. Leaving home is very hard. Actually. I'm sure a lot of people understand that there's a lot of responsibilities to cover at home if I go. So it causes guilt if ever I leave. But honestly, the biggest thing is the weight of my decisions or the burden of.

Jason Elkins (54:40.191)
Yeah.

Monika Sundem (54:49.206)
all the staff that we have in our company and me wanting to make sure that I am ensuring a positive future for all of us in how we run the company. So I had not expected, I mean, I did and I didn't, but when I assumed this role, I had not expected that weight to be quite as heavy as it is. So I would imagine a lot of CEOs feel that way.

Jason Elkins (55:14.879)
Okay.

Monika Sundem (55:19.158)
especially of smaller companies, you know, we're still relatively a small company. We're kind of in that middle land right now, but where I know everyone's name, I know their face, I chat with them directly. Nobody is refused access to me on our staff. Anyone could message me at any time and I, they get my attention. So I feel a very personal responsibility to all of them. And I watched our founder go through this during COVID too, when we had to lay a,

Jason Elkins (55:43.327)
Yeah.

Monika Sundem (55:47.094)
a bunch of staff off and it was just gut wrenching because we really do view each other as like a work family. They're my people. So it's incredibly real and felt. Even right now, you know, things are travels rebounding right now. We're in a good time right now, but I know how the travel industry is. When...

Jason Elkins (55:58.815)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (56:10.815)
Yeah.

Monika Sundem (56:12.502)
you know, an election doesn't go right or stock market plummets or things travels usually the thing most people cut out of their spending. And so our industry tends to fluctuate quite dramatically. And so that is a real burden that I feel on a regular basis. So.

Jason Elkins (56:30.207)
Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I can, I can imagine. And I suspect that I'm happy that you brought that up because I suspect that when they look at you, look at you, you're at the top of the adventure life. Wow. What a great job and all these perks and all this stuff. It's so easy to probably forget that you're still running a business with employees and families and decisions and a volatile market potentially, or at times.

Monika Sundem (56:31.798)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (56:57.366)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (56:58.815)
Whereas I suspect if you were CEO of a construction company with the same number of employees, people would probably be a little bit more sensitive. Wow, you must have a lot of pressure on you, da da da da da, because they see it as a normal business, right? Where they just see travel as like a hobby and like, ooh, isn't that cool? Look what you're doing. And they don't realize, but wait, accounting,

Monika Sundem (57:13.622)
Mm -hmm. A normal bit, yes. This is more of a... Woohoo! Exactly.

Monika Sundem (57:26.71)
Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (57:27.551)
Budgets, P &Ls still work. We use those in travel as well. And so yeah, I can see where people might miss that, hey, this really is a business with responsibilities. And so, cool. I appreciate you sharing that.

Monika Sundem (57:29.462)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (57:35.478)
Yeah.

Monika Sundem (57:41.814)
Yep. It is interesting. But I mean, I can't complain. I'm in an industry that I strongly believe in. Yeah. Yeah. They wouldn't know. They'd be like, whatever. You're just trying to find something to complain about. Yeah. So true.

Jason Elkins (57:48.639)
Nobody will listen to it, even if you did. Nobody's going to listen to you.

I remember when I was traveling specifically for work, doing the site visit, you know, I spent three weeks in New Zealand and yeah, my wife at the time just didn't want to have anything to do with me complaining about how hard I was working. Or if I was in the Bahamas or South America and I could say, my gosh, I've been with my clients from, you know, 5 a until 10 p every night for a week and...

Monika Sundem (58:11.702)
Totally. So true.

Jason Elkins (58:23.583)
We, and some of them are really challenging and the boat broke down, whatever it was, whatever challenge or obstacle she's, yeah, whatever. You're not working. This is just vacation for you. And I'm like, yeah, well, not quite. But.

Monika Sundem (58:34.262)
I know. I'm very careful to not complain about being tired when I come home to my family because of that. But I'm exhausted usually. Yeah. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Jason Elkins (58:39.647)
Yeah. Yeah. But at the same time, I heard you when you said I've got four kids and when I leave the responsibilities at home, don't stop. So yeah, I can imagine coming, you know, coming back and like, okay, yeah, that's there's no, cause some people that they talk about, we need a vacation after the vacation or, you know, when you're out traveling, you said you visited 30 some places in Costa Rica on your first, fam trip or inspection trip.

Monika Sundem (58:57.526)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (59:09.727)
That's exhausting, but you can't come home and complain about it.

Monika Sundem (59:09.814)
Yes, it is. It is. And eventually they start to mold all into the same place in your mind too. And you're just like, I don't even know what I did. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (59:18.559)
I remember I remember I was supposed to write reports for every place I visited, right? To share with the rest of the staff and to share with the lodge owners. And I quickly learned that if you don't write them as you go, or at least take really good notes, you get home and your family is waiting for you and your regular normal work is waiting for you. And three weeks later, someone's like, Hey, did you get those reports done? Like, I don't even remember going like, was I there? So.

Monika Sundem (59:22.326)
Mm -hmm.

Monika Sundem (59:31.062)
yeah, there's no chance.

Monika Sundem (59:41.238)
Where are those reports? And then you don't remember. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. No. Or even if you write as you go, you find suddenly by the end, wow, I called all 10 of them charming. And like you're using the same adjectives over and over again, because you're running out of words to describe each one. So it can be difficult, yes.

Jason Elkins (01:00:01.599)
huh, yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:00:06.303)
Anyway, you and I could probably just keep chatting forever and I want to be respectful of your time. I appreciate you sharing your time with us today. Is there anything I forgot to ask, should have asked or anything Monika that you just want people to know about either you, Adventure Life, the state of the travel industry, anything that we haven't covered that you want to make sure we cover before we wrap up?

Monika Sundem (01:00:10.134)
Probably.

Monika Sundem (01:00:25.718)
Really? Not really. No, I think we hit it. It was good.

Jason Elkins (01:00:31.103)
All right, great. Well, cool. Well, thank you so much. That was a really great conversation, a lot of fun and look forward to, we'll record episodes two, three and four later on, but appreciate you being here with us today. Thanks, Monika. All right, bye -bye.

Monika Sundem (01:00:35.254)
Thanks for having me.

Monika Sundem (01:00:41.302)
Sounds good. Bye.