Brian Jewell (00:01.471)
All right, everybody. My guest today is a former news anchor and technology reporter who now uses her communications expertise to help tourism clients boost their sales and marketing efforts. She's the vice president at, I'm going to try that part again. She's the vice president of sales and marketing at Red Sage and a frequent speaker for organizations such as the National Tour Association and Southeast Tourism Society. Michelle Stark, welcome to the podcast.

Michelle Stark (00:28.775)
Hey, Brian. I'm so glad to be here. I really appreciate you having me on. This is going to be great.

Brian Jewell (00:32.995)
I'm so excited to have you here. I'm always thrilled to get to talk to a fellow journalist, even if that's part of your past and not part of your present. There's so much I want to get to here, but let's talk first about how you made that transition from journalism to tourism marketing, because that is not the typical path for people who come from your background.

Michelle Stark (00:40.792)
Thank

Michelle Stark (00:54.138)
No, it's really not right. So we'll start there. You I'm a Michigan girl. I grew up in the state of Michigan, graduated from Michigan State, go Spartans, woo! And then pursued a career in broadcast journalism and I loved it. It was so much fun, but you reach a certain age and a certain season where waking up at 2 a.m., putting a whole face on just gets really old. So...

Brian Jewell (01:19.111)
Yeah.

Michelle Stark (01:20.27)
about 10 years ago now, I just started thinking I really wanted to explore something different. had the good fortune to tag up locally through a shared connection with the founder of red sage communications. At the time it was a really small little shop doing strategy design, website development. And honestly, the founder was looking to grow the company. She was like, I need a number two. I need someone who can do business development marketing.

and it was just seemed like a great fit, with my background and having been a technology reporter as well. had some exposure with content and modern social tools, how we advertise and push content through those. So I took the leap and Red Stage has always had a strong foundation and economic development. When I joined, we were more of a generalist, but in the last couple of years, Brian.

We really realized we were doing our best work in that recreation tourism space. You we were doing a lot of liveability campaigns, workforce recruitment, and over time just realized, Hey, we have a really great Mac for destination attraction experience. So about two and a half years ago, we repositioned the agency full time into this space and just embraced that change. Um, so that was a big rebranding for us and re.

pivoting into an ecosystem that we love. And I'll say I've loved working in this space, being able to leverage my knowledge and meet so many wonderful people, just working to spread the love of travel through their various roles, right? Whether on the DMO side or working with tour operators. So it's been a fun journey. I myself love to travel. So, you I couldn't be happier with where I am currently and where the agency is as well, but it was definitely a unique path. I won't lie.

It's a little bit unconventional.

Brian Jewell (03:10.807)
Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. You know, I tell people all the time, if you want to make a lot of money, there are other industries that will help you do that better. But if you want to have a lot of fun, you cannot beat travel and tourism. just the best.

Michelle Stark (03:17.454)
you

Michelle Stark (03:24.938)
Absolutely. you know, one thing I really love at Red Stage, we did retain kind of a business to consumer arm. So we do help market, you know, consumer focused brands who are interested in growth. And one thing I like about that is it keeps us plugged in to some of the bigger advertising and, you know, socio behavioral trends. And that really allows us to, you know, see the full spectrum of creative advertising and development in a pure consumer environment.

and then be able to bring that over into travel and tourism. So it's just a really great, unique space for us to be in. And like you said, it's always changing. It's a dynamic industry, but it is one that's a lot of fun.

Brian Jewell (04:07.271)
Yeah, absolutely. So you have a lot of experience helping organizations kind of craft what you call a sales pipeline, kind of figure out what that customer journey looks like from, you know, first exposure, I'm assuming until conversion and even after conversion, you know, delivery. Why don't you explain what you mean by that concept? What the sales pipeline is and what maybe the building blocks of it?

Michelle Stark (04:32.366)
Sure. So the sales pipeline, put very simply, is just the pathway that prospective customers take to actually engage in a conversion. So when we think about building a pipeline, it's really about both in-person connection and more commonly in our current world, this whole big mishmash web of digital touch points where someone might see and engage with your brand. And the idea of the pipeline itself is

building something that is sustainable, again, a pathway through these various touch points that leads those people, those right fit audiences to potentially book with you, right? Or engage with your destination and bring that revenue in that everyone's eager for.

Brian Jewell (05:18.825)
Yeah, absolutely. So give us some examples of what that looks like today. You mentioned there's some in-person elements, you mentioned there's some digital elements. Garden variety, tour company, or maybe small destination. What is that pipeline going to look like for them?

Michelle Stark (05:35.246)
So this is interesting. When we think about the pipeline, I'll kind of talk about it from two perspectives. So there's the new client acquisition pipeline, Brian, and there's also the existing client pipeline. So let's just separate those out for a minute. The first piece is the new client piece. And one of the things that I always stress to people is that marketing should live in service of sales.

I know this stresses people out sometimes that they have a marketing background. like, my gosh, marketing is not sales. We're not doing the same thing. And that's true. There are different functions from a pure marketing perspective and a sales perspective. But it's my point of view, having done this for a very long time now, that marketing should serve that sales outcome because at the end of the day, right, we're trying to grow, we're trying to expand that brand recognition and be able to bring more people into the travel ecosystem.

So with that in mind, let's talk about the new pipeline. How do we get new customers in the door? So I want you to imagine Brian for a minute that people are pigeons. one thing that sounds crazy, but stay with me. So one of the things we really try to encourage our partners at the agency to think about is people as pigeons and that we want to lay a breadcrumb trail for them. We want to

Brian Jewell (06:42.043)
Okay.

Brian Jewell (06:57.8)
Hmm.

Michelle Stark (06:59.192)
put these breadcrumbs out into the world, but do it in an intentional way where we lead the pigeons to you to be able to take that action and ultimately drive sales. It's not just a, me throw all the breadcrumbs into the wind and try to give the pigeons a great lunch. That's not really what this is about. It's about that intentionality. But new clients, new...

Brian Jewell (07:20.126)
Yeah.

Michelle Stark (07:23.902)
customers, they do cost money. And so there's an intentionality there, as I mentioned a moment ago, that's really critical to making a pipeline work. Also on the existing side, this is another one that's really amazing. People underutilize this opportunity, Brian. You know, they're so focused on bring me new people, bring me new people, bring me new people. They don't think about how can I engage and reengage and upsell.

super fans who are already in their ecosystem. I've talked to so many tour operators who are like, gosh, we're based out of Miami or we're based out of this metro area and we have such a great reputation here. We've got some people who are routinely booking with us. They love it. Those are your immediate best reach opportunities for widening and converting bookings into new opportunities.

Brian Jewell (07:50.899)
Hmm.

Michelle Stark (08:18.318)
Having a plan for what we call life cycle marketing, which is staying with people at every step of their experience with, again, your company is so important. And I just, I'll call out Disney. They do this so well. It's crazy. You know, I went on a family cruise a couple of years ago. It was our first cruise ever. We were like, oh, this is going to be good. We'd heard all these amazing things. It was amazing. Let me just say it was amazing. But, you know, I get routinely every month,

an email from Disney Cruise Line that is giving me something else that I could potentially activate or be enticed to do. For example, they do placeholder bookings. Again, people who are listening who've been on a cruise, may recall this, but for Disney specifically, there's an offering to come back with a discount, 10 % off rack rate usually. You'd be amazed at how many operators out there are not leveraging a loyalty program, a bounce back initiative, a discover

this experience, if you liked this experience kind of strategy. So those types of efforts, again, both new and existing, that's a little bit of what we talk about when we say building up a pipeline. It's the collection of these marketing strategies, the breadcrumbs, if you will, that are placed, but placed with intentionality.

Brian Jewell (09:36.351)
Yeah, I want to dig into that Disney thing for a minute because it's fascinating. I think a lot of people get regular emails from brands and there are brands that get emails from once a day, twice a day. Sometimes it can be, you know, totally overwhelming. They get emails from brands and they get so conditioned to those emails that it's swipe, swipe, swipe, delete, delete, delete. What is it about either the way that Disney is crafting those emails or the content they're giving you in those emails or the strategy, the timing by which they come? What is it that makes you

Michelle Stark (09:53.166)
That's right.

Michelle Stark (09:59.342)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Brian Jewell (10:03.717)
Open that email even if you don't have intent to book another Disney Cruise today.

Michelle Stark (10:08.866)
Yeah, great question. So one of the things with email marketing specifically as a tactic for building a pipeline that we have to really be mindful of is fatigue, right? People can check out if they have too many emails. So one of the things we advise is the content itself, including the offering needs to be hyper relevant. It needs to really be tailored with, again, intentionality, probably the theme of this podcast.

Brian Jewell (10:29.855)
Hmm.

Brian Jewell (10:36.713)
you

Michelle Stark (10:37.164)
to make sure that you're not just spamming out all kinds of information, segmenting your lists by experience. If you offer culinary tours, for example, what types of food, what types of experience are people interested based on their existing history with you all? Or again, if you're doing outbound outreach, kind of new solicitation on a prospecting front.

Brian Jewell (10:45.534)
Hmm.

Michelle Stark (11:00.482)
How can you segment those lists to where there's a little bit more alignment in terms of what you're featuring and what you're offering as an enticement? Just that extra little bit of work versus, okay, here's my whole email list, both of existing clients and prospects. I'm just gonna push this out there. These are the tours we're offering this season, six months out from now. That type of email marketing is not gonna get you very far. You've really got to double down on the targeting capacity. And again, being...

Brian Jewell (11:18.685)
Yeah.

Michelle Stark (11:29.322)
super focused on serving the right message to the most receptive audience.

Brian Jewell (11:35.461)
even if it's not your entire audience. It's like a

Michelle Stark (11:37.558)
Even if it's not your entire audience, yes, like taking 20 minutes to go through your lists and trying to organize them in a way that categorizes with a deeper level of intention that goes a long way in terms of enhancing and raising open rates and also click through rates.

Brian Jewell (11:56.937)
So on the idea of the pipeline, know a lot of entrepreneurs who, you whenever I see them and ask them how things are, they'll say something like, you know what, I did such a good job prospecting, you know, six months ago, my pipeline got full and now I'm so busy fulfilling that business, executing that business that I haven't had any time to prospect. And so the next six months aren't looking that great. How does somebody get off that treadmill and establish a sustainable, as you mentioned, sustainable pattern of filling the pipeline?

and also executing the work, particularly if they're like a solopreneur or a very, very small organization.

Michelle Stark (12:33.186)
Yeah, Brian, this is just the age old question, isn't it? For all small business owners, not just in destination and travel, you know, the challenge, it's a trap, right? Of so many entrepreneurs, so many business leaders and owners, they get caught working in the business instead of on the business. And what happens is, as you mentioned, they have success, they grow perhaps organically through

Brian Jewell (12:36.509)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Jewell (12:53.499)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Michelle Stark (13:02.871)
great word of mouth through initial reputation, but that's only going to take them so far. And so what we see even from an agency perspective is this is often where people say, boy, how do I get out of this? I'm stuck in this, you know, recurring rut. I scale up, I've got all this activity and then it's a, you know, a dead pipeline. Nothing's coming through. So when we talk about building a marketing driven sales pipeline, it's really about building a

system of advertising, marketing, PR, all these different integrated tactics that will do the work for you of leading those prospective travelers to your door. And that takes a lot of work. It's got to have great strategy. You you've got to have some money to put behind that. But the idea is that you are standing up the operational mechanism to bring leads to you instead of you always having to go out and try to

Brian Jewell (13:46.323)
Hmm.

Michelle Stark (14:02.668)
dig them up on your own because that only gets you so far. That is not scalable for any business in any industry after a certain point.

Brian Jewell (14:04.201)
Hmm.

Brian Jewell (14:10.227)
Yeah, chasing leads is exhausting. And you know, you can only folk. Yeah, and I mean, it can work. It can bring in business, but you can only get so far doing that. Because as you said, it doesn't scale. That that brings me to my next question, which is, how automatic do you think something like this can be? You know, there's lots of folks out there who, know, for $10,000, we'll be happy to sell you their, you know, proven secret to building a set it and forget it sales pipeline or marketing pipeline. So

Michelle Stark (14:12.622)
It's horrible. It's horrible.

Brian Jewell (14:38.429)
How automatic can this be versus how much does a business leader and entrepreneur need to have human interaction built into the pipeline or constantly be tweaking?

Michelle Stark (14:49.838)
Gosh, this is a great question, Brian. Let me ask you this. Have you ever had just a terrible experience with AI or with an automated platform in the travel space or even outside of the travel space? Like, tell me a story here.

Brian Jewell (14:59.647)
I

Yes. yeah, absolutely. mean, it's you trying to your flight is canceled and trying to get through the phone tree with whatever airline you're trying to, you know, get get rebooked with. mean, it's it's you know, you might as well just go get a hotel room and try again in three days. It's maddening.

Michelle Stark (15:13.314)
Horrible. the airlines help.

Michelle Stark (15:21.612)
Yeah, it's maddening. so keep that little anecdote in mind as we talk about this. So what we're seeing is there's really two philosophies on the table right now as of 2026 when it comes to automating a pipeline, automating your marketing, automating your brand touch points. So in one category, you have the pro automation group and these companies, these organizations are leaning in hard with AI.

Brian Jewell (15:27.88)
Okay.

Michelle Stark (15:48.782)
They're leveraging every tool available. They want scalability and they're going for it. What I have seen in terms of just my own experience, research and data that's been published, you know, that can work, but only for a very specific segment of people. So this comes back to audience intent. So if you have a traveling audience, if your customers are really comfortable with digital tools and platforms, if they are

Brian Jewell (15:54.399)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Jewell (16:07.079)
Interesting. Okay.

Michelle Stark (16:17.95)
often a little bit more sensitive to price. They're really interested in quick scanning, activating, okay, this looks like the best thing for my buck. You know, those types of customers do tend to resonate better with a more automated approach. They just are more comfortable in that ecosystem. And so even if from a customer experience perspective, it's not so great. They're like, this is fine. This serves my need. This serves my purpose. You know, I'm going to go and have this experience and it's going to be great.

Now there's another category which is much more tailored. It's a much more hands-on kind of customized experience. And what we see, especially in the tour operator space, that people, especially for older audiences, where people may be slightly less tech savvy, it is a myth that older individuals are not tech savvy, by the way. I just want to put that on the table. But there is definitely a

Brian Jewell (17:11.645)
Yeah, for sure.

Michelle Stark (17:15.502)
preference, both for older individuals and also higher income individuals to have more of a hands-on concierge style experience. So that's also a segment of the market that is, you know, I would argue better served by adopting less AI, less automation. It doesn't mean you can't have some in your process.

But there's definitely two distinct categories that are starting to emerge as we move as an industry over the next coming years, and especially as AI continues to ramp up. The key, Brian, to take away from this is you have to understand your audience. If you're going forward either on your own or with an agency partner to try and design and really reevaluate how you build a marketing and sales pipeline, it's got to start with a deep understanding of who is the audience, both again.

the new target audience or audiences, and then again, who are our current customers that we want to continue to engage in a meaningful way without making them really frustrated and heading out the door.

Brian Jewell (18:19.071)
Yeah, so it's almost like that customer who is considering spending, I don't know, six to $8,000 per person on your high-end tour to Europe or your river cruise or something like that. It's almost like they say, with the amount of money I'm about to spend with you, you can afford to have a live customer service rep that I can call with questions. Is that fair?

Michelle Stark (18:28.984)
Hmm?

Michelle Stark (18:39.586)
Yes, Brian, absolutely. And we can talk about this a little bit later in the podcast as well. But one of the things I've been sharing and really kind of preaching out in circles here in our industry is that we are in this K-shaped economy and we have been in this model for a long time, but it's continuing to accelerate. Most economists that I've read and observed talking about this all say this is probably here to stay.

Brian Jewell (18:53.375)
Mm-hmm.

Michelle Stark (19:05.964)
And what this means in plain language is that the top 20 % of household income earners, they are holding up the whole economy for us here in the States and in North America more generally. And so the bottom 80 % are struggling. The middle class as traditionally defined is shrinking objectively. And we also have this huge cohort of people in that bottom 80 % of household earners that are

Brian Jewell (19:28.479)
Hmm.

Michelle Stark (19:35.79)
really reevaluating their travel decisions. It's not that they're not traveling. So it's not that they're not traveling. It's that they're starting to prioritize closer to home, drive market experiences, things that are a little bit less, how should I say this? Polished and packaged. So that's a different category. But what we say to people, again, circling back to the point of your question is, who are you targeting? Are you a luxury brand?

Brian Jewell (19:53.95)
Right.

Michelle Stark (20:04.78)
Are you going after that top 20 %? If you are, you better have a real human person who can help field questions, deliver a higher touch type of experience to again, justify a higher price point. And you better have your brand on target in terms of the message you're sending out to that prospective group because they have money and they're willing to travel, but you can't go into that space with

Brian Jewell (20:12.927)
you

Michelle Stark (20:33.986)
you know, a brand that looks as though it's bottom dollar, it's a misalignment. So those are some of the nuances that I think are really important for all operators and destination marketers to understand right now in this economy and where we are.

Brian Jewell (20:47.167)
Yeah. Yeah. I think you're absolutely right about the K shaped economy. You know, something that I'm really passionate about, and we talk a lot here on the podcast about is how we can serve, say that middle sliver of the K shape, you know, the sliver that has shrunk, the sliver that is getting less attention, the sliver that is feeling so squeezed every time they go to the grocery store or look up hotel prices online. So if you were advising a tour company that is not shooting for the high end customers, but is trying to serve,

Michelle Stark (21:00.718)
Yes,

Brian Jewell (21:17.363)
that middle sliver, what would you tell them is a smart and acceptable way that they could leverage some tech tools, some AI to build this pipeline, bring in sales without having to have the overhead of a bunch of customer service representatives answering phones?

Michelle Stark (21:35.851)
Yes. Okay. So this goes back to the building a pipeline that will do the hard work for you so that you are no longer as exposed to the seasonality or the cyclicality of your ability as a business owner or leader in the company to drive sales and energy. So a couple of things. One,

Brian Jewell (21:41.182)
Mm-hmm.

Michelle Stark (21:54.444)
The website has to be in great shape. And this is where Brian, to your point about that middle audience in particular, your website's going to really have to thread the needle in terms of your value proposition. And it goes back to what are you offering that really will appeal to this group of prospective travelers? You know, I'll be honest, the middle road is the hardest one to tread. It is much easier to pick a lane.

even if it means kind of downshifting, you know, for that middle group and sort of targeting that larger 80 % on a value proposition, that is usually the easier path. But for any of the groups, including the middle road, as you suggested, having your website be up to date for our modern reality is important. And I'll touch on AI here for a minute. You know, as we're seeing this shift with AI,

Brian Jewell (22:37.695)
Hmm.

Michelle Stark (22:52.494)
we're moving from search engine optimization to what's called generative engine optimization. And this is a space where all of the content that you put out on behalf of your brand. So your website content, YouTube videos, social content, all of it has to be aligned in a way that is readable and visible ideally to AI, to AI platforms. You know, it's something like 75 % of

Brian Jewell (23:15.678)
Mm-hmm.

Michelle Stark (23:20.302)
AI users, Brian now use ChatGPT or their preferred AI platform as their primary search engine. So they're not relying on Google anymore. And, we'll talk more about this, I'm sure, as we go on, but it just really justifies, you can't gatekeep pricing anymore. You know, I talked to so many people who are like, oh, I don't want to put my pricing on the website. I'll tell them, you know, tell them when they get here. Or, you know, I'd like to, especially if they're marketing to a higher end traveler.

Brian Jewell (23:39.166)
Hmm.

Michelle Stark (23:49.106)
well, well, you know, it's all custom. We'll build that. And there's a place for that. The problem with that is that AI is going to be crawling your site, looking for that baseline information to determine relevancy when someone is searching within that AI tool. So again, looking at your site, making sure that it's in great shape. That's key. YouTube brand. How often would you say you watch YouTube?

As a traveler, as someone who loves to travel, do you watch it often? Do you not? Sure. Or just in general, how often are you on YouTube?

Brian Jewell (24:19.143)
like for travel content or just any kind? I mean, I I watch something on YouTube every day. Sometimes it's like, you know, how to fix my leaky, you know, faucet in the bathroom. Sometimes it's, you know, I'm looking up some geeky detail about some TV show I'm watching. Sometimes it is a travel thing, you know?

Michelle Stark (24:33.486)
Yes, right. Okay. So here's the thing, Brian, you and my 80 year old dad are in the same boat. Right. And, and, you know, my 10 year old nephew, everybody is on YouTube, everybody. And I tell people this all the time across all the industries that our agency serves, you know, when I'm in a position to speak, YouTube is the closest thing we have.

to the mass reach capabilities of the olden days television advertising, where you could put an advertisement out there and reach tons of people across all different segments. The great part about it is YouTube offers a targeting that was never available in those old school, know, golden days of TV advertising times. But it's amazing how underutilized YouTube still is. I don't see enough operators putting their content on YouTube intentionally.

doing things like discovery-based ad campaigns, which are far less cost than, you know, a more robust, full slate type of campaign that we might roll up. It's almost like a promoted or a discovery type content, Brian, where you can put a single video out and then push it out to your targeted audience. And I'm simplifying that a lot, but just to say YouTube is underutilized. Social platforms, everybody knows about Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.

Brian Jewell (25:49.983)
Sure.

Michelle Stark (25:57.986)
But the other one I want to stress is Reddit. How often are you on Reddit, Brian?

Brian Jewell (26:04.479)
I I read something there at least two or three times a week.

Michelle Stark (26:07.552)
Okay. You are not alone. So Reddit has slowly through the years been crawling up, up, up the placement in terms of the most visited site, you know, in the U S it is one of the most visited websites or platforms that we have now, but here's why it's really important. So Reddit and Wikipedia are number one and three respectively in terms of feeding content to AI algorithms.

Brian Jewell (26:37.481)
interesting.

Michelle Stark (26:38.616)
So if you are not widening your content strategy to be in the organic conversations that are going on on platforms like Reddit, if you do not have a presence in authoritative resources like a Wikipedia, you are not going to be visible for the future as search and discovery really shifts into this AI lane. So again, when we talk about what tools

to your original question, should tour operators be thinking about, these are the ones that are less obvious to them. Another piece in this same lane, Brian, if you'll indulge my dorky enthusiasm for these technology developments, is Google just recently announced this Universal Commerce Protocol, this UCP. And I don't see enough people in the travel and tourism industry talking about what that potentially means.

Brian Jewell (27:18.463)
Sure.

Michelle Stark (27:32.224)
Right now, this is more of a commerce driven focus, right? So, you know, purchasing potentially things like beauty products or hair care products. But the intent and what I have seen it written from industry and tech leaders is that if this works well, the universal commerce protocol really can build the pathway for cutting out all of the middlemen in our tourism ecosystem. So OTAs suddenly out the door. Now we're going to have

agentic AI, where the agentic AI will decide when you type your prompt, find me a trip to Italy that costs between five and $10,000 for this season and, you know, features the best highlights, you know, with a focus on culinary experiences. AI is going to decide and then book for you without you having to do anything as a consumer. You're not even going to go to a website.

Brian Jewell (28:26.751)
Mm-hmm.

Michelle Stark (28:32.002)
So this is a huge shift where we have to be laying the pathway now, the content breadcrumbs, not just for people, but in anticipation of us marketing to machines.

Brian Jewell (28:46.183)
Yeah, I was in a room. That's a lot. I was in a room a couple of months ago. I was at a big, tourism event in a room with leaders from, say, the 10 biggest tour companies international in the world. And I asked this group of leaders, how many of you guys are building agentic AI sales tools on your website? And they all looked at me like I was speaking Farsi or something.

Michelle Stark (28:47.938)
I know, it's big. It's a lot.

Brian Jewell (29:14.014)
Like they had no idea what I was talking about. And when I explained it, they're all like, no, we have no intention to do something like that. I'm curious if you think that's something that the smaller tour company, know, the solopreneur, the upstart should try to get a jump on, or are we a little bit far out from that tech being ready? And do we wait and see?

Michelle Stark (29:36.962)
Yeah, this is such a great question, Brian. So, you know, I think as a business leader myself, as someone in a growth position, right, to build and grow Red Sage Communications as an agency, and who has been able to help do that really successfully over the years, what I always encourage other business leaders to think about is maintaining a pulse on these bigger, higher level

really important transformational things in our space, right? So whether it's tourism and the travel industry more broadly or marketing and how we think about sales and sales origination, it is really important to carve out time to have that in our minds. But on a day-to-day level, you're so right. That can feel really overwhelming. I'm like, oh man, all this is coming. What do I do? So I do think there are some practical key things that people can focus on.

Brian Jewell (30:05.725)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Michelle Stark (30:33.24)
And I'll circle back to what you asked before about what are the tools and the priorities. I would encourage tour operators, small, midsize, larger, whether you work independently, work with an agency, carve out time in 2026 to really just take a fresh look at your marketing strategy. Think about how you do sales currently. Does it have both a new and existing focus?

really optimizing your website for what we call capture ability, making sure that you're not gating information, that you're not making your customers go through too many clicks to try to actually sign up and book with you, providing things like travel policies and forms upfront where people can read through those and opt in very easily, just removing friction. These are some of the things that we really encourage in what we would call strategy sessions. Again, Brian, is

a problem across all industries where the world is moving so fast. People want instant results. What we always try and orient people back to is yes, we want to move fast. We want agility. We want to make changes in how we do the tactical piece of marketing to get on all these platforms and be in the right place in front of the right eyeballs. But you can't skip the strategy piece. You can't skip over the really thoughtful work of, you know,

Brian Jewell (31:53.983)
Hmm.

Michelle Stark (32:00.79)
Am I right? Am I actually offering the right itineraries? Like going back to what we said about this bifurcation with the K shaped economy, where do I sit? Am I a luxury offerings type of operator? You know, am I wholly a part of a new ecosystem? You know, we haven't really talked, Brian, about this whole space of like influencer driven, social driven, almost like travel agent slash operators. They sort of fill all these

Brian Jewell (32:03.709)
Hmm.

Brian Jewell (32:13.491)
Yeah.

Michelle Stark (32:30.476)
different roles that are not classically defined. The lines are blurred, right? If someone's listening to this podcast, they might be thinking, do you fit in that space, right? Are you kind of in a different market entirely? And what can you glean about, again, who you need to be marketing to for success? Do you fit better marketing to a very niche group in that 80 % and below of household income? Or are you, again, on the higher end of things?

Brian Jewell (32:32.957)
The lines are blurring for sure.

Michelle Stark (32:56.642)
Just taking a moment, Brian, to carve out time and defining, who am I? Who do I want to be? Are my offerings actually aligned for success, you know, to go out into the market and compete in this space? And then looking either independently with an agency partner and saying, look, this is what I want to achieve. This is where I know I have a customer base. This is where I think I can grow my customer base. How do I get there? What are the, again, what are the,

Right term immediate steps I can take to build both short term pipeline and long term pipeline We just can't skip that level of strategic planning or you're just gonna be throwing spaghetti out at the wall all day long

Brian Jewell (33:39.516)
Yes. So what I hear you saying is that if you've got a rock solid strategy, then there's always time to experiment and dial in different ways of execution. if your strategy's a mess, if your strategy's a mess, there's no execution that's going to solve that problem for you,

Michelle Stark (33:48.514)
Yes.

No, right. Yes, you nailed it. That's exactly right. It's just, and it sounds so simple. It sounds so obvious, but it goes back to what we said earlier. You know, I have so many conversations with wonderful, you know, travel professionals from DMOs, from the tour operating side, buyer supplier. Like everyone's just kind of running around like a chicken with their head cut off. It's like most, most of us. And you know, it's so, we know it's hard, but that's when like doing the obvious things.

Brian Jewell (34:12.837)
Right. Yeah.

Michelle Stark (34:20.974)
Sometimes that falls by the wayside. It's just like weight loss or anything else, you you set out to do. It's the foundational things that sometimes we know we should do, but we don't make time to do them. And then we really struggle down the road because we haven't invested that thought work and aligned our effort accordingly. So that's a really big piece of it.

Brian Jewell (34:43.977)
Yeah, well, that's such good advice. I could talk to you about this all day. I know you have other stuff to do, so I won't keep you much longer. But Michelle, what is the best way for people to find you, follow you, learn about what it might look like to work with you?

Michelle Stark (34:57.358)
Oh, thanks, Brian. Well, you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm Michelle Stark. You can look up Red Sage, look up me and connect with me there. And then of course, redsageonline.com is our website and you can browse and see some of the work that we've done and some of our case studies. And of course, people can always email me, mstark at redsageonline.com, all spelled out. But it's just...

I really appreciate being able to be here with you and talk about these shifts. We're seeing so much transformational change in our industry. And I know there are so many operators out there who have great offerings. They are really like doing some wonderful, innovative, amazing things in terms of on the ground travel experiences. And, you know, I just want to help all of them reach the right people and do it in a way that's cost effective.

that doesn't completely blow their operating budget, but really does generate outcomes.

Brian Jewell (35:55.859)
Yeah, excellent. Well, we love that kind of work and we will link to all those resources in the show notes. So everybody, it will be easy for you to find Michelle. Now, before we let you go, we got some fun questions we ask everybody. These are no pressure, no big deal. So you can just answer off the top of your head. We'll start here. When you book travel, are you booking window seats or aisle seats?

Michelle Stark (36:08.748)
Love you.

Michelle Stark (36:16.498)
my gosh, I am an aisle person all the way. I don't know why, but I just feel like there's like extra room off to the side. I can kind of like put my elbow out. just, yeah, I'm an aisle girl. Yes, I can cheat. Exactly.

Brian Jewell (36:19.283)
Yeah.

Brian Jewell (36:28.467)
You can kind of cheat on that aisle side as long as there's not a cart coming through. Yeah, I'm with you. Same for me. What is something in your travel, in your carry-on that you wouldn't travel without?

Michelle Stark (36:40.494)
Oh my gosh, this is a great question, my carry on. I am a huge gamer, like a huge video game nerd. I love Nintendo. Once upon a time, I dreamed of working there. And so I have a Nintendo Switch that I bring with me everywhere when I travel.

Brian Jewell (36:47.154)
Mmm.

Okay.

Brian Jewell (36:53.619)
yeah.

Brian Jewell (37:00.487)
Yeah, you are the first guest to give that answer. So originality points. love that.

Michelle Stark (37:03.534)
Here's the thing, as an elder millennial, feel like, right? It kind of, we were right on the leading edge of like when gaming became a thing when we were kids. So I grew up with it, dear to my heart. Yeah. I'm honored to be the first.

Brian Jewell (37:11.124)
That's right.

Brian Jewell (37:17.063)
It's in your blood. There you go. I love that. If you had a free airline pass and a week with nothing else going on, where would you be headed?

Michelle Stark (37:28.11)
Free airline pass, nothing else going on. Ooh, this is a really tough one. You know, I would probably say Barcelona and Spain. I had the opportunity to travel there when I was in high school to study foreign language and I just love the country. I thought it was amazing. This was a long time ago now without giving away my age, but I'd love to go back and just, you know, as an adult, really experience some of the cities.

Brian Jewell (37:38.015)
Hmm.

Michelle Stark (37:57.676)
there and the food and culinary offerings. That would definitely be a bucket list return trip for me.

Brian Jewell (37:57.684)
Yeah.

Brian Jewell (38:05.4)
that sounds amazing. You you just said you're an elder millennial, so I think people can probably kind of get in the range, you know, do the math. But yeah, Barcelona, what an incredible place. Last question. What is one thing you have seen or done on the road that you wish you could go back and experience again with somebody you love?

Michelle Stark (38:10.71)
you

Michelle Stark (38:22.542)
Man, this is really good. Well, I will say we have been fortunate to take some longer family road trips with my husband and my two girls. And I just treasure them. They have been so wonderful to see so much of the United States in an up close way and kind of expose our kids to that. So, you know, I would probably say a couple of years ago we went through and saw the Dinosaur National Monument, Dinosaur.

Brian Jewell (38:48.788)
Yeah.

Michelle Stark (38:50.208)
And we loved that and we were there during COVID, which is kind of a weird experience. But that pathway, you know, kind of going through Colorado up through Utah and then up even to Idaho. We have some family up in northern Idaho, Montana area. So I'd like to take another road trip down that path and, you know, see what we could see and check out a few more national parks that we haven't been to. We do the passport thing. I'm sure I hope some people listen. The passport and the Junior Rangers. I mean, we love

Brian Jewell (38:54.964)
Sure.

Brian Jewell (39:07.294)
Yeah.

Brian Jewell (39:12.477)
Yeah, amazing. yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Michelle Stark (39:19.712)
are obsessed with doing these things. Getting our passport stamps and the Junior Rangers for our kids. They love that.

Brian Jewell (39:23.773)
Yeah. man. And you know, your kids are going to be talking to that well, well into adulthood. Those are priceless memories. So I'm so glad you're getting to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Michelle, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you. Thanks so much for spending some time with us and sharing all your insights.

Michelle Stark (39:31.616)
I hope so. I hope so.

Michelle Stark (39:39.98)
Yeah, thank you, Brian. You're doing great work. Love the show and really appreciate being asked to come and spend some time with you.

Brian Jewell (39:46.43)
Yeah, thank you.