Charge Forward Podcast

Secrets to Successful Career Transitions, Networking, & Selling your Business with Bobby Hopkins

• Jim Cripps • Season 1 • Episode 1

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🎧 Episode Summary: Secrets to Successful Career Transitions, Networking, & Selling your Business with Bobby Hopkins

In this must-listen episode of the Charge Forward Podcast, we dive deep into the art of effortless career transitions with our special guest, Bobby Hopkins. From Building and then Selling his Business as well as navigating several other industries, From managing a bowling alley, the wireless industry, studying law at 40, and now thriving as a travel agent—Bobby shares his proven strategies for successful career pivots.

Discover Bobby’s unique approach to meticulous planning, goal-setting, and continuous learning that makes even the most drastic career changes seem seamless. Learn why regular job interviews keep you on the cutting edge and how diverse experiences can cultivate a powerful entrepreneurial mindset.

Bobby also opens up about the vital role of mentorship and networking in his journey. Hear the inspiring story of Melanie Davenport, a mentor whose generosity was pivotal in launching his new stores, and gain insights into leveraging local Chambers of Commerce to build and maintain meaningful connections.

We also explore the emotional and psychological aspects of leaving a long-term business and the importance of having a well-thought-out next step to ensure a fulfilling life beyond work.

But that’s not all—Bobby brings his financial acumen to the conversation, emphasizing the importance of early saving, understanding compound interest, and how financial security can fuel entrepreneurial courage. Get inspired by his transition into the travel industry with Travelmation, where he found a supportive community and top-tier training programs.

Whether you're contemplating a career change or aiming to build a thriving business, this episode is packed with actionable insights and inspiring stories that will empower you to charge forward with confidence.



Jim Cripps:

Welcome to the Charge Forward podcast. I'm your host, jim Cripps, and I'd like to say a special thanks to Nick Heider and the creative team here at HitLab Studios. Today we have a special guest, mr Bobby Hopkins. Bobby, welcome to the show, thanks, thanks for having me. Absolutely Now, bobby.

Jim Cripps:

We've known each other for a while, right? In fact, I think our first conversation was the week of Christmas 2008. Wow, that was a long time ago. Yeah, I think we both had more hair and probably a different shade, right?

Jim Cripps:

So one of the things that I'm constantly impressed with you about I say constantly, but I've seen it several times and the reason I wanted to have you on the show today is you make transitions in your career almost look effortless, and really, what I mean by that is to put an analogy with. It is a lot of people struggle with the transition, or they, they lose momentum, and I think about it like shifting gears in a car. So, for those of us who do know how to drive a manual, when you push the clutch in, the goal is to go ahead and shift and be picking up speed as you go, and a lot of people that, when they push in that clutch, when they go in through that, through that transition, they miss a step or two or they slow down and it seems like, just through your career, you've done a great job of that. What do you? What do you attribute that to?

Bobby Hopkins:

Well, I appreciate that. I feel like that. The biggest factor in career and business, and particularly for myself, is that I do everything as a planner, I exhaustively plan and I do that as part of goal setting. So when you see me transition and you and you see it, I've, I've debuted that transition to the world, so to speak. Those that have all been something that has either been written down as a goal or that I've been planning for for between two and five years, and some people would say that, that, that and, uh, some people would say that, that, that that splits my focus. You know, you're working on thing a and you're planning for a thing b. I don't think it splits my focus at all. I think it's all one continuous stream, uh, of career, of job, of the ways that we make money, the things we're passionate about. I'm just planning them further ahead than some people are.

Jim Cripps:

That's very insightful. I mean, you know, I think a lot of people make those transitions on emotion and that absolutely could create more of that stall because they don't really have the plan fully baked.

Bobby Hopkins:

Well, that's true, and you know some people Well, that's true, and you know some people that they have to make that in an, in an emergency situation. Somebody told me many, many years ago and you know, I worked in the wireless industry for a long, long time they told me, they said you should go interview for another job. Ok, you mean once. No, they said you should interview every month and for the period of time from about I don't know 1995, until I opened my own practice and I knew what was out there, and so I had things that I could kind of put in the uh, in the goal setting process to look at maybe someday I want to do this, maybe someday I want to do that. And and I did that all as a part of that interviewing process.

Jim Cripps:

Nice, well and does. Does that play into the different facets of your career and I could get some of these wrong, but I think there was a bowling alley in there at some point. Circuit City Right, next Hill Sprint, obviously those were together Then staying in communications at Cricket. But somewhere along the lines you got your law degree and then now you're a travel agent, right, did I miss any you missed a few.

Bobby Hopkins:

Okay, as a result of working at Circuit City I started in the phone business and in those days I was with Bell South and I left that and I was in the GTE. Wireless became Segular, one became Verizon, so I was in, I worked for them and and at one point I managed the bowling center and and worked in the wireless business as well. So I had kind of always had law and a legal involvement in the legal profession in the back of my mind and I had turned it over. At one point I had a goal written down on that goal sheet that said go to law school. I even took the LSAT, the entrance exam, to get into law school and I never did it.

Bobby Hopkins:

And then I got older and I got in a career and I got some obligations and the idea of going back to school, while appealing, didn't seem possible, but at some point it still nagged at me on that sheet. So I applied at 40 years of age and went to law school and in addition to working you know, working full time and uh, and graduating past the bar and I and I practice a little law here and there I do some things. But it gave me a great understanding, you know, and and and enhance the entrepreneurial mindset, uh, and prepared me for other things, for, for, you know, doing some real estate and doing some some other things, um so yeah yeah, I don't know what I would it.

Jim Cripps:

Some of them to me, some of them connect and then some of them don't, true? And well, I think, I think that can be true for a lot of people. Sometimes the job is out of necessity and you know, our career paths were not that dissimilar through some of those stages in that, you know, I started out at Circuit City and wireless because everybody else hated dealing with them because it took three hours in order to, you know, process a transaction, and you know that transitioned into working for the actual telecommunication companies and that's really kind of where our paths crossed. Right, that's awesome, that's awesome. Now, these days, you're in a far different position.

Jim Cripps:

We got, uh, uh, zach is now out of the house, and you know all all those things. One of the things, on a personal note, that I I've I don't want to say been envious of, but, um, really respected is you had a code with Zach in case he ever got in trouble, yeah, or if he ever needed to quietly have you come get him out of a situation, yeah, and so do you mind sharing that?

Bobby Hopkins:

No, not at all. I mean, I told Zach when he became old enough to be going to things without us. I told Zach when he became old enough to be going to things without us. You know, that if he ever needed me to come and get him out of the situation that he should text me a particular letter. And if he ever texted it, I would come and get him, wherever he was, no matter what, and I would extract him and it would all be on me, it wouldn't embarrass him.

Bobby Hopkins:

So you know, I wanted to create a situation where, um, you know, there's just no harm, no foul, and I've always told him if you call me before stuff starts turning South, I can usually fix it. If you call me after it's turned South, maybe I can fix it, maybe I can't, uh, but it just gave him a way to text me and tell me you know I need you. And you know, after I didn't think of that idea. I stole that idea somewhere. I saw it. Somebody else did it, said that was a great parenting idea. And I did it with the kids across the street too that I was close with. I said you boys ever need Uncle Bobby to come run in you. Here's what you text me and uh, so you know, it just gives them an out Okay, okay and any, any of them ever use it?

Jim Cripps:

Not a single time.

Bobby Hopkins:

Uh, did they ever use it? But you know it did open the conversation, uh, particularly with some other people's kids, as, as they would either tell their kids about it. It opened some conversations and you know I had some, some. I told, told kids some truths that maybe their parents wanted to tell them, but you know your parents aren't as cool and and and I was just willing to say it, and so it it. It opened some doors to to do that.

Jim Cripps:

That's good.

Bobby Hopkins:

That's good.

Jim Cripps:

Again, that one just sticks out as one of those best practices, and you know, both of us having come from sales backgrounds, it's all about best practices, right? It's about you hear somebody say it better than you said it. Well, tomorrow you're saying it that way, that's right, or you're adding it to. You know, your your list of of um best practices? Nice, um, so kind of backing up a little bit, to kind of how you've navigated your career. Yeah, did you ever have a mentor? Do you have anybody that really kind of led you down the path or showed you what success looked like?

Bobby Hopkins:

You know, there are lots of people that I can point to that have mentored me in one way or another. For in my first foray into the wireless business, when I was working on commission not really working directly for a carrier but working through what we knew as the indirect channel then Sometimes they call it the agent channel but I worked for a lady named Melanie Davenport and I'd gone to college with Melanie and this was in the wild days when we were selling phones out of the trunks of cars. I mean, we were just kind of making it up. There weren't really any retail stores, the demand wasn't high enough to justify that and Melanie, at one point she opened a retail space and we moved through different retail spaces. But she really taught me a whole lot about how you would run a business, about how you sell things, about how you do customer service, about how you do the right thing. And you know one story that really illustrates that is when I was, when I was going to open my own, my own stores and and I was coming back, obviously I was going to do that in Rutherford County. I love Rutherford County and so my stores were going to be centered there.

Bobby Hopkins:

In some ways, they would have been in competition with Melanie's stores because it's a different brand.

Bobby Hopkins:

Some of her customers might have become my customers and I was concerned about that because I had a lot of respect for her and I did not want to, you know, step on her toes in any way. And so I went to her before I ever opened the stores and told her what I was planning to do, and you know I thought I might get a lukewarm response you know, we hadn't worked together in many years by that point and she said you know what? I've got a whole room full of stuff that you can use. And she said you know what? I've got a whole room full of stuff that you can use Conference tables, small refrigerators, microwave ovens, desk chairs, all this kind of stuff that you've got to have to open a retail establishment. I said well, what do you want for it? Oh, just take it, just gave it to me. Couldn't have been any warmer. And it shows me that even the person that I looked on as a mentor and a close friend, she even surprised me with her generosity all over again.

Jim Cripps:

So kind of a neat story. That's great how you have people that you know just surprise you even after you think you know them. Yeah, you know, and you went there, you know being honest and you know coming to her and letting her know ahead of time. So she probably felt a certain way about that too.

Bobby Hopkins:

Yeah.

Jim Cripps:

So I think it's crazy how many people affect where we end up Right and how we get there. Now, one of the big things for you that I've seen over the years is your ability to network, and you know we joke from time to time about you know. I think even joked earlier with you about getting you out of Rutherford County today. And I think that's that's partly because you live there, but also because that's where your network is, Not that you don't have network elsewhere, but what all are you involved in currently?

Bobby Hopkins:

You know the biggest and the best networking opportunity that exists in most places in the US that I think people in business and people in sales underutilize is the local chamber of commerce. And you know that's something that I've used throughout my career in Rutherford County. I'm a diplomat for them now volunteer for them. But even when, in the early days of the wireless business, when we were driving long distances to go sell phones and we might go to Smithville or Lewisburg or Shelbyville, just any number of towns that we might go to to sell phones I always stopped at the Chamber of Commerce and said what are the networking opportunities here? What events do you have coming up? What can I go to to meet people? Because Chamber of Commerce events are one of the few things that you can go and do and nobody's offended at all. They expect you to talk business. You know your family, they. They might not want you talking business at thanksgiving your church. They really may not want you talking business before the worship service. Certainly civic organizations, some of them, have rules against it. The chamber, chamber of Commerce is built for it. So you know that's the backbone of my network.

Bobby Hopkins:

The other thing that I do and I try to do this on a consistent basis. But I try to reach out to people three people every week that I haven't talked to in some arbitrary period of time. It might be weeks, it might be months, it might even be years, but I try to reach out. Text messaging and social media has made that easier than ever. You know, I'm friends with people on social media that I haven't talked to since high school, but it's an easy way to reach out and say catch me up on what's going on, and so I try to be very, very deliberate about it, and that's part of that networking and I try to be open to that when other people reach out to me, even if I can't imagine. Of course, in my transition to this business that I'm in now, I can help almost everybody. But even if there's no business to be done, it's still good to stay in touch, because you never know when that next change is going to need to start being planned for.

Jim Cripps:

Absolutely, and mutual acquaintances and friends of ours prepped you for and said you know, when you sell your business, you're going to have a mild case or a severe case of depression, and I think you've avoided that. Yeah.

Bobby Hopkins:

I was told that by more than one person and I have been nothing but delighted to make the change. More than one person and I have been nothing but delighted to make the change. Not that that wasn't a good business and isn't still a good business, and not that I couldn't still be happy if I were doing that business. It's changed. It's changed many, many times over the years, but there's been no depression. I have been excited and I planned for that for almost 24 months. You know I knew what I was doing.

Bobby Hopkins:

Next, I knew where I was going to do it, and so their identity was very tied to that business or that job. And you know, I think, as another point, it's dangerous to ever get yourself in that position and it's particularly dangerous when the day comes that, for either health reasons or other reasons, you can no longer do that, because if that's what your whole identity was, you struggle, you will struggle. You know, I watched my dad, who had been in a charge forward kind of person all his life and he had been in emergency management and you know, know he retired and he was retired 90 days and he called me and said I've got to go find a job because he needed to work and he needed a mission and and for him it was always about work. I try to make mine about networking and service and some other things, so that when the day comes that I do hang up the business side of things, I've got something to do Absolutely Well, even Nick Hyder, who owns this studio.

Jim Cripps:

One of the smartest things I've ever heard him say is that entrepreneurs need to build their personal brand, that other things are pieces of or off of, as opposed to building the company as your brand, yeah.

Jim Cripps:

You know, and you know I've, in my career, I've struggled with that. You know I'm one of those people that I have a hard time figuring out where that line is between who I am and what I do. And you're right, it makes transitions much harder, yeah. And what I do? And you're right, it makes transitions much harder, yeah. So, again, I think that's one of the things that that makes your transitions so much smoother.

Jim Cripps:

And, uh, you know the methodical side of it, the fact that you, you plan them out for so long. In fact, I remember, you know, when you called me and we sat down that day at um street coffee and you said all right, jim, I want to package up and sell this dealership before the end of the year. Now, that could be one month or it could be. In this case it was early March. So you know, good, right at 10 months, when we walk through that process and getting that one packaged up and sold, is there anything that surprised you that was either harder or easier or more important than you'd previously thought, or maybe that had calculated, you know.

Bobby Hopkins:

I wrestled with that sales decision. I wrote my business plan when I was 48 years old. It took me two years to go into business. So when you talk about transitions, all that time I was working at another job and I and I was focused, knowing where this was going, and I wrote that business plan to be in it for 10 years. I was in, you know, I was supposed to sell and and I almost did it like clockwork. I mean, it really happened the way I wrote the business plan. I know they don't all happen that way, but it was just interesting to me.

Bobby Hopkins:

When you talk about surprises number one it surprised me how quickly buyers came forward. I thought that I'd have to look a lot harder for a buyer. What I had to look a lot harder for was somebody that satisfied the criteria of, you know, the right price and the right and the right that they were going to take everything I didn't want to. You know, I didn't want to sell, I didn't want to piecemeal and, as you said, when we talked, I knew I wanted to package it up and that there would be a day when I would walk away from it. So that was a little surprising. And then, once the word got out that they were for sale, it surprised me how many people that they called me, and it turned out to be a good thing in the end. It's always better to have a lot of people that want to buy something. It creates some price competition.

Jim Cripps:

Sure, Well, I remember that was a point of hesitation for you too, especially in the beginning. You said you know, I don't want this to get out Right, I want to strategically talk to a couple of people. But then really things started happening once it got out Right. And you know, I think that's why it ended up as good a deal as it did. It absolutely is one. I think that's why it ended up as good a deal as it did.

Bobby Hopkins:

It absolutely is one, you know, and I needed my employees to feel good about the process when it got out too. So you know, that was a whole other thing that had to be managed, and if there was a point of sadness, depression, any of that, it was a couple of my employees had been with me the whole run. Sure, I mean, they just became part of my family, and so I was very careful to try to put them in the right spot and in a good spot. As it turns out, neither of them still work for that company. They've both gone on to do other different things. Sure, and positive things, but yeah, it's sad leaving them.

Jim Cripps:

Oh yeah, I mean they do become part of the team and just part of your world, and in a lot of ways, I mean your success is because of them, right, and you know. So whether they would have left beforehand or whether you sold the company, taking care of them is always important in my opinion. Sure, if you could go back and we'll have a couple of different questions along this but if you could go back and tell yourself something about packaging up and selling your business yourself, something about packaging up and selling your business, if we could go back to say that day that we sat down at the coffee shop, is there something you'd go back and either warn or say, hey, this is going to be more important than you think it's going to be. Would you give yourself advice about that?

Bobby Hopkins:

You know, if I could go back to the very beginning of opening my business, back to the very beginning of opening my business, there's books of things that I would tell myself, but it specifically relates to being able to sell the businesses. I've coached a lot of people in business. It's always happened informally. My wife keeps saying I need to charge for it and I'm like, well, you know, it's just something that's interesting to me. I love looking at businesses and so I do try to pour that advice into younger entrepreneurs and say these are the things to do. And so to get to the answer of your question, if I could tell myself anything, I would almost go back to day one and always be preparing to sell the business.

Bobby Hopkins:

You know, I did things.

Bobby Hopkins:

Once I realized I was going to sell it, I went through the stores and I took all the stuff out of the stores that didn't need to be in there and I took it and some of it I sold, some of it I junked, but you know, the stores were so much lighter.

Bobby Hopkins:

Once you got all the stuff out, I went through the inventory that we had and we had some stale inventory that we had had for years and you know, I packaged it up and got rid of it. I sold it as a batch because when it came time when everything happened, it happened fast, sure, and if I had not been doing that kind of as I went, I should have done a whole lot more of it. I had almost a hundred thousand dollars worth of phones that had to be returned and I had to wait on the vendor to credit it back. But that was too much to have at the end of the, you know, at the end of the run, I should have went over that down a lot sooner, right well, I think it's kind of like cleaning your house or a spring cleaning, and when it's when it's your business, sometimes we don't have that that same feel.

Jim Cripps:

Or you know, you've got you have owners that aren't in their stores all the time, right, and then we get used to things. Yeah, you know, I remember, if we backed up 15 years ago an old sign up at the top of the trialsdale location and we'd walked past that we've done our own audits probably 15 times, right, nobody looked up that high, yeah, you know.

Bobby Hopkins:

So that what we can get used to is just amazing sometimes, yeah, you have your own blind spots and and I used to I used to challenge people to to managers and reps go in and look at that retail space, but even they, they just had blind spots, and so it was much more useful if I could have a friend in a different business come in, and I would. The times I did it, I would always say look at this business and understand why everything is where it is. If you don't understand it, ask me. And so, as they would go through, we would. Really one of the things that came up we didn't have seating for people to sit down in a chair in the lobbies. We needed that. We have customers that just can't stand at a counter, and so, even though it wasn't on the plan, I went and bought some chairs and put in each store, and so that was a blind spot that we just didn't see.

Jim Cripps:

Sure, I think that comes from Mel, because we noticed the same thing. It might be. I love it. I love it. What advice do you give Zach? You know, as he's growing up he's in college these days, you know, looking at what kind of career path he's going to go down as somebody who's both worked at jobs, worked at long-term jobs, then stepped out and become really a serial entrepreneur in the last decade. What advice do you give him?

Bobby Hopkins:

Um, you know, beyond the advice of of the, the goal setting piece of the puzzle, um, the advice that my dad gave me and I did all the way through my career. I started working for money at 15. You know I had worked, obviously I had we. I grew up on a farm so we had worked as little kids doing little kid things and sometimes not so little kid things, but that's right. The advice he gave me was start saving early. And you know, you hear it If you, if you Google anything to do with finances, they say start saving early the value of compound interest.

Bobby Hopkins:

But for Zach and and his first job, why do I have to enroll in this 401k? And I said because I'm making you and I'm subsidizing your lifestyle right now. So you have to do it. And that's just the. It's just the best advice you can give anybody starting out Put that money away and never touch it, because when you get to be 50, 55, 60, you're able to look at that steady, you know bit of money and you're able to be a little more daring.

Bobby Hopkins:

It makes you a little more fearless because you know that, okay, worse comes to worse. I might not live too high on the hog, but I've got some money saved and set aside and I think that's a great place for an entrepreneur to be, to know that. You know, I've done that all along and I've done it even in the lean years. Even in the leanest of years, I still did it.

Jim Cripps:

Do you think that helped you make the transition between working for somebody and then you know, open your own company?

Bobby Hopkins:

Oh, there's no question. There's no question it did. Own company? Oh, there's no question. There's no question it did because, um, people I mean people that are trying to retire, that don't have savings in there and are dependent on the government's going to save us or you know, it's just not going to happen, right, you can't live on that. And when you look at what, uh I listened to a presentation about by uh, the mayor of Murfreesboro this morning, and somebody was talking about a tax increase from 2018 that was earmarked for a specific purpose. The question was are you going to roll that tax increase back? Well, unfortunately they can't, because inflation they're holding the line, doing the same services, but inflation has grown so much they can't afford to. And that's the same thing in our personal economies. Inflation's going to get you, and so don't count on that small amount of money to help you.

Jim Cripps:

Now I know you've got some real estate holdings and those types of things. You've diversified. What is your favorite? I mean, obviously you like 401k as a as an investment strategy. You stick with mutual funds. What if you, if you were given Zach advice on his what? What would that look like?

Bobby Hopkins:

Well, I, you know, I I do stick with mutual funds for the most part, and I pay somebody to make those decisions. I did it myself for for a lot of years and I pay somebody to make those decisions. I did it myself for a lot of years and I finally decided I did not need to be focused on that. I wanted to have somebody that did it full time, that looked at it every day, all day, and then, as another thing, I started investing in real estate. I did that about the same time that I started my business and have consistently done that, year by year, as I find a property.

Bobby Hopkins:

Of course, it's hard to find them. There are a lot of people that that's a part of their puzzle, but I've added a number of them. There are a lot of people that that that's a part of their puzzle, um, but you know, I've added a number of them. I've got, you know, six units now and, uh, they stay full. I have a waiting list of people that that want to move into Rutherford County and and as soon as I have a place and I'm like, well, don't wait on me to find one Sure.

Jim Cripps:

And are you predominantly in residential?

Bobby Hopkins:

You're in commercial, it's all residential so far I've looked at some commercial pieces but so far I haven't found one that ticked all the boxes. I do have some realtors that have some searches laid out. I've looked at a lot of things, not that are strip centers but are more office park kind of things yeah, nice.

Jim Cripps:

Well, now that you're a travel agent, now that you've you've made that transition, um, I saw just last week you made one of the top lists at travelmation is that right yeah and so you're doing things a little bit differently than a lot of people and stick to um, I don't want to say tried and true, but the easy stuff your, your Disney and your your, uh, local cruises or, you know, outside of the United States or inside the United States, type cruises. What, uh, what, what's your brand? What are you doing there?

Bobby Hopkins:

Hmm, Well, right now, uh, I'm doing a little bit of everything. I have a wide variety of stuff Because I've been to Europe so many times and I understand Europe so well, I kind of very quickly got into a niche that I knew how to do Europe travel. But I'm really doing a little bit of everything. I couldn't put my finger on one specific thing. Uh, the travel business is an interesting business. Uh, the average person who gets into the travel business about 60% of them wash out in the first two years because they don't treat it like a business.

Bobby Hopkins:

I, if you ask me what I'm doing differently, I'm really trying to treat it like a business. I get up, I put my shoes on, I go upstairs and go to work and I try to be working the whole time that I've set aside to be there and that work consists of things that are different for me. I'm doing lots more work on social media. I'm doing lots more work with graphics and layout. I've had to learn some new skills, which I think is healthy and good. As you get into, I said I'm entering the second half of life and one of my smart friends asked if I was planning to live to be 140. And I said I'm not quite that old yet, but uh, uh, yeah, I've had, I've learned a new skill set. Um, I'm sure Europe will always be a big part of my, of my package. That I'll, that I'll be selling, but I'm doing lots of all inclusives. Uh, I'm doing uh, lots of, uh, just regular Caribbean type cruises. Um, so, yeah, okay.

Jim Cripps:

To me it seems daunting, and maybe maybe your customers feel the same way. Um, to me it seems daunting to plan out a, you know, two week, three week European vacation, multiple countries, multiple, uh, you know types of currency, trains, uh, planes, automobiles, like all the things. But you seem to have fun with it.

Bobby Hopkins:

I do, and that's part of what drew me to that as a career change is how much I enjoyed planning my own trips. And one of the interesting things about a travel agent because I've had somebody just yesterday. She said I don't understand your business plan. Who uses a travel agent? Why don't people just go book it on their own? And I said well, there is more travel booked through travel agents now than at any point in history and it's because the travel industry has grown so much and people don't want to put together even a simple vacation, even an all-inclusive vacation, where they would really go to one place and put their credit card in and book the trip. They just don't want to do that because they don't want to learn all those things.

Bobby Hopkins:

And if they are the kind of person and I do work with some customers who are the planning-type person a travel agent is a great resource because if they're the kind of person who wants to pick out the specific hotel, the specific time they get there, the specific make of car that picks them up at the airport and drives into the hotel, I can help them do all that because I can send them all those choices and say these have all been vetted. When you get there, that's what it's going to look like, and so there's any number of ways. There are a lot of tools. Of course, the Internet's a fantastic tool, and I've set my office up where I've got three big screens, and so sometimes I have multiple things open as I'm planning one of those trips, and then I can drop all that down into a simple itinerary with all the confirmation numbers, all those things in one space, and yeah, it could be daunting, but I think I'm equal to the task?

Jim Cripps:

Yeah, no, absolutely.

Jim Cripps:

Well, I think it's your attention to detail too.

Jim Cripps:

You know, I think, one of the misconceptions out there, you know, because I called you around I think it was on January 1st and said, hey, I'm looking at this cruise, we're thinking about taking a cruise for the spring break, right, and, and I didn't know how it worked, right, I didn't know if it was going to cost me more money or less money, or you know, to use you and that kind of thing. And so I gave you the cruise, said here's, here's what it is, and then you booked it for less than I could find it, even even on the January 1st, new year's special Right. And you know, then you also knew all the things that that came along with it, in that you need to book your dinner time, you need to do this, you need to do that, and so I think some of it is just a misconception that it's going to cost me more money to use a travel agent, right, and at least in my experience, it did not. I mean, what do you see across the board?

Bobby Hopkins:

Well, you're already paying a travel agent anytime you travel. It is already baked into the price that the hotel charges you, the rental car company charges you, even the airline charges you. It's already built in. We're compensated by those things that we book. So it's already in there and, all things being the same, it should never cost you more to use a travel agent.

Bobby Hopkins:

Now there are travel agents who will tell you I'm going to charge a planning fee, it's going to cost you $250 or $500 for me to plan this multi-state road trip for you, make all these reservations, and that's certainly valid. They need to disclose that up front. Obviously, with airline tickets, airlines typically don't pay a travel agent to book their tickets. That's very old school that they used to do that. But there are travel agents that will tell you I'll book your airfare, it's going to cost you $25 a ticket. That's my charge for doing it. That's certainly valid. They should just disclose that up front. At this point I don't charge anything and I can't imagine that I ever would. I see this business as a 36-month timeline. In 36 months, all things being the same, I think I will have been able to replace the money that I was earning from my cricket business. So I think I can grow this business to that point and I won't have any employees. That's right.

Jim Cripps:

Well, and you don't have retail locations.

Bobby Hopkins:

You don't have all the things that come along with that, and so the quality of life is different it is, and, and at some point I may, I may have an office away from the house just to have some separation, because it is way too easy to get involved in playing with the dog and realize I've wasted half the afternoon, uh, that I should have been working on quotes and sending them out, or marketing or any of the other things, uh. So I may do that, or I may find a coworking space that I can, I can, rent. I don't know, we'll see that. That will be another transition.

Jim Cripps:

That will be another transition. So if you were going to give advice to, say, somebody that was considering becoming a travel agent, I know you looked at a lot of different companies, a lot of different models and I guess start us with why you chose Travelmation.

Bobby Hopkins:

Okay, there are many people that are in the travel business that will tell you if you want to be a travel agent, go, start you an LLC, start you a corporation and start calling and setting yourself up as a travel agent. It's doable, it's not complex. You can get an IATA or a CLIA card. Those are just associations that you become a member of and you can call and you can start setting up who you want to work through, right, call Disney, and I don't know exactly what Disney's process is. It will no doubt be more complex than some other people's will, sure, but some of them are really really real simple. And once you sign up as a, as a travel agent, you send them the tax form so that if they send you money, they can send you a 1099. Uh, once you do that then then you're able to sell that particular brand, that particular cruise line, whatever fill in the blank for whatever it is. So I knew I didn't want to do that because it was going to be limited in what I could sell by what was set up. I knew I wanted to find either a franchise or an entity that had already done that part of the work for me, right? So second thing that's big in the travel business is there's lots of network marketers, the multi-level marketing kind of thing, where it seems like it's almost more important that you find somebody to sign up than you actually sell any travel. Sure, I don't know. That's not for me. I've looked at those businesses because I love looking at businesses. Some people do really really well in them. It's just not what I wanted to do. I wanted to sell travel. I wanted to help people's dreams come true is really what I wanted to do. That's the real thing that gets me excited and gets me out of bed in the morning. So I looked at those and could easily say neither of those paths work for me. Then I looked at franchises. Now, most of the franchises in the travel space. They vary in price from I think the least expensive one I looked at was about $5,000. They've already done some of the heavy lifting for you. They've already got these relationships in place with different things. Some of them are cruise centric. Cruises a lot of times are the kind of the low hanging fruit, because those cruise ships, man, they've got to turn over every week and they need everybody. They need the biggest sales force they can have out there, absolutely. So some of those franchises are centered around that. Some of them are more general travel experience, where you can kind of pick what, what your niche is going to be, and and and and go with it.

Bobby Hopkins:

Um, I didn't really want to, I didn't really want to use the franchise model. I had looked at some franchises as I was looking at transitioning out of the uh, out of the wireless business and into something else and, uh, I just just didn't. I didn't like it. I didn't like the continued stream of payments that you sometimes had to make and I knew that I needed to start this really lean so I could build it the way that I wanted to build it.

Bobby Hopkins:

And so I had a really, really good friend who I had known for many years and she had some other career stuff that she had done and she had homeschooled her kids. I just loved both. She and her husband thought they were great folks and she had consulted with me because she had had some problems, some problems, uh, with a travel agency that that she was involved with and I, you know she she had landed at travelmation and I could tell from her social media posts that she loved it and she had done almost all of our personal travel arrangements Cause once I realized somebody was going to do that hassle for me, right? All I had to say was here's what I want to go do and here's when I want to go do it. And boom, it magically appears and all I got to do is give you my credit card number. I'm in, right. And so she had done that for us for I don't know how many years.

Jim Cripps:

And you guys took some big boy vacations too. We did.

Bobby Hopkins:

We did. We had been to Africa, we had been to Europe, we'd been down the river cruises, I mean we'd done some stuff. And she was really good at me saying we've got eight days here that we can get away, I don't know where we want to go, and she would come up with two or three ideas. And so that was where I kind of got interested in the planning piece of it was when she was able to give me those options and whatnot. But anyway, I'm making this story way too long. I called her and I said if you had it to do over again, would you go with Travelmation from the beginning? And I did that for everybody I know that's in the travel business. Some of them didn't even bother to text me back because I think they knew I mean, they knew that probably must be thinking about getting in the travel business and so maybe they didn't want to have that conversation. I don't know. But she was very enthusiastic about it and helped lead me through some of the questions I should be asking and things I should be looking at, and it was the right space, it was the right place.

Bobby Hopkins:

Travelmation is focused on training and they provide training opportunities every week. I've got the opportunity just to learn about six different vendors, and they might run the gamut from a cruise line to a hotel group, it could be just any number of things, and that's every single week, all year round. So I spend that day learning, and then there are tons of other opportunities to learn, and so, even though it's a little like drinking out of a fire hose when you start trying to learn the travel business, I felt like they were uniquely positioned. They also offer certifications. They offer certifications in group travel. It's really important. That's the first one that I earned. They offer certifications in luxury travel.

Bobby Hopkins:

So for your high-end client, how do you sell to them? What kinds of properties are involved in that? How do you sell to them? What kinds of properties are involved in that? And then they offer the newest certification is accessible travel right.

Bobby Hopkins:

And so for a parent who has, maybe, a child with autism, very specific needs, very specific things for them to be able to travel how does a person who uses a wheelchair travel? What does that look like and what places are set up for that? And so I think it's really says something about who Travelmation is at their heart, that that's something that's important to the company and then just the collaborative nature. There's about 2,000 Travelmation travel agents across the US and I have yet to meet one that didn't offer to help me in any way that they could. And so if I have a client, if you call me and you say Bobby, I really want to go to Namibia, go to Namibia. I mean I'd have to find Namibia on a map first, but I have resources and I promise you somebody in Travelmation has sent a client to Namibia and so they can educate me, so then I can provide you good service.

Jim Cripps:

That's great. That's great, bobby. How does somebody, how does somebody find you, how do they work with you?

Bobby Hopkins:

Um, well, you know they can. They can find me on Facebook. Um, I'm, I'm, you know. They can find me under my personal name and and and. Uh, send me a message there. They certainly can call me. My number is 615-533-2951. They can send me a text, they can email me. It's bobbyhopkins at travelmationnet. That M in the middle of travelmation messes people up. People think it should be travelmation. Sure, they came up with that because obviously we're in the travel business and we are a big partner to Disney and so animation. They shortened it and they came up with Travelmation.

Bobby Hopkins:

That's how the company was named and my website is travelmationnet forward slash Bobby Hopkins. So there's a theme there?

Jim Cripps:

No, no, I love it. I love it. There no, no, I love it, I love it. And you know, probably the most excited I saw you get, you know, facial features, those types of things. The whole time we were talking is when you were talking about, um, making somebody's dreams come true that dream vacation you know, and I think maybe that's that's what um kind of sparked that with your travel agent, because sometimes you didn't know where you wanted to go and she brought ideas.

Bobby Hopkins:

It absolutely is true. And you know, everybody's dream is their dream, and even a regular old vacation. I just quoted one for some folks and it's not my dream, it's their dream, right, and they were. They're so excited about where they're going and what they're doing and it. I mean, if you gave it to me free, I'm probably not going there, but it's what they wanted to do, sure and and, and I can get excited for them.

Jim Cripps:

Uh, and that and that's fun, and I'm and I can't wait to see their pictures because I know they're going to have a great time. I love it. Well, Bobby, thanks for coming out and spending some time with me today. Give somebody a best practice about their goal board or their goals.

Bobby Hopkins:

Where did you put them? How did you write it down? If you don't write it down, you've just got a wish, and wishes are fun, but it's just a wish. It's got to be written down and no matter how far in the future it is, you have to back up until you get an action that you take today that moves you toward whatever that goal is, and you can do it with anything. I mean, I've challenged people to try me and then I just back them down until we get. What am I doing today to get to that goal?

Jim Cripps:

that's five years down the road, so write it down, write it down, then make the steps backwards, be methodical about it and then take action today. Yeah, I love it, bobby. Thanks for coming out. Absolutely. Have a great day. Team, thanks so much for joining us for the very first episode of the Charge Forward podcast. Look forward to other amazing guests. And, as always, thanks so much for joining us for the very first episode of the Charge Forward podcast. Look forward to other amazing guests. And, as always, thanks so much to Nick Heider and his amazing team at the HitLab studios. And thank you to our sponsors, sense, custom Development and Charge Forward Solutions. Have a great day. See you soon.