Transcript:
Marilyn Ball: [00:00:01] I feel the best way is to be your honest, authentic self and even though they're asking specific questions, just put down what you want to put down that you feel are your strength. Sometimes you just have to be like, you know, I've worked. We worked with a lot of destinations. Here are things that we feel are really important to include in that RFP process that is not there. Here's how we would answer those questions.
Adam Stoker: [00:00:29] Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Destination Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Stoker. We have got another great show for you today, but before we dive in. I just want to remind everybody, make sure that you're following us on our different social media channels on most platforms. It's @destination_pod but again the links to that will be in the show notes wherever you listen to these podcasts. Also, I want to make sure that if you're enjoying the show and I hope you are, please leave us a rating or review wherever you are consuming these podcasts. It really helps us to continue to bring you this show on a weekly basis and continue to bring amazing guests like the guest we have today.
Really excited to introduce our guest today. Her name is Marilyn Ball. She is with an organization called Speaking on Travel and it's a really interesting organization. I'm excited to learn about it today, but let's go ahead and bring Marilyn in and chat with her. Marilyn, thank you for joining me today.
Marilyn Ball: [00:01:27] Hey Adam, thank you for having me today. I'm looking forward to talking to you.
Adam Stoker: [00:01:33] Yes, absolutely. We've got a little tradition here on the show where to get the conversation going. We are going to ask you a couple of questions that we like to get from everybody that comes on. First of all, I want to know Marilyn, if you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be? What's your dream destination?
Marilyn Ball: [00:01:50] I think right now my dream destination would be the Maldives. It sounds so exotic and yet on my radio show and podcast which is Speaking of Travel, the interview that I had with one of the foundations. They have a foundation there in the Maldives called the Sun Diva Foundation. They're doing all these eco conservation work there on these islands that are out in the middle of the water. Beautiful, very luxury and yet it's all about their community and teaching their people how to swim. There are people in the Maldives who don't even know how to swim. I feel that's a place that is almost like a birthplace of conservation and ecotourism and beautiful sunshine and crystal blue water.
Adam Stoker: [00:02:44] Oh that's awesome. Yeah, I've seen so many of the pictures and videos of the Maldives. It just looks like a dream. I think it's really impressive that one of your motivations is to go help with some of the conservation efforts. Get out in the local community because I'll be honest with you. As I look at those overwater bungalows, it would be difficult for me to want to go to the Maldives and leave the overwater bungalow unless it's to jump in the water because it just looks so amazing. It does. It looks like a really fantastic place to visit.
Marilyn Ball: [00:03:21] I'm looking forward to someday being able to go there. I can tell you that.
Adam Stoker: [00:03:25] Is that a trip you think you'll be able to tackle in the short term? Is it more of a long-term goal? What do you think?
Marilyn Ball: [00:03:31] I would say it's probably more of a long-term goal. However, because of my now-connection with the people who live there, I feel like I have a little bit better in, if you know what I mean.
Adam Stoker: [00:03:45] Well, and this is where the pitch for an in-person podcast episode might make a lot of sense. Right, Marilyn?
Marilyn Ball: [00:03:50] Oh, I'm already on that Adam.
Adam Stoker: [00:03:54] Well, good. I want to hear also Marilyn a little bit about maybe a favorite travel memory that you have or your favorite trip you've been on. Anything like that that you want to share with us?
Marilyn Ball: [00:04:03] I just feel so fortunate and grateful that I've been able to do the traveling that I've done throughout my lifetime and there are so many memories. I mean that's the thing about travel, you come back changed. When I think about really, there's so many. I go back to this one moment when I was in Italy for the first time and I was with a friend. We were in a restaurant, a little teeny restaurant in a little teeny square in Florence. I'd never been to Italy before, I was just mesmerized and everything was so dreamy. My friend went to the restaurant and our waiter, who was, I would say probably in his sixties or seventies back then wearing a tuxedo. I mean just your classic Italian stereotype of a waiter in an old restaurant. He had been waiting on us. He had been so sweet, but he came over to me and he just leaned in and said, “Your smile is so, so sweet.”
Adam Stoker: [00:05:03] That's like a movie.
Marilyn Ball: [00:05:05] It was a movie. It was like I was in a major motion picture right there in that restaurant. It just melted my heart and made me love these people so much that I've been able to go back. Well, I'm actually doing a whole series on Italy this year. That's another grab my mic and go do an on-location radio show.
Adam Stoker: [00:05:26] Nice. This isn't a tale of romance. The end of the story isn't that you're now been married for 30 years or anything like.
Marilyn Ball: [00:05:32] No, but I did go back to that restaurant many times and wrote a great review on TripAdvisor.
Adam Stoker: [00:05:39] I love it. I love it. Well, Marilyn, that sounds like an incredible experience and good for you for leaving a positive TripAdvisor review because normally it's the negative ones that end up there. It sounds like they deserved the review they got.
Marilyn Ball: [00:05:52] Absolutely. I'm a big fan of saluting all the customer service that is provided when you travel and the way that people really, really want to help you. Well, let's help them. Let's give them a positive review two thumbs up.
Adam Stoker: [00:06:09] Well, Marilyn, I'm excited to chat with you today and talk a little bit about you, your background, and your organization. I think as we get the conversation going, I'd like to have you just give us the story of your background and what led you to travel in tourism.
Marilyn Ball: [00:06:24] My background is very varied because in my early career, I was actually a monastery teacher, a little kindergarten teacher in a parent cooperative school here in Asheville, North Carolina where I've lived for many, many years and after a while teaching, just wasn't working for me. I went back to school and I decided to major in Mass Communication Journalism but really it was more electronic media focused. For me, I thought I would go into video production, editing and video production. I graduated and ended up going to work for an emerging ad agency here in Western North Carolina in Asheville, North Carolina. This ad agency that I went to work for, was emerging in the travel and tourism industry here in Western, North Carolina.
At that point in the state of North Carolina, you open a state map and it looked like it ended in Asheville North Carolina, but in fact, it went on quite a ways to the west, including the Cherokee Indian reservation. We ended up putting together a collaborative effort with all those rural counties who really didn't have a lot of money or big budget, but to teach them how to leverage their budget so that they could put out a bigger message and create a bigger brand around their destination and around the western part of North Carolina. It included golf associations and business owners and restaurants and hotels. Of course, at that time people were like thinking competition. Oh, I can't be on the same page, full-page ad that I'm participating in with a competitor. We had to really go in. This is where my teaching came in to talk about collaboration, working together, and holding hands when you cross the street. Let's all work together. I'll tell you Adam over time, people got that and it worked.
For 18 years I worked with that agency working with the Cherokee Indian reservation. They brought in a casino management company when they built their casino. We helped all those rural counties. We worked in economic development hospitality. We were the agency that people could trust, that we worked with them to help them grow. That's really where my travel and tourism came in. In 2009, my business partner retired and I opened my own company. It's called 12-12 Collaborative Solutions. I named it that because I felt collaboration was what I do best.
For the last since 2009, I have an agency myself that is made up of travel and tourism partners here in Western North Carolina. In 2013, I decided that I wasn't really sold on being an agency. I wanted to do something else and I wasn't sure what that was. I ended up going out to Portland Oregon to a summit. It was called World Domination Summit. It's put on by a guy named Chris Guillebeau. He was bringing people from all over the world to Portland and to focus on travel, adventure and service. I thought those words and ideals resonated with me. I wonder what that's about.
Really what I found at that summit were people who had given up their day job and bought one-way tickets to Southeast Asia and people who would, you know, made these big life decisions based on happiness and the passion that they felt for what they wanted to do with their lives. I started thinking I want to be like that. Lo and behold when I came back, I was at a little dinner party and a friend of mine was talking about starting a little community radio network. He was looking for content and I thought well I love to talk. I love to travel. I love my friends who travel. What if I talked to them and they told me their stories? I went on there with him. It was a 30-minute show. I didn't have any sponsors.
Every week, I had a guest and I really got into it. I felt like I have found my full potential. This is all these areas of my careers that have come together to create something that I'm passionate about. After a couple of years, iHeart Radio came on board. They brought me over. I have a radio show that airs every week here in Western North Carolina. Its podcast back then we called it just uploading to an app that was 2013. This is my 10th year. Over the last year, I've kind of weeded out my PR and marketing and really focused on this show because the people I bring on are giving us stories and information that just really is inspiring, encouraging, and educational.
Adam Stoker: [00:11:55] Oh, how cool! I actually had the opportunity to be on your show yesterday. It was such a fun experience to be able to share a little bit of my story. I want to go ahead and I said it on your show. I'm going to say it here for my audience too. I want to congratulate you on 10 years of doing this. I've been doing this show now for coming up on four years. It's been so much work to find the guest and outline the topics and put together the show, and I just kudos to you for doing this for 10 years for finding your passion and kind of rebuilding your life or at least professional life around this show. I think it's a pretty amazing milestone for you.
Marilyn Ball: [00:12:38] Well, thank you, Adam. I appreciate that. I am very inspired by so many people that I listen to them. I think this is how I want to live my life. I want to be able to have a good work and personal balance. I want to be happy. I want to be able to be engaged. This is a platform for me to do all of that. It works. It's a win-win for everybody.
Adam Stoker: [00:13:08] Great. Well, I want to go back to one of the things that you said earlier about your career because I thought it was really interesting. As you looked at these small destinations around North Carolina and realized they can't do this all on their own. They can't, with the budgets that they have be as effective as they could be if they pulled their money together. I think that's a really insightful thing. It sounds like you did it early compared to a lot of people in the industry. It goes back to what does the visitor want.
The visitor wants a great vacation and doesn't care where the city line is and doesn't care where the county line is. They want a cohesive vacation across multiple destinations, in a lot of cases, especially when you're looking at like rural America. It's going to be difficult to have an entire vacation in the city limits of one city. Right? This idea of collaboration that you put together; I think it was really forward-thinking. I'd love to hear a little bit more about how did you sell this idea to the destinations that you did and get them all on board? What kind of results did they see after trusting you with this type of a campaign?
Marilyn Ball: [00:14:22] Well, I'll start from the back. I'll kind of move back but these clients stayed with our agency for 18 years. That's almost unheard of as an ad agency. That was because we created relationships and we listened. We didn't come in and say we know what you need. We didn't know what they needed. They didn't even know what they needed. We needed to have a lot of brainstorming. Back then, the county was really all they knew where this county, where this county.
These people back then Adam, I have to tell you were traveling tourism visionaries. I felt like I was in the company of masters of people who had been around the block a few times, although they hadn't. They just had a vision and they were able to bring that vision to the table that instead of it being broken down by county and county. It really got even more into that when they created the room tax and the occupancy tax, which is where the hotels pay a certain amount of tax that goes into a budget that is only used for marketing. That's all they can use it for. Once they started to have those kind of budgets, they became in a silo even more. This is our money. We are just going to spend it on us.
A lot of what we had to do was teach. I did a lot of back then slide show presentations of what collab, I mean I used monastery methods in preschool and kindergarten methods seriously. It was like all the things we learned in kindergarten remember that-
Adam Stoker: [00:16:06] Marilyn, can I stop you really quick?
Marilyn Ball: [00:16:07] Yes.
Adam Stoker: [00:16:08] I got to ask because I actually feel like there's so many people that are listening to this that have to communicate to stakeholders or have to communicate to the people in their office or their board or whatever it is. What are some of those monastery principles that help you get a message across in a simple way and teach adults using some of these tactics that work very well for preschoolers as well?
Marilyn Ball: [00:16:33] It's definitely about cooperation. That's one of the areas that I start with is that we learn when we're kids to cooperate. We have to know how to share and how to work together when you're in the sandbox or when you're on the playground and there's only three swings. How is everybody going to be a team and make sure that everybody gets their fair share and gets to be a part of that team? Those were the principles that we really started with was to show people that their neighbors and their coworkers and there are co-colleagues in their industry wanted to grow with them. We use that old cliché about a rising tide raises. It lifts all boats. We got down to the basic fundamentals of what it looks like to work together and to partner together.
We started on a small scale. Let's put all the hotels in all these seven counties and that was one thing that was really brilliant about Western North Carolina. They started what were called host groups and what those were collaborative membership organization of counties. There were seven in the Smoky Mountain host group and all of those counties became a membership organization that shared and put together a guide. It was here all the things you can see and do in these seven counties that we call the North Carolina mountains, the mountains of North Carolina. We taught them how to create.
They did a brand around their region. That's when they all started stepping up to the table and saying, “Here's what I have to offer. Here's what I can bring to the table.” Then here's where it really became brilliant. I have to pat myself on the back because we really created this model. We created what were called coop advertising packages. I worked with the media. They were able to give me good rates. We could buy two-page, three-page or five-page. We could buy an insert; an eight-page insert for x amount of dollars that was being contributed by economic development in this region at that time.
The other participants matched that. We had a package. If you spend x-amount dollars, you're going to go in southern living, guns and whatever. All these different publications because back then that's what we were using. It was more print. Anyway, everybody came to the table and over the years it was one-stop shopping. They could buy that whole package and know that they were able to come in at a budget. They could afford and be a part of something bigger than themselves. It was extremely successful.
Adam Stoker: [00:19:34] Awesome. One of the things that you mentioned there that I thought was fascinating is you wouldn't go into a client and say this is what you need. You would listen to them, but then sometimes they didn't know what they needed. It was a real collaborative effort to figure out where should we go together. One of the flaws that I see in the industry, while I understand that it's a necessary evil, the RFP process today.
I feel like it suffers a little bit because destinations in a lot of cases will put the RFP together that's fairly rigid to what they think they need when in reality they might not be entirely sure what they actually need. Then all these ad agencies are trying to be as rigid to the process or RFP as they can and answer what might not even be the right questions as they put together these RFPs. I feel like we've now gotten to the point where we've eliminated the discussion that happens to the discovery portion of the process where you can find out what the goals and needs and desires of the community are.
You're supposed to respond to this piece of paper and submit it. You look at 12 different pieces of paper and whoever wins is who can put together the prettiest RFP response. Right? I'm wondering, as you've kind of backed off of your advertising agency career. You don't have a dog in the fight. Right? I'm wondering what would be your advice for somebody that has now gotten to the point where when they want to bring on a partner like an agency, but it's not limited to an agency. What's the best way to decide the right partner to work with for both sides?
Marilyn Ball: [00:21:27] Well, I can tell you. I think the best way to do that. Well, a couple of things I think rigid is archaic. I feel the whole RFP process and I've helped many, many people come up with an RFP that really was able to speak to who and what their mission was and who they were looking for. Coming back from an agency point of view, I feel the best way is to be your honest, authentic self. Even though they're asking specific questions, just put down what you want to put down that you feel are your strings. I went through that a lot with this one destination that just never, they always hired out-of-town agencies because of the way they were putting their RFP together. Local agencies didn't have a chance even though we were working on a level of another, out-of-town agency.
Adam Stoker: [00:22:24] Yeah.
Marilyn Ball: [00:22:25] Finally as the RPS would come out again, I would always just say I know you're going to hire out of town but look at this coop package we can put together for you on a local level that nobody from out of town can do and that's when they hired us.
Adam Stoker: [00:22:44] Oh cool.
Marilyn Ball: [00:22:45] We were happy with that. We didn't need the whole nut. We just need to get in. Once we did, they came to love us and more and more responsibilities came our way. Sometimes you just have to be like, I've worked. We've worked with a lot of destinations. Here are things that we feel are really important to include in that RFP process that is not there. Here's how we would answer those questions.
Adam Stoker: [00:23:11] Yeah. It's funny in the last six months we have changed the way we're responding to RFPs. We used to really try to get into the rigid point-by-point response and everything. Now we've got to the point where we say we've done an audit. We see what your destination needs and regardless of what you're asking for, here's what you need. The rate at which were a finalist on these are FPs is so much better than it was before. I agree with you. I think that's absolutely the way it should be.
Going back to writing the RFP, you've helped a lot of destinations, right, their RFPs. What are you putting in there that's allowing them to get a more authentic response for their destination or allows them to understand the right partner to move forward with?
Marilyn Ball: [00:24:03] I would say Adam and it's something we talked about on my show yesterday. It's storytelling like, who are you? Why do we care? There's so much competition out there. How do you stand on top of all that? What's your positioning? What do you envision for yourself? Remember I worked with seven rural counties in Western North Carolina. They all had the same product going on, beautiful mountains, beautiful water, rafting, biking, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. What we needed to be able to do and sometimes people would say, “Oh that's a conflict of interest. You're working with this county and this county. They're doing the same thing.
They're not doing the same thing. They're doing their own thing. This is the way they do it. You find that spirit, that vibe, that connection of who the people are and sometimes destinations forget that. They think that they have to go on this. I don't know just this more superficial level to bring people to visit when in fact what the audience was really looking for was who are you and why should I come visit? Am I going to feel welcome there? I think that's a big part of it right there. They miss out on recognizing that storytelling portion of the program.
Adam Stoker: [00:25:26] I think that's really interesting because what you're saying is instead of just putting something together that says, here's all the things you need to tell me at agency or website company or whoever I'm going to be hiring. Instead, here is a very clear articulation of our story. By understanding our story, you should be able to tell us how you're going to fit into it.
Marilyn Ball: [00:25:50] I can tell you, Adam, there were many, many cases where my agency had to do a mediation. We actually, you think you're an ad agency and you're doing this and excuse me, you're doing that. In fact, you are kind of a therapist and kind of you go to relationship with these people. There were times where in order to get to that place of vision, we had to do a mediation.
If there were different teams working, we worked with a big outfit or one time that had all these different messages in different ways that they saw themselves, whether it was from the retail side or the guide side or the database people's side, they all needed to come together and be on message. What is that message? Well, we didn't know. We did a series of mediations to get them to tell us what are the keywords? What is the vibe? How do you see it? Coming to one cohesive message that resonated with everybody and they could jump off of that's really important.
Adam Stoker: [00:27:01] Great. Marilyn, it's funny. I brought you on to talk about your show, Speaking of Travel. By the way, I messed up earlier saying speaking on travel. I want to make sure I clarified Speaking of Travel. We haven't really gotten to that because we've had such a fascinating conversation about destinations in the different, especially ways to work together and how to choose the right partner. I think it's been a great discussion, but I do want to talk a little more about your show, Marilyn. Tell me about some of the stories that have been told on your show that stand out to you over the years.
Marilyn Ball: [00:27:37] Well again, there’s been so many and now I have to say I'm very fortunate because I have connected with publicists and PR firms who are bringing people to my attention and saying, “Hey, here's an author or here's a composer and a conductor.” For me this travel show platform is not just about people who travel in the sense that they're digital nomads or they're out traveling. Whatever their career is or their passion, there's travel involved. I have to say that for me, one of the most meaningful stories actually was right here in my own backyard. I was at the Asheville Regional Airport and they were getting all excited about an event that was happening the next day. It turned out it was what's called the honor flight.
Adam Stoker: [00:28:32] Oh yeah.
Marilyn Ball: [00:28:33] It was actually started here in Western North Carolina. They partnered with an airline and they take veterans to Washington D. C. For an entire day of being honored-
Adam Stoker: [00:28:44] Marilyn, really quick.
Marilyn Ball: [00:28:45] Yes.
Adam Stoker: [00:28:46] My wife's grandfather did the honor flight last year.
Marilyn Ball: [00:28:49] No way. Way.
Adam Stoker: [00:28:50] It was one of the more-
Marilyn Ball: [00:28:52] You're going to make me cry.
Adam Stoker: [00:28:53] It was one of the more amazing experiences that I've been able to witness. I mean, one of the things that I thought was so fantastic is I know that for especially some of these the soldiers that fought in different conflicts, some of them didn't get the welcome home that they deserved because of the political things that were happening at the time or whatever. Watching those veterans, some of them in wheelchairs going through the crowd with everybody clapping and welcoming them home. It really is. It's an emotional experience to be able to witness that and watching my wife's grandfather go through that crowd. It was an incredibly memorable experience for me, the honor flight, what an amazing story and the fact that it started in your backyard is really awesome.
Marilyn Ball: [00:29:46] What was even more awesome was that because I did a couple of podcasts with the founder and their team and some of the veterans, they invited me to go on the honor flight.
Adam Stoker: [00:29:58] Oh wow.
Marilyn Ball: [00:29:59] That's why your kind of making me cry because to be there, these were all people from Western North Carolina. You lot of these guys were, and women were teenagers and living up on the farms out in the coves and suddenly there in Vietnam or in World War Two. They come home and they're totally dissed. They've had these lifetimes of battling all of those scars and then they come back and the airport is just thousands of people, not. We are a small town up here, but there were thousands of people at the airport cheering them on. It was so emotional. I can't even tell you what it was like. That was my big story.
Adam Stoker: [00:30:46] Oh that’s amazing. I mean these are the types of stories that you're telling on your show and it's funny. The honor flight isn't necessary, like a travel and tourism topic and yet they are traveling. They are experiencing tourism. It's one of the more unique ways that someone can do that. I think that's a great example of the unique stories that you're telling on your show.
Marilyn Ball: [00:31:11] Thank you. I'll tell you one of the most popular shows that I've done was about the wood thrush a bird. I was having a conversation with a woman who does the climate listening project. She does video productions all over the country, talking to people about climate change, not about political climate change, but just how these people in these different areas are affected. She brought on the Audubon society. We talked about the wood thrush. We had just done a whole documentary. They migrate from Belize to Western North Carolina to the Great Smoky Mountains.
They actually have a different song that they sing. Right here in the mountains way up on the higher elevations, there is acid rain and that is polluting the mountains at the top. That's affecting the wood thrush migration. The Audubon guy gave us solutions because that's one thing about my show. I always want a solution. What can we do to make it a little better? He said, “throw milkweed seeds in your yard. They eat milkweed and seeds.” Just by throwing milkweed seeds in your yard, you are helping that migration. That's not about travel and tourism, that's about a bird migrating, but it's still travel. Right?
Adam Stoker: [00:32:36] Well, the bird is the traveler in this scenario.
Marilyn Ball: [00:32:38] Right.
Adam Stoker: [00:32:39] Right.
Marilyn Ball: [00:32:39] I have a voicemail on my phone to this day from a woman who just called me Out of the Blue and said that show just moved me so much. I just wanted to tell you. That's what keeps me going like these stories are really impacting people.
Adam Stoker: [00:32:52] It's so clear that you found your passion here Marilyn and that's so great to see. I know when I started my show four years ago, I couldn't have predicted then what it was going to become and the idea or concept continues to evolve over time. You've got 10 years behind you now of probably your idea, evolving and changing and developing. What's your vision now for the future with your show? Where do you plan to go?
Marilyn Ball: [00:33:22] Well Adam, I think that's one reason why I've been attracted to what you do is that you help these destinations with their podcasts and help them get out there and get their messages and their stories out there. Doing a show like you said is a lot of work. There's a lot of research that goes on. I think I'm at a point now where the challenge of all the numbers and listeners and how many people am I reaching has become something more of a driving force for me because I want people to hear these stories like you said.
Adam Stoker: [00:34:06] Yeah.
Marilyn Ball: [00:34:07] These are the kind of stories we need to be hearing right now. They are very unique and you meet people from all over the world. I guess, what I see for my future is to be discovered. I want somebody to discover Speaking of Travel and say we want to put you up here on this big national platform so that you can reach even more people.
Adam Stoker: [00:34:30] Your hope is full syndication at some point. And then of course continuing to grow the more on-demand side of things, which is the podcast form of what you do. Correct?
Marilyn Ball: [00:34:42] Yes. Also, just FYI, like you, I have a producer and together after the honor flight we actually started working with a veteran’s organization here called Brothers and Sisters Like These. It's a writing program for vets where they would get up and tell their stories. Some of them never having told these stories ever. When COVID came, they couldn't go out and tell their stories. We started a podcast for them called Brothers and Sisters like these. We produce it, they bring the stories on. I like to see I'm going to be doing a podcast for a colleague about hemp and CBD. That's an industry here that people just don't know a lot about. It'll be an educational type of podcast where she will be the get the host and bring in the guest but I'll work with her. I want to continue to do what you do. To help destinations and people tell their stories and be able to get support and even some activism, if necessary.
Adam Stoker: [00:35:55] Awesome. Marilyn it's been so fun to chat with you today and I really appreciate you coming on. Congrats again on 10 years. I have no doubt that syndication that you're looking for should be able to come with the amazing stories that you've been telling. I'm definitely going to check out your podcast that you mentioned Brothers and Sisters like these. Is that correct?
Marilyn Ball: [00:36:14] Yes.
Adam Stoker: [00:36:17] I'm definitely going to check that out. I hope that all my listeners will too. Where can people learn more about Speaking of Travel and any of the other pieces of content that you're putting together?
Marilyn Ball: [00:36:26] Really the best place is just to go to my website which is speakingoftravel.net. There's a Speaking of Travel Instagram and Speaking of Travel on Facebook. Those are all the best places and then my contact info. I'm always happy to talk to people. Adam, I did want to just end with, I always like a solution like just give me something that I can take away a little take away.
Adam Stoker: [00:36:51] Yeah.
Marilyn Ball: [00:36:52] I guess when we talk about travel and travel trends and what we're seeing, I just want to put a big, reminder out there to your listeners to everybody that when you travel today, you need to really pack your patience and flexibility. It's something that we should be practicing all the time every day in our daily lives, just being more patient and having a little bit more flexibility. Really when you travel, you have to be patient and you have to be flexible. You are going to have an awesome time and everything will work out. Practice being patient. Practice being flexible.
Adam Stoker: [00:37:37] Don't be the lady in the TikTok video screaming at the Southwest employee. Is that what you're saying?
Marilyn Ball: [00:37:42] Bring a bag of M&M's every time you get on a flight. Give it to the flight attendant and you'll be happy.
Adam Stoker: [00:37:50] I love it. Marilyn, it has been so great to have you today. I really appreciate not only you joining me on this show, but the stories that you're telling on a consistent basis on Speaking of Travel.
Marilyn Ball: [00:38:00] Well, thank you, Adam. I hope that we can continue on, have a collaboration ourselves some time and continue to support each other on our storytelling and travel and tourism.
Adam Stoker: [00:38:12] Sounds great to me. Thanks, Marilyn.
Marilyn Ball: [00:38:14] Alright, thank you, Adam.
Adam Stoker: [00:38:16] Thanks everybody for listening. If you enjoyed today's show, please don't forget to leave us a rating or review. It really helps us continue to bring you amazing guests like Marilyn and also look in the show notes. Make sure that you can go find us on the different social media channels and join our LinkedIn group destination marketers. We're going to get a lot more active in that channel this year. I've seen a lot of you joining already. Just in a couple of weeks, I've been talking about it. I've got a couple of questions up right now that we do need answers to. If you have the answer to those questions, we'd love to do an episode with you. Check it out and we're looking forward to continuing the conversation in the LinkedIn Group destination marketers. Thanks, everybody for listening, and have a great week.
[End of Transcript]
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