In this episode, Namaan and Stephanie reveal their top travel hacks and tips from years of business travel and 80+ countries visited. In addition, they share their craziest travel horror stories – and how they survived.
It’s an entertaining yet informative end to our 4-part travel series. If you haven’t listened to the previous 3 episodes, go back and check those out (links below)!
Relevant Links:
- Top Business Travel Tips
- Best Airline for Consultants: Delta or United?
- Free delivery on your first Instacart order over $35
Previous Episodes
- Part 1: Best Travel Credit Card Strategy for 2023
- Part 2: Best Travel Credit Cards for Business Travel
- Part 3: What is Management Consulting Travel Really Like?
Transcription: The Horrors and Glories of Business Travel
Stephanie Knight
Welcome back to Strategy Simplified. We’re excited to dive back into our series on travel. This is the fourth and final episode in our series. We started in episodes one and two talking about the points game in general, and how to maximize your efforts through co-branded credit cards. In episode three we heard from coach Tripp as he told us his personal experiences with consulting travel. And today you get to hear from Namaan and me for a fun storytelling discussion as we share our own triumphs and horrors in travel. I hope you enjoy the discussion.
MC: Namaan Mian
Welcome to another episode of Strategy Simplified. Namaan here joined by Stephanie. We’re so excited to be with you today for the fourth and final installment of our consulting travel series. Today, both Stephanie and I are going to be sharing a few of our craziest travel stories. And some of you may be shocked and horrified by the nature of business travel. Some of you may think that we’re complaining, because you’ve had it way worse than we have. I’m sure that both types of people exist in the audience today. But we’re just excited to have a conversation about some of our personal craziest travel story. Stephanie, how are you doing today, and are you recording this from an airport or not?
Stephanie Knight
Well, for audio quality purposes, of course, I am stationed at home in my controlled environment. However, I have racked my brain for not only professional but for some personal stories as well. At the end of the day travel is travel. Of course, it comes with a disclaimer that, at least the way that my brain works, I completely filter out to the worst of the worst. So I had to go back, I asked my parents, I reflected on some journal entries. And so we brought some stuff into this conversation. But I’m excited to learn more about you, Namaan, through your stories and to be able to just share about some of our various experiences.
MC: Namaan Mian
Oh my gosh, Stephanie, I’m sorry that I gave you travel PTSD, or unearth that for you in the basis of preparing for this episode.
Stephanie Knight
It’s all for the benefit of others. Right?
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MC: Namaan Mian
It is. Well, how about we dive in because I’ve been waiting all week to hear some of your craziest travel stories. Kick us off with the best one. This is a competition for me. I want to see if I’ve got the best one or if you’ve got the best one here.
Stephanie Knight
Oh my gosh, I feel like based on that premise that you’re already going to win. I think instead of what was the craziest combination of circumstances, I think I have, in essence, maybe even a more of a set of vignettes around different learnings, different periods and times and experiences. I look across this list and the one that really sticks out to me, especially given the fact that we’re at the end of this consulting travel series, is thinking back to my time working for a large national insurer.
And I was working at one of their call centers in Indiana. I’m from Indiana. And on a week to week basis. It was one of those projects that had a pretty consistent schedule. Expectations were pretty well set, not a lot changed from week to week. And so it became a personal race and a challenge from week to week. You’re talking about story challenges. I can’t help but think about this engagement where I timed myself every week, how long did it take from my computer open at the client site in the team room to sitting on the airplane. And I will tell you that driving at the speed limit, it was pretty close. You could get from the client site to the parking garage in about eight minutes. And my best ever time, of course you’ve got transit time, getting to the car, getting out of the car, going through security, getting to the gate and then actually boarding the plane. Seventeen minutes was my was my top my top score.
MC: Namaan Mian
That’s pretty impressive.
Stephanie Knight
Anyway, I kind of liked that adrenaline of even like living on the edge. It’s kind of like well, I’m gonna be able to get my best time if I can board at the end of the boarding process. So that means that I’m playing with fire to make it there by the time the boarding doors close 15 minutes before departure, as any good traveler knows for most airports and most airlines. So I kind of dipped my toe in the water closer and closer to the fire, week after week after week and kind of whittled it down. And those types of more controlled environments are the ones that my brain is happy to reflect on, as opposed to maybe where kind of everything went wrong. Or maybe there’s some times where everything goes right. So I don’t know Namaan, If you think about across your travel experiences and what you thought your best story was, is it a story of glory and positive things happening, or is it a story of struggle and challenge?
MC: Namaan Mian
Oh, it’s certainly a story of struggle and challenge. But also, I would say, a little bit of travel skill and overcoming the challenge to the struggle. And so I’ll get into it in a few minutes. And you can tell me if it was skill, or just dumb luck. But those to me are the the travel war stories, if you will. The airline, the airport, the weather, the mechanics, everyone’s conspiring against you. And you’ve got to get to New York, or LA or Singapore, or wherever you have to be by a certain time, and you just got to figure out a way to make it happen. I do have to say, though, Stephanie, I play the same game with myself, like how long from like, laptop down or front door closed to like, at the gate or at the airport.
My personal goal, if I’m not driving myself to the airport is can I make it through security and to the gate before the person who dropped me off has left the airport premises. So when it’s my partner, I can actually track her location on my phone. As I’m walking, I’m like, Okay, did I beat her to the gate before she left the airport premises. So I think sometimes you just got to keep it interesting for yourself when you’re traveling so much, and come up with these little games to keep yourself mentally engaged. And I’ll also just say, one of my other travel pet peeves is just getting to the gate and having to sit there. So like getting to the gate and timing it perfectly to where it’s time to board. And you’re there 15 to 30 minutes before the gate closes is perfect for me. I know have planned everything right if that’s what’s happened.
Stephanie Knight
Absolutely. I mean, we started this podcast series by setting up the premise that a lot about travel is a game, right? Are you going to decide to really play, are you going to maximize what flights you take, and airlines you fly, and what loyalty programs you’re part of, what credit cards you have to be able to maximize your personal experience, your personal travel and let your professional efforts be leveraged in that way. It’s the same thing as you think about than actually having to go through the process. And the reality is, it is a necessary evil. I mean, there are there are some but they are even in this post COVID world, few and far between, no travel models. So at least most everybody’s back to a hybrid model, if not full travel. And so it’s something that you just have to get used to. And there’s little things that you learn pretty early on, right kind of, well, I’m making decisions on week to week about what time of day and what days I fly. Maybe I’m going to make those decisions based on when business travelers fly versus when leisure travelers fly.
MC: Namaan Mian
Absolutely.
Stephanie Knight
Because you don’t want to be in the line with any leisure travelers. They don’t know what they’re doing, you get really frustrated really quickly. But everybody on that Monday 5:15am flight is going to have their expertly packed carry on, they’re going to know whether or not they’re going to be able to put it into the overhead or have to you know pink tag it so to speak. That’s the Delta lingo right? But you know, kind of gate check it. And kind of everybody’s there for like, just in time and it’s a lot different from I remember when I traveled to, as a part of an engagement, I got to attend a convention in Orlando.
MC: Namaan Mian
Oh my gosh, the worst city in the world for business travel.
Stephanie Knight
Exactly. But getting in and out of Orlando, I didn’t I didn’t realize it going, and so I built the buffer time in leaving just because I couldn’t get through the lines efficiently. I couldn’t navigate through the crowds efficiently. I couldn’t even get through the rental car process efficiently. It’s just like everything was catered towards the leisure traveler. And you know, each of us have experienced and then all the listeners as current or future business travelers, you want to participate in those services and try to go to those locations, and even schedule your your flights based on what’s going to be most efficient effective for you. And yeah, not be interrupted in that way.
MC: Namaan Mian
Absolutely. I love those 5:30, 6:00am flights, not only for the reasons that you said, but because I know the plane is going to be there. Even if the last fight coming in the night before got in at 3:00 for 4:00 in the morning, it’s ready to go for the 5:30am flight. Because the the delays compound throughout the day So, if I’ve got to be somewhere, I’m traveling next week to LA and I just now a couple days ago change my flight to the 6am flight, the first flight out of the city i’m based in because I know the planes gonna be there. And there’s just been too many issues happening lately. And I’ve got to get there for a client engagement. So the 6am plane is the one I’m getting on, and I’ll spend a few extra hours in LA, but that peace of mind is worth it to me. And then the other thing that I’ll just say, along with that is, depending on the time of year, I’ll try to be really strategic about where I scheduled layovers. So I’ll try and avoid O’Hare in the wintertime if I can. I try and avoid some other places in the south and southwest during the summer because of thunderstorms if I can, not always perfect. But these are all these, like extra little variables that come into play as you’re, you’re trying to optimize your travel life.
Stephanie Knight
Absolutely. It’s kind of like, okay, I’ve got this upcoming engagement I’ve got I’m gonna do four months in Toronto, right. And it was four months over the summer in Toronto. And it sounds really cool. It wasn’t that far away, you know, geographically from Minneapolis. But oh, yeah, you’re going to a different country. And you got to go through the customs process and you know, making those decisions about what data to fly, what time to fly. Okay, fly early in the morning, because then the planes there. Oh, also make sure you bake in the de icing process, of course. And the extra time that that’s going to take every single time that you leave, but then to the season traveler, then you really you can get into the nuance, okay. And and for for those of you kind of uninitiated listening is may sound crazy, but it’s not. It’s not crazy at all for the consultant to look at. Okay, what’s the actual plane being flown? What’s the setup? Is this? Yeah, how big is how biggest business class is? Or is this a two by two kind of regional jet? You know, maybe you end up with preferences over not only even the large scale, you know, business, the large scale airlines do you like delta versus United. But you could end up with preferences one level down to I like Sky west or Republic, right, kind of the the different regional carriers that operate under the brand names of the, you know, major airlines. It’s just, obviously, air travel is big business in and of itself. There’s a lot of different ways for you to get from place, place to place. If you’re thinking about you know, if you’re working in or living in Europe, and then you’re debating air travel versus rail travel, even within the you know, different parts of the US, you could be debating, air travel versus car rental, versus in some places, you can do train travel here, but not very frequently. And all of those have different pros and cons. And all of those have different ways to optimize your schedule gain efficiencies. But once you once you start living that life, once you do it repetitively, there’s a lot of data to get into, there’s a lot of detail that you could, you could make yourself familiar with to be able to continue to optimize travel, gain those efficiencies, or you can just do as we heard, Tripp talk about last week, you could just email the American Express, you know, kind of consult concierge, concierge email and say, Hey, book me every Monday and every Thursday pm from x city to y city. And then you just see what you get. There are some people but I would say it’s a it’s a, it’s a shrinking minority, who are just going to go with that, that straightforward approach. Because with the little bit of extra effort to try to plan ahead and to optimize and to think of this as a game as well as the points generating aspect. You can just continue to improve your experience and have fun with this necessary evil of business travel.
MC: Namaan Mian
Absolutely. And that’s such a good point that you make Stephanie around. Okay, what plane is, is running this route at this particular time of day. I’m based in Austin. And you know, we’re kind of large city but we’re not a hub city. So you’ve got this like unique mix of your regional jets and your mainline jets that are flying out of here. And so the the less popular times of date are on a route, let’s say it is Austin to LA or San Fran San Francisco, right, the 6am flight may have the regional jet and the midday flight might have the mainline jet. And if I’ve got time flexibility, I get to decide, okay, what’s more important to me when I land, the on time percentage of that particular time, or the fact that I’ll fly the the mainline United flight as opposed to the Republic airways or the sky West flight instead. So, you know, that’s, that’s something that I’m always calculating and balancing. And if you really want to get in the weeds, sometimes what I’ll do is I’ll go on and I’ll check upgrade availability on certain routes, and then say Oh, Pay? Well, there’s this many upgrade seats available on this this flight or this time as opposed to the other. So you’re doing some quick math, you know, what are the chances that my complimentary upgrades going to clear on this flight or not? And so that’s perhaps one of the reasons actually to take a flight with more leisure travelers. So your your upgrade clears. But then again, you’ve got to put up with the frustration. So it’s just a balancing act to figure out okay, what do I want today? And that might change tomorrow.
Stephanie Knight
You talked in a previous podcast before about being in Austin and various airlines fighting over the Austin business. You know, I was based out of Minneapolis for a bunch of years, you fly Delta, right? I mean, the vast majority of the time you fly Delta so if I’m on any Monday 5am 6am 7am flight, I’m kind of like, I’m never gonna get upgraded, ever. There are always more people that have been, you know, diamond for X years in a row, as opposed to you know, me as a brand new whatever. And that really was, you know, I I overall with travel, even though I’ve talked a lot about efficiency already, I will be more patient and go through longer lines to be able to get that upgrade. So you know, I’ll fly at a slightly off time to make sure that that that works out because that is a it’s not a guaranteed perk, but you’re flying so much the airlines do want to reward you very few business travelers actually purchase those premier seats. But they earn them through their through their loyalty. So just just another thing to try to, to index for as you’re making these decisions,
MC: Namaan Mian
million little variables, you know how much weight you give each one is going to be dependent on what you care about. And that’s so funny, I actually have people close to the end of the year that will call me and walk me through their like status and a lead earning strategy for the next year to like, have me sanity test and check it for them. And I’m always giving them the feedback. Well, it’s like, Yes, that’s what I would do. But you’ve got to decide what you care about. Because Because I would do that for a different reason than what you care about. Or then the way that you travel or, or, you know, that doesn’t necessarily align with the way that you’re planning to travel in 2023 and I am planning to travel that way. And so I feel like I’m always giving the typical consulting answer when people ask me about status and earning it’s like well, it depends, right because
Stephanie Knight
yeah, I remember the first time I went on a status trip right as an outcome from creating my path to whatever path to platinum path to diamond spreadsheet for that year. And that I knew my current MQM ‘s and I could chart out my my
MC: Namaan Mian
point just pause for a second and just like admit, like, like how nerdy that is that you had a spreadsheet I respect it. But I just have to call that out. Like that’s next level.
Stephanie Knight
Know, all these people are listening, you get in the game, you you know, and if you want to really get in the game you got you got to chart it out. And this is we’re talking about airlines a lot. You can do the same thing with rental cars, you can do the same thing with hotels, you you think about, you know, back in the day, it was a big deal when when delta evolved to not only counting your miles but having $1 equivalent to the whole status thing as well. And so then it just became that much more tricky to figure it out. If the stars in the line and I wasn’t already going to get it. But yes, it absolutely felt nerdy the first time that I that I even put a spreadsheets spreadsheet together. And then when I acted on that spreadsheet and took a pure status flight, that was just As I felt that it was next level at that, at that point in time, and I knew enough at that point that I did all the things that we’ve already been talking about, I looked at where the different places that I could go on a Delta operated flight on a nicer upgraded aircraft. That could be a nice kind of overnight trip or an out and back, and I ended up on a brand new flagship aircraft, I did get upgraded to delta one on a Minneapolis to Seattle out back with a quick overnight and a quick trip downtown. And then that cemented my, you know, a December trip. And in the, you know, in consulting circles, you’ll hear people around November and December making these decisions and deciding, okay, yeah, I’m going to, I’m going to secure it with a quick trip to Amsterdam, or that, you know, the Bahamas or Yeah, cross country. Because that that boost really does, you’re talking about a week in and week out experience of having this be a part of your just natural professional flow, that increased chance to give yourself that business class seat really does, it does play a role in making these decisions. And then, you know, with that additional loyalty level, then you get increased earning potential with kind of getting more points as well. It’s it’s a snowball effect. And they’ve designed it that way, for a reason. And so you think about, and sometimes you do the opposite, right, you’re getting to the close close to the end of the year, and you decide, I don’t want to hit Diamond, because then I’ll have x number of rollover miles to move from this calendar year to next calendar year, and then the pressure will be off to get or maintain status with this airline. So maybe I can only fly Delta half the time next year. And maybe I can do an American status challenge or something like that. And kind of you know, broaden your broaden your wings a little bit. But know, the more people dive in and the more you see that this can be fun, that this can be data driven, I have seen more than one analyst put together slide decks on this and make propositions, proposals to their team, to the to the partners to the office about different places that they should go do team events, or kind of office retreats and things because of the benefits in these areas. So it’s nice to see that people can have fun with it. And I hope that through the conversations that we’ve been having, that people see that aspect to it. Obviously, there still are horror episodes, there still are times and periods in which just everything goes wrong. At the end of the day, we’re both still here, right? So those catastrophes weren’t fatal in any way. But Namaan, now I’m itching to hear your story on all these different things that went wrong and what you did because of it. And I’m sure that that’s going to prompt some story that I don’t even have on my list right now. So what happened to you? Tell us.
MC: Namaan Mian
Absolutely, absolutely. I first just have to preface this by saying I’ve never been on a mileage run. All of my travel planning that I do at the beginning of the year so far has actually ended up being enough for me to hit the status I wanted to hit. But I have a friend who flew from San Francisco to Santiago, Chile, for one day to have lunch and then got right back on the plane and flew back. So position of privilege, I know, but that’s the craziest mileage run I’ve ever heard of is San Francisco to Santiago for lunch. So yeah, I’ll share a couple with you. The first one that comes to mind is I was in Dallas on a client engagement, Dallas Love, so smaller airport, primarily Southwest operations, and just less options. And if you familiar with the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex, Love and DFW are on opposite sides of the metroplex. And it’s an hour, hour and 15 minute drive to get to the other airport. And so I’m on the Dallas side of the Metroplex in Love, leading a client engagement, have to be in New York the next morning, and just these classic Texas thunderstorms roll in. And it’s not just Texas, it’s all over the Midwest. And so if you are familiar with Love, the terminals have these like large almost floor to ceiling windows and you can see right out onto the runway, you can see all the kind of the flight ops happening outside. You can also see these like storm clouds rolling in from dozens of miles away. And so I think I’m being smart. I’m like I can see this coming. Everybody else is just sitting here chilling, they have no idea what’s going to hit. Like I’m going to preemptively change my flight. And so ended up doing it. You know, I was flying Southwest that day, kudos to Southwest they make it pretty easy for you to do flight changes, etc, especially if you’re A list. But I changed the flight. Turns out that one gets delayed or canceled too. Okay, hey, you know what? Everybody else is standing in line, the line is long at the counter. I’m going to go ahead and do this myself through the app, or I’m going to call the dedicated premier line, I’m going to skip all these people. Get on another flight, well, that flight is delayed now or canceled as well. And so now what I’m trying to figure out is, okay, I need to get to New York, that doesn’t necessarily mean I have to fly into New York. I just need to get within striking distance of New York, because I’ve never missed a client meeting before. I’ve never missed a client engagement. I’m not about to start now. And so I’m just like, now looking at all the flight schedules, all the flights that look like they’re going to leave Dallas that evening, and get myself on the last flight out that happens to be to Baltimore. And so I’m like, you know what, I just need to get to the East Coast, right? Like, New York is not even within striking distance of Dallas. Now at least I’m in the same ballpark if I can get to Baltimore. So get on the, whatever it was, 10:30, 11pm flight after being at the airport since six, or five, you know, last flight out of Dallas to Baltimore, stuck in a whatever, middle seat because I was in the C group, because all the other seats were taken, you know how it is. But hey, I’m happy to get out. Land in Baltimore. And as soon as I land I’m scouring the Amtrak schedule. I’m scouring the other plane schedules. Okay, now how do I get from Baltimore to New York. And I’m with a colleague of mine that ends up making the Amtrak up to New York. You know, we had some presentation materials that had been in a checked bag, by the way. Okay, here’s something I forgot in this story. We had checked the bag. And we were so delayed I had gone back out to get the checked bag back. And then took it through as a carry on and took it onto the plane. And so that’s the part that I forgot of the stories in Dallas, I was like, there’s no way I’m getting stuck with a checked bag. So went back, finagle the person to get it for me, take it, went through security with it got back onto the plane with more carry on bags than I should have. But was able to sneak them on. Get to Baltimore, tell my colleague to go ahead and catch the 3:30 Amtrak, and I’ll grab all the carry ons, and I’ll figure something out. And so she goes ahead and does that. I get off the plane, and I just end up opening up my phone, and looking at which flights are leaving in a couple hours from Baltimore, and booking a United flight for two hours later, and just kind of going back through security, and getting on that flight. Made it into Newark at, I don’t know, seven in the morning. And grabbed a car, went up to a gym that was open, ended up showering and heading straight to the client site. So it was just an all night adventure. And you know what, it was worth it because I can still honestly to this day say that I’ve never missed a client engagement or a meeting due to travel. And so you’ve got to do what you got to do.
Stephanie Knight
Oh my gosh, that’s amazing. I can’t make that claim by any means. I have missed plenty of meetings and client engagements because of travel. But I have to say everybody’s always pretty forgiving.
MC: Namaan Mian
Yeah, it’s understandable.
Stephanie Knight
Yeah. And and the vast majority of the time, it’s not going to be your fault, right. So you just got to make the best decisions that you can. Your story, Namaan, did remind me of something that happened only the past couple of months. But I was flying from Chicago back to Raleigh Durham, where I’m currently located. And it was on American through Charlotte. So you know, you mentioned it already, but kind of consulting rule number one, you pack in a carry on. You don’t check your luggage. That is a rookie move. And although I had probably borderline too much stuff, the consultant traveler needs to remind themselves that leisure travelers get away with like huge carry on bags. And so even though you might have stuff stuffed in your backpack. One of my favorite tricks is to like stuff stuff in a Starbucks bag or a Hudson news bag. Now I have to go buy something to be able to do that. But then I can offload quite a bit of stuff into a Starbucks bag or a Hudson news bag and I can still have one carry on and one personal item. So that’s like a personal tip. And so I am flying back to Raleigh Durham because I have a client engagement in the morning. I knew that there was weather coming in, as you had in your story. And I searched and scoured the different flight schedules, there wasn’t really a better option for me to get home. So instead, I just tried to, number one, I’m going to ensure that I have a carry on instead of a checked check bag, and then let’s just see what happens. And I thought that my biggest struggle was going to be getting out of Chicago. Instead, I make it to Charlotte. And then they announce there’s a delay. And okay, well, but I’m already in Charlotte. I’m in North Carolina. This is a 11 o’clock roughly pm departure. Charlotte to Raleigh Durham. I mean, time in the air is gotta be something like 25 minutes. Yeah, I mean, nothing, nothing, right. The overall flight I think is booked, it says it takes about an hour or something. But all that is really take off, taxi, landing, all that stuff. So it’s delayed. And then they push it back again. And now people are starting to go to the counter and obviously ask questions. Consulting rule number two is, you don’t have people at the counter fix your problems, you immediately go on the phone or on chat, to be able to be more efficient about the whole thing. Or you at least double up, you can get yourself in line and you get yourself on the phone, right? So a bunch of people are going in line, I go ahead and just ask the people that are coming out of line, what did you learn, what’s going on? And they say, well, the gate agent says that there is a mechanical issue on the plane, and they’re going to have to do a diagnostic. So okay, my key question is for the gate agent, and I get myself in line. I know you can’t tell me anything right now. But usually, when you hear that there’s a diagnostic and a mechanical issue with with this type of plane how long does that usually take to do? She hadn’t announced anything to the broader gait area, but she tells me after I asked her this pointed question, it’s usually about an hour to an hour and a half before we have an answer. And I said, Okay, hypothetically, if the answer is that this plane is not flyable tonight, do you know the situation in the rest of the airport, is it possible to get another airplane? She said it’s possible. But we may very well just reschedule for the morning. Immediately, Namaan, I about face, I walk straight to the rental car agency, I punch it in my phone on Hertz from the gate to the rental car place, I hop in a car and I drive the two hours home. And it’s not that far, two, two and a half hours, something like that. Because and then I was following the flight. As I got in the car, I’m following the flight and following the flight. And it did, Namaan, actually fly from Charlotte to RDU that evening, and it didn’t arrive until like 4am. And so by paying a little bit of extra money, and by taking quick action, I got what I was told at Hertz was the last rental car. And I booked a little one way and saved myself about three hours of sleep that night.
MC: Namaan Mian
I love it. I’ve done the same exact thing coming from St. Louis to DFW to Austin. That was supposed to be itinerary. Storms again, we’re in St. Louis for like six or seven hours. The plane goes at at whatever 10pm, lands at Dallas at 12 or one, then they’re trying to figure out if there’s enough of us connecting to where the plane was still there. They’re trying to figure out if it’s actually going to go now or not. I did the same thing. Didn’t even bother to find out. I just walked out while I was there. Yep, on the Hertz app. One of the last cars is a pickup truck. So I drove in a pickup truck from from Dallas to Austin overnight. Got into my bed at like 4:35 in the morning. And that was really important to me because I was supposed to be coming home for like one day. I had a flight out for my next trip at 2pm that same afternoon. And so instead of having one night at home, I ended up getting eight hours at home. But that was better than just not coming home at all. And so sometimes you just make a quick decision. I honestly didn’t even check what happened with that plane. I didn’t want to know, I was like I made the decision and I’m going to just live with it and own it and get home and try and get like four hours of sleep before I have to get up and go again.
Stephanie Knight
That’s, you know what? You make it work. You make it work and if it doesn’t work out when you first do it, your team and your client, they might be frustrated, but they’re going to understand. And you’ll learn how to do work in the airport, how to take calls, making sure that you mute yourself when the huge booming voice comes down from the ceiling. But sometimes it’s a little bit of a power move as well, right? Like being able to do business in transit, to still be value add, as you’re going through that travel part of your week. Different people make different decisions. But you’ve definitely got a subset of people that are like, I’m going to take that Monday 5:15am flight, and I’m going to come in with pajama bottoms. And you know, I’m going to have easily accessible my real clothes, and I’m just going to sleep the entire time. And then you’ve got other people with their laptop open. And they’re making edits on their slides. And they are finishing up things for an upcoming client meeting and they’re using that time productively. You know, each of us just have to figure out how we operate and what works best for us.
MC: Namaan Mian
Absolutely. Any other crazy stories, Stephanie, you want to share while we’re together?
Stephanie Knight
Gosh, I remember how crazy it was the first time that I was on an airplane that was fumigated. Right? Like, because when you’re working in parts of the world that have, I think, especially kind of airborne, like mosquito borne illnesses, they fumigate the plane before you leave. And I worked for a summer in Nigeria. And I remember the first time that I got on an outbound flight, and the cabin started to fill up with smoke. And I was just so confused. I was so confused what was going on. I don’t know how I hadn’t experienced that in my personal travels yet. That it was it was in professional travels the first time I experienced it. Now I’ve seen that more often with other places I’ve visited. So that one definitely sticks out. And then just the I guess one last tip is some of the airlines as a status benefit will say they give you an opportunity to recognize key airline personnel who’ve added to your experience. And I’ve just found that taking those extra few moments to fill out those surveys or carry those certificates with you really goes a long way to not only doing something kind for somebody else and helping making make their day, but you can actually build some connections or even kind of acquaintanceships or relationships with some of the people in the travel sphere. You go in, it’s the same desk agent at the hotel every single time when you go to check in. Or you can end up with kind of some repetition on the flight schedule with flight crews and flight attendants. And kind of making sure to acknowledge these people, thank them for their efforts, even use some of those opportunities that the businesses give you to recognize their efforts. It really can go a long way, not only in your experience, but kind of making their day and making their job a little bit nicer overall as well. So that’s kind of my last little cherry on top piece that hopefully we get this next generation of consultants to be efficient travelers, but also be just really good humans as we all go through this process together.
MC: Namaan Mian
Absolutely. I’ve been on a long international flight. And the crew recognizes me, and I recognize them from a previous flight. It happens if you fly enough. I know people that bring gifts for the flight attendants, every flight that they take. That’s not something that I personally do. It’s not guaranteed to get you special treatment, but it’s very generous. And on the margins, it probably does help. Let’s be real. So yeah, I think that’s the golden rule of travel is nothing is really ever the fault of the people that are right in front of you wearing the uniform of the airline. So pointing fingers at them, yelling at them is not really gonna get you anywhere. And that’s not really the way that you want to represent yourself or your firm anyways, out in public.
Stephanie Knight
Awesome. It’s been so fun, Namaan, to learn about your experiences, to chat around this, to talk about successes and failures and best practices and tips and tricks. And I just hope that everybody will take away from this what they will and just be excited about that part of the job.
MC: Namaan Mian
Thanks, Stephanie.
Stephanie Knight
Thanks for joining us today. In reality, Namaan and I could have swapped stories for several more hours, but we wanted to just hit some of the highlights and low lights. We’re always wishing you smooth seasons of travel ahead. We hope you’ve enjoyed this travel series. And make sure to check out the other episodes if you still need to catch up. We’ll see you next time.