What is Management Consulting Travel Really Like?

Updated

Continuing our series on travel brings us this light-hearted conversation with Tripp Twyman, a former BCG consultant and Management Consulted case coach.

Tripp shares how travel at BCG has changed from pre-Covid to present day, how he maximized travel rewards in consulting, and more:

  • BCG’s travel model [2:13]
  • The nuts-and-bolts of booking travel at BCG [17:06]
  • How consultants win the points game (and how to get points!) [27:48]
  • Downsides of consulting travel [33:23]
  • Tripp’s wildest travel stories [36:42]
  • Tripp’s favorite travel hacks [38:32]

If you haven’t listened to the previous episodes, make sure to check those out after finishing this one!

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Transcription: What is Management Consulting Travel Really Like?

Stephanie Knight 

Welcome back to Strategy Simplified. We’re excited to dive back into our series on travel. This is the third episode of a four-part series. We started in episodes one and two talking about the points game in general, and how you could maximize that through the use of credit cards. Today we bring back on the podcast Tripp Twyman, MC coach, current GSB student and BCG consultant extraordinaire. To discuss his view on personal travel, insight into how BCG handles travel, his personal tips and tricks, as well as plenty of good personal stories along the way. I hope you enjoy the discussion. Tripp, welcome back to Strategy Simplified. For new listeners, could you provide us with a quick overview of your background?

Tripp Twyman 

Hi, Stephanie. Thanks so much. My name is Tripp Twyman. I grew up in San Diego, California, did my undergrad at the University of Arizona, a Master’s of Accounting at USC in LA, and then worked at BCG, Los Angeles for about three years on a whole host of topics ranging from large scale change projects like transformations and post merger integrations to topics like building a racial equity task force for the City of Los Angeles. So consulting was a pretty wild ride, I would say I enjoyed it. My years at BCG were some of my favorites. And now I’m an MBA student at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Stephanie Knight 

And in a separate coach interview podcast, we delve a little bit more into different parts of the background that you just overviewed. So if there’s listeners who want to go back and look that up, then make sure to do that to learn more about Tripp. Today we’ve got a pretty specific conversation teed up, though, around travel. So if you could just get us kicked off here, Tripp, and walk us through BCGs travel model. Did the standard Monday through Thursday consulting travel model hold true in your experience?

Tripp Twyman 

Yes, on and off. So I would say let’s start with BCG is travel model. So the way travel works at BCG is that the staffing model is probably the best way to approach it. BCG’s staffing model, they use what’s called the personalized staffing model. So every case that you get staffed on, you have a say in that process. You get to articulate what you’re looking to get out of the case, what topics you’d want to work on, what skills you’re hoping to develop. And your talent manager will work with you to compare that to your actual development priorities, and the needs of the teams. And those three things will intersect to find you the best project for you.

One of the dimensions that you’ll discuss in that staffing conversation is travel. So there are some projects that are traveling 100%, some that are traveling, call it 50%, some that are completely remote. And completely remote might mean you’re working out of the LA office, or in my case, it was LA office, which is out of your home office, or you might be working from home and doing the work completely remotely. And then obviously, there’s anywhere in between. You might be traveling like three quarters of the time, or 25%. So it varies project by project. But when we are traveling, typically we do follow the Monday through Thursday model that has been pretty well established within consulting. Within that there’s some flexibility.

So for personal conflicts, like if you have a thing on Thursday that you gotta be home for, you got a thing on Wednesday, you got to be home for, of course you can leave early. You talk that through with your team, and then make the appropriate arrangements. And then for me personally, I would always come on Sundays, because I don’t like Monday morning travel and just kind of stresses me out. So that was how the travel model looked for me.

Stephanie Knight 

I can understand that for sure. Across your three years and the categories that you just set up, where did your projects land? In person, at home, remote, hybrid, some of these various versions.

Tripp Twyman 

Good questions. I would caveat that half of my time at BCG was like COVID work from home time. So there was a lot of non-travel going on in that period. So I guess I’ll split it into like a few chunks. My first call it nine months at the firm. I traveled probably four of the nine months. My first project was eight weeks in San Diego. So I spent my time there, which is home for me. So that was actually really fun because I got to experience my hometown in a completely new way, getting to like eat out every night. Like there’s no way I’m eating out every night when I’m actually at home.

And so it was cool getting to eat every meal at a restaurant. I tried all these places that had seen my whole life but had never actually gone to. Then I was working local, like on local projects for a few months. So these were like projects in LA. And we were either working out of the BCG office or out of the client site. There was a client and like, call it Venice Beach. And so we will do like a week at the office, and then a week at the client site where we might alternate even like by the day. So we will do like Monday, Wednesday at the client, and Tuesday, Thursday at the office. And then Fridays were in the office, but Fridays are like fun Friday. So it’s a really good time.

And I didn’t really think of it as like a super hard work day in the same way that Monday through Thursday were. And then after that, I was on a project in Atlanta. And so I was going to Atlanta for about two months, like little over six weeks before COVID really took off and everything was grounded. Once COVID took off, I was working from home like virtually for basically, I don’t know how to count it. But it was probably almost 18 months of just working from home. Maybe 14 months, a little over a year, like after we really like went into the COVID work from home model. I got to be on one of the first projects that came back in person.

So I really wanted to travel when I was in consulting, that was like one of my – not like the main. But like one of the main things I was excited about in the job was the opportunity to travel and see new places ,and get to live life on the road, be that traveling consultant. So when I caught wind of this project that was supposedly going to be in person, and I found the managers and I made sure that I talked to the partners on the team and did what I had to do to get the opportunity to work on that project. So for that one, it was like the full Monday through Thursday, four days a week, but I came on Sunday. So it was like five days a week for almost six months straight, with like a week or two off here and there because I was traveling over the summer. That was one of my favorite projects at BCG, actually, we had some of the coolest team events like locally when everyone was in town. So that was really fun. And then after that, for my remaining projects, it was pretty hybrid, like I’d say 50/50, one week on, one week off.

Stephanie Knight 

I want to tease out some of the things I feel like I’ve heard you say so far. One is the project by project nature of things, that you’re staffed on one case or engagement. And it’s going to be dealing with the nature of the work and the preferences of the partner and the budget and all these different things come together to have the team set some norms and expectations as it relates to travel. And then within that, I’ve also heard you talk about that personal element though as well. Even though that’s a team norm and expectation, there’s still some room for choice. And you talked about okay, I can decide, do I come on Sunday night, r do I come early on Monday morning? Okay, do I try to negotiate and ask for coming home midweek sometimes for special occasions or specific events. And so this aspect to which you’re not 100% bound to this contractual agreement around this, yet there’s strong expectations and norm setting and everything that happens around it. So would you say all that’s fair?

Tripp Twyman 

Yes, definitely. There’s the travel, and then there’s the opportunity to make the travel your own. And BCG is really big on that, to be honest. Like they’ve got this whole thing called PTO, which is like predictability, teaming and open communication. And the core premise of PTO is that the consulting job is hard. But it doesn’t have to be as hard as it could be. Right? Like, we should find ways while getting the work done, to make the job work for you. Whether that’s like figuring out your schedule, or making sure that like the big rocks in your life have time to breathe, whether that’s like the gym, or your partner, or the hobbies that are just really important to you, whatever it is. And so taking that into consideration, BCGs respect for the whole person means that when you’re traveling for work, they’ll still within reason, try and give you the flexibility and the autonomy to make that travel work as optimally as possible in your life.

Stephanie Knight 

Absolutely, and that realm, I’ve already heard you mentioned and talk about eating out and team events, these things at which even if you’re only traveling regionally, or if you can sleep in your own bed at night, but other members of the team are traveling from somewhere else, I mean, when you’re actively staffed on a case, then there’s still this aspect to which Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, especially. And correct me if this is wrong at BCG, but certainly the McKinsey culture is those nights, there’s some effort made, often, if not always, to on a weekly basis, or even a daily basis have opportunities to do things. I mean, everybody has to eat. So you are equipped on the firm’s dime to make sure that you are fed and that you are housed.

And we’re going to talk tactically in this conversation too, about kind of how those decisions are made and how you work through that process at BCG. But then there’s the aspect to which, okay, it’s not just me figuring that out by myself, every week, every night, it’s like you and your team, you stay at the same hotel, usually, right? And you get to go out to eat together. Maybe it sometimes is with the client. And sometimes we can even kind of ratchet that up a notch and have it to actually be an event and do something cool and make some memories and some type of either an off-the-beaten-path kind of place that somebody just finds, or do one of the top things on TripAdvisor in that local area. So all of this is kind of embodied within this aspect of travel within the consulting world.

Tripp Twyman 

Yeah, for sure. And it’s honestly, figuring out how to do that is one of, at least for me, one of the ways that you get the closest with your team. Of course, you get close at dinner, and you get close, like at frickin’ SoulCycle. But it’s important to have the conversations about what is that going to look like? Imagine you go on a vacation with six of your friends. And it’s a week-long thing. And you guys are like, okay, so where are we going to eat? And are we all gonna eat at the same place? Or are we going to for lunch today, you get your thing and you get your thing, and the two of us are gonna go here. All of that has to be discussed, right? And so I think the process on a weekly or monthly, or the project-by-project basis of setting those norms was actually a really, really integral part of the experience for me, I would say. Because you got to learn more about the preferences of the people you’re working with beyond just talking to them at dinner. So that was pretty cool.

Stephanie Knight 

I love that. I think for me personally, that took longer to set in than it should have. For me, as introverted with my energy, I need those times of respite and I need breaks. And so I was on plenty of teams with lots of extroverted personalities who would be happy to go from early morning workouts through to late night drinks four days in a row. And I kind of woke up and realized at some point, it’s like, okay, a) that’s not me; b; I have the autonomy and agency to communicate that to others, and to have my preferences actually lend to a different experience and have it, as you said, Tripp, something that works for me. And so that finding that balance with the team, I think, and learning about other’s preferences, and kind of making it good for everybody. It’s tough. It’s it’s a tough balance to figure out.

Tripp Twyman 

Yeah, for sure. The PTO thing I mentioned, that was on my favorite project, the six months one. That was one thing that we had on the slides, because we would make a PTO slide. So everyone on the team would fill out the slide together. And you can imagine it, it’s like, a table work across the top of the table is everyone’s name. And then down the side of the table, each row is a different dimension of preferences. So you would define things like, what does end of day mean for me? And how many times do I want to have dinner as a group per week versus eat alone? And when it’s after work, like after call it like six or 7pm, how should you try to reach me? Should you text me? Should you call me? Should you email me? What if it’s urgent, right? So we laid out all these things.

And the travel things. And they’re like, Oh, your KPIs. Like I need to work out this many times a week. I want to have this many dinners together. For me, I made it a point to stop and watch the sunset. I like really like doing that. So like while we’re just like cranking away. I’d be like, by the way, I don’t really care what time it is, but unless we’re in a meeting, you should expect me to disappear for about half an hour at sunset time. Or if I’m gone, I’ll be watching it somewhere cool. And the teams are really good at like respecting that. And then people might coalesce around certain things. Like if one person wants to do at least one group fitness class a week and that’s their thing, a bunch of the other people in the team might join in. It’s like, yeah, let’s all go do that.

And so you start like scheduling like a big group barre session together, or like you go to hot yoga, hot yoga was hard. But we did that at my Atlanta project. And it was really fun, just as a group. Because you know everyone’s good at the job, right? Like, everyone’s a pretty good communicator. They’re really strong at like, analytics and working with clients and structuring problem solving. But none of that has to do with  holding your body up at like these weird positions in a super hot room together. And so you get to just, I don’t know, see different dimensions of the people you’re working with. And that’s probably my favorite part of the travel.

Stephanie Knight 

Oh, my gosh, I love that so much. Hot Yoga is my big thing right now, Tripp. I love it. I’ve been three times this week already. And after our next meeting later, I’m going again later this evening. So but it’s just the mix of all the different things that are associated with, you’re not just doing a project with other people, you’re living life with other people. All to help our clients reach their objectives and and everything else. So let’s pivot. Let’s talk about tactics as it relates to all this. Let’s talk about actually doing the travel. How does that work in BCG? I mean, what’s obvious about travel to those in consulting is often a black box to outsiders. So walk us through the nuts and bolts. How does booking travel work? Do you have a travel agent? How do you how do you pay for it? Is everything set by BCG? How do you do that?

Tripp Twyman 

So BCG works with American Express as like a travel provider service. I think most big companies do. Like in my experience, every big corporation I’ve worked for a used like Amex Travel. There were several different ways you could book travel. The most straightforward one, the one that I did,most often at least, was we had this internal travel portal. So you go and for flights or hotels, you would look up the dates and the city. It’s basically just like looking it up on my Google Flights. So like any travel website, the UI was really easy. So you look up where you’re going, you put in the project code, and whether or not it’s client travel, internal travel, or personal travel. And I can explain that the personal travel, like all travel stuff in a minute, but you put in like the type of travel, the project code that the travel is gonna get billed to, and then you just make your reservations, and it’s done. Super easy.

There was also an email address that you could reach out to. Sometimes I would use the email address, if I were for sure traveling on a weekly basis on a longer project. So instead of going in manually myself, and saying like, Oh, look, let me book my hotel for this week. And let me book my hotel for this next week. I would just write them an email at Amextravel@BCG, or whatever it was. And I would say, like, hey, team, I need to book this hotel from Sunday night to Wednesday night. For these eight weeks consecutively. Please do that. It needs to be under this much money per night. So if any of these weeks look like more than that, let me know and we can problem solve. I’ll find another hotel or something. Here’s the project code. It’s client travel, boom. And then that’s like the most efficient way to do it because then you get just all eight hotel confirmations come in, like just back to back to back to back. Everything’s taken care of. You can do that for flights too.

And then for last minute, like niche stuff, or like, last minute or niche stuff, you could also call. I’ve got the BCG AMEX travel phone number on my phone, basically on speed dial. And I can call them and they always have reps that are super helpful in terms of like, hey, like I’ve got this flight, but suddenly a meeting came up and I need to change it. What are the other options? Can we do this quickly. And you can do this while on the go. So that’s really useful if I’m on the move, and needing to make updates to something, or if I’ve to to troubleshoot because I got somewhere and my plan didn’t work.

So for example, I, was going to a recruiting event at Tuck once, which is at Dartmouth in Hanover, New Hampshire. So like tiny town, and I fly in, and I thought I was just going to call an Uber to get to campus. But as it turns out, there are no Ubers in Hanover, New Hampshire at the Lebanon airport. There are no Ubers coming to get you. So I arrive, and I’m like, Oh, no. I have no way to get to my hotel. I also booked the wrong hotel because someone, like this Tukey was like, oh, yeah, just stay at the Inn. And I was like, Oh, the Inn. So I Google the Inn in Hanover, New Hampshire. And the Residence Inn by Marriott comes up. And I just assume that’s the one because like what other Inn. Turns out there’s an inn right next to Dartmouth, which would have been super convenient to stay at. And that’s also where we had our recruiting event.

So anyway, I’m staying at the wrong place. Don’t have a ride to get there. And so thank goodness I have this Amex travel phone number, because I call him this woman is so nice. And she helps me book a rental car on the spot. And then I drive my rental car over and it’s a great time. And then that was a fun travel story. I also got to ride like a six seater plane to get there, which was super cool. So shout out JetBlue for owning like a small regional air carrier has six seater planes. But yeah, that’s, I guess,  the nuts and bolts of how to book travel. The one other thing I’ll talk about is the three different types of travel. So I mentioned client travel, which is pretty self explanatory. There’s internal travel, which is for recruiting events or training, or like internal conferences. And then there’s this third category called alt travel or in lieu travel. And this is where at BCG, basically if I were going to spend $500 round trip, getting home on Thursday, and then getting back to the client site on Monday, I could use that $500 instead, to go somewhere that’s not home, which was super convenient.

Actually, when I was working in Atlanta, because the cross-country travel was brutal. It was like I was never on one timezone. I’d spend like three or four days in Atlanta. And by the time I was adjusting, I’m flying back to LA, which made it really easy. I went to Orangetheory at like 5am on Fridays, because it was like it felt like 8am It was like, let’s just send it. But then outside of that, like little orange theory benefit, my body just hated it. And so there were some weekends where instead of flying back to LA, I would use my alt travel budget to fly up to Boston and visit a friend, or to stay in Atlanta and just explore with friends  that I had that live locally. And so that’s the third category of travel that you can book, and personally one of my favorite parts about consulting travel.

Stephanie Knight 

Gosh, absolutely. And that kind of opens the door to the strategy I think involved with all this, right? So this aspect to which well I can decide each week and maybe I don’t go home. Maybe I go somewhere else. I can decide what day I come. Is it Sunday night is on Monday morning, and I can make those decisions myself and pour through the flight calendar I can send it off to the general email for Amex travel or whatnot and have them book something for me. So associated with this is then the points game, right Tripp? So the heavy traveler gets rewarded for their efforts across all different medium of travel. And then especially younger consultants, new consultants, many like to pour a lot of their energy into this. What was your experience with that? Maybe you even what a shout out some of your favorite brands. What’s your points game like?

Tripp Twyman 

They could have it Oh, my points game is pretty strong right now. I actually was just looking and I have a lot of Southwest points at the moment. Like a crazy amount because I go to business school at Stanford. And so I do a lot of  random West Coast travel and I think Southwest is the most affordable, most convenient carrier for small scale regional travel. So I also fly them a lot when I was flying across the state, like if I was going from LA to San Francisco. That’s an aside. I care about points, but I would call myself an intermediate points chaser. So there were people at the firm that I would consider points hardos. Like they just knew everything. They can tell you literally the dollar value of a point on different airlines and hotel chains. And they’d be like, Yeah, so this one’s worth 1.3 cents. But this one’s only worth 1.2. So you shouldn’t do this one was you have to, and I was like, Dude, what are we talking about? And a lot of people also have perspectives on, the value you get.

So they would talk about different airlines as being worse domestically within the US. But then if you were doing them on big international trips, they actually had a much better experience. So depending on which one a) the travel that you needed to do for work, which one would you have a better experience flying, but then also for your loyalty and your status, there’s a trade off there. Do you want to have the fancy status on the airline that has the best experience internationally, but then you have fancy status on an airline that doesn’t have like a great domestic experience. Or do you want to flip it, and have a fancy status on the one that’s really good in the US, but then internationally, it’s kind of like, I don’t love it. So there were things to think about.

Me personally, I ended up as a loyalist to Marriott and Delta. I did this a) because Delta had a cool, all the airlines, I think, or the big ones have, a consulting fast-track program. So you can sign up with your work email address, and link it to your loyalty account. And then they’ll give you some crazy promo, like fly this many times and we’ll fast-track you to this super high status level. Because I mean, for them feels like a good business decision, right? Like, we know that consultants are going to be spending money flying. And so I will throw status at young consultants if it means that that travel money is going to come to my airline. So I’ll use the status programs. A lot of the airlines for like the fast-track programs, a lot of the airlines also have status match programs. So if you get to some super high status level on one, another one will match that status automatically in an effort to just like win your business.

And I was talking to a friend who said – it wasn’t a friend, I was in a lounge. And there was a girl sitting near me in the lounge, who was also a former consultant. And she was talking to her friends about the fact that, I think it was United, that had a cool, status match plus one program, where if you had the second highest status level, they would match it, but then give you the better one in United terms. So she went from having the second best one on Delta, having the best one on United, or something like that. So it’s a it’s a pretty compelling offer.

Tactically, how do you get these points? Step one, sign up for all the programs, like literally just make a loyalty account with every hotel, every airline, or if you don’t want to just make them all at once, which I think is the most efficient, before you travel, make them. So if you’re going to make a booking, and then you realize Oh, I have to stay at a Marriott, and I don’t have a Marriott account, make a Marriott Bonvoy account. It’s easy. And free. Step two. After you do that, in theory, pick one. You don’t have to pick one. But if you pick one, you’re optimized. You don’t want to have mediocre status at two places when you could have the best one at one, especially when that one can get you everywhere you need to go. You’ll just have a better time. Step three, plan accordingly. So once you’ve got your status, once you’ve got your loyalty programs and you’ve figured out where your loyalty lies, like are you a Marriott or a Hyatt person or like IHG, then book those hotels, try and book just those hotels or try and find a way to fly those airlines. That’s the best if you really want to get a lot of points, that’s the best way to do it.

You can also get credit cards. So I actually got the AMEX Bonvoy credit card, which then, when I started at BCG, I would pay for my hotel stays with that credit card. And that gave me a bunch of extra points for using the card. And you can imagine doing the same thing for different airlines or different hotels. Or you could get one of the generic travel credit cards like the AMEX Platinum, or the Chase Sapphire reserve, which gives you like between three and 5x points on hotels, travel, flights, etc. All these will create a lot of points on the firm’s dime. At some firms, what you’ll be able to do is spend the money on your personal card and then have the firm reimburse you for those expenses. So that’s why it makes sense to get the personal credit cards. That’s how BCG operated when I started. Since the pandemic they’ve switched to like a more hardline corporate card approach.

So now you have to use your corporate AmEx. That doesn’t change much in terms of the strategy, it just takes away the credit card angle. So now like with my corporate AmEx, you pay like $50 a year or something, maybe it’s less. And that fee activate – no actually it might be $50 one time. But whatever it is, it activates the points accrual on that card. So then on my corporate AmEx, I was earning one point per dollar spent. So obviously, it’s not the same as like the three points on the Chase Sapphire reserve, or like Amex platinum is five points with airlines. But it’s not nothing.

The other thing is that Amex like, this is for the hardos. But you could argue that Amex points are worth a different amount that like Chase Sapphire reserve points, which are worth a different amount than like Venture X points, especially in terms of how you’re redeeming them. Because if you redeem the Chase Sapphire reserve points on travel, then they reserve at 1.5x instead of 1x. So you end up getting a lot more value from the points. This is all like very detailed, you can look it up, Google it. There are websites for this. If you want to go deep, you can. So that’s tactically kind of how I thought maximizing value from points and getting all my loyalty fun.

Stephanie Knight 

I mean, I just have to point out that Tripp here is, probably rightfully so, calling himself an intermediate points junkie in the consulting world. And yet the casual observer listening to this conversation would absolutely in your language, Tripp, be like no, he’s dropping facts. That’s a hardo, right? But it just kind percolates into conversation, into your decision making. You know, the team makes some decisions together about where are you going to stay, or how you’re going to travel, or who’s going to rent the car this week, and all those different things. And even though, no money’s coming out of your pocket in the process, you’re still getting points through that corporate card. Maybe not as many as in the pre-pandemic era. But it’s still a nice extra little benefit of having to travel for work. Now obviously there’s downsides to traveling for work and you’ve mentioned at least one already. But what comes to mind for you in that?

Tripp Twyman 

Well, I think the biggest one is like socially, it can be challenging because you may want to have a life at home. And that may be challenging to do when you’re gone four to five days a week. There was someone in our office who had a bunch of roommates. I think he was living with like four other guys. And he was really having a tough time because these four other guys were not consultants. So he would be out of town all week, and then come back and they’ve like had four days of friendship and palling around and hanging out and he’s like just catching up. And then he’s also paying the electricity of water bills for this house that he’s barely living in. So that can be one downside.

I think one other it’s just that it keeps you, some people like the comfort of sleeping at home. Beyond the social aspect of having a life at home. I know people who really just like sleeping in their own bed. I personally really like hotels. I think they’re nice, but they’re not for everybody. And so if you don’t like living out of a suitcase and only being able to bring like a couple outfits a week, wherever you’re going, it might not be the model for you. Or if you like home cooked meals and you don’t don’t like having to eat out all the time, then it might not be for you.

Or if you don’t like airports, some people really don’t like airports. A lot of times, you’re gonna be in airports. And so there’s lots of little things about the lifestyle that I think can be downsides. There are some that you can manage around. Like, for me, one big downside would have been early Monday mornings. I wouldn’t have liked getting up at four or five to try and make it to a 6am flight so I could be somewhere three hours away by a reasonable time in the morning to still have a full workday. Doesn’t sound fun to me. But fortunately, I had the flexibility to change that and to say, I’m coming Sunday night. So that way, I don’t have to deal with that early morning thing. Or when I was in Atlanta, this was like a really tough decision for me, because it was either take a red eye at 10 o’clock or something on Sunday night, get to Atlanta at like 4:30, 5:00 in the morning. So I’m groggy, I’m uncomfortable. I might make it to the hotel for like a nap for an hour or two before I go to the office. So that’s not a good experience. But the alternative was leaving LA at l10am to get to Atlanta at like 7pm on Sunday. So then I miss my entire Sunday, because I spend it on a plane and losing time with the time change. And I went back and forth like. I never actually found a solution that I loved. So sometimes travel just puts you in tough spots.

Stephanie Knight 

It has been great to get to hear a lot of different stories through this conversation, Tripp. But are there any other memorable moments, memorable travel experiences, whether they’re positive or negative, that you wanted to share?

Tripp Twyman 

I think some are just things I saw in different places. So like, when I was going back and forth to Atlanta, one time on the plane, I was sitting next to this big dude. And he had all his jewelry on and I was like, Oh my gosh, who is this guy? And I couldn’t figure it out. He’s playing games on his phone the whole time so I never really struck up conversation. And then later, I see this video of him on Twitter. And I was like, I recognize those hand tattoos. And it turns out, I was sitting next to Waka Flocka Flame on my flight to Atlanta. So that was fun. We saw in our hotel in Atlanta one time, we saw Nicolas Cage on a date. That was cool. We were like, Oh, look at him. We sat at a table intentionally so we could like see him and see what’s happening. When I was going to Seattle, our Seattle office had a Falcons nest, like a peregrine falcon nest, on top of the building. So I loved going to Seattle, because every time I would get to see these Falcons flying around the building. And that was not something I was getting in LA. So that was pretty good fun. Just experiences like that. I think it’s just the part of travel, you get to get around the world, get around the country, see and experience new things, and new places and new people. And that really, for me, was just such a joy and such a treat of the job.

Stephanie Knight 

Absolutely, absolutely. As we start to wrap up this conversation, any other thoughts, insights, hacks that you wanted to share with the listeners?

Tripp Twyman 

I’m kind of a big fan of renting cars instead of Lifting and Ubering everywhere while traveling. This is a bit controversial. I would argue about this with my roommate. He’s very hard core like no, you should Uber. But I think if you rent cars, then you get enough rental points, like I’d use Hertz. That’s when I have enough Hertz points that when I go on vacation, I can get free rental cars. There’s not a world where I Uber enough that when I go on vacation, I’m like getting free Ubers. He would say Yeah, but you get UberEATS credit, which like, okay, but do you want free food, or do you want a free rental car on your vacation? I’m going to take the rental car. So I think that’s a tip.

But beyond that, I’d say just enjoy it, like lean in. I think especially when there are travel experiences that come up, or travel requirements that come up that seem a bit inconvenient, instead of wallowing in the inconvenience or trying to find a way out of it or to lessen the amount that you’ve got to do it, sometimes it actually works pretty well if you lean in and do more travel. So if you gotta go out to like some random place for a day. And you’re like, God, I don’t want to make this day trip. Like how short can I make it. What if you can extend it and just make it like a two or three day thing and use that time to see a new city, meet some new people, learn some stuff, try some food. I think if you do that, you can start to have a really good time. I did, at least.

Stephanie Knight 

Absolutely. Finally here, Tripp. Do you have a location on your travel bucket list you’re trying to hit next?

Tripp Twyman 

Yes, absolutely. It’s not going to be next. So in business school, everyone travels all the time. And coming back from winter break, two of my friends, I saw these videos of them, and they were off, somehow they found themselves off the coast of Madagascar, freediving with sperm whales. And it looks like the coolest, coolest experience. They had these videos, you could hear the clicks from the whales. And if you don’t know much, but I really love animals. Fun fact, if you don’t know much about sperm whales, they have some of the loudest vocalizations of any animal. You can hear them from hundreds of miles away in the water, they can hear each other. And if you’re really close to them, like the clicks can be loud enough to rupture eardrums. So they got to swim with sperm whales. And now I’m just trying to get to whatever island they were on off the coast of Madagascar so I can at least have a chance to see them.

Stephanie Knight 

Oh my gosh, I love that so much. And then Tripp, have you been to the Galapagos?

Tripp Twyman 

I’ve not.

Stephanie Knight 

Okay, you’ve got to add that to your list. The nature stories we’ve heard even just today. And that’s, a little bit closer to home. So there’s travel, but now we’re talking like travel. So I love it. And this type of work kind of opens you up to be able to do that. So thanks for letting us get into your brain a little bit to learn about your experiences, your insights, your learnings here. It’s a pleasure as always, Tripp.

Tripp Twyman 

Absolutely, this has been so much fun.

Stephanie Knight 

Thanks for joining us today. Travel should be an important part of your consideration process to join many management strategy consulting firms. And it was fun today to discuss through with Tripp the various benefits as well. Join us next week as we’ll wrap up our series with some personal travel stories and vignettes from Namaan and me, we’ll make sure to hit both some fun and some horror stories. And make sure to check out the other episodes in the series if you still need to catch up. We’ll see you next time.

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Filed Under: consulting travel, Strategy Simplified