Guest Bio
Bryan Lewis is the founder and CEO of Tenon Tours, a boutique travel company specializing in custom-crafted vacations across Europe. With over two decades of experience in the travel industry, Bryan has turned a college-era passion for organizing trips into a thriving business dedicated to creating immersive, flexible, and deeply personal travel experiences. Under his leadership, Tenon Tours has grown to offer journeys in 18 European countries, acquired the adventure-focused Lemonrock Motorcycle Tours, and earned repeated recognition on the Inc. 5000 list of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies. Based in the Greater Boston area, Bryan is a motorcycle enthusiast, father of five, and a firm believer that purposeful travel can transform lives—and legacies.
Show Summary
In this episode of the Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Podcast, host Jason Elkins speaks with Bryan about how Tenon Tours has redefined the way people explore Europe—one custom itinerary at a time. Bryan reflects on his early days promoting spring break trips and how those experiences sparked a career dedicated to empowering travelers through choice, personalization, and authentic cultural connections.
The conversation dives into the rise of bespoke travel and how Tenon Tours balances structure and freedom to create meaningful journeys. From hybrid group/solo experiences to the emotional impact of travel, Bryan shares how understanding the unique motivations of each traveler is at the heart of Tenon’s approach—and why adventure, at any stage of life, starts with a willingness to explore.
Key Takeaways
- ✓ Tenon Tours designs fully personalized travel experiences across Europe.
- ✓ No two itineraries are alike—each trip is crafted to fit the individual.
- ✓ Flexibility and choice are central to Tenon’s travel philosophy.
- ✓ Hybrid travel options combine group energy with solo freedom.
- ✓ Travel can foster deep personal growth and transformation.
- ✓ Experienced travel planners make a major difference in trip quality.
- ✓ The journey often matters more than the destination itself.
- ✓ Even without prior experience, anyone can start a travel venture.
- ✓ Material possessions fade—experiences are what truly last.
- ✓ You don’t need to be “there” to get started; begin from where you are.
What You’ll Find on Tenon Tours
- Tailor-made European vacations in 18+ countries
- Custom itineraries designed around your interests and pace
- Options for guided, self-drive, and hybrid travel experiences
- Access to local culture, heritage, and hidden gems
- Motorcycle tours through Lemonrock for adventurous travelers
- A team committed to making travel personal and unforgettable
Learn more about Tenon Tours and connect with Bryan at:
https://tenontours.com
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Podcast Transcript
This transcript is auto-generated on recording, and has not been edited by a human. It may contain lots of mistakes, crazy words, and stuff that makes no sense. The host and the guest are not responsible for the accuracy of the transcript.
Jason Elkins (00:00.444)
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Big World Made Small podcast for the Adventure Traveler. So happy to have each and every one of you back today and super excited to also have my guest with us here today. We’ve got Bryan Lewis. Bryan is the CEO and founder of Tenon Tours. Bryan, welcome to the show. So happy to have you here.
Bryan Lewis (00:19.416)
Thank you, Jason. Happy to be here. Very excited to talk all things travel today.
Jason Elkins (00:24.476)
Yeah, it’s gonna be a lot of fun. You and I spoke earlier, I think it was a couple weeks ago, just had a fascinating conversation. You’ve got a few different things going on and I thought, well, we just need to come back and sit down for an hour or so and record it so other people can hear it as well. Bryan, we’re gonna get into background stuff. We’re gonna figure out how did you get from where you were to where you are now, but let’s help our listeners kind of get a feel for where we are now.
So we’re going to discuss I’d love for you to just give everybody kind of the 60 second elevator pitch for Tenon tours I know you do some other cool stuff some motorcycle type stuff as well So let’s mix that all in and we’ll just go from there. So what is first of all, what is Tenon tours?
Bryan Lewis (01:03.566)
Awesome. Well, Tenon Tours, we provide true tailor-made travel to Europe only in 18 destinations across Europe. So we’re in our 18th year. We launched in 2007 and I can talk about how that came to be. But 18 years later, we just launched our 18th destination and it’s all things custom travel. There’s no two itineraries that we’ve ever done the same. Everything’s personalized to you.
and it’s individual families, groups, and it’s a variety of different types of trips because we can do anything from point to point transfers to private drivers. We can do four star hotels to five star castles. We can do igloos to sleeping underneath the Northern Lights. So we’re pretty excited about where we’re at today and the background, the story is
equally as exciting and we’ve overcome quite a bit that I’m very proud of. And most recently, you mentioned the motorcycle tours. Two years ago now, we acquired Lemon Rock Motorcycle Tours out of Ireland. And so we own 20 BMW motorcycles. We have a depot outside of Dublin and we do full, yeah.
Jason Elkins (02:23.272)
You know, hey Bryan, you’re mentioning the motorcycles as you and I right before I pressed the start button, I told you that I was here in Mexico City and we were talking about there’s a little bit of street noise out here. As soon as you started talking about the motorcycles, I don’t know if you could hear the motorcycles in the background.
Bryan Lewis (02:33.614)
Little bit.
Bryan Lewis (02:39.298)
Yeah, no, I queued them up. said, I was like, all right, go now. Yeah. And it was right on cue.
Jason Elkins (02:42.366)
That was that was perfect timing so it’s a great opportunity for me to tell our listeners You know, maybe some of this background sound might come out in the editing But if they did hear the motorcycle go by just know that Bryan really knows his stuff when it comes to motorcycles And is able to cue that up. So anyway So lemon rock you mentioned that you you acquired them a couple years ago So they it was a company that already existed it sounds like
Bryan Lewis (03:07.618)
Yeah, it was actually a company that we had tried to work with years ago because I’m a motorcyclist myself and have been riding since I was a teenager, I guess, on dirt bikes and then evolved to a street rider. so when Tenon, we started Tenon in Ireland 18 years ago. And for me, the backstory and the launch of the company revolved around just the access.
how easy it was to get to Ireland and how hospitable the people are and the fact that they’re on the Euro, they speak English. So Ireland was kind of a natural launching pad for Tenon. Years later, after I kind of joined this pseudo CEO biker gang and started to pursue motorcycle tours in Ireland, and there were two companies that existed doing motorcycle tours, and one of them was Lemon Rock. The problem was they were located down in Killarney.
And if you know anything about Ireland and the geography of Ireland, it’s not easy to get to Killarney to then pick up a motorcycle, tour the country, get back to Killarney and then get back to wherever you’re going. So Killarney is about three hours, four hours southwest of Dublin and two hours south of Shannon. So you just couldn’t get, as we say in Boston, you couldn’t get that from here, right? And so the opportunity came up just two years ago.
Jason Elkins (04:29.886)
Yeah, right.
Bryan Lewis (04:35.374)
crazy enough, I’m gonna jump into this story because it was kind of like the motorcycles racing by you. I had on our leadership meeting agenda, the same day, October, 2023. And on the agenda, had new markets, I golf, motorcycles, and events. And we didn’t actually get to that agenda item. And it was, we got off the meeting and two hours later, I got an email from the former owner of Lemon Rock saying,
We’re selling the business. Are you interested? And the key here is I had a riding buddy who lived in Dublin and he had just sold his company and was kind of spinning his wheels, so to speak, no pun intended. And I said, the key is to have somebody in Dublin. He said, I’m in, I responded, we’re in, and we made it happen two months later. So that’s the newest development. I’m very really passionate about that because this was the passion meets purpose brand that an opportunity that we got to.
got to take over and really build up, so it’s going well.
Jason Elkins (05:39.326)
That’s very, very cool. I know we’re gonna get back into that and discuss it probably at length. And I also wanna get really back into kind of the early days before Tenon came around, figure out kind of what was going on to help you get, inspire you to do all this stuff. And before we do that though, I do have just a couple of clarifying questions about Tenon and then you can tell me if they apply to Lemon Rock in the same way.
was that Tannen does basically, you know, bespoke or custom tours. Somebody contacts you, because some of our listeners might not be familiar with that terminology, so I just want to make sure I’m clear to help them be clear. But somebody reached out to you and says, we want to do this in Europe and you help them, advise them and put together an itinerary that works for them specifically. So like you said, no cookie cutters, no tours, no two
are the same. So it’s mostly for individuals, small groups, family, stuff like that, that are all traveling together, know each other, that type of thing. As opposed to…
maybe the group tours and maybe this is where Lemon Rock is a little different, right? Is the group tours where you guys say, we’re gonna do, you know, the highlights of whatever, German highlight tour from November 10th to the 21st and we’ve got 12 spots, do you want one? That’s different, that’s kind of a group departure or an open group departure that anybody could book into. So help me understand what are…
guys doing a little bit of both or what does that look like?
Bryan Lewis (07:20.566)
Yeah, it’s a great question because I think for lot of listeners too, there’s some confusion around, are we a travel agency? Are we travel agents? Are we a tour operator? So the first things I’d like to clarify is that we’re a tour operator, right? So what we do as a tour operator is we contract everything directly with suppliers on the ground. Whereas a travel agent or travel agency,
is the liaison between the traveler and the tour operator. So, you know, a lot of tour operators will sell most of their trips through travel agents. And the travel agent has the ability to pick, you know, us or another company that better suits, you know, their client. But what we did a little bit differently is we entered the market, and this was 18 years ago, to fulfill both of those roles.
So what we didn’t want to do is just put butts in seats, as they say, on buses, right? So I’ll go back, I’ll shift, this will define who we are, but it’s also part of the story of how we started because I wanted to do something different. And when I looked at the market at the time, it was the group tours that you speak of, is most of the travel to Europe, you opened a brochure, you picked your itinerary,
And then you picked your departure date and you joined a tour alongside 40 other people who signed up for the same tour. Yeah, well, I was going to say 52 and then I was generous and said, maybe there’s some luggage in the other seats. but what I didn’t like about this, Jason, was that it’s so rigid and doesn’t give the traveler any choice, right? And you go to every site that along the way that you may or may not want to see, you’re with people that you may or may not want to be with.
Jason Elkins (08:49.288)
or more.
Bryan Lewis (09:13.01)
And each night you have group dinners, that’s chicken, fish or beef. And that’s just not my style. So when we, we launched the company with a different idea of giving people choice. so Taylor made bespoke, personalized, all the same thing. And that is really listening to the client, listening to the travelers, really seeing what they want to do and how they like to travel, you know, what they, their must sees and do’s who they’re traveling with, what kind of.
pace they want to travel on, how they want to get around. Is it train? Is it car? Is it private driver? Is it motorcycle? And then we put something together from the ground up. So we don’t do a lot of group tours. We have dabbled in it in the years past, but it’s everything that we kind of go against. And that is making sure that you are traveling the way you want to travel.
You are seeing what you want to see and only what you want to see. And we’re designing all of that around your wants and needs. we’ve put a lot of, pride ourselves in our, with our travel designers who are very, very experienced, you know, destination experts. And we always say we want to be, we don’t want to be a jack of all trades and master of none. We want to master those destinations, which is why we’re only, we only offer trips within Europe because we want, we’re experts.
in future destinations across Europe. So we’ve done special events, we’ve done some group tours, but our specialty are these personalized individual trips that are designed around
Jason Elkins (10:49.062)
interesting things because because you’re right just just the fact that you don’t just specialize in Europe that’s like kind of all we do is Europe because a traditional travel agent quite often well well my my my expertise is Europe but if you want to go on a cruise to Alaska I do that too which is fine not knocking that
all. I think that there’s many different ways that we can all participate in this industry. But like you said, kind of the tour operators a little bit more kind of like, okay, this is our area. We’re working directly with a lot of the providers, the transfer drivers, the hotels, the, you know, the guides and stuff like that. So it’s it’s it is a little bit different than just being a travel agent, you know, different stream tour operator travel agent.
I don’t know where I’m going with this, but I think where I want to go with this is What actually I’m not going anywhere with that We’re just gonna leave that there But what I want I do want to come back around to because you mentioned kind of the differences between these group departures where you just book a spot and Something that’s more bespoke customized, but you also said we like to help people travel the way that they want to travel and
been around long enough to know that some people really kind of want the private itinerary but they’re perfectly happy to do group activities during that itinerary. So say for example they’re going to, I don’t know, you’re doing something in Italy for them and they’re gonna be there for 10 days and maybe on the third day they want to do a cooking class and they’re perfectly happy to go do a cooking class with eight to ten other people.
And actually they might like that because it’s an opportunity to see other people and be more socially outgoing as opposed to just being with your spouse for 10 days and not talking to anybody other than maybe a server in a restaurant or your private driver or your private guide. So does that come up where there’s kind of a hybrid of group activities but on a private tour?
Bryan Lewis (12:49.066)
Absolutely. think that’s what we really, those are the wants and needs of the group, right? So when we have that consultation call, we ask those types of questions. Do you want to travel privately, but tour publicly? That’s what you’re saying. And a lot of the touristy sites, it’s funny because when we first launched, I was really opposed to sending people to the overpopulated
Jason Elkins (13:08.649)
okay, yeah.
Bryan Lewis (13:18.574)
tourist sites, right? And they’re, they’re, they’re popular for good reason. But we try to be more unique and send people off the beaten path. But everybody wants to do, let’s just go back to Ireland for a second wants to do the Guinness storehouse, you know, if they want to do Blarney Castle, do not do Blarney Castle at one o’clock in the afternoon, when all the tour buses come in and you’re waiting in long lines. But to go back to your joining a small group,
experience, absolutely. I think that’s where you both balance your budget and experience because you don’t want to be isolated the whole time. And most of our trips are to places that have plenty of people around, but sometimes it is fun and comfortable to be around other people for sure, especially when you’re doing like, yeah, yeah, no, and when it’s, and usually when it’s say a whiskey tour, distillery, a vineyard,
Jason Elkins (14:05.736)
For a day or two. Maybe not the same people for the whole 10 days.
Bryan Lewis (14:17.026)
where you have a couple of drinks, you loosen up, then it becomes social hour. And I think that that’s a lot of fun too. So while the trip is individualized, a lot of people absolutely choose to be part of a smaller group on these tours.
Jason Elkins (14:32.67)
Do you feel like sometimes you need to explain that to people? Because here’s the thing, if I don’t know any better and I know I like to socialize, I know I like to be around people, but then I’m looking at a tour operator’s website that’s all about private, custom…
private, no big groups, know, it’s like almost the whole website is about how personalized and individualized and how private this all is. I might kind of be a little turned off by that because maybe I do want to be around people, but I don’t want to be on a tour bus with 50 people, the same 50 people for 10 days. So do you do that through your marketing or is that a conversation you generally get to have?
I mean how do you overcome that or do you even have to overcome that? I don’t know. So it’s probably not a problem.
Bryan Lewis (15:22.254)
this is the first time that this has been brought up. I love this question because, no, well, it’s funny because I’m not the one that’s always on the consultation calls and I haven’t been for a long time. So it’d be an interesting question to ask our travel designers who take the initial calls and if this has ever been brought up. I’m gonna bring this up because I think it’s a great question. And now I’m sitting here wondering, oh my gosh, is our website off putting to somebody who wants to see
anybody else while they tour, do we make ourselves too exclusive and independent? I don’t know. Did you find that from our website? Did you get that feeling? Because this is a really good feedback if you did.
Jason Elkins (16:01.757)
No.
No, it’s just I’ve had the conversation enough times. See, I’ve also done a lot of group.
I’ve put together, developed, led a lot of group tours. So I’m kind of familiar with some of the challenges that go along with those. But we’ve also done a lot of custom bespoke tours. And for clients that, frankly, they want to be able to travel on their dates. They want to be able to see the things that they want to do. But…
they also want to engage with other people. So for example, lot of the clients I would work with in the past was more of a fly fishing type of clientele, a lot of fly fishing stuff, some nature, safari type of stuff. And what I think they enjoyed was doing their, kind of doing their thing, but maybe staying at a lodge for a few days where there’s other guests that were booked in by other operators. You know, so they’re at a lodge where maybe dinners are served with the other guests.
But they didn’t necessarily but they’re not with those people for you know a week to ten days They might be there for a few nights So they get that that interaction with people So I don’t I was just curious if if you got people that said well We’re not sure if we private the whole time. don’t know maybe you and I can develop a whole new style of touring But you but but you but you you actually called you you mentioned it you said travel alone
Bryan Lewis (17:26.306)
Maybe, yeah, think, yeah, how would we do that?
Jason Elkins (17:35.144)
There was a term you used, like travel alone but tour together? Or what did you say?
Bryan Lewis (17:42.51)
It’s something along those lines. think, you we’re going to have to go back and maybe trademark that once we realize what I said, because it must have landed. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (17:46.75)
It landed with me, think that’s why I wanted to I think that’s we went that direction so all right
Bryan Lewis (17:55.15)
I think to get back to land this plane, Jason, I think what people realize is that when they’re staying in upscale hotels or any just popular hotels and they’re doing, they’re visiting popular places, they’re certainly not lacking the opportunity to socialize. Most people who we deal with are looking forward to those nights in the pub.
as much as they are touring around by themselves. I think we give them a good mix of that because we don’t pack our days. And in fact, when somebody wants their days packed, we try to slow them down. And we say, slow down, enjoy yourself, really take it in because our philosophy is all about the impact of your experience, not just checking boxes, right? So I think that, and when we started, little known fact is my entire…
The goal of Tenon when we started was to get people in pubs in Ireland. I was obsessed with Irish pubs and we even did a country-wide pub crawl and we had this little booklet. I mean, I can’t, you know, I can’t neglect the roots of the company here, Jason. And I was younger when we started the company and I was very, I was heavily involved in events here in Boston and in my
Jason Elkins (18:55.966)
You
Jason Elkins (19:02.012)
I knew the term pub crawl was going to come in. Either you were going to say it I was going to say it. Go ahead.
Jason Elkins (19:12.722)
You
Bryan Lewis (19:20.526)
previous life and travel. It was big events and big parties and a lot of social gatherings, we’ll call it. And in fact, at one point we had the world’s largest pub crawl here in Boston and it was a precursor to traveling to Ireland to get them in the pubs over there. And there’s a whole story, I tried to do this whole event, but it’s a pretty cool, you know, we grew up, we evolved. So it’s not all about drinking in pubs by any means, but it is part of many
travelers experiences is to socialize in those types of places.
Jason Elkins (19:56.318)
Did you, so you’ve got so much experience with this. Cause that’s the thing, I imagine like, okay, you do a custom itinerary for somebody, a bespoke itinerary, and you’ve got them staying at a few different places in Ireland, and you say, okay, this evening you’re on your own, which sometimes some people like the idea of being on your own, and other people like, what do mean? But I guess what I’m saying when I say that is you’ve got some time to go explore, to go.
do go to a couple pubs, but do you find that most of your clients are comfortable walking into a pub in Ireland and making friends or is it better to have something almost set up for them to go in and like, I don’t know.
Bryan Lewis (20:41.454)
I’d say the majority of people, majority of travelers are pretty comfortable, I think. We always say there’s, target market is kinda, we have opposite sides of the spectrum. One is the first time traveler who doesn’t know where to begin and may be really hesitant, they’re very nervous and intimidated to make their own plans. They’ve never been to Europe, they don’t know what to expect and we’re there to kinda.
hold their hand, we even have our concierge services called by your side service. So we’re always by their side virtually, right? The flip side are those who are really confident, well traveled and recognize the value in both our expertise and just saving the time to do it, right? So they know that if they’re going over 12 nights, they’re staying in.
seven different towns and seven different hotels, transportation, we sprinkle in tours and they just go, we’ve done it ourselves before. We know how much work it is. We don’t want to take it on again. We want a one stop shop. Please do it. So it’s kind of twofold there. That first traveler, they’re not as confident and they may not go into a pub. And that’s where we have to communicate that where they have the opportunity to either do that or how safe it is or tell them like, hey, this is a town.
just stay in for the night. You know, this is a stopover town and maybe you just want to stay in. It’s not dangerous. We would never put somebody in a place that’s dangerous, but maybe they’re not as comfortable as they would be, you know, in the next town or their last town.
Jason Elkins (22:18.268)
So maybe like if they’re staying in Amsterdam the first night, you might not leave them the evening free to explore if they’re a first time traveler.
Bryan Lewis (22:25.9)
We would get him a babysitter, a guide. no. Yeah, that would be interesting to just, never been to Europe, go to Amsterdam your first night and go nuts.
Jason Elkins (22:37.128)
Yeah, yeah, I can imagine and you know I’ve, I won’t mention any names, I’ve worked with operators in the past maybe that, you know, their multi-day tours start in interesting places that.
are great for people that are well traveled but are very intimidating. Like so for example, hey your first night is in Bogota, Colombia. You’re free to explore the city on your own the first night. I don’t think so. Most people that don’t travel very much, that pretty much means they’re going to stuck in there. That pretty much means they’re going to hang out at maybe the bar in the hotel or hang out in the room and get rid of jet lag or whatever.
Bryan Lewis (23:02.573)
Yeah.
Bryan Lewis (23:07.427)
Thanks.
Bryan Lewis (23:19.706)
I think that comes down to the individual travelers style too, right? Because if I’m traveling and you tell me, you just say, hey, your first night is in Bogota, right? I’m going to say, I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to be excited to do it. And my wife always makes fun of me because if there’s any time I’m in someplace new and there’s a well lit street and then a dark alley, I’m always going to go down to the dark alley. And I’ve only got myself in trouble once, which is a different podcast.
Jason Elkins (23:22.776)
Exactly, yes.
Jason Elkins (23:33.63)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (23:40.478)
I am so the same way.
Jason Elkins (23:52.2)
Well, I don’t know, I kind of want to hear that story, but I’ll take your word for it.
Bryan Lewis (23:56.43)
Yeah, I don’t know if I could tell it without really putting a black cloud over this destination. It’s here in the US too, so maybe I don’t really care that much.
Jason Elkins (23:59.698)
Hahaha
Jason Elkins (24:05.394)
think there’s a few black clouds over a few destinations in the US right now, but I’ll say it so you don’t have to.
Bryan Lewis (24:09.612)
That, yeah, yeah, no, that’s also another podcast. But like, I do think it comes down to the individual traveler. a lot of times, let’s take something as familiar as Paris. Paris can be really intimidating, right? Because there’s a stigma that Americans aren’t as welcome as other places, that you are expected to at least attempt to speak French, to be responded to and respected by the locals.
And a lot of times the American traveler will just be as happy to go down to their hotel bar. They do their touring and exploring during the day. They wind down, have a drink in the bar and get ready for the next day. And so they’re not looking for that, you know, exploration in the middle of the night and down the dark alley.
Jason Elkins (24:57.15)
And it’s super interesting and you know just came up I was having a conversation with someone yesterday that I’ve been traveling with a little bit and she was like oh Jason you could inspire people to do XYZ and
I think what came out of the conversation was it’s like people just kind of have their way already kind of set. I hate to say that people are so rigid that they can’t change and grow because I think we all can. But the person that turns down the dark alley, you know, walks up to an intersection, it looks both ways and decides, okay, which way am I going to go?
and you know the one that looks down and there’s a dark alley and but I hear some noise back there I hear some music there’s got to be something interesting going on back there I’m gonna go that way I think that’s just who you are I don’t think you can you know I think it gets to the point where you and I can sit here and encourage people to always take the dark alley
But if you’re not a dark alley person, you’re not a dark alley person and you’re not gonna you probably won’t even enjoy it You might even if you do it, you might just do it and say geez. I’m not listening to Jason I’m not listening to Bryan anymore. And that’s one of the challenges working in this business is We’re accommodating different types of people right
Bryan Lewis (26:10.673)
Yeah, absolutely. First, I want to make, I mean, we might need a disclaimer out here at the end of this show to be like, we do not, we’re not encouraging you to go down the dark alley. But if you do, no, I think, right, right. I think you’re right. And that comes out in the conversation. I think that route to really get to know your travelers is the, leads to designing a good trip for them and keeps them coming back.
Jason Elkins (26:15.464)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (26:19.326)
Do as I say, not as I do.
Bryan Lewis (26:40.58)
You have to listen to the traveler. can’t, this is my whole thing with the traditional travel packages and being rigid is basically, is the tour operator in the past, the travel company is always telling you what you want to do and how you want to travel saying this is how, this is the best way to travel. Get on this bus, see these sites, eat this food and talk to these people. No, that’s the opposite of what we are trying to promote and provide and what we have provided now for so long is that is not how you travel.
That is, that is, you know what I’m saying. So.
Jason Elkins (27:13.406)
It might work, I’m imagining as you’re saying that, I’m imagining a bell curve, right? If you’re a large tour operator and you’ve got, you’re taking 40 people at a time, or even if you’re just doing the same itinerary, maybe it’s just two people at a time, but it’s the same itinerary for everybody, you’re…
you’re creating that experience based on the bell curve. You know, you’re looking at, okay, who’s in the middle? So if you’re in the middle of the bell curve as far as sense of adventure or sense of security and certainty and knowing what to expect, if you’re in the center of those two things, those types of trips might work for you. But if you’re on either extreme, maybe not so much. And…
So what I hear you saying is like your advisors when they get on the phone with somebody get to know them They can help them make the right choices that are right for them as opposed to going here’s the thing I book a lot of stuff on booking.com or Airbnb Just because that’s I’m a you know, I’m a solo traveler been traveling full-time for four and a half years I think I know what I’m doing But that’s just the story in my head. I think I know what I’m But every once while even yesterday, you know, I had booked a place on Airbnb for a week and I got there yesterday
And an hour later I was like, yeah, I’m not staying here. And I think the point that I’m going with this is you really don’t know. Because somebody puts their hotel out there or their tour experience out there on the internet doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right for all different types of people. So having an expert that’s…
unbiased like your advisors have a lot of different things they can offer they’re not you know whereas a tour up whereas somebody that only offers I don’t know city tours in Rome Coliseum tours let’s say that’s all they offer that’s all they’re gonna offer you call them and say hey we think we’d like to go on your Coliseum tour they’re not gonna try to talk you out of it probably so there’s a lot of advantage to working with someone that can kind of walk you
Bryan Lewis (29:14.0)
And we take, well, I think part of it too is that we take our feedback seriously. We survey our travelers in so many different ways and they have the opportunity to rate specific properties and tours and guides and drivers and everybody. And we’re probably a little too critical. If somebody has a bad experience in one hotel, all of sudden everybody’s like, my God, we’re never using this hotel again. And then we look back and we say the last 20 people loved this hotel. let’s.
Jason Elkins (29:42.11)
Yeah, that’s a tough one.
Bryan Lewis (29:42.64)
let’s not have a one strike policy, but let’s take it serious. And if we see a trend, we realize people really, really like to express their disdain for water pressure and the number of towels. The amount of information that people provide to us about their bathroom experiences is mind boggling. so all of sudden, but then you see these trends, you’re like, oh, everybody mentioned that there’s no water pressure in this hotel.
Jason Elkins (29:54.942)
Yes.
Bryan Lewis (30:12.048)
So then we actually can come up in conversation and say, you know, this is a really popular hotel. Just know that you might not have the best water pressure because a lot, you know, right, right.
Jason Elkins (30:20.574)
Yeah, how important is water pressure to you guys? Have you ever written a bad review and mentioned how bad the water pressure was? And if they say, oh yeah, then you know, well maybe we can find a different hotel for you, I guess, yeah.
Bryan Lewis (30:35.264)
It’s fascinating when people share. Some people are stuck on breakfast. Everybody will review every breakfast they have. Others are every shower they have. Others are every bed they have. It’s funny.
Jason Elkins (30:44.456)
Well, it’s, I mean, a really good, I guess a good way in my mind to…
Well, so I like noisy places in case anybody hears any of the trucks going by during this conversation. I’m staying in an Airbnb in Mexico City. It’s noisy. I like noisy places because noisy places mean there’s a lot of things to see and do close by. And there’s other people that like quiet places and are perfectly fine if, you know, cause maybe they’re going to have their tour guide pick them up in the morning and take them somewhere and then they want to come back to a nice quiet place. That’s not me.
but you read a lot of reviews. So if I’m reading reviews for a place and it’s like it was noisy, it was noisy, it was noisy, I don’t know, that means nothing to me, but somebody else that’s sensitive to that and that’s why it’s important to have those conversations with people, especially if it’s your first time to Europe, you know, and you’re just trying to figure stuff out on your own that could, you could end up writing a lot of bad reviews and then realize, gee, Bryan’s team could have helped us with this.
Bryan Lewis (31:26.816)
If you sign me up.
Bryan Lewis (31:44.176)
I mean, think that’s, yeah, yeah. I said I like noise and they put me in a farm stay, you know, but I think again, the individuality and the difference in people’s likes, that’s what makes us all unique and makes it fun, right? And it educates us because the time, if we’re putting everybody in city center hotels and somebody goes, no, I really want to stay in a countryside farmhouse.
Jason Elkins (32:01.406)
Of course.
Bryan Lewis (32:11.3)
Well, now we get to research that we need to we get to find it for we get to see, you know, what the experience was like for other people. And then we get to hear about it from our own traveler, and then we get to add it to our portfolio of recommendations, you know.
Jason Elkins (32:23.518)
Let me ask, because the other thing that came up is sometimes you have mixed preferences within a couple or a family and I’m sure there’s times when maybe the person that you guys were talking to when you booked the trip really likes noise, but maybe their spouse doesn’t so much and then their spouse is the one who ends up writing the review.
Bryan Lewis (32:45.018)
Mm-hmm.
Bryan Lewis (32:48.504)
Wife always wins, Jason. It’s one thing we’ve always learned. The wife wins.
Jason Elkins (32:48.51)
Well, I’m still trying to figure that out still but yes, you’re absolutely right. So I’m curious when you do your cons well, do you typically do phone consultations video consultations or do you do a lot of this by email? What is your typical process look like?
Bryan Lewis (33:07.536)
Tip of the process is once we receive that inquiry and the inquiry we get from our website is pretty thorough because it walks you through what type of accommodations you like to stay at, what style of travel, what kind of pace, and then how you want to get around. And we always ask the budget question, which makes some people cringe right away because they think by asking your budget, we’re going to spend your money up to that budget.
Jason Elkins (33:35.134)
you
Bryan Lewis (33:35.162)
but it’s the most important question we can ask because we don’t want to start leading you down the wrong path. And when we hear somebody say, have $2,000 to spend on a 14 night trip and five star hotels, we know what we’re walking into and we need to reset those expectations. So when they submit that form, we already have a good idea of their expectations. And then our travel designers review that very first thing is to review it by phone or video.
Email only goes so far, it’s very impersonal. And we’ll respond right away saying, we received your request, but let’s jump on the phone for 30 or 45 minutes and really talk through this. And if we find at the end of the call, we’re not a good fit for each other, hey, we did our part. And we think we did you a service and we certainly don’t want to force somebody work with us that when we’re not a good fit. Some people are looking for those bus tours or small group experiences.
We can refer them to one of our trusted friends and partners too. So that consultation call is really important. And we don’t have to move forward. we’re not, I’ve always said that the definition of success to me is when you get to a point of being selective, where you can be selective, right? And so instead of taking on everything, you have the conversation, you decide if you’re a good fit together.
And then you decide to move forward or not together.
Jason Elkins (35:04.319)
it.
I don’t even have to ask you. just know. know that when you guys got started, I’m just getting, well, I say I know, but it sometimes takes a while to figure that out early on. you’re just so new and just so anxious to get the business that you’re like, you know, someone comes up and says, we want to do this. And you’re like, you know, it’s a bad idea. You know, it’s not going to work, but you’re like, okay. And then you bust your butt to put together this itinerary for them knowing that it’s not a good itinerary, but that’s
Bryan Lewis (35:26.882)
Everything. Take everything.
Jason Elkins (35:34.984)
what they’re asking for and you just and then you get to the end and you just know it’s gonna be a problem and then they write the one-star review and you’re like yeah we knew that was coming
Bryan Lewis (35:44.568)
Yeah, you know what a perfect example of this is, and this is both the evolution of Tenon and our own expectations is we started as a three-star B &B self-drive company. When we found our groove after launch, was kind it. We could do three-star B &Bs with a rental car for seven days, and it was like $900 per person, and you could get a great trip.
until the expectation of that three-star B &B was not what reality provided. And so the same thing with hotels. Three-star hotels in Europe are not great places to stay. And that’s not, I’m just calling it out there because it’s the amount of people who would come back and complain about their three-star hotel or B &B experience. We quickly learned that we’re not, we actually, we don’t offer it.
we won’t put you in a three star. So it’s minimum four star for your own, just for your own experience. And if you’re unwilling to stay in a four star, that’s when we say we’re probably not the best fit. There are budget companies out there, but know that a three star B &B or hotel experience is not a three star here in the US. It’s different.
Jason Elkins (37:04.604)
And that’s a really important thing for people that have not traveled. I’ve traveled enough that I’ve traveled a lot. And you just kind of have to accept that things are not always the same. Not better or worse. There’s no judgment. But they are just different. And if you don’t know that, and if you don’t have someone like the folks on your team to explain that, then it could be a big surprise. And yeah, I could see how that would be a learning lesson for you guys to…
Bryan Lewis (37:20.464)
different.
Jason Elkins (37:34.238)
I can just imagine, I can see it in my head. But, I wanna make sure that we’ve talked a lot about this stuff, but we really, really, really wanna hear your story. How the heck did you get into this? How far back do we need to go to kinda get an understanding for how Bryan, like, were you growing up, right? Was that motorcycles first, travel first? What came first? How far back do we need to go to figure you out?
Bryan Lewis (37:57.402)
We’re gonna go back to, let’s just go back to my upbringing in Minnesota. You growing up in Minnesota, we just didn’t have, we didn’t have opportunities to travel far and wide. We would travel to, we’d go to a resort in Wisconsin for two weeks a year. That was our vacation. We were very grateful for having that opportunity. But I never saw the ocean until 18. I didn’t fly in an airplane until I was 19. But I did go to college, Jason, in Northern Minnesota where
It was really, really cold in Bemidji, Minnesota, and we didn’t have a lot to do. And I started to throw parties and I was really good at throwing parties and realized I can make money throwing parties. And it was kind of this, this aha moments. mean, didn’t take long to go aha, but you know, once you start making money, throwing parties and having the time of your life, you go, what are other opportunities that I can do? So,
it turns into weekends away. We’d go up to Winnipeg and I’d start organizing weekends for friends. And then I went on spring break. spring break to me in Mexico was, that was my future. And it truly was my future because for the next 10 years I worked in spring break for some of the biggest spring break companies. I’m actually sitting in their office right now, which is kind of funny.
Jason Elkins (39:23.55)
Whoa, whoa, hold on, I am so fascinated. Okay, before you say spring break companies, I’m like, my mind is like, I don’t even know if I’ve ever heard of a spring break company. I never got to one spring break. When I did college, the little bit of college I did, did not involve the spring break experience, so I missed that. So what is a spring break company before we go any further?
Bryan Lewis (39:24.694)
Full circle moment here. Yeah. It gets deep.
Bryan Lewis (39:52.528)
And this is the start of it all, Jason, is that the model for a spring break company and they were everywhere. And I think anybody who went to college in the 90s, they would know exactly what I’m talking about where you go up to any bulletin board and there’s sometimes 11, 12 different spring break flyers. You open the old school newspaper and there’s ads for spring break trips. And it was really cut through. These companies and it was brutal.
but it was so much fun. So the model was you’d go on college campuses and you’d recruit campus reps, right? Just students who would promote spring break trips to other students on campus. And the old school way of doing it is you’d have a flyer and on the bottom of the flyer, you’d have a code that said, for more information, call Bryan and my phone number. Anytime somebody mailed, because you couldn’t book online, you had to mail in the registration on that flyer, I would get credit.
for anybody who booked a spring break trip with my flyer. So I called an ambassador, campus rep ambassador, the point that if you got 15 people to sign up, you went free.
So I got four. I did not go for free. did not succeed as a campus rep. But what I did do was form a really tight relationship with the owner of the company that I traveled with. And he was in Minnesota as well. And so the next year I actually worked for him full-time. I took over his program to Mazlan, Mexico. So a traditional spring break trip to Mexico, as you’ve seen on MTV or back in the day.
is exactly and probably, yeah, yeah, and it’s everything and more that you’ve come to know. And so you go down, and this is wild because this is back in, say, 1997, I started selling spring break full-time, and you could go to Mazelon, Mexico for a full week, seven nights with air from Minneapolis for $399. It’s crazy to me, and we made money doing it, which was even crazier. But the real money was made
Jason Elkins (41:31.624)
heard about them.
Bryan Lewis (42:01.028)
by throwing parties. So without getting myself in too much trouble here, you can, so when you’re on spring break, you work with the nightclubs down there and you basically promote the parties to both your own travelers and everybody else on the beach, trying to get them to come to your party or instead of somebody else’s party. And you just get a per head commission at the door. And so you just pack these places with spring breakers, which makes for a great time.
Jason Elkins (42:31.198)
just curious, you’re on the beach or you’re with some of your guests or whatever, do you give them a little card to get a free drink? Is that the idea? And then when they show up to get their free drink, now they know that they came because of you?
Bryan Lewis (42:45.658)
So there’d be one promoter, right? So there’d be, if you contracted that club that night, everybody who came through that door, you’d get paid on. So you’d have people firing the beach, just getting anybody and everybody in the door. Code or not, you just got paid for anybody. It was your night. You contract the night and yeah, it was your night. And so the real money was made, and I’m not telling any secrets here, or maybe I am, but.
Jason Elkins (42:54.648)
okay.
Jason Elkins (43:05.81)
because it was your night. Okay, you were the one, okay. All right.
Bryan Lewis (43:15.344)
in the party package. I don’t even know if this exists anymore. I could probably ask, again, I’m sitting in their office. You would have on a seven night spring break trip, you’d have seven nights of parties, but you’d sell it as one party package, say for like $200. And then you got entry into seven nights of parties. And that’s where you’d make the money is just selling the party package. All of this basically.
Turns into so what this led to is I was working in Mexico and there’s other companies like ours that are exclusively selling spring break and it’s to Mazelon is to Cancun is to Jamaica and while I was working in Mazelon and met folks from a company in Boston and they Hired me to go work in Jamaica and The Bahamas and then offer me a full-time job out here in Boston
working for, it’s called Student City and it still exists. Again, we ended up working with MTV and we became the official provider of MTV Travel for Spring Break and we just blew up. It was insane and we got up to, at one point we sent 40,000 Spring Breakers over a six week period to 27 different destinations. It was wild.
Jason Elkins (44:36.328)
So I’m curious, if you meet, you’re not in, you’re not working, but you’re just somewhere, you’re at a grocery store and you meet a nice young person, a nice young lady, whatever, and you start a conversation and she says, what do you do? What kind of work do you do? What was the answer during that time? How do you label what you did? Other than I’m a professional spring breaker.
Bryan Lewis (44:59.184)
Student travel, we’d say, you kind of, mean, was everybody’s dream job, Jason. I got to tell you, it was the closest thing to being a rock star as you get. But no, you work in student travel, specializing in spring break. We only did spring break. And what was funny is that, yeah, go ahead.
Jason Elkins (45:05.178)
You
Jason Elkins (45:17.214)
Alright, so that’s what you tell the maybe the young lady that’s you know that maybe attractive young lady that you run into. Now, what do you tell your mom you’re doing?
Bryan Lewis (45:31.674)
That was a hard sell, harder sell. He said, mom, I’m, Honest answer is yes, I did. I went three years to college, I got my AA, and then I had the opportunity to go work in Mexico and be a full-time. Yeah, I mean, it was, I gotta tell you, it was more than party. I mean, there was a lot of party, this was a fun business, but this was hard work, and we took it very serious. And me personally,
Jason Elkins (45:35.056)
and, and, and did you drop out of school to do it?
Jason Elkins (45:41.66)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (45:48.328)
Party full time.
Bryan Lewis (46:00.772)
When I moved to Boston, was a just regional inside salesperson. I went around to colleges and then recruited campus reps. Then became the sales manager and direct sales and then VP of sales. Then I had equity and then we sold the company. And that’s how the story goes. it was all our growth from when I started 99 full time, we had 4,000 travelers. It was four years later, we had 40,000 travelers. It was insane. So you had to tell, I mean, mom,
Mom was really, really proud of me by the end. By the end. Yeah, I’m not sure what she told her friends, but she told me she was proud of me anyway. I think when you looked at it as this is a serious business, when it went from being a few hundred kids on the beach in Cancun to, my gosh, we’re throwing a party hosted by Paris Hilton.
Jason Elkins (46:33.534)
In the beginning maybe not so much.
Bryan Lewis (46:57.474)
sponsored by Axe Body Spray and with Method Man performing, it was taken a little bit more serious where you’re like, okay, this is a special event company really is what it was that had the travel. So long story short, those were my travel routes and what Spring Break did though was made travel an experience for me. It was more than a plane ticket in a hotel room. It was a full…
experience it gave you, it introduced you to different cultures. I you’re in Mexico City right now, so you know, like the first time you go to Mexico, everything’s just so, so different and your eyes are wide open and you’re a little, you know, maybe apprehensive in certain areas, but you’re so curious and those, it’s the curiosity.
Jason Elkins (47:45.298)
The dopamine is going through the roof. It’s all the new things to see and do. Yeah, it’s very cool.
Bryan Lewis (47:52.602)
So how do you take that and expand on it? So when I left that company, I got to tell you, I vowed never to be back in travel again, especially student travel. And it took me about six months before I…
Jason Elkins (48:07.646)
Why is that? Why did you vow not to get back into travel? Tell us a little bit more.
Bryan Lewis (48:11.568)
Mmm.
I think because it was, I mean, this, this, the business then there’s some personal things that, happened. And, and I think that it was just so cutthroat. I mean, really, really there’s, there was some dirty players in the arena. you know, and it just wasn’t, it wasn’t what I wanted to do anymore in terms of, again, especially student travel and where you, you really had to.
Bryan Lewis (48:46.34)
just maybe, you know, do things. We were always above board and this is the one thing, it was hard to walk the line when you knew other people weren’t, over it. Okay. And so I just, I think it just, it weighed on me. I was also going through a divorce at the time and it just was spent.
So it wasn’t until my current wife and I were sitting in Newport, Rhode Island, and we were watching, we got to be tourists, right? So we were never tourists. We always had the carpet rolled out for us and you were always on the behind the scenes. Well, if you’ve been to Newport, Rhode Island, they have the mansions, mansion row or whatever, and you get to go and be a tourist. You get to pay to get into these really cool houses and…
Then you have to, you know, you have to walk through crowds of people to get to the restaurant that you’re, you’re going to eat at. And, and so I’m looking around and I’m just seeing the impact that this destination, and this is New Port, right? And this is not Mexico and everybody taking a break from their normal life to come to a common destination.
as a break from reality. And there are cheers and right, everybody’s having a good time. You’re laughing, you’re watching the boats come in and you’re experiencing something new. And it just, said, this is, got to be back in this because this is the most rewarding industry because you can, you’re exposing people to new experiences that they would never have otherwise. And so my wife said, how are you going to do this? I’m like, I don’t know. I said, I don’t care if I’m running buses from Boston down to Newport. I’m doing two.
trips around the world, I’ve got you back in tourism. And I told a story about my friend Vinny, who said, Bryan wants you to start your own company. And I’m like, yeah, you I’ve never really thought about it. He goes, well, you should. And when you do, I’m the first person you call. My wife said, well, what’s Vinny doing? I he’s doing these trips to Ireland. And all of sudden I went, Ireland? Let’s do it. I’m like, he knows Ireland. I can do the sales. He can do the operations.
Bryan Lewis (50:59.598)
I’m calling him frantically on the way home as if I’m telling him the worst news in the world. He finally calls me and says, Bryan, what’s up? I said, we’re starting a company. He’s like, whoa, slow down. He’s like, thought something was wrong. I’m like, something is wrong. I’m unemployed and I need my next chapter here. And I said, now I’ve figured it out. I’m like, let’s do trips to Ireland and let’s do it different. And he’s like, I’m all ears. So he’s working up at a ski resort up in Vermont at the time. I drove up to Vermont the next day.
And we crafted this whole idea of doing trips differently in Ireland that weren’t totally self-driving dependent, weren’t big bus tours. It was a very biased approach of how we wanted to travel and how we wanted to experience things, you know, firsthand. So that’s how Tennant was born.
Jason Elkins (51:44.51)
Had you been to Ireland at that point?
Bryan Lewis (51:49.072)
man, you are exposing me. You’re getting all my dirty secrets out. had, no, it’s always the first day of employment I always tell during our background story and all that. I always tell people, I’m like little known secret. I started a tour company to specialize in trips to Ireland without ever having been there. I had never been to Ireland. Yeah, yeah, well, because.
Jason Elkins (52:12.232)
How did I get that sense? I love that about you. It’s something about you. That’s cool. That’s really cool.
Bryan Lewis (52:18.912)
I mean, it was something I didn’t really volunteer in the beginning, but I’m so proud of now because it was the tenacity and just the resilience, I think. I mean, I wasn’t going to stop. So Vinny was going to be part of the company and it didn’t work out because he was in the ski business then. And so I went, he was my connection to Ireland. He was my he was my knowledge.
I hired two people, we literally went, we flew to Ireland and went hotel to hotel and said, this is who we are, this is what we want to do, we want to see if you’d work with us. And, you one by one, and some of these hotels are still are the best of our partners, which is kind of a cool story. Because we didn’t know what we were doing, Jason. We, I I learned that first trip, I’m like, oh, this, yeah, it was wild because, but I was in, I was in and I had to.
Jason Elkins (53:13.534)
But it’s so cool because…
Bryan Lewis (53:14.704)
Keep going.
Jason Elkins (53:16.126)
Because there’s so many people that would, maybe a friend, somebody says, you should do this. I’ve got some connections in Ireland. And so many people might see that opportunity in front of themselves and say, now who am I to start a business selling trips to Ireland? I’ve never been to Ireland. Well, maybe someday after I get to know Ireland, maybe I need to go on vacation a few times before I can even
and start thinking about doing this business. And the person that says, I don’t know anything about it, I’ve never been there, but I have faith in my ability to figure things out. So I’m gonna go ahead and start taking steps in that direction and not just get ready to get ready, but like, just like, hey, I’m doing this. I don’t know what, so for example, like I’m a hot air balloon pilot.
and I started learning how to balloons when I was a kid. And one thing about hot air balloons is they don’t, you don’t fly them from airport to airport. Pretty much every other type of flight, know, helicopters, airplanes, whatever, you take off, you know where you’re going, you actually file a flight plan, you know, you have a destination in mind, but with a balloon, you know you’re going downwind, but that’s
Bryan Lewis (54:12.176)
Fascinating.
Bryan Lewis (54:33.53)
Yeah
Jason Elkins (54:34.254)
So you take off and an hour later you start looking for a spot to land. And it was someone at one point had said something to me about like, you don’t have to know the destination to get started. Take off, have faith in your ability to figure things out along the way and amazing things will happen. So when I hear you tell that story, that’s what reminds me of that.
So yeah, you’ve never been to Ireland. I can’t tell you how many places I’ve landed a balloon that I’d never been before. I still landed a balloon there. I figured it out.
Bryan Lewis (55:04.504)
and you figured it out because I mean, I think it comes back to how resourceful you are, right? And how confident you are in your own abilities and the more than anything or delusional, yeah, absolutely.
Jason Elkins (55:16.038)
Or delusional, depending. But either way, a little bit of delusion can go a long ways.
Bryan Lewis (55:22.256)
It can and now and I look back and I go, okay, that might’ve been a little, the odds were against me, Jason, for sure. But I learned to hire people that knew way more than me, right? And that’s what we continue to do. If you ask me where you should go in Sweden, I’m gonna say, I have no idea, but our travel designers do because I can’t possibly.
you know, know everything across 18 destinations, but I know enough to hire somebody that does. And that’s how you build a strong team and a trusted team of a network of global travelers. And it’s pretty impressive when you go around the room, you’re like, you know, tell us about your travel experience. I’m like, am I the least traveled person in this room? I think I am.
Jason Elkins (56:13.074)
Which is actually a really, really cool thing because there’s not a lot of CEOs out there that will hire people that have more knowledge and experience than they do. They’re intimidated by that. So that’s actually, the smart ones hire people, surround themselves with people that are either smarter, more knowledgeable, more experienced than they are. That’s the sign of a good leader, I think. And it sounds like kind of what your philosophy has been.
Bryan Lewis (56:37.084)
I mean, you got to check your ego at the door for sure. I’m very intentional who I align myself with and as soon as somebody rears that ego first mentality and I don’t have any patience for that.
Jason Elkins (56:54.01)
It’s, we have a wide listenership of the show, I’m say, be careful how I say this, but there are travel companies out there that are led by people that have tremendous travel experience, you know, and we’ll tell you about all their travel experience. And they’ve been to 150 countries or whatever, and then you look at the team of people they surround themselves with, and you kinda wonder, it’s like,
I’m not knocking anybody, you know, when they hire travel planners, they have a tendency to hire travel planners that are maybe good at, maybe good communicators, maybe good at follow-up, maybe just great people, but actually haven’t traveled very much. And it’s just always, you can see it, you go to a Bata’s page, you know, you can kind of see, they’ve got the CEO who’s been everywhere, everything and this and that, and then you’ve got the person that…
Bryan Lewis (57:23.888)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (57:51.326)
maybe lives in Minnesota and is saving up to go on a Caribbean cruise someday. I just really feel like I’m being an asshole when I say that. But you know what, you kind of know what I mean. So I respect and admire you for surrounding yourself with people that know more than you do. But at the same time…
Bryan Lewis (57:59.257)
Yeah, yeah
Jason Elkins (58:12.786)
Having traveled to a lot of places is not necessarily a good indication that you’re a great travel advisor. We both know that.
Bryan Lewis (58:21.552)
Absolutely. mean, it’s you can be, you know, cultured. I think that we do look for people who have traveled, you know, obviously great travel experience. mean, even anybody who’s studied abroad and we see that on their resume does stand out because that they’re they’re they’re just probably more emotionally mature. They’re they’re they’re, you know, just better rounded people. But the the key for me is is to
to absolutely surround yourself with a team that props you up and supports it fills those gaps that you don’t know. Now, conversely, when we talk about motorcycles, I would never pretend to know how to put together a motorcycle tour if I didn’t ride, right? Because that is, you have that, you need to be a rider to know the ins and outs of riding and what’s important and all of that.
So I think that that’s where, even when we started going back to when we started, when we tried to work with Lemon Rock in the past, the reason we didn’t be beyond, besides the fact that they were in Killarney, is that we didn’t have anybody to sell the tours except me. And so it was one of those situations where I’m like, do I wanna get back on the phone and can I even do it? I have the bandwidth? And I didn’t, and nobody else was comfortable enough selling a motorcycle tour when they didn’t.
when they weren’t familiar with motorcycles. we kind of.
Jason Elkins (59:52.254)
Okay.
I’m going to ask you this because here’s the question that’s popped into my head. I’m thinking when I think of all the people I know or the people I think I know, the stereotypes of people that travel on motorcycles, you’ve got in my mind, this is all in my mind, so you get to correct me if I’m wrong. There’s kind of two extremes. There’s kind of the biker dude, which I have a lot of love and respect for, you know, works a blue collar job, works his ass off and goes out on the weekends and does poker runs on his bike or maybe gets to go to Sturgis.
or Daytona or something like that for big event. That’s one side and then you’ve got the doctors and the lawyers that kind of want to be biker dude. That have the BMW motorcycle or the really nice Harley Davidson and maybe they go to same events. And when they get to Sturgis Bike Week, everybody’s the same because we’re all bikers. But I’m trying to picture the person in that crowd that would also be a good travel advisor.
that is, that wants to do that type of work that has the organizational skills, the patience, the people skills to actually sell motorcycle tours. And I’m thinking, man, that’s a pretty small niche. It’s a pretty small slice, right? Am I right?
Bryan Lewis (01:01:01.232)
It is and we’re, we are so lucky to have found our person. And, and if I, if I may, our, our general manager, Aaron is that person. is just amazing. She’s so well connected and I’ve, I’ve met my matches. I she’s well, way more connected than the motorcycle landscape than, than I am. And so we found that person and that’s another podcast that.
That might be an exclusive paid only podcast of how we came together and the serendipity around it. It’s an amazing, amazing story.
Jason Elkins (01:01:41.114)
I can imagine, because how do you, you can’t just go to Sturgis and say, I’m gonna go to Sturgis and find somebody who would be a great travel planner or tour operator or anything. He’s just like, what are the, that’d be a needle in the A stack, I would think.
Bryan Lewis (01:01:55.492)
Yeah, and luckily, I mean, she signed up for one of our tours and then became our general manager through certain, the series of events and conversations that were really, really kind of funny to look back on. But now you’re right, I think that’s the challenge. But in some ways it’s easier because again, it’s such a travel mentality with motorcycles, even finding our market and our customer base.
Jason Elkins (01:02:10.118)
That’s very cool.
Bryan Lewis (01:02:23.236)
There’s two things you need to be licensed to ride and want to travel, right? And that’s it. So your target audience just is so narrow and it’s really easy to identify. And then you have to see the segment of that audience, right? You’ve got the biker guy that you said, and you’ve got the CEO who rides, you know, that’s finding those.
Jason Elkins (01:02:29.202)
Well, that’s true. Yeah, that’s true.
Bryan Lewis (01:02:49.744)
the target market within the audience is a little bit more challenging. But it’s so easy to find bikers who want to travel to Ireland because you can target them.
Jason Elkins (01:02:55.198)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:03:02.152)
Well, yeah, I guess so. I you’re right. I think there’s a whole other podcast around that. let’s, we’ll move on a little bit. But actually before we move on, let’s go back because I really want to know when you were in high school or maybe the first year of college, what did you think you were going to do with your life? Did you have a plan? Did you have a direction you were going before you got turned on to the party promoting and throwing parties?
Bryan Lewis (01:03:07.502)
Yeah.
Bryan Lewis (01:03:30.628)
Wow, I gotta remember, I mean, I changed my major seven times in three years. So, no, no, didn’t, think I, you I had this idea. If I were to go way back and think, you know, what do most people want to do in high school when they don’t know what they want to do? You go, I want to be a high school counselor, guidance counselor, right? Cause I want to, I want to work with others, you know, to, so I did, right. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:03:35.038)
So you did not have a plan.
Jason Elkins (01:03:55.294)
help them figure out what they’re going to do. It’s kind of like the therapist who gets into psychology because their therapist inspired them.
Bryan Lewis (01:04:00.282)
That’s ironic, isn’t it?
Bryan Lewis (01:04:11.8)
Right, right. No, I had an interest in psychology, right? And that’s, I think it was just a kind of a default. weren’t, our childhood is, it’s weird when you look back and go, what inspired us when we were growing up? I mean, I was a hockey player and I loved, you know, I loved social events.
And so to try to think about what you’re doing for the rest of your life. We have five kids and to look at each of them and see where they’re at in life and where they see themselves in the future. Our youngest is graduating high school this year and she’s determined. She’s one who’s 18 and determined to become an entrepreneur and in a very, you know, in a market that she’s got to figure it out. But we’ll see, you know, we’ll see what happens in a year.
Jason Elkins (01:05:04.136)
But if she comes to you two years from now and says, dad, there’s these people at the university that are throwing parties and making all this money, and all I gotta do is get 15 people to go to Daytona with me, what are you gonna say to her?
Bryan Lewis (01:05:04.72)
two years after years.
Bryan Lewis (01:05:21.456)
mean, it was my launching pad. So, I mean, I’m gonna say I’m going with you, but let me help you. Yeah. No, I would never, I mean, this is where it gets a little slippery, right? Because there’s, I’m always going to encourage growth through uncomfort, right? Discomfort rather. And so, and that could be, it’s usually traveling. We’ve taught our kids from very young that travel is the door to the.
Jason Elkins (01:05:23.262)
Okay.
Bryan Lewis (01:05:49.504)
to personal growth, more than just seeing the world, seeing yourself. That same daughter is now, she may have visited more countries than me by now. She’s 18, she’s visiting Portugal in April for 11th country, I think. So she’s well traveled and she knows what’s up. But it was very intentional on our part and to always prioritize experiences over things and exposure to new cultures.
being open-minded and inclusive and all that. it’s pretty nice. It’s cool when you see your kids take on some of your own values.
Jason Elkins (01:06:23.805)
the sit.
Jason Elkins (01:06:29.181)
Was there anybody in your life when you were younger? I mean, you mentioned that you didn’t really have to travel much. You maybe went to, I think you said Wisconsin to a resort or something like that. did you have any grandparents, crazy aunts, crazy uncles that used to send you postcards or give you subscriptions to National Geographic? Was there anybody younger, when you were younger, that you think?
Bryan Lewis (01:06:38.725)
Yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:06:53.327)
planted a seed or just kind of happened because of the party promoting stuff.
Bryan Lewis (01:06:59.778)
I mean, wasn’t, no, we didn’t really have any influence for travel at all. We had, it’s funny, I remember our basement, we had National Geographic and none of it really interested me. You didn’t pick it up and be like, my gosh, because I think part of it is I truly didn’t believe I would ever have the opportunity to do it. I didn’t have the means to do it. And it just, wasn’t within reach.
Jason Elkins (01:07:21.041)
Yeah.
Bryan Lewis (01:07:26.594)
And I think when we went to our first spring break, our seniors in high school, we drove down to Panama City, Florida from Minnesota, three buddies and two buddies made. And I think that was the, when I saw the ocean for the first time and it was like, I can get to places on my own. And I, and maybe this is just the start of something. So I, think you started to say yes more like, did you want to see new places? The other thing I was a blackjack dealer in Minnesota. And is that a.
big casino, but when you’re a blackjack dealer there, I was my hopes of dealing on a cruise ship. And then I was going to move to Vegas, I was going to move to Reno, that was going to move to Mississippi was all around dealing blackjack. But did the cruise ship idea to me really stuck with me because I’m like, if I could I is this real? Could I actually do this? Could I could I work on a cruise ship? And I didn’t really have the confidence to pursue that much, because I didn’t know how to start.
Uh, and I think that’s where, I, when I landed with this, I guess, who was my first kind of mentor in this business, the owner of the spring break company, then you had, you had somebody to guide you and throw you into it too, and say, and then this is my future. So you got to gain the confidence.
Jason Elkins (01:08:46.181)
One last childhood question. You weren’t traveling much, but one thing you mentioned was experiences over things, which I guess that defines a lot of my life, because here I am in Mexico City, in an Airbnb with everything I own is in my bag right behind that door behind me. The things I don’t, I personally, I just can’t get my head around things anymore. Growing up, were your parents…
Bryan Lewis (01:09:06.585)
love it.
Jason Elkins (01:09:15.653)
even though you weren’t traveling, was it an experiential thing? I’m just curious where there’s some influences there around experiences over things.
Bryan Lewis (01:09:24.816)
I think what became really important to us and what they were very grateful of is time together and they worked hard, they scraped together what they could to buy hockey gear, right? I mean, and it was a goalie, so it was expensive gear. we didn’t, again, there was a lack of means to do much. So you really valued work ethic and then you work really hard to go on that two week vacation.
Jason Elkins (01:09:38.541)
Mm-hmm. yeah.
Bryan Lewis (01:09:54.522)
to the resort in Wisconsin. And then we bought a piece of land and this is in Wisconsin as well. And it was the greatest day of our family’s life because we had this, our own land. And I’ll tell you, it was the land cost, I think it was $15,000 to get this little piece of land. We parked a trailer on it. And some of my best memories is sitting in that trailer playing cards, eating popcorn and that, and having campfires, eating hot dogs and all that. I would give up.
any material thing to be able to do that.
Jason Elkins (01:10:27.749)
That’s so cool because it’s because we think of land is kind of a tangible thing, but it’s not about the tangible thing It’s about the experiences that you that you had there What did you call it? Like when you was a family and say we’re gonna go out to the the camper the trailer the land What was the term you used?
Bryan Lewis (01:10:43.984)
So it’s funny, we always had a joke because you’d go, most people go up north to the cabin. Because when you’re in Minneapolis, you went north to the cabin and we had a camper east of Minneapolis, so we’d go east to the camper. And then it became the cabin. So then the trailer, the camper turned into a bigger camper, turned into a cabin and now it’s just, and still in the family. So we go to the cabin.
Jason Elkins (01:10:57.487)
Okay.
Jason Elkins (01:11:08.157)
So where these were these like you started the smaller trailer the bigger trailer and then a cabin because sometimes in parts of the world they kind of build the cabin around the camper did you guys do that or was it a actual separate structure
Bryan Lewis (01:11:22.96)
No, it was a real cabin, real foundation. The camper was like a pull behind, like you just pulled it in one day in a truck and then I don’t know if we sold it. But those, I think my childhood and I think not having the access to a lot of travel, mean, kind of wound me up to just see as much as you possibly can. And when it got in my blood,
Jason Elkins (01:11:26.019)
Alright, alright, wow.
Jason Elkins (01:11:33.821)
You can, you can…
Bryan Lewis (01:11:52.4)
And that was just, it was just everything to just never say no. It’s like do and see everything you can. And I have a real strong philosophy on, you know, not being here forever and not thinking so narrow that you need to save today for when you’re 90 and you can’t do anything. You know, so spend it on experiences. Make sure that you’re prioritizing that for kids and not just collecting things, you know.
Jason Elkins (01:12:23.069)
Do you have something, I’m not going to use the term bucket list, I’m not even sure how I feel about the term bucket list, but what’s next on your radar? Because we’re talking about prioritizing experiences, maybe it’s with some of your kids, or what do you have something big that you’re looking forward to, either destination or particular type of experience?
Bryan Lewis (01:12:44.976)
I want to ride more in Scandinavia. That’s always been like riding in Norway to me is high on my quote unquote bucket list. I think more than anything, I want to travel with my wife more because over the past 20 years, we’ve been together for 18 years, we get to travel together, but not as much as I would hope. And so one of the things, my priority,
She’s never been West. And every time I go West to the Rockies, to Wyoming, to Montana, and I’m riding, we’re always on two wheels, and I’m thinking, I need to show this to my wife. She has to see what’s in her own backyard. And so she’s agreed to either do, she loves trains, she’s either agreed to do like a cross-country train trip, or, and or maybe we’ll do.
rent a big RV and do the RV thing for 30 days in the West and in the mountains because she’s never seen it. She rides on, she loves riding on the back. She doesn’t have her own bike, she, yeah, she’d absolutely ride through the mountains with me. And so if we drove out there, she doesn’t like to fly. So she would much prefer a train or an RV and then we can carry a bike, trailer it, or they have these toy haulers.
Jason Elkins (01:13:45.245)
Does she ride?
Jason Elkins (01:14:03.197)
Wait, wait, wait, wait. She’s not a game to get on the back of the bike and go all the way to Wyoming from the East Coast? What do mean? I would not advise it. Have you done it? Have you driven that?
Bryan Lewis (01:14:10.84)
from Boston? Probably not. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. I have not ridden from here. No, we, we travel every year in this little group of we call it’s called the CEO ride as it’s business owners who ride and we’ve done some incredible rides and so we’ll go through the, we’ll get together and fly into a common place. We’ve done, you know, the, from Vancouver to Calgary through the Canadian Rockies we’ve done.
I haven’t ridden from Boston cross country. think that if I had the time and lack of responsibility, I think I would love to take three months and just do the ride as much as I could around the US, really.
Jason Elkins (01:14:54.617)
It’s, there’s a lot of, as someone who has done the cross country trip many times in a pickup truck with my father when I was younger, I’ve driven across a couple times and I have done the motorcycle from Fort Campbell, Kentucky to Sheridan, Wyoming.
I didn’t even have a motorcycle license. That’s another story for another day. No, no, was, when I was in the Army, I went and bought a motorcycle. They loaded it into the back of my pickup truck. I went and found a ramp to get it off the back of the pickup truck. Rode around in the parking lot for a few hours, and then the next day, well, don’t know if it was next day, but it seemed like the next day I got on it and drove it from Kentucky to Wyoming. It was really dumb.
Bryan Lewis (01:15:14.124)
No, geez. You’re not renting from us.
Bryan Lewis (01:15:40.184)
Wow. I mean, you survived. You figured it out. Ken, you figured it out. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:15:40.637)
I survived. Man, my butt was really sore. had no idea. Anyway, where I was going with that is, yeah, it’s a long, there’s a lot of flat, very flat, very straight roads in the middle of the country. Still beautiful.
Bryan Lewis (01:15:48.449)
I bet.
Jason Elkins (01:16:01.361)
Bryan, we’ve discussed so many different things. Obviously, we could have a few different episodes talking about a bunch of different things. But I want to make sure that, like, is there anything you wish I would have asked you or that you think I forgot to ask you that you want to make sure that we cover before we wrap up?
Bryan Lewis (01:16:17.252)
think we did a good job of carrying a lot of bases, even though, I mean, I could talk, I think we could talk for hours. I’ve really enjoyed this. I think, you know, when I just, if I have the opportunity to, I think, you know, share my belief in travel, maybe that is to me the most important thing that I embraced when I had the opportunity to do so.
Jason Elkins (01:16:26.397)
You
Bryan Lewis (01:16:46.992)
It just made me such a better person. And I’m gonna share one more thing with you where I thought the pivotal point was for me in that kind of personal growth and cultural shift. And that’s when I worked in Jamaica. And working and living in Jamaica, I mean, you were really exposed to, you know, it’s a third world country and people are living in, you know, tin shacks. And I really got to know
good friends down there and know how they live and embrace the way they live and live with them. you felt like, I mean, we were down there for a couple of months at a time. And in those couple of months, you felt like a local, you lived like a local, you traveled the whole island, the confidence in that time. And this is like, people would say, do not go to Kingston. I’m like, I’m going to Kingston. I mean,
Jason Elkins (01:17:40.765)
The dark alley.
Bryan Lewis (01:17:43.504)
Yeah, I go into the dark alley in Kingston and I made it out alive. There’s also another podcast we can do when I went to Cuba and almost didn’t come home. But I think working in Jamaica and really, I loved everything about it. I loved how different it was from my everyday, from me, my upbringing, my everyday life. And I just, and I wanted to, that to me was the point where I came home different.
Jason Elkins (01:17:51.453)
You
Bryan Lewis (01:18:10.936)
and a better person. So I think that that’s the last thing I want to share is just, growth comes through discomfort and to take that leap and whatever that is.
Jason Elkins (01:18:22.141)
What do think is more valuable for a young person, 18 to 22? A six months working and living in Jamaica, backpacking through Europe, whatever, or four years of university?
Bryan Lewis (01:18:38.096)
Loaded question. I think you’re going to
Jason Elkins (01:18:44.381)
because your kids might be listening because we didn’t get into that.
Bryan Lewis (01:18:46.96)
They know how I feel about this. I was trying to encourage them to go to school in Europe because I think that they just, the education system just does things differently. mean, they’re gonna get it. Oh God. The growth is gonna come through the experience. I let my 19 year old son go to Thailand.
Jason Elkins (01:18:56.559)
That’s a good mix of the two.
Bryan Lewis (01:19:14.864)
for a month on a fitness retreat a couple of years ago because he was a little lost. He was looking for his purpose in life. I, know, 19 in Thailand, it was a gamble. And I said, you’re 19, I’m not gonna tell you you can’t go. And I think you’re gonna get a lot. But my life started when I worked in Mexico. And I think you’re gonna find a lot of opportunity. You’re gonna expand your whole mindset’s gonna change.
So I’m gonna go with, take the travel experience. College and education can always be there. I think you learn more from firsthand experiences and you’re not $300,000 in debt from it.
Jason Elkins (01:19:54.269)
That’s a good note to finish on.
Bryan, thank you so much. It’s fascinating, fun, not just fascinating, but just a fun conversation. so anybody that’s listening to this, you know, I’m sure you already felt a connection with Bryan. We’ve got a link right to his website in the show notes. So go take a look. Now, presumably they threw the link to Tenon tours we’re going to have in the show notes. They’ll be able to find their way over to Lemon Rock motorcycle tours as well. Probably all in that same. Okay.
Bryan Lewis (01:20:25.06)
That’s right. Yes. Yeah, you can. There’s a section on in Ireland section that links to lemon rock, but it’s it’s ride lemon rock calm. So it’s either and that’s through Tenon tours calm. So you can get there from here and you know, we’ll make sure we we promote it just as just as well.
Jason Elkins (01:20:43.933)
Isn’t that kind of a cool metaphor actually. don’t know if metaphor is the word for it, you can get there from here. I keep having these fascinating moments of, my gosh, you can go there. Like I watch YouTube, I watch all.
way too many YouTube food travel videos. That’s my thing, is I sit and watch YouTube travel videos where they’re eating food. sometimes I just grin and I think, my gosh, you can go there. Now that I’ve traveled enough, it’s like I realize people can just go there. You don’t have to sit here and watch it on YouTube. I mean, I recognize there’s obstacles for everybody. We all have our own issues, but you can go.
to these places. I love that you just mentioned you can get there from here because that’s a good, I don’t know, there’s probably something there philosophically that I need to carry around with us. We do. Bryan, thank you so much. Been a lot of fun and I look forward to chatting with you again soon. All right, thanks. Bye.
Bryan Lewis (01:21:33.872)
Yeah, we got a lot of side projects to talk about Jason.
Bryan Lewis (01:21:42.04)
Absolutely. Thanks, Jason.
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