Guest Bio
Charles Odom is a supporter of the sustainable travel movement through his platform Painted Circle. He has a degree in International Development and has worked in tourism since 2008. Starting his travel career in Germany, he is now working with travel companies around the world to build an ethical travel platform that helps travelers explore more intentionally and with a more positive impact.
Show Summary
In this episode of the Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Podcast, host Jason Elkins speaks with Charles about his journey from a childhood filled with travel experiences to founding Painted Circle, a platform committed to ethical and sustainable tourism. Charles shares how his early exposure to diverse cultures shaped his values and vision for responsible travel.
He explores the impact travel can have on both the individual and the communities visited, highlighting the importance of supporting local businesses and making intentional, values-driven travel choices. Charles also talks about the need for transparency in the travel industry and how Painted Circle connects travelers directly with purpose-driven tour operators to foster a more equitable tourism ecosystem.
Key Takeaways
- ✓ Travel can be a powerful tool for personal growth.
- ✓ Supporting local businesses enhances the travel experience.
- ✓ Ethical travel is about making conscious choices.
- ✓ Traveling helps us connect with diverse cultures.
- ✓ Transparency in the travel industry is crucial.
- ✓ Painted Circle aims to redefine how we book travel.
- ✓ Travel should prioritize community impact over profits.
- ✓ Experiences are more valuable than material possessions.
- ✓ The travel industry can lead in social justice initiatives.
- ✓ We can create a better world through responsible tourism.
What You’ll Find on Painted Circle
- Purpose-driven travel listings curated for ethical tourism
- Connections to local tour operators and guides worldwide
- Resources for planning low-impact, sustainable trips
- A mission-driven platform built on transparency and equity
Learn more about Painted Circle Travel Guide and connect with Charles at:
https://www.paintedcircle.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 (00:00.844)
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Big World Made Small podcast for the adventure traveler. We’ve got Charles Odom here with us today. Charles is the founder of Painted Circle. Charles, welcome to the show. Happy to have you here.
Charles Odom (00:14.004)
Thanks, man. I’m so excited to be here.
Jason Elkins (00:15.886)
It’s going to be fun. had a conversation a few weeks ago. We were actually going to record and we had some tech issues and we said, Oh, let’s come back and do it another time. And then we went on and spoke for an hour and a half, I not recorded. So, uh, learned, learned quite a bit about you on that call. We’re going to try and get back to some of that stuff because it was fascinating and just really, really happy to have you here. Um, Charles, let’s start with, give us the, I don’t know, 32nd, 62nd elevator pitch. What is painted circle? What should our listeners know about that before we get into your story?
Charles Odom (00:45.716)
Yeah, great, painted circle. We’re building this as an alternative to your traditional big box mass market travel websites. And I’m sure we’re go into all kinds of detail about what’s good about those guys, what’s wrong about them, and why we’re trying to do something different. My goal is that for all those people out there wanting to travel in a more ethical and intentional kind of way and spend your money in a way that aligns with your values.
we’re building a platform to make that possible. So I look forward to discussing all the nitty gritty details of it. It’s definitely a work in progress and something that I’m excited for people to like join us on this journey. It’s kind of an experiment to see what we can do, what the results are, and we’re just getting started. So it’s an exciting time.
Jason Elkins (01:38.936)
Very cool. We’re going to dig into it. And before we go any further, when you say those guys, those big guys, those big websites, we’ve got a lot of, a lot of tour operators have been on the show that would kind of fall into the category of big operators like Intrepid, G Adventure, stuff like that. But I don’t think that’s who you’re talking about when you say the big guys. So let’s, let’s clarify that.
Charles Odom (01:58.205)
Not at all. Yeah, and another thing that I’m excited to talk about is I used to be one of these tour operators myself. Most of my time working in tourism has been with the tour operator in Germany. so that was me in my last role, working on the ground with guests. And so when we’re talking about big mass market travel sites, what we’re talking about here are
booking engines, marketing sites. We know them as TripAdvisor, Viator, Get Your Guide, Booking.com. These are really great companies, but it’s time that we have an alternative. And it’ll be good for us to talk about when we should be booking travel through those big sites and when we should be looking to book travel in a different kind of way, because a lot of travelers don’t realize what happens behind the scenes.
And so that’s what we’re trying to educate people on and make available to them.
Jason Elkins (02:59.598)
So I wanted to make sure we got to that real quick so people kind of understood what the kind of scope of the conversation, because this is a popular topic right now. You know, you and I are both in a lot. think that’s how we connected was probably through, you know, LinkedIn and, the communities there up tour operators. And there’s a whole lot of conversation around, you know, working with the tour operators and how to find alternative ways to connect with the potential clients and that type of thing. So it’s, that’s exciting. And
I really, really want to kind of figure out how the heck did you get here? How, you know, where did you get from where you were to where you are now? You mentioned working for a tour operator in Germany, but let’s go back a little further and delve into your childhood and see what sparked all this stuff for you. So how far back do we go?
Charles Odom (03:44.541)
Okay, yeah, back in the black and white world, I guess. No, yeah, it’s not that bad, but I do tell people that I’m like a geriatric millennial because I’m an 82 baby. So I think we were the first vintage of the millennial. you know, I am a millennial in so many ways, but I’m also very old school in some other ways. It’s kind of that weird hybrid crossover situation.
Jason Elkins (03:48.206)
Yeah, me and you and I both.
Jason Elkins (03:58.638)
Uh-huh.
Charles Odom (04:13.446)
I grew up in the United States. So I grew up here. Luckily, I was with a family that really appreciated travel and we were never very well off or anything. I mean, we went without so that we would have money to travel. you know, I think kind of the typical American thing is that all your trips kind of get more and more spectacular over time because you’re trying to like build momentum.
Jason Elkins (04:40.268)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (04:42.576)
And so we definitely went from your traditional, let’s stay close to home or let’s go to the mountains, let’s go to the beach. And then, you know, let’s go to one national park, let’s go to the Grand Canyon, let’s go to the other side of the country. And, you know, it just kind of expanded from there. And as a kid, I was fortunate to grow up with parents who really appreciated that. I was born in South Carolina in Columbia.
Jason Elkins (05:04.398)
What part of the states did you grow up in?
Jason Elkins (05:09.77)
South Carolina. Okay. All right.
Charles Odom (05:11.73)
which is probably the hottest place on earth. We’ll debate, there is, Go to South Carolina in the summer, Columbia, the humidity, the heat, it’s oppressive. I grew up there and I think that’s actually one of the reasons why I appreciated traveling so much is that we would usually leave during the summertime and try to do something.
Jason Elkins (05:14.51)
Wait a minute, Charles. I’m sitting in Arizona right now. It’s August 12th in Arizona.
Jason Elkins (05:30.398)
Well, that’s true.
Charles Odom (05:41.981)
I had a really close relationship with my grandparents and on my dad’s side of the family, they were big into like camping. And at one point they even had a camper van that they got in retirement. And so we would do these different trips and part of my family lived in Santa Cruz, which is just south of San Francisco. And so we would have this target, you know, of let’s get in the van and let’s go.
Jason Elkins (06:11.918)
That’s a long trip. Yeah.
Charles Odom (06:12.176)
And so it’s a long trip and we did this several times. And so each time, like over many years during the summer and each time we would try to do a slightly different route so that we would see different things. And it’s kind of funny, like even just this past week, somehow this really obscure place called the corn palace in South Dakota came up in conversation and I was like, I’ve been there.
Jason Elkins (06:23.342)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (06:33.006)
I was, I was going to ask you, I was going to ask you because I, I spent my summers traveling with my dad and I’m from Wyoming. So we did that cross country route several times through the Dakotas and Nebraska. Yeah. The corn palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, I believe that’s where the corn palace is. And there were other places. Do you remember like reptile gardens? And no, you didn’t see that.
Charles Odom (06:51.444)
Yeah.
Charles Odom (06:57.556)
I haven’t
Jason Elkins (07:00.332)
or Waldrug, South Dakota, there’s the signs every mile and a half or 300 miles until you get to Waldrug South, I think that’s South Dakota. but yeah, the Corn Palace, did you stop and actually go look at the Corn Palace? Yeah, yeah, pretty corny, wasn’t it? Very corny. Let’s tell our listeners what the Corn Palace is from your recollection or from your interpretation.
Charles Odom (07:05.308)
Okay. No, I don’t remember that one. But sounds pretty amazing.
Charles Odom (07:14.206)
we did yeah went inside it totally was yeah
Charles Odom (07:26.462)
Well, my recollection from being very young when we went there is that it’s a building that was, it was something else first that was disused. and it had been turned into a bit of a cultural showcase slash convention centers slash meeting place, but it was, it was a very large building, which under, under the surface, which we can literally say like under the corn is like a really nondescript kind of building. And it’s been adorned with all kinds of.
Jason Elkins (07:49.187)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (07:55.206)
on the outside of it, all kinds of shapes, colors, sizes, like all over it. And it’s this very intricate design. It almost reminds you if you’ve seen some of the architecture like Brighton in the UK, where they’ve got some of these convention centers that are all like palatial looking and everything, and it’s just totally out of place. It’s kind of that same thing. You know, it’s almost like medieval castle meets Victorian like.
charm meets antebellum kind of like all put together. It’s this very unusual thing.
Jason Elkins (08:27.448)
Would you use, I would use the term a mosaic, like murals, like the walls, let’s say the exterior of the building is covered in corn mosaic, I guess, like you said, different, like the corn cobs. I’ll take the corn cobs of different colors, slice them in half and glue them to the wall in a mosaic manner to create some sort of design. And my understanding is they do a new one every year.
Charles Odom (08:34.472)
huh.
Charles Odom (08:41.822)
It’s designed.
Jason Elkins (08:56.588)
Like they strip off the old corner and do a totally new design each year with new murals and stuff. Yeah. Okay.
Charles Odom (09:00.369)
It’s perishable. So I mean, you do. And so we would see these like weird things like that. And I don’t know, like when I think back, know, my childhood was mostly about travel. That’s most of what my parents spent money on was on travel. so we got to see things like that. And it’s a perfect example of some place that’s totally ridiculous.
Jason Elkins (09:19.843)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (09:28.339)
but it’s amazing how many times it has come up in conversation since then. And when you have these toys or plastic junk that you have as a kid, how much of that do you really reflect back on over your lifetime? And yet there are these things that we had. We were able to go to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. And just because we took the time and…
Jason Elkins (09:32.127)
you
Jason Elkins (09:41.656)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (09:49.582)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (09:53.544)
My parents were both educators, which meant that during the summer we did actually have some time to spare. And so we did a lot of that. And as I got a little bit older, when I was more like nine, 10 years old, that’s when we started traveling more.
Jason Elkins (10:07.842)
You know what, Charles, if you don’t mind, I want to ask you, do you remember your first outing? What’s the first memory you have of having an adventure? And I’m not sure how to define that right now, but what’s the, what’s the first thing that pops in your head is like that first memory. It wasn’t the corn palace. you do. Okay. Chuck was good.
Charles Odom (10:27.453)
I do remember. No. Aw, shucks. No. No. My first memory, and I do think this is gonna be really interesting for us to loop this back into what I’m doing now with Painted Circle because so much of what I do now is about ethical travel, sustainable travel, businesses that are really using their energy and their income for these positive things, but.
That’s not necessarily how I grew up traveling. We didn’t have so many options out there and there wasn’t as much transparency about what goes on behind the scenes. And one of the places I loved as a kid was, of course, Disney World. And I think that is one of my first adventures that I remember because the first time that I went, I was two years old, like two and a half, I think. And I remember it because
Jason Elkins (11:21.198)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (11:24.915)
I traveled on that trip for the first time by plane. And we couldn’t afford for everyone to travel by plane. So I went with my grandmother. And so my grandmother and I flew to Orlando and met my parents there who drove in the car. But they wanted me to have that experience of flying on the plane. And so I have it somewhere. I’m sure I’ve posted it at some point or another.
Jason Elkins (11:28.672)
Okay.
Jason Elkins (11:44.44)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (11:54.9)
I have this great picture of me and my grandmother at the airport getting ready to take that flight. And it was like, that was the beginning. And I do remember it because I remember being on the plane. I remember flying through the clouds the first time and like that experience. And I still have vivid memories of that. Not of the whole trip, but like you have these little vignettes, know, like splashes that you’ve got that are just really vivid. And what comes before and after I’ve forgotten, but I have those, those mental images.
Jason Elkins (12:07.47)
You
Jason Elkins (12:14.188)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (12:21.582)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (12:25.149)
And I think that was definitely the first adventure that I had for which I have really strong memories. And I think that that trip and that picture that I have really sums it up that this was something that we did as a family. Everyone was smiling and happy, you know, and it was that idea of, this is what this type of trip can be. You you can have a traditional vacation. It’s about fun. It’s about family.
And then over the years, that’s where I’ve started to see through working in travel for so long, that that’s just one type of travel that we can do. And there’s lots of other travel as well that has a completely different purpose and a different impact for ourselves and for the world that we visit. And so…
Jason Elkins (13:15.086)
We’re going to dig into your philosophies and thoughts behind that. And you also mentioned you were starting to mention something about nine, you started doing something.
Charles Odom (13:27.967)
We started going abroad and getting out of the US. And one of the first really big trips that we did was to Africa. And I went with my dad. It’s a big one. And I did that when I was 10. And it’s, again, one of those things where I’ve got really strong memories. And I think that’s a point where I really started seeing just the huge scope.
Jason Elkins (13:29.614)
Okay.
Jason Elkins (13:41.772)
Yeah, that’s a big one.
Charles Odom (13:57.846)
of what’s out there. And this is not a Disney World vacation and it’s not a cruise where everything’s curated. You know, this was something very different. And everything about that experience has, I think, shaped me in some way. Going to Africa, and this was back in the early 90s, it’s expensive at any point in time. And even back then, you know, it was very tricky to do. And so…
I remember all the things that we did in order to try to economize to save money. And, you know, we gave up cable TV, we gave up going out to dinner. I spent my weekends rolling coins in the paper things, you know, to take them to the bank, you know, and we saved for about two years in order to be able to afford to do that trip, which was only about three weeks long. But it was…
Jason Elkins (14:39.33)
Uh-huh.
Jason Elkins (14:51.808)
Wow, wow, that’s
Charles Odom (14:54.1)
It was incredible, just absolutely incredible. And over the years, and this is 30 years ago now, again, I find all these connections back to some of the places that I visited when I was a kid. It’s like, my gosh, my dad took me on that trip for…
Showing me something different giving me a different experience So was also a little bit of selfishness on his part because he loves elephants and I do too but he’s like obsessed with elephants and he really wanted to see them in the wild and he was concerned about the way things are going and whether or not they would still it would still be possible to see elephants in the wild for much longer and so we went and Yeah, just so many things that you kind of open your eyes when you when you have experiences like that
Jason Elkins (15:45.038)
It’s, it’s, it’s super, super powerful. And obviously it influenced you. That’s why we’re having this conversation today. I’m curious, do you have siblings as well? Were you, were there others in the family or is okay. So here’s the question I want to ask you, cause I hear you discussing saving money. This stuff’s expensive. when I was young, I remember smashing aluminum cans, you know, so we could save up enough money to go to Disneyland, you know, so I can relate to that. but my question is this.
Charles Odom (15:45.322)
Charles Odom (16:08.8)
Yep, did that too. Yep.
Jason Elkins (16:16.503)
Hmm. If you’d had more siblings, do you think that would have reduced your opportunities to travel? Cause it’s one thing when you’ve got, you know, mom, dad, and one kid to go to Africa, but it starts getting out of reach for families that have more kids and also just trying to keep everybody happy. And it’s stressful traveling with one kid is a lot different than traveling with two kids. So do you think that.
Charles Odom (16:41.264)
yeah.
Jason Elkins (16:46.184)
if you’d had more siblings that would have impacted your ability to go see these places. Yeah.
Charles Odom (16:51.488)
For sure, absolutely. But you know, I think that’s not a reason to shut yourself off to travel. I think it means that you adapt and figure out what you would do differently. And so, I think that’s one of the big things we can talk about is, why do we travel? Why do we put so much, travel is expensive no matter who you are, it’s expensive. So why do we spend so much money traveling? Like what’s the purpose of it?
Jason Elkins (16:59.875)
Right.
Charles Odom (17:21.02)
Do you really have to spend all that money to have the result that you want? And so if you’re a family and you’ve got one child, you may be able to splash out on different things. If you’re a family and you have several children, you might be able to get a very similar result by doing a different experience closer to home.
Jason Elkins (17:43.692)
And it might be in the station wagon instead of, you know, or something.
Charles Odom (17:47.307)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s an important lesson to learn because I think for a lot of people, financial ability is a barrier to travel and it shouldn’t be that way.
Jason Elkins (18:01.358)
think it can be, but I also want to touch on this because I’d heard somewhere somebody that said something like if…
If I want to know what you value, I’m going to look at your bank account and your calendar, right? Where, cause people can say, I value family, but they spend money on, I could say any number of things, but, but where they spend their money and where they spend their time, kind of maybe sometimes says otherwise. And I’ve met an awful lot of people that, yeah. You know, cause I travel, I’m, I’m like sickly passionate about it.
And I meet other people and like, oh yeah, I like to travel as well. And he said, okay, well, you know, when’s the last time you went somewhere? Well, I really want to go, but they’re driving, you know, really nice car. They got the nice house. They’ve invested in other things so they can talk about wanting to travel. And I’m not knocking them. I’m just the reality. And then you’ve got other people that will drive the, you know.
1977 Toyota Corona station wagon for 30 years so they can, you know, but they’ve been to Africa. They’ve to Asia.
Charles Odom (19:15.52)
That was us. I I’ve helped my dad push his old beat up car on more roads than I can count, you know, when it breaks down. And that’s how we were able to do it.
Jason Elkins (19:21.678)
So then my question is, what do you think it was about your parents? Because there’s plenty of other parents out there that are school teachers, that have one child, that for whatever reason don’t travel. So what do you think? Have you analyzed your parents to figure out why were they like this and what made them different?
Charles Odom (19:51.415)
That’s a great question. I like to think that I scrutinize my parents on a daily basis. Yeah.
Jason Elkins (19:53.356)
We don’t have to go into it. was just curious though.
Jason Elkins (19:59.439)
I know I do. We were talking about that right before I pushed the record button.
Charles Odom (20:07.14)
yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I think that in many ways I have to recognize that I had a really privileged upbringing. And that doesn’t mean that we had tons of money because we didn’t, but there were many people who had much less than we did. And, you know, that continues to be the case. And so I think that there’s always a combination of financial resources, decision-making, the
knowledge that you have that you’ve learned from your own parents that they’ve learned from theirs things that we’ve learned in schools. There’s
Jason Elkins (20:44.812)
I think that that’s the, think that you really touched on something there because it’s a lot of times it’s what are we led to believe is possible and acceptable, socially acceptable. So if your parents grow up constantly talking about.
you need to go be a doctor so you can find a wife so you can buy a car so you can have a house so you can you know get a retirement so you can create all these things then you tend to either pursue that or feel guilty the rest of your life if you didn’t pursue that and if you’ve got parents that are like hey let’s go we’re gonna save up our money we’re gonna go to hell with
getting a new kitchen or a new bathroom in the house, gonna put our resources towards going and do something. That sends the message to you that it’s okay to value experiences over things. I think that’s a big part of it is that conflict between things and experiences. I…
I deal with it almost on a daily basis because I, you four years ago I sold all my stuff and started traveling full time. And the amount of guilt and shame I had around that was huge because like, and my parents are great, but it’s like, how can you do that? You know, my son, just the other day, dad, you know, you’re so irresponsible. If you just stay here in Arizona, get a job, get a house and all that stuff, your life would be so much better. So much easier.
You know, so somehow he picked up a different message than what I’m trying to do. But, so I suspect that’s it. And it sounds like your parents, know, their parents were supportive and encouraged them to go do stuff. Right.
Charles Odom (22:39.617)
Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I think you do touch on something. There’s a lot of cultural to it. I think something that spans many cultures is a very human thing, which is that doing things that are different is scary and doing things that are customary is easy. So we’re, as a species, we are more prone to do things that are
measurable, comparable, predictable, and don’t challenge us too much. Because, yeah.
Jason Elkins (23:15.864)
keep us alive, not to keep us happy. Our brain is trying to keep us alive, not happy. And the chances of staying alive are better if you never leave the house.
Charles Odom (23:24.267)
Yeah, and as we go through generation after generation, that’s where we do start to see some disparities that pick up. And so that’s something that I think many of us have to be aware of, that, you know, I always say that I grew up with parents that didn’t earn a tremendous amount of money. They were both educators. But at the same time, there were other things that we had access to. So there’s like institutional knowledge, you know, my
Jason Elkins (23:33.55)
Hmm?
Charles Odom (23:52.504)
Grandparents went to college, which is not the case for many people to have multiple generations of college-educated people. this did not make anyone rich at all, but it did give them the ability to be problem solvers. And that’s something that I think is a challenge, because many times we’re faced with opportunities that would require us to be problem solvers to take advantage of them.
And if we don’t have the skill sets to say, I can figure this out. This is something unusual and unknown, but that’s okay. I’m accustomed to that. I grew up in a place where we figure things out and we know that there’s a solution. We just need to find it. That’s a privilege for people to be in that position. I think a lot of people do live in an existence where they have to do the tried and true thing. They have to get up and do that nine to five. They have to do the side hustle.
because there’s such a thin layer of ice with breaking even, providing for their families. And so those of us who travel have to be aware that not everyone is able to do that.
Jason Elkins (24:59.534)
Do you think?
Jason Elkins (25:04.782)
Do you think, so you mentioned specifically college education and you know what popped into my head was, I suspect that for a lot of people, the biggest value they get out of college or university is that they leave their home. You know, lot of them, not always, but oftentimes they leave their home and they get out on the skinny branches. So like my daughter was living in Alabama with her mom and her stepdad and
was time to go to school, you know, you got to stay in Alabama, go tight or whatever. I don’t know anything about college sports or anything, but she’s like, you know what? I’m going to Wyoming. Like my dad’s from Wyoming. My grandfather’s from Wyoming. My grandparents graduated from University of Wyoming. Just something about it. I’m not sure she would say it. Maybe she would now she’s older, but I suspect a lot of it was because nobody else was in Wyoming. She was going to go do her thing. And she went to the University of Wyoming.
And there’s a lot of people that I guess where I’m going with this is it’s not so much what they learn in classes. You know, it’s that they figure shit out. my French, but you you said figure it out along the way. Like someone that picks up and goes halfway across the country to go to school and adapt to a totally new group of friends or no friends. Cause you don’t have any friends when you get there and figure out.
You know, where am I going to stay? how am I going to get things for my room? How am I going to deal with money issues when I run out, whether that’s call your parents or not, whatever, you’re just working through a series of things that build confidence where maybe the, the, the kid that stays home. And we’ve got more of that now with a lot of people staying at home longer, which is fine. but.
You know, maybe they’re like, they’re hearing you need to go get a job, you know? And so they go get a job, you know, somewhere. guess where I’m going with this is they kind of follow the path that’s set for them. And maybe they don’t build a lot of confidence because mom’s always there. Dad’s always there. They didn’t go far from home. So what do you think?
Charles Odom (27:24.139)
Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I would just add no judgment because, you know, for some people they get a lot of fulfillment from staying close to home, staying close to family. I think the ultimate goal for anyone should be to figure out what is it that makes you feel fulfilled and happy as a person and make sure not to exist in a blind spot. Like really think about that. You know, what’s going to make you happy?
Jason Elkins (27:34.37)
Yeah. Yeah.
Charles Odom (27:53.744)
and there’s something missing, figure out how to get the tools to fix that. And there’s so many things that I despise about things like social media and everything existing on the internet and things like that, but one of the positive things is that we now have access to more opinions and more tools and more resources than ever before. Now the quality may be something that’s debatable, but…
The reality is if you want to figure out how to do something, there’s now ways to connect with people who are happy to help you. And so one of the things that I do as like an unofficial kind of side thing is I do coach some businesses because I worked for a successful business in Germany. And there’s a lot of people that are starting up businesses and they say, I don’t know how to even get started. I want to do this, but I don’t know.
And so there’s a lot of people like me who do have some experience and we’re always excited to share that with other people because there’s a lot of people out there who will say, hey, I want to do something different, but I don’t know how. And so that’s where we have to help.
Jason Elkins (29:01.006)
What’s so there’s the don’t there’s the don’t know how, but as a coach, what do you think is the thing that generally most people have the hardest time with? it figuring out the right accounting software? Is it, you know, figuring out Mark? mean, what’s the thing that usually gets away for most people that say, you know, I’ve been wanting to do this for years, but
Charles Odom (29:17.399)
It
Charles Odom (29:21.473)
bass.
Charles Odom (29:25.729)
basic things that all of us are victims of. Like none of us are susceptible to this. Change is hard and scary. Asking for help is really like difficult for people to do. Particularly for people in the US. You know, I grew up here. This is a success culture. And I think it’s starting to change where…
we recognize that people are people, we’re not machines. And sometimes we need maintenance. And that’s spiritual and psychological and mental. And I think a lot of people are exhausted from feeling like they’re alone. And it’s not necessarily alone like, I’m not around other people, I’m isolated like a hermit. It’s more like, no, I’m starting to…
do a new business and it’s different and there’s no one to talk to about it. There’s no one to just spitball ideas with or to have as a sounding board. I’m alone in this journey. And so that’s where I think that it’s starting to change and people are realizing there’s a gap and we can’t do everything ourselves and it’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay not to know how to do everything. And it’s okay to do things that are different because
Jason Elkins (30:26.744)
Yeah, and maybe their parents, they’re, yeah.
Charles Odom (30:49.792)
just doing things the same way over and over over again is self-defeating because the world moves on and we can either adapt and move with it or we can just be like so committed to grabbing onto the old ways of doing things until there’s nothing to grab onto anymore. So I’m a fan of people saying, I wanna change, I need help to do so. We figure out things like marketing, the accounting, all of that kind of stuff.
But the first thing is knowing you can’t do everything yourself. And sometimes you need that partner, that thought partner, to just help you get over yourself and say, all right, I need help. Here’s what I want the result to be. Here’s the direction I want to go in. Help me figure out how to start moving in that direction. And then we work through the details as we go.
Jason Elkins (31:30.572)
Yeah, yeah.
Jason Elkins (31:40.271)
And I think it’s mostly just somebody to give you permission to feel the way you feel, that give you permission to, know what? This is like what you’re doing is valuable. What you’re doing is meaningful and you deserve it. know, as I don’t know, deserve, that’s a weird word, but that it’s okay to want these things. Because probably if they’re holding back, if they just…
at decided I’m gonna go be a tour guide and open and tour operation business and they went out of the world and did it. That’s great. That’s awesome. Most of us, most of us have the scenario where, you know, the first time we mentioned, you know, I think I want to be a fishing guide and your spouse is, well, that’s the worst flipping idea I’ve ever heard. How are you going to do that? How are you going to support your family?
Or you tell your parents you want to, you know, sell all your stuff and start traveling. Well, how are you going to do that? And, know, there’s, there’s so many voices out there and I’m not knocking anybody. They love you and they’re trying to support, you know, be there for you. But there’s so many voices out there causing you to question yourself. And then you keep playing those voices over in your head. Cause you keep hearing it. So you just need one, maybe hopefully at least one other voice to say, you know what? You can do this. Other people have done this.
You’re smart, you’re outgoing, you’ve got whatever going for you and let’s just figure out a way to do it. And first thing you gotta do is quit listening to everybody else.
Charles Odom (33:10.424)
And you have to also, if you’re the person listening to someone with their grand idea, I think we have to also learn to be better listeners and figure out what is this, why are they sharing this information with me? Are they looking for encouragement or are they looking for someone to give? Yeah, are they looking for the voice of reason to back them away from the edge? You know what I mean? It’s like if someone comes to you and says, I’m going to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Okay.
Jason Elkins (33:27.586)
looking for me to pick holes in it.
Charles Odom (33:40.502)
then you might want to look to them and say, all right, I don’t want to like kill their dream here if this is really their dream, but I don’t want to just flat out tell them bad idea because maybe this is their dream, but it is. we have to think.
Jason Elkins (33:49.273)
that’s all perspective. That’s all perspective. Because to you and I, we here go over the falls in a barrel, we’re thinking, obviously that’s dumb. But someone else might.
Charles Odom (33:58.775)
Right, but maybe we can frame it in a way like, that’s interesting. What kind of thought process have you put into the enormous g-force that’s gonna be sustained by the barrel when it hits the water at the bottom? And maybe as a way of not knocking someone’s idea, but actually pushing them in the thought process and we might start to realize.
That’s kind an extreme example. I think I would be very careful before I encourage someone to do something like that. sometimes I think people just want help to work through their thought process without an outsider necessarily telling them like a binary yes or no, good or bad kind of thing. It’s more of like, hey, I have this idea. I want to talk about it. And so maybe we can help them have the conversation with themselves because that’s what they need to do to work through what’s going to be the best thing for my business.
Jason Elkins (34:49.4)
But yes.
Charles Odom (34:53.078)
what’s the best thing for my family because every person is unique and every family is unique. And although businesses share a lot of regulations, each business is going to have its own dynamic as well. And so it’s going to be really difficult for an outsider to just come in and tell you exactly what to do. That outsider can come in and help you question things. And then you as the insider in your business can take that and figure out how to chew on it.
Jason Elkins (35:13.198)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (35:20.844)
Like, okay, this outsider just came in, they pointed out things to them that don’t make sense, or they had some examples of other businesses that were analogous to what we’re doing, or they had a completely different industry that was suffering through the same problem, and they shared some information. None of that is intended to be directive. It’s more of, let me bring in some experience, some data points, some insight, and then let’s work through this together, see what applies, and see what could actually make
momentum for your business, you as the business owner are the one who’s determining the direction of that momentum. So that’s always going to be on you.
Jason Elkins (35:56.249)
Right. And I think that also finding someone to bounce those ideas off that kind of has a similar mindset value system. I’m not sure what exactly there, but like, so for example, if I’m wanting to quit my job and build a tour operation business doing food tours and
I’m not going to say Italy because there’s too many. That’s a whole nother conversation, but I, know, something like I’m going to quit my job and go be a tour operator. And the person that you’re going to for advice has maybe worked, for the government, you know, for the last 35 years and has 10 more years that they want to work until retirement and they’ve never traveled.
then maybe that’s not the best person to have that conversation with, you know, cause the perspectives are so different. So if you’re the type, I want to be a tour operator and you don’t have tour operators around you, maybe go find a tour operator to have conversations with somebody that’s yeah, exactly. It’s someone that doesn’t think you’re crazy. Cause you want to be a tour operator. Cause if you’re in a bubble, if you’re living in a world where you don’t have any of those people around you and you keep saying, I want to go be a tour operator.
Charles Odom (37:06.934)
Yeah, or start working with one.
Jason Elkins (37:20.488)
from their point of view, that’s like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. You know, so find somebody that maybe if you really want to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, you probably need to find somebody who’s done stunt work or at least can relate to that, I guess.
Charles Odom (37:25.547)
Exactly. Yeah.
Charles Odom (37:37.474)
Exactly, and you know, we kind of came up with that crazy example, but the reality is people have done it. So this is not something that’s impossible to do. It’s something that the majority of people still think is crazy, but it is possible to do. so, does claimer, no one listening should try this until you’ve consulted it.
Jason Elkins (37:45.742)
You
Jason Elkins (37:53.295)
Charles, I gotta share this with you. was my, I know, yeah, exactly. But actually it’s funny you brought that example up because my father was, you he’s a balloon pilot and I grew up traveling with him flying balloons and we did, yeah, yeah.
Charles Odom (38:10.031)
yeah, that’s right. I remember we talked about that and I mentioned that that scared the crap out of me.
Jason Elkins (38:15.054)
But what but he used to do one of the you know went through this phase of we were doing bungee jumping out of the balloon because bungee jumping is popular for a while so he was doing bungee jumping out of the balloon and he decided that he wanted to offer a product called the Niagara Falls at where it was he took one of those big blue shipping barrels shipping crates or barrels and rigged it up to where he could get inside the barrel this is so weird but and put the lid on and like
Charles Odom (38:24.17)
goodness.
Jason Elkins (38:45.198)
run a bungee cord through the top of through a hole in the top of the barrel into a harness. And they would throw him off the basket in this barrel attached to a bungee cord. And he called that the Niagara falls. So he thought this all out. He thought, man, people are going to want to do this until the first time he did it. And he decided, Nope, that sucked. So, that’s the father I grew up with among many other weird things. Um, so I’m like,
Charles Odom (39:04.375)
Right, market research is important.
Jason Elkins (39:15.136)
I kind of have an excuse for being a little bit, you know, adventurous and a little bit like, okay, I’m just get to go do my weird stuff. and my, my point there is having someone around that’s kind of adventurous. If you want to go have adventures, have someone around that’s adventurous, bounce some ideas off of them. they might still be able to rein you in on, know, or help you kind of think through the thought process a little bit. but, and that’s what you can do as a coach, right? Are you.
coaching and working with tour operators? Yeah, okay.
Charles Odom (39:45.05)
Tour operators, yeah. Usually the smaller to medium-sized businesses that have fewer than 100 staff, usually they’re just in one or two locations, and usually are facing some kind of existential question. These are usually owner, founder businesses, and many travel companies start with usually one passionate person.
or like a passionate couple who have some kind of destination or experience or a skill or an activity or something about which they’re extremely passionate and they want to share that. mean, so many travel businesses start with this like really just raw human emotion of wanting to share, which is great. And successful businesses in the tourism space usually start that way. But then,
Jason Elkins (40:28.078)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (40:36.27)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (40:42.862)
Hmm?
Charles Odom (40:44.471)
they run into the problem of, my gosh, we’re growing. What do we do? And so that’s where a lot of these businesses that are started by owner founders can start to run into some friction because they either start growing faster than they’re really capable of managing or they decide they’re more aspirational in the amount that they want to grow, but that
Jason Elkins (40:48.91)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (41:14.211)
growth track is beyond their skill set because the core of what they know is the passion around the experience that they’re providing. And running a tour business does start to share other aspects of other businesses, which are like you mentioned, what’s the marketing, what’s the accounting, what are the systems that are at play? And for a lot of people, those are a major like time suck, like major drag, you know, like what, if you’re passionate about.
Jason Elkins (41:28.419)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (41:34.766)
For most?
Charles Odom (41:40.547)
paddle boarding, you know, why the hell do you want to sit there and talk about what should I use QuickBooks or should I use, you know, like that’s not what you want to spend your time doing.
Jason Elkins (41:46.395)
Your eyes, yeah, your eyes roll back in the back of your head, you know, and you know that you should be doing, you know, you should probably have a bookkeeper or have quick books or something. But yeah, yeah, it’s like that’s not what you got into. And this conversation has come up so many times on this podcast. Anybody that’s listened to this, that’s heard other episodes. Oh, yeah, that’s and we talk a lot about how do you make that work? You know, do you partner with somebody else who has that mindset?
that is more interested in the operational aspects or maybe the some of that stuff because yeah, because usually the person that starts it, they’re, one of those outgoing types and maybe a little bit of ADHD or whatever’s going on. don’t know.
Charles Odom (42:30.477)
Yeah, yeah, for, I know that there’s like all kinds of people that listen to this. And so if you are in the camp of like you’re running a business and you’re wondering what do you do next? You know, like, should I grow? Should I expand? Should I hire people? Or if you are listening because you’re thinking, yeah, I want to switch my career. I want to get into tourism. I want to leave my desk job and do something more interesting in travel.
I think it all starts with thinking, what is it that you want? Like, as a person, what do you want? Do you want to be a guide and just give tours? Do you wanna just work with families that are on vacation, small groups, maybe a student group every now and then, maybe a couple companies and people, and you wanna work for yourself and you don’t wanna have to report to anybody and all that kind of stuff. That’s important to know.
Jason Elkins (43:06.168)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (43:30.486)
If your goal is, no, I want to get into tourism because I think I’ve got a winning idea and I want to eventually take over the whole landscape and I want to start exporting this idea and replicating it, be in lots of different locations and grow, grow, grow, I think it’s important to know that. There’s no right or wrong way, but it does determine setting expectations properly so that you can be happy. There’s nothing wrong with saying,
Jason Elkins (43:57.165)
Yeah.
Charles Odom (43:59.34)
I want to work for myself. I want to do everything in house. I don’t want the headache of working with other people. I don’t want to deal with paying an accountant. I don’t want to deal with paying for marketing. I get it. That’s totally fine. Just accept that that will have some limitations with it. But the limitations also mean you have total freedom. You’re working for yourself. When you decide you don’t want to do it one day, you just don’t do it. You know, like there’s pros and cons. The other way, you might make a lot more money, but you’re going to spend a lot more money as well.
Jason Elkins (44:13.4)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (44:28.973)
you’re also gonna have a lot more headache, you’re gonna have a lot more liability, your phone’s gonna be buzzing all the time because of stuff unless you start partnering with other people. So like you were saying, yes, you have to start partnering. It’s great to work with a coach. Of course, a coach can help you see the light at the end of the tunnel, they can help you make sense of the forest so that you can focus on what you’re doing. But absolutely, an accountant is your friend.
Jason Elkins (44:39.47)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (44:58.337)
An insurance person is your friend and a local lawyer who knows the laws applicable to your location and the locations of your guest is critical. So even if you don’t work with a coach or someone like me, those three types of people, an accountant, a lawyer, an insurance person. I always tell travel business owners, make friends in those spaces. Have a relationship because that way you can focus on your passion.
knowing that if something hits the fan, it’s going to be in one of those three areas. And you have a person to help you with that. So you don’t have to approach every day with fear of saying, what if today’s the day that something comes up in accounting that I don’t know how to handle? I’m going to waste my whole weekend trying to figure this out. That’ll eventually take away from your passion and you will not be a happy person. And if that’s happening, quality of what you do is going to suffer. So
Jason Elkins (45:47.118)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (45:56.773)
Have that person ready to go who can help you with accounting, with insurance stuff, with legal stuff. It’ll really save you a lot of headache and just, it’ll make your life so much more enjoyable and your guests are gonna, they’re gonna feel it. know, if they come and you and your staff are happy, it has such a huge difference in how the operation works.
Jason Elkins (46:18.338)
I I agree completely. And I want to reemphasize. I think the coach, we can use the word coach or really what it is, is have somebody also in your corner that is interested in the same thing. Cause the lawyer might not be super interested, like might not be the type you’re going to go have a beer with and talk about new rafting trips that you want to offer. Or, you know, the accountant may not be that person, but having someone in your world.
that is excited about it that has some experience that’s able to. You can call it a coach. We can call it a battle buddy. Hey, you know an accountability partner, just somebody maybe to have like hey, let’s just do a call once a week and just. Have a conversation, cause accountability is a big one. If you are a tour operator, maybe you’ve got a few guides working for you. Your guides.
Charles Odom (46:56.228)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (47:09.102)
Yeah, huge.
Jason Elkins (47:15.82)
are great, they’re probably interested in the same thing. You probably have lots of conversations with them, but they may not be the person you need to have those one-on-ones with. Your guests are great, but you don’t want to spend all your time with your guests. You just need somebody else that’s outside of that world that you can not outside, I shouldn’t say outside of the world, but maybe it’s outside of your immediate sphere.
Charles Odom (47:36.965)
Yeah, it’s someone who’s gonna be a real thought partner for you. And don’t be afraid to look for a coach who tells you no on things. It’s important to have someone who’s not just going to bolster bad ideas. You need someone who’s gonna help you work through your thought process. And the role of a coach is not to tell you exactly what to do, but is to help you organize yourself.
Jason Elkins (47:48.302)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (47:55.374)
You
Charles Odom (48:05.582)
to figure out the best solution for your particular case. And if you find a good coach, that coach will not be afraid to put you in contact with additional people. I have seen a few folks that wanna really own that relationship and they’re so afraid like, you I’m a coach and I wanna control this person. Like this is my client and all of that. I don’t think that’s the case because none of us is an expert on everything. You know, like I can, no.
Jason Elkins (48:31.958)
A coach, a coach doesn’t have to be because here’s the thing I could coach. did some coaching. I did some coaching in the past as well. And I would explain to people, like I could probably coach you to run a marathon. I’ve never run a marathon. I don’t even like to run, but I could coach a good coach could coach someone to run a marathon because it’s not about, you know, it’s mostly about what do you want?
Why do you want to do this? What do you want to do? What’s it going to feel like when you finish that marathon? Why is that important to you? Okay, so now what do we need? What do you need? Most runners probably know what they need to do. They need to get up in the morning and go running. It’s not a matter of not knowing what they should do. So you say, okay, so, you know, work with them. They set up their own training schedule and then the coach basically, when you get on the call, you’re like, hey, what did you commit to last week?
I committed to 50 miles this week. Okay. Well, what did you actually do? I only did 40 miles. Okay. So talk to me. What got in the way? You know, and it’s, just having that conversation, holding you accountable, helping you figure out what’s getting in the way of you doing what you said it was, whether it was running or setting an appointment with a lawyer or hiring a psychologist or whatever, you know, or whatever it is. So it’s just, so it’s super valuable.
Charles Odom (49:49.147)
Yeah. absolutely. And it’s helpful to have someone who’s within the industry or has experience in the industry because part of a coach is going to say, help you figure out how to talk with other people. For example, if you’ve got a kid and they’re going to go buy their first car or something, you’re going to say, all right, want you to do this yourself. But when you go to the dealership, be sure to ask them,
Jason Elkins (50:00.429)
Get it?
Charles Odom (50:19.556)
What’s the mileage? What’s the condition of the tires? know, like you’re gonna give them some advice. So you’re like, okay, be sure to find out these things. Now go do it yourself. And it’s kind of the same thing with travel businesses as well because you can say, go get yourself an accountant. And it’s like, great. But it’s like, no, go get an accountant and talk with them. Find out how many times they work with international clients. Find out if they know how to do EU VAT.
See if they know how to walk you through reverse charge. you know, it’s like, I don’t know what any of that stuff is. And I’m like, yeah, and sometimes accountants don’t either because that’s not what they do, but you’re gonna do it because you’re in the travel space, which means you’re gonna be located in one place, your clients are located in another, and sometimes going back to that like big box booking engine, that money’s coming through something that may be in a third country altogether. And that has.
Jason Elkins (50:57.038)
Right.
Charles Odom (51:15.64)
major accounting implications for your business. And so it’s important to work with not just any accountant, you need to have a conversation that qualifies them to work with your kind of business. And you may not consider these things, but as a coach, I can say, hey, really like kick the tires on this particular topic, because that will help you know how easy it’s gonna be for you to have a conversation with that person going forward. In my business that I worked in in Germany,
For a while we worked with a great accountant, but after a while realized that we were we were overpaying a huge amount of stuff because we weren’t taking advantage of legal taxation regulations and so we were paying for taxes that we didn’t need to pay and that’s just because you know tax situation is very complicated in any country and then when you start doing cross-border
accounting, gets a whole new layers of complexity in there. And so there’s just things that you learn and you adapt and you go from. And so when you partner with a coach that does know your industry, you kind of tap into all the mistakes that they’ve made in the past and the things that they’ve worked through with other clients and can actually say, hey, I’m going to save you a bunch of time and energy here. Here’s some questions. If they can’t answer these questions, say thank you so much for your time, but I got to move on.
Jason Elkins (52:36.066)
Yep. Yep.
Charles Odom (52:43.51)
and it’ll be so much of a time saver in the long run for you and a money saver.
Jason Elkins (52:48.536)
Yeah, I appreciate that you brought that up because I use the coaching a runner as a kind of an example as for around kind of what coaching is, but you’re absolutely right. I mean, if you’re going to run a marathon, you probably be best if your coach likes to run and has some experience maybe as running marathons. So, but the same thing as a tour operator, somebody that’s been through it, that’s had some of those and probably painful experiences and, you know, learn things the hard way because.
Charles Odom (53:04.462)
Yeah. Yeah.
Charles Odom (53:15.278)
Yeah, we’ve all had them. so part of that, you know, that relates back to, know, don’t be afraid to ask for help. It’s also don’t be afraid to make mistakes because we’ve all made them in a variety of ways. And so I think that as more and more of us are getting connected, we’re learning from each other and starting to share experiences about things that have worked really well, things that if we could go back in time, we would do differently. And so those are fun conversations for me to have with people.
Starting a tour business or growing one that you already have is so rewarding. And I’m a firm believer that travel businesses are at the forefront of making a more equitable kind of world. I really do. And so we need to be helping each other to do that. There is space for a little bit of friendly competition, but there’s a huge space for us to cooperate and collaborate with each other.
We’re one of the biggest industries in the world when you put tourism related stuff together. We have to be at the forefront to push initiatives that are aligned with the values that we think are important. Like we have to do that and we have to do it together.
Jason Elkins (54:28.142)
Which brings us to painted circle. So let’s discuss that because we’ve discussed quite a few things and I want to make sure our listeners have an opportunity to kind of understand why did you start it and I suspect some of it had to do with when you work in Germany. So just jump in wherever.
Charles Odom (54:31.811)
Hmm. Yeah. Okay, so.
Charles Odom (54:47.099)
Yeah, so after traveling as a kid, I left South Carolina. I moved to Washington, D.C. to go to university. And while I was there, I started working with international development. And I also studied during university in Berlin. And that was, again, one of those things of, I’m gonna do something different. I’m going to Berlin. And so I just got on a plane and went to Berlin and went to university there.
I had a back and forth existence for a bit between Berlin and Washington. And I lived in Washington for off and on, but for about seven or eight years in total. And then eventually moved to Germany. And when I moved to Germany, I said, all right, I’m going to take this kind of education that I have from university of, I studied both political science and also international development. And then I really enjoyed my time in Berlin.
when I was a student there and I said, okay, I’m gonna move back and I’m gonna find a way to combine these two and at that time there was a relatively young tour company that was working in Berlin and I was like, hey, this is gonna be great. So I started working with them and it kind of, it filled many buckets for me. It was a small company, so it was a lot of fun to do. It was in a city that I loved and so I loved that I could be out
and in this city every day. It was working with people from all over the world. So we had guests from all over. That was fantastic. And it was talking about a topic that I felt passionate about. The history of Germany and of Berlin is unbelievable. And so much of our world today, we can trace back to things that have happened there. And there are so many lessons to learn.
There are so many cautionary tales and there are so many connections that we can find today that have, or let’s say that there’s so many situations that are happening today for which we can find examples in German history. And we can see, you know, how things worked out, what were the consequences, what happened. It’s a really fascinating place. you know, Berlin is a multifaceted place. Some people go there just for the parties and all that kind of stuff.
Charles Odom (57:14.959)
But Berlin is a really consequential place politically, culturally, economically. And so it was really fulfilling to be part of that and to share that city and its legacy with guests from around the world. It was kind of an opportunity to say, hey, come here, witness this, know about what’s happened here, and take this back where you’re from and make sure that people know about it.
Jason Elkins (57:40.256)
Mm-hmm. All right.
Charles Odom (57:43.416)
Our challenge with that company was working with travelers. They’re on vacation. They want to have a good time and you know, they want to have fun and we have to talk about Nazis. You know, it’s a difficult thing to do and it’s difficult because we have to be respectful of the history. We have to be respectful and aware of, you know, the people who suffered there. And we also have to make sure that we’re running a business that people will
Jason Elkins (57:54.062)
Yeah.
Charles Odom (58:12.901)
you know, find, hey, we had a good time on this. We had to really define what is having a good time. And for us, it was how do we give people an eye-opening experience? And so that’s what we did. And in the process of growing that business, we learned a lot. We learned about, you know, how do we hire and train people? How do we recruit the right people? How do we cultivate a culture that’s going to respectfully share this history? How do we grow ethically?
Jason Elkins (58:20.27)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (58:42.395)
with kind of monetizing a relationship with very turbulent history, like where’s the line, what’s right, what’s wrong. We went through all of this and the reality is there’s companies around the world that are facing the same thing, no matter where they are. If they’re in Vietnam or they’re in Japan and they’re doing all kinds of tours and experiences, how do we do those businesses in a sensitive kind of way? We don’t want to commodify people. We don’t want to take advantage of cultures and people are finding a way to do it.
Jason Elkins (59:12.174)
Charles, I’m curious where the local Germans, because I hear that, I completely understand that you don’t want to commoditize. What’s the word? Commoditize? Commodify? So an example that I’m curious, help me connect this is, you know, I spent a lot of time in Colombia.
Charles Odom (59:12.291)
And so.
Charles Odom (59:26.574)
modify.
Jason Elkins (59:38.615)
And there are people there that give Pablo Escobar tours. And there’s people that sell t-shirts and stuff like this. But the vast majority of Colombians do not like that. They think it’s disgusting that somebody would offer a Pablo Escobar tour. There’s a little Pablo Escobar museum and they get, you know, very upset about that. I’m curious in Germany, is that similar? Are there…
people there that really get upset by the idea of Americans coming there and taking tours. Things like Holocaust museums and stuff like that. Do Germans respond to that? mean, I don’t know what the question is, but tell me.
Charles Odom (01:00:21.74)
It’s, I think I know what you mean. A couple interesting things about Berlin. Berlin is a huge, there’s actually been a lot on the news recently about immigration in Germany. And, you know, in many places in the West, there’s a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment going on. And Germany acknowledges that it’s challenged, but it is an immigrant country.
like it has to be in order to function. And places like Berlin, you can really see that because I’m not sure the exact statistic. it’s, has hovered around one out of every three people in Berlin is not German. So, you know, to your point, how, how are tours like this received locally also has, you know, like what is the demographic of the local, you know, and, and so we have to qualify that in some way.
Jason Elkins (01:01:12.898)
Okay.
Charles Odom (01:01:18.588)
Germany in the last couple of decades, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, has really marched down a path of transparency, or we should say they aspire to be transparent in how they operate. And as a result of that, many locations and very prominent locations in the city have been set aside as monuments or
historical landmarks. In German, there’s actually different words for memorial, like we would say in English. So like here you would say something like, I’m gonna go to the Lincoln Memorial or something like that. German has a few different words that come back to the meaning of, is this a location that makes me think? Is this a location that makes me honor something? Is this a location?
Jason Elkins (01:02:13.87)
Hmm.
Charles Odom (01:02:16.046)
Is it something that commemorates something? So there’s a lot of meaning behind how things are named, and there’s many of those throughout the city. And so some of them are related to the Soviet history in the city after the end of the Second World War. Some are related to things that happened during Bismarck’s time. And some of them are related to things during the Second World War, things certainly like the Holocaust Memorial.
Jason Elkins (01:02:36.322)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (01:02:44.068)
which of course has a very specific name as well. It’s much more like direct. These are things that are in very visible locations. There’s no hiding it. And so on the positive side of the spectrum, I think that culturally there is a connection to acknowledging the past. And so tours that are acknowledging the past,
is not stepping over a line. The line is already well pushed to the side. The government buildings there are all made out of glass. And part of that is symbolic to say nothing’s happening behind closed doors. You can view things. And one of the big highlights for tourists, if anyone’s listening ever goes to Berlin, you can go to the Reichstag, which is the parliament building. And it’s usually symbolic.
because there’s a dome on the top of it and the dome is made out of glass. But if you visit it, you can actually go onto the roof of the building and there’s a spiral staircase that goes up to the very top of the dome. And when you’re on that spiral staircase, you can look through the middle of it down and you actually look into the chamber with the politicians working below. And the idea is that you don’t only see them, but you as the people are above them.
Jason Elkins (01:04:07.679)
Above them, yeah.
Charles Odom (01:04:09.262)
And so that’s something that’s hugely symbolic. So in a place like Germany, tourism, as I think we would be talking about it, doesn’t cross a line. It’s in line with the way that people say, look, we need to acknowledge what happens here. The line, think, is drawn when we start placing too much blame, because the reality is most Germans today…
they’re not personally responsible for what happened during the Second World War and many Germans today suffered quite immensely because of the legacy of the Second World War and then the division of the country afterwards. And so that goes back to this layer, like it’s like a lasagna, you know, of history that’s there and each layer has its own dynamics to it. And so when you go there as a tourist, going on a tour is kind of like having that coach.
because it’s going to help you make sense of this very complicated history that’s there. But no, I don’t think it’s a negative thing. The closest that we had is there’s a memorial camp outside of Berlin that’s called Sachsenhausen. And it was used as an internment camp during the war. And it was one of the earlier ones during the Second World War.
was used as almost like a testing ground to try to find policies, the systems and the setup and things that could then be exported to other concentration camps as Germany expanded. And it’s still there. It’s been turned into a memorial. You can go and visit it. And it’s actually a big tourist draw for people to go there because it’s one of the few that you can get to from downtown Berlin on public transport.
And we had guests asking us like, hey, can you give us a tour out there? And for us, that’s where we started to draw the line. And we said, you know, we just, we feel gross about making money showing that. But at the same time, we also didn’t want to say, no, if there are people that want to learn about what happened there, we need to help them to do that. So our company actually established a nonprofit.
Charles Odom (01:06:33.392)
so that the nonprofit could operate the tours. And so we could still charge people to go. We could use that money to pay the guides so that they could actually still earn money and they didn’t have to volunteer. And then anything else that was left over, we donated to that memorial so that it could fulfill its mission to exist. And so there’s always workarounds to do things. And that’s also another thing that’s fun to work with businesses from a coaching standpoint is to figure out
Jason Elkins (01:06:33.71)
Hmm.
Charles Odom (01:07:03.598)
Again, what is it that you want? And part of that is, you know, where are your limitations? Like, where are you going to give back into this tourism ecosystem? And, you know, do you have values that you want to support with your business? And so that’s one of the areas where I think we have so much potential because there’s a tremendous amount of energy out there to do like good things, you know, and say, look, people are coming here, we can shed light on things. And then maybe we can turn some of that
that travel money and that tourism industry money into something positive so that we learn from these things that have happened. for things like what happened at this camp, can make it human. It doesn’t have to just be a memorial. There are humans that were impacted there. And we can keep that knowledge alive so that it doesn’t happen again.
Jason Elkins (01:08:00.943)
I love that. That’s a creative solution to, uh, yeah. Cause I can imagine that dilemma. I just don’t feel good about making money off of that. But yeah, flip side, people need to see it and people need to, you know, some people need to see it. Right. Yeah.
Charles Odom (01:08:17.659)
Yeah, some people are in locations where they can’t do solutions exactly like we did, and they may have to run a for-profit business. I always tell folks, think about, is it important that you share this experience with people? And if it is, then it’s important for you to make money, because that’s gonna help you to keep doing it. And then you can decide what’s within your values for what you do with your profits.
Jason Elkins (01:08:23.502)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:08:39.779)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:08:46.168)
Cause if, if nobody does it, right. Cause if, if nobody does it ever, everybody’s like, I don’t want to make money from that. Then this little place where some things happen that people need to know about is just going to disappear into the jungle or into the forest or whatever. yeah. So, but, and what I hear you saying aligns a lot with my understanding of, of painted circle. So I want to make sure we do touch on that and as well.
Charles Odom (01:08:46.266)
and you can be in control.
Charles Odom (01:09:12.761)
I look for, yeah, so I kind of evolved from working with my one company in Germany, and now I’m working on pulling companies like ours all around the world onto one platform. And I call it painted circle for a variety of reasons. The idea is that many people who are running travel companies are doing it so that there’s some kind of benefit. There’s a community impact.
they’re working for some kind of sustainability project. They’ve got a big vision of how their company fits into kind of creating a better world through tourism. And so we’re bringing them onto Painted Circle, which looks and feels a lot like the big box mass market sites like TripAdvisor or Viator. But we’re creating a site that works more like a travel guide. So you as a traveler can come to our website
find these businesses that are really driven by some kind of purpose. And then we show you how to connect directly with them to make your bookings. And it seems so simple, you know? But the result is enormous. And this is where a lot of travelers don’t really know what happens when they click the Book Now button on a big website. Let’s say that you’re gonna go on a tour.
and you’re like, here’s this cute little tour. I want to support these people. It’s going to be a hundred bucks for me to go book now. I just supported this local business. You actually supported that booking website where you just made your booking. So they’re going to take your money. They also take all of your booking data. So they’re going to be remarketing to you to sell you more stuff. And then they will pass some of your money onto that local operator.
There’s rates that are negotiated. Usually it comes in the form of like a commission, like a sales commission. And typically those booking websites will take between 25 and 30 % of what you spend and they keep that. So when you do the math, it’s really kind of scary. So let’s say that you go on that tour that’s 100 bucks and it costs that company $60 to operate.
Charles Odom (01:11:36.766)
that particular tour, because they have to pay their guide, they pay overhead, if you’re doing something that requires a vehicle, they’re paying that, paying insurances, all that. They might work out to $60 per person and you just paid 100. Well, they don’t earn 100. They’re gonna get 75 from the booking company. So they’ve gone from a 40 % profit margin to 15. Like,
Jason Elkins (01:12:03.576)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (01:12:03.931)
just because you hit book on that website as opposed to theirs. And so we’re creating kind of a more simplified system that says, I don’t want to control the bookings. I don’t want to control your spending and I don’t want to control all of your data. I want to show you places where you can travel and find really high quality businesses. And now I’m going to show you how to go directly to them. And that’s what we’re doing. And so we’re starting this off as a huge community effort.
Jason Elkins (01:12:28.728)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (01:12:33.565)
where we’re inviting businesses that are aligned with this idea of keeping money local, of supporting worthy initiatives like sustainability, inclusion and belonging, all kinds of other local impact projects. We’re inviting them to painted circle and saying, just come onto our platform. We’re creating this guide of impactful tour businesses around the world.
And so as we’re doing that, we’re building out our network of businesses that most travelers will find really fulfilling to spend your money when you go on tour with them and you’re connecting directly to them. So you know that when you spend your hundred bucks, all of it is going to that person.
Jason Elkins (01:13:21.71)
So that leads to question and I feel compelled to ask Charles, like we know that the, the via tours and trip advisors, we just explained to us how they make their money and kind of, kind of understand how the tour operator makes their money more if the book directly. but how does painted, I think, I think tour operators listen to this, like, I don’t pay any commission. How the heck does painted circle make money? So what do you want them to know about that?
Charles Odom (01:13:49.96)
Yeah, yeah, well, first of all, I don’t make any money from the tour operators at all. There’s nothing on our site that charges them or they never get an invoice from me or anything like that. Here’s what we’ve done. When we started bringing businesses onto this platform, onto Painted Circle, we realized that we’re saving those businesses the 25 or 30 % commission that they would be paying through a reseller.
So we realized we could harvest that savings in some kind of way that benefits the traveler. So all these businesses that are coming onto the site then say, OK, let me give a special offer for travelers. And sometimes that’s like a 10 % savings. Sometimes it’s an additional experience, or sometimes it’s an upgrade. And so every business on Painted Circle has come up with some kind of special offer like that.
and we’ve packaged that together into a travel pass that travelers can get if they want it. So if you want to come to Painted Circle as a traveler, you can use our site for free. You can see the businesses that are on there and click through and book directly. But if you want to come to Painted Circle and say, oh, I want to go on this and I can save 10 % or I’m going to do this activity and I get $200 savings off of my booking.
You can do that by purchasing our travel pass as a one-time purchase and it unlocks all of those special offers forever as you use our website.
Jason Elkins (01:15:27.199)
I back in the day,
They, don’t know, maybe they not value packs, but like you could buy a booklet full of coupons kind of, right.
Charles Odom (01:15:39.473)
Yeah, yes, yes. Or like a community fundraiser where they would sell a card and it was good for a year at local businesses, stuff like that, yeah.
Jason Elkins (01:15:46.166)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And each, each business, each business that was listed on the card had some sort of special deal or you, or yeah, you got the book with the, the tear out coupons and the, the business community, they could participate it in. If they wanted to, they didn’t have to, but the money was actually coming from the consumer. Well, maybe, maybe a combination in those days, but so that’s what I hear you say. And it sounds kind of like that the customer or the consumer can, can buy something that
Charles Odom (01:15:54.513)
Yeah.
Charles Odom (01:15:59.016)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:16:19.256)
has the promise of getting special discounts and deals and the tour operator is not paying for it.
Charles Odom (01:16:25.626)
Exactly. the kind of unique nature of what we’re doing is that it’s all online, so you don’t have to carry anything with you. You know, don’t need that physical book. It also, from a practical standpoint, from the business’s side, it also means that they’re not locking something in stone, right? So they can actually change those offers over time. yeah, absolutely.
Jason Elkins (01:16:32.366)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:16:46.082)
Great. Yep.
Jason Elkins (01:16:50.37)
Like every day. Almost, right? Yeah. Yep.
Charles Odom (01:16:54.11)
Yeah, and that’s a great thing because a lot of businesses, every season, they’ll have different offers that they do to take advantage of changes in their environment, changes in the season, all that kind of stuff. And so it’s great that they can actually update those as they go, which is great. The other thing that’s unique about what we’re doing is it’s not a subscription. We’ve made it a one-time purchase to get this travel pass, and then you have it forever.
Jason Elkins (01:17:01.646)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (01:17:23.608)
And part of that is I’ve been told that self-defeating and I get it because, you know, we started off talking about doing things that are different and people always say, do it this way, do it this way. This is the tried and true way. And people have also told me, you got to make it a subscription and charge people like 20 bucks a month, that kind of thing. And it just doesn’t align with the vision of what I’m trying to do. You know, my goal here is not to make money off of people traveling.
Jason Elkins (01:17:36.867)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:17:47.598)
Right, right, right, right.
Charles Odom (01:17:53.297)
It’s to help people spend their money more ethically when they do travel. And we can incentivize people to do so by offering this travel pass.
Jason Elkins (01:17:59.503)
Because if they because.
Yeah, because if they buy it, if they buy it, they’re probably going to book their experiences through partners of painted circle or members or whatever. And if it’s for life, then they could potentially continue doing that indefinitely. Where if it’s a subscription, the subscription runs out.
Charles Odom (01:18:14.738)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (01:18:27.166)
They have to pay for it again and again.
Jason Elkins (01:18:28.856)
They have a tight month where they’re like, you know, I need to start, I need to go through and cancel some of these subscriptions. They cancel the subscription and then, you know, and then you never see them again. Maybe. Yeah.
Charles Odom (01:18:38.792)
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, part of it is also really influenced by our own like financial journey as a couple as well. And so we’re part of the group of people working for financial independence and how do we live very frugally so that we spend our money on experiences as opposed to things. And one of the things that we try to avoid is paying for subscriptions for things that don’t really add
Jason Elkins (01:18:48.078)
Mm-hmm.
Jason Elkins (01:19:01.006)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (01:19:08.19)
like continuous value to our lives. And so I didn’t want to create something that I myself would not pay money for, you know? So I would want to…
Jason Elkins (01:19:10.594)
Right. Right.
Jason Elkins (01:19:17.676)
So is this like Dave Ramsey approved, this approach? Sure.
Charles Odom (01:19:22.398)
That would be something if he did. I don’t know, but I crunch the numbers and it’s like, yeah, our goal is to make enough money that we can support and grow our platform at a rate that is sustainable for us. That’s the goal. The goal is not to replace TripAdvisor. I think TripAdvisor is a great company. They do a lot of positive things for…
Jason Elkins (01:19:41.645)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (01:19:48.563)
Businesses and for many travelers who are just getting into travel. That’s the way to go You find the biggest variety of things that are there They’ve got literally hundreds of thousands of things that you can go and do when you travel Look through them if that’s what you want to do But there’s a there’s a growing number of people who are getting to be a bit more discerning with When they travel and that doesn’t mean that they’re looking for like more and more luxury It means that they’re becoming more and more aware of the consequences of what they’re doing. And so as people realize
If I book a trip through TripAdvisor every year and every year I’m spending $1,000 on a trip, over 10 years, that means that I’ve given TripAdvisor nearly $3,000. You know, it’s just like, that’s a lot of money that you’re giving to a website that isn’t in the communities that you visit. They don’t employ anyone who gives tours. Like, they’re a marketing agency and there’s nothing wrong with that. But we as the traveler need to know, okay, well,
Jason Elkins (01:20:27.886)
300. Yeah. 3000 bucks.
Charles Odom (01:20:46.524)
Do we want to spend our money on marketing or do we want to spend our money on impact? And that’s where we’re coming in and saying, no, we can do it on impact.
Jason Elkins (01:20:51.412)
On, yeah. On that, on that guide. Yeah. And on that guide and that, that person that you’re going to actually be with, right? Cause you know, you book a tour on TripAdvisor and then you get there and you spend the time with the person. You create the connection with the person. And at the end of that tour, wouldn’t it be nice to feel like, yeah, you know, my money went to this person and not a tech company equivalent to a Zillow or, know, those bigger companies that are out there.
We’ve touched on so many things, but we’ve got a variety of listeners as well. So I wanted to just personally say this to our listeners, if you’re a traveler, click on the link in the show notes, go take a look, right? Whether you use the website for free or you wanna explore the possibility of you said the travel pass, right? We’ve got tour operators that are listening to this.
Charles Odom (01:21:45.022)
Yep.
Jason Elkins (01:21:49.279)
If you feel an alignment and connection with Charles, which I can’t imagine how you don’t, if you’ve listened to the episode this long, click on the link. Go take a look, book a call with Charles, see if this makes sense for you guys to get listed. He just told you it doesn’t cost anything. And I know I see every day in the social media groups, people are like, how do I find more direct bookings? do I, you know, I don’t really, you know, these OTAs are…
cutting into my profits. How can I get more? Well, you just, if you’re still listening to this, you just learned one way. So, reach out. don’t have any big OTA listeners, probably. I don’t know. Maybe we do. If we, if we do reach out to me directly, I’d love to have a conversation with you, but, we Charles, what else do you want to share with our listeners real quick before we wrap up?
Charles Odom (01:22:36.358)
I would just share, be excited about tourism. I think that there’s, no matter where you are in the world geographically, or where you are on like a political spectrum or a financial spectrum or anything like that, there’s a lot of doom and gloom out there. But if you put any value in what I say, as someone who talks on
Jason Elkins (01:22:54.52)
Mm-hmm.
Charles Odom (01:23:03.674)
almost a daily basis with business owners around the world. There is a huge amount of positivity and optimism about what we can do in tourism. And I think that what we do in tourism can affect the greater world as well. And so get excited about travel, whether you are designing it and operating it or whether you are consuming it as a traveler.
get excited about it, and then get excited about the fact that you can have control over your impact. So whether you’re running a business and you wanna do it your way, or you are about to spend money on travel and you’re now scratching your head saying, yeah, I can do something that doesn’t cost me any more money, but it ends up having a better impact, you can take control back of saying, yeah, I wanna support what I wanna support and I don’t want people to be…
like extracting money out that I don’t know about. Like you can be in the driver’s seat on that and feel good about travel. There’s a lot of talk of, know, what’s the impact of this? What’s the carbon footprint? All important things for us to do. The biggest risk is for us to stop traveling. So we can start traveling more sustainably, more ethically, but the important is we need to continue traveling and we need to put…
value on what is it that we get from travel. It’s about human connections. It’s about learning things that expand your mind. It’s about recognizing that travel is when we can continue to learn new things, have new experiences, expand ourselves as people, get to know other people, and be less afraid of the world that’s outside of your four walls. Like, this is all very positive. And along the way, let’s support businesses who are working on that carbon footprint.
and who are working on income inequality and who are working on social justice. We’re going to support those things along the way because now we’re working together to be more efficient with how people spend their money and we’re going to stop wasting it on marketing and we’re going to start creating more impact.
Jason Elkins (01:25:13.816)
Very well said. Charles, thank you so much. Really impactful conversation and appreciate you taking time out of your day to share it with the audience and just good to see you again. Let’s do it again soon. All right, thanks Charles. You have a great day.
Charles Odom (01:25:25.66)
I look forward to it. You got it.
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