Meet Sarah Stecker

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sarah Stecker a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sarah, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?
Sometimes people say I am too much now-a-days, I say I have established self confidence and am proud of who I have become. It’s not something I thought I would ever confidently say, especially when I was in my 20’s. Fortunately, it has developed as I have gotten older, wiser and listened to my mentors around me. Understanding that, in the moment, not to make rash emotional decisions, but to take a step back and think through the entire situation infront of me and then proceed. Slowing down and feeling I am making the best decision for my company, and myself, does infact give you a huge boost of self confidence and increased my self-esteem (and awareness), because I felt more in control.

I wasn’t always like this, my wake up call was my first ever job in the travel industy. The business owner and my mentor fired me, because I was too confident in something I didn’t know that much about. She put me in my place, and what I thought was confidence was immaturity. Of course it was a shot to my self-esteem, thinking I knew what I was doing. Now that I think back about my time with her, I see my faults and her lessons. Honestly I would not be where I am today if it wasn’t for her putting me in my place and firing me.

What I have learned is that even when a unagreeable situation might me infront of me, taking that step back and learning from it has drastically improved my knowledge, confidence and echoing out into my sucessful business I have today.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I have now been in the travel industry for over 10 years. My love of travel started with my parents, every year we would take our traditional trips like skiing in Northern Wisconsin, adventure to the West and go white water rafting, horseback riding, and possibly get licked by those huge buffalo’s blocking the road. My brother and I would live off of my mothers tuna noodle salad so we could afford to take yearly Disney World vacations, but man was it worth it!

When I took my first trip out of the country, I was done for, an absolute goner; and I haven’t stopped. From Northern Europe to the South Caribbean and everything in-between; I want to see, touch, taste and experience it all! I firmly believe that truly learning hands on is not only a way to retain history, but to feel more connected with our ancestors as well.

This is why I started Travel Advisors Unlimited LLC, I wanted to create a team of experts that share the same passion for adventure as I do and help people create memories they will want to share with their grandchildren.

Travel Advisors Unlimited LLC is a full-service travel agency agency dedicated to providing reliable and practical travel solutions. We offer competitive rates within today’s travel market by a professional team of well travelled experienced travel specialists. We expertly handle domestic and international travel services including, customized tours in unique destinations, hotel accommodations, theme park packages, cruises and of course those all-inclusive Caribbean stays! Our team of group travel specialists can help you plan all of your multi-generational travel, incentive travel and plan destination weddings!

Our 2024 Goal is to expain our corporate travel portfolio and add more agents to our team. The Team already has a ton of travel planned in 2024 to explore all over the world and gain more knowledge about the details of these destinations so that when we help our clients create these trips we confidently can assist.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
My husband and I come from a small town in Wisconsin. We went to the same High School, lived on his family farm, had our kids early. We were living the small town life, until that wasn’t enough. And by that I mean being a mom is the best job in the world, doing the room mom thing and keeping the house. But when the kids grow up, I needed something for me. Being ADD, my mind comes with lots of open tabs and ideas, so I would do little things here and there to create that simulation, we would go camping and small adventures with the family. And as the kids grew with thier independance my feelings of being needed drifted further away.

I was reading the newspaper one morning (yes the paper one), and that’s were I saw there was a part-time job opening at one of the local travel agencys. Right away I called and scored an interview, I met the owner at the local coffee shop for a conversation and she offered me the job. Now, note I had not even told my husband yet, because honestly I didn’t think I was going to get the job. So, that evening I spoke with Mike, my husband, and he was so excited for me. He knew I needed something more and always supports my spontaneous adventures. There I was a part-time working mom with dress pants and all, going to learn how to help people book travel. Little did I know what that would turn into.

So, if there was anything I could put out there to that mom that feels like they are drifting and in the need of feeling needed… Just do it, take the risk, make the phone call, never be scared of a No, ever! Looking back if I didn’t make that phone call, it would have never sparked that fire in me about travel and I would have never learned about all of the tools that help create amazing adventures.

Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?
I have two people that have been a major part in my develpment of a Agency Owner as well as an over all business woman. As you can tell, I mention my first boss a lot, because honestly even though she was a battle axe, she was the best mentor I could have ever asked for. Her high expectations and no nonsence expectations pushed me to better myself. A lot of people would crumble under that pressure, but the way she did it made me see it was creating a higher standard for myself. The second person would be my husband, I am one of those… Hang on Tight, type of girls. Mike is a quiet guy with roots to support and hold steady. Honestly we are the perfect match because he allows me to take the reasonable risks and if they don’t work he is there to support and encourge me to try again.

With these two people in my life, I feel, I have become a confident business owner and can say that I can overcome any challenges with patients, knowledge and understanding.

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Image Credits
Image Credit: Tess Camps

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