对于这位旅行顾问,生活始于50
byDavid Cogswell/
有人说生命从50开始。对于Limor Decter来说,这是事实。但这实际上是她的“第三人生”。
By the time Decter became a travel advisor, she had already had two careers: as an English teacher, and as a full-time mom. Her life as a travel advisor started with what seemed like a fluke, and it could easily have ended before it began.
It started with her sitting on the beach, looking at her iPhone. “I got my job from Instagram,” said Limor. “I tell people life begins at 50 and they laugh at me. But it’s true.”
职业生涯3.0的背景故事
Long before she became a travel advisor, Limor (named after a fragrance) taught English, public speaking and creative writing in a high school on Long Island for six years. Then she stopped teaching to raise her children. She loved being a mother. She was very hands-on, raising three children, who are now all grown up and set off on their own career paths.
但是旅行从一开始就在她的血液中。她说:“我出生于以色列。”“我在6岁时来到美国。我的父亲出生在摩洛哥。我母亲出生于伊拉克。他们在以色列相遇。”她的祖父就读于贝鲁特大学。迪克特(Decter)出生于一个真正跨大陆的家庭。她并不是“出生于灰狗巴士的后座”,但她出生于一个运动中的家庭。
Somehow that sense of motion was visible to others, because when she was raising her children, friends picked her out as the person to call for travel advice. She had a knack.
“I stayed at home and became a full-time mom and an unofficial concierge travel planner to all my family and friends,” she said. “For 20 years, I stayed home with my kids, and every day all day I fielded calls, ‘Where do I go? Plan my trip. What museum exhibit should I see? Where should I go for a restaurant? What should I do in this city?’ I don’t know why they thought I knew, but I guess I knew.”
Before her children reached school age, Limor traveled some with her husband, an importer, while her parents stayed with the kids. But when the kids got to school age, her travel ended. “Once the kids rolled around, I devoted all my energy to being a mom and to their lives and school and the PTA and the community and all that, and just being an unofficial concierge, go-to to anything.”
“My friends would be driving into the city and say, ‘Where should I park my car?’ I’d say, ‘Where are you staying, on the east or west or up or down?’ I don’t know why they asked me. Before Google, I was Google.”
A perfect beach day
When Limor turned 50, her youngest child was a senior in high school and the demands of mothering were shifting. She started to look to new horizons.
Limor had spent most of that summer on the beach. It started as just another day. “I was scrolling through Instagram at the beach one summer day,” she said. “I had followed some life coaches and I saw this seminar for women, a second-career workshop.”
Out of the blue, she was seized by an urge to attend a workshop. “It happened to have been a perfect beach day, ten out of ten,” said Limor. “I said to myself, ‘It’s a great beach day, but I’m just going to follow my gut. I like this lady. I’m just going to drive over and figure it out.’”
She asked some of her friends if they would be interested in going with her and got refusals all around. “They said, ‘No, why would I do that?’” she said. Why indeed? “I said, ‘I’m just going to go. I have this calling.’”
The hero’s journey
So began a quest that came with its own dragons and demons, as she drove from Long Island to Asbury Park, New Jersey, to attend a women’s empowerment, back-to-work seminar. The trip assumed the character of an epic struggle in miniature. Perhaps the gods were making sure she knew that nothing worth having comes easily.
“It was a real adventure to get there that day,” she said. “I got lost. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong.”
Still she persisted. “I was just so determined to find this lady and meet her.”
It meant leaving the idyllic beach day, driving through Manhattan and down to the Jersey Shore. She barely got started when she found herself stuck in one of those impossible, maddening New York traffic jams. “I’ll never forget,” she said, “I was sitting on the Belt Parkway. The traffic was insane. I was looking at the Verrazano Bridge and I thought, ‘Should I just turn around?’ But I said, ‘No, I’m just going to go.’ I was on that bridge and the traffic and the whole time, Waze was talking to me.”
While she struggled through traffic, Waze was consuming the energy on her phone. The app was also leading her the wrong way. “I didn’t realize my battery was dying,” she said. “I finally got to this neighborhood and it was not the right neighborhood. Waze put me in another city, one town over.”
Lost in space
She found herself in a scary-looking neighborhood in the wrong town. Thanks a lot, Waze! Not only was her phone dying, her car was also about to die. “I almost ran out of gas,” she said. “It was starting to putter. I was literally on my last minute.”
正好及时,她来到加油站。她说:“我要抽出自己的汽油,对周围的所有这些人有些害怕。”“我环顾四周,以为这不是一个安全的社区。我不太安全。然后我在后视窗口看到一个广播棚。”
Thank God! There she could find a charger for her phone, and a restroom. “My bladder was going to explode,” she said. “I walked in and said, ‘I’m begging you, can I use your bathroom? And then I’m going to buy a charger. I’m ready to drop dead.’”
After the climactic Radio Shack moment, Decter made it to the seminar. She met the life coach, who took a liking to her and offered to introduce her to Jack Ezon, a mover-and-shaker in the travel industry, who was then at the Ovation Travel Group.
“She called Jack Ezon, who is one of the most well-respected luxury advisers there are,” said Decter. “He’s a powerhouse. He’s amazing, very well-connected, a strong producer, on advisory boards. He’s literally at the top of the food chain.”
Ezon invited Decter into the office. After smashing through all the barriers, she had established some momentum and the magic was clicking. She walked into Ezon’s office and he offered her a position with Ovation Travel on-the-spot.
到目前为止,挣扎的努力只是序幕。“I ended up getting four days of three hours a day of orientation, with Jack explaining the ropes, and then he took me to one of the rows and said, ‘This is your desk.’ I’m like, ‘Now what?’ He goes, ‘Now you’re going to work.’
“我想,‘我不知道该怎么办。’我在额头上流汗。但是你知道吗?我参加了网络研讨会。我向周围的每个人学习。我问了一百万个问题。我每周四天虔诚地通勤三个小时。我遇到了来到我们办公室的最好的供应商,然后开始进行营销。在您不知不觉中,它就会成长。”
After three months, she got her first paycheck. “It was $87,” she said. “It didn’t even cover my train. It was very humbling. I looked at my husband and said, ‘I don’t know if I should continue this.’ He said, ‘Of course! Don’t worry, it’ll come.’”
It all pays off
And he was right. By the end of three years, she had booked more than a million dollars in travel business.
“So that’s that,” she said. “It’s a crazy story. But, I feel this career always had my name on it. I’m so lucky. I built a really nice client base. I’m growing nicely, but the best thing is working in this industry.
“I’m in the luxury travel industry, but the biggest luxury of all is being in this industry, because the nicest people are in hospitality. Suppliers will really bend over backwards for you. They are so appreciative that you send people their way. It’s such a feel-good industry. It’s a happy industry.
"I’ve also been so blessed and privileged to have not only traveled around world, but attended the best trade shows in the industry and met amazing people and made great connections. What could be better? I love my job.”