"Take it easy, enjoy yourself, relax and don't rush into something," all sage words of advice I received from friends and colleagues when I notified them that I was leaving Nature Group, a family company I had started and helped grow for the last 8 years. The feeling of leaving something that I was so in-tune and enamored with felt a little like leaving a concert right in the middle of the set. The strangeness of it all was only eclipsed by my excitement from walking away from something I knew, to something that was going to be unchartered waters.

For the first time during in my 15 year professional travel career, I was finally behaving like a traveler and not a tourist. I set out with an open mind and no set plans, I was considering all options, quietly observing the landscape before jumping. I stayed active and attended travel shows, seminars and events and I listened more than I spoke.

And I figured something out.

I actually never had a job in the travel industry. I also never had to sell anything in the travel industry either. The fact is, I have had the good fortune of working with brands and products that sell themselves, I only needed to facilitate the sale like a good conductor at the symphony. The fact is, too many "experts" in travel think they know how to fool the audience. Does a photo of a fake tanned and finely toned couple really sell more rooms or does that image just happen to sell everything from life insurance to Viagra? I mean come on, who's drinking the Kool Aid here?

There are fine destinations, hotels and tour operators that offer a unique and compelling story to a voracious audience who values authentic destinations and immersive experiences. The key to all effective marketing and communications strategy is applying left-brain research to right-brain creative and executing it with hard-nosed tenacity.

That's why I gladly ended my sabbatical last month and joined the ranks of MercuryCSC, a creative marketing communications firm, that listens more than it speaks, and as they say in Montana, "just gets it done."