Bridging the Gap Between Competence and Confidence
By Meredith Calloway, Chief Growth Officer
I hear a version of the same doubt from advisors who come to this business later, after a full career somewhere else has already gone well: that all the operational skills in the world won't matter if they haven't yet built the nerve to actually sell it. While competence may get you started, it’s mindset that keeps you going.
Patti Mills-Roy, founder of Mills-Roy Luxury Travel, a longtime GTN advisor and repeat member of our Top Producer Club, spent 13 years running an international buying department for Canadian Tire, then owned and operated one of the company's franchise locations for close to 20 more. She was the third female Canadian Tire dealer in the company's history, running a business large enough to become the top eight-bay service operation in the country. When she and her husband finally retired to a golf and tennis community in Florida, she started a little travel business almost as an afterthought so she could earn just enough income to meet Medicare requirements.
That "just enough" business now runs river cruise groups of 60 and 70 people at a time, on trips where a single charter can clear more than $60,000 in profit. But getting there was never about Patti learning to run a business - she already knew how to do that better than most people ever will - it was about trusting herself enough to ask for the sale.
She started building this habit before she had a reason to. In September 2018, before she'd even fully joined our GTN advisor community, Patti started a weekly newsletter modeled directly on the same “Know, Like, and Trust” formula I still teach to advisors. Though she had almost no list at the time, she built the discipline anyway and kept it small and selective rather than chasing volume. That list is a big part of why people trust her enough to show up 70 at a time for a river cruise.
The scariest part of her first big group trip wasn't filling the boat; it was signing a supplier contract committing her to 25 staterooms before she knew whether she'd sell them. But instead of trying to overcome the fear, she leaned on GTN’s resources and was able to hold client deposits before she had to sign anything. Having this support in place allowed her to confidently move forward without
For her, operational skill was never the problem. But operational skill wasn’t what helped her to confidently pick up the phone and ask a near-stranger to commit five figures to a cabin she hadn't sold yet. Instead, it was her commitment to emotional fitness, strengthening that mental muscle by ignoring the voice of fear over and over and building the certainty her competence alone could not.
Patti has learned to let go instead of forcing it, especially in the slow months. Even now, with two sold-out river cruise groups behind her and a referral business that keeps compounding, Patti still hits stretches where nothing seems to be moving. Her own Canadian client pipeline slowed for a while recently over the cross-border political climate. What turns it around, she told me, isn't pushing harder. It's the opposite: relaxing into what she calls "whatever," and trusting the business to come back on its own timeline instead of chasing it. It always has, often right when she's stopped expecting it to.
If you're sitting on that same gap right now, all the skill and none of the certainty, here's the concrete version of what closed it for Patti. She sent the newsletter before she had a list worth sending it to. She signed the contract before the cabins were sold. Patti may still have weeks where nothing moves, and she wonders what she's doing, but she keeps going anyway instead of waiting for that feeling to pass.
If you love hearing stories like Patti's, tune into The Travel Business Unpacked podcast! Each episode dives deep into the real stories, practical strategies, and transformational moments that turn travel dreams into thriving careers. Listen and subscribe on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and check out Patti's full episode here.