Chronic Illness can completely change how you work, travel, and live, especially when your career depends on showing up for others. In this episode of The Traveling Therapist Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Sally Riggs to talk about what it really looks like to build a traveling therapist lifestyle while living with chronic illness and long COVID. We talk honestly about burnout, restructuring your business, creating flexibility through telehealth, and how Sally built a travel advising side hustle that supports both her health and her love of travel.
In This Episode, We Explore…
Connect with Dr. Sally Riggs:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.sallyriggs/
If you have any psychosis patients to refer: https://www.nyccbtp.com
Free Webinar: What You Don't Know You Don't Know About Psychosis: https://event.webinarjam.com/0oxmo/register/8m05miy
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/sallyriggs
Travel advisor profile: https://www.foratravel.com/advisor/sally-riggs
Connect with me:
Instagram: @thetravelingtherapist_kym
The Traveling Therapist Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/onlineandtraveling/
Signup to learn more about life as a Traveling Therapist: https://www.portablepracticemethod.com/free-training
Revolutionize Your Private Practice with AI Course: www.kymtolson.kartra.com/page/ai
Bill Like A Boss Insurance Billing Community: www.kymtolson.kartra.com/page/blab
Subscribe to the Podcast:
Apple iTunes | Spotify | Google Podcast | Stitcher | Amazon | Castbox
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Transcript:
[00:00:00] Kym_: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Traveling Therapist podcast. I'm excited to have our guest today, guys.
[00:00:06] I feel like I already know her because she's in the traveling therapist Facebook group and I've just chit chatted with her for years.
[00:00:12] It feels like Sally, you know, just, just All the different things you're doing. I'm always commenting on your posts and stuff 'cause I love what you're doing. Dr. Sally Riggs is here with us.
[00:00:21] Sally, I would love for you to just. Start out and let us know, like how did you go from being just your traditional therapist to a traveling therapist?
[00:00:29] Dr Sally: Yes. And I am so excited to be here and to, to talk to you and talk about all of this. I think for me, and I know lots of people talk about this in the Facebook group, I trained in the uk and then I immigrated to the US in 2008. So I did the thing that people are always asking about, how do you become a therapist in another country?
[00:00:54] And I did not have a license in the us. I did not have any way of getting a visa. I didn't have a spouse or. Family or anything like that. So I had to take a job in a university department because they give out visas much more easily. And then I had to get my hours all over again in the US and then get licensed originally in Pennsylvania.
[00:01:20] And then when I moved up to New York, I had to get licensed again in New York, which was goodness, that could be an entire podcast. That took me like. A year to get my New York license. It was a nightmare. But because of that, I have always kind of had a dream of being able to work from other places because I would go back to the UK originally when I was first here.
[00:01:45] I think I got 10 days vacation a year. And because in the UK people take off between Christmas and New Year's, like I would just. Go back on the 20th and that would be my whole 10 days gone. And then I'd have no other vacation. And I think, so I was working at the University of Pennsylvania for the first two and a half years that I was here.
[00:02:09] And that entire time I didn't go anywhere else. And then I got a job in New York at a hospital in Brooklyn. And again, I was there for almost five years. I think we maybe had 15 days vacation by that point. But again, like most of it was used up between like going back for family stuff. Somebody has a wedding you want to go to.
[00:02:33] I just didn't manage to take any time off. I remember one year. If you remember Hurricane Sandy that came through New York and was really devastating. And we actually couldn't make it to the hospital for a couple of days because the bridges and the tunnels were closed. I lived in Manhattan.
[00:02:49] I couldn't get to Brooklyn, but the hospital docked those two days from our annual leave. If we couldn't make it to the hospital under the heading that, well, you should have come the day before and just stayed over. Knowing that there was gonna be a hurricane. And so because I lost those two days, I couldn't go back to England for the holidays.
[00:03:10] Um, And so I then wound up having enough leftover, like at the end of the year that I managed to do a seven day trip to Mexico. And it was literally the first place that I had been since I had lived in the us. In the UK we typically take off. In the UK I had six weeks vacation a year, and you typically take off a long weekend once a month and a week, every three months because as a therapist you don't wanna burn out.
[00:03:41] And being in Europe, it's super easy to travel all over Europe a little bit further afield. And so I kind of. Not having gone anywhere for such a long time. It was a really big adjustment to not be able to do that. And so when I finally got my green card started my private practice, I already was structuring, like you talk about blocking out the days that I was gonna travel, the days that I wasn't gonna be working.
[00:04:09] And I pretty much operate my private practice on a 42 weeks a year model. Which sounds crazy, right, to take 10 weeks off.
[00:04:19] Kym_: I, I'm with you.
[00:04:21] Yeah, I'm
[00:04:21] Dr Sally: do the math and you budget on like, okay, I'm only gonna work for 42 weeks and this is what I can bring in, and then you divide that by 12 months, then you know there's ways of making it work.
[00:04:33] And so I've been taking off the whole of August probably since 2020. And then I also take like weeks here and there. So like, I didn't actually travel over the holidays this year 'cause I had done so much travel. I was exhausted and I stayed home. But I have a week off. End of January, and then I'm gonna be working from London for most of February.
[00:04:56] And I had already really started doing that before the pandemic even hit. Because as soon as I had that flexibility from private practice, I realized that it was much nicer and much cheaper. If I would go to London at the beginning of December, the ticket is much cheaper. And if I would stay for a month and come back in the middle of January, the ticket was much cheaper and then I would just work from London.
[00:05:20] And also like you right from the beginning with that time difference, I was like, well, I'm not gonna work at 9, 10, 11 at night. I'm just gonna say to my patients, I'm having a schedule change for the month of December. Can you come at 7:00 AM.
[00:05:38] And they make it work. And so I would work in the afternoons in London and they would be seeing me 7:00 AM 8:00 AM 9:00 AM and they just made it work.
[00:05:48] And if you are clear that I'm so sorry, I'm not available at that other time, then people just find a way to see you. So that's really how, like even before we started doing telemedicine, I was one of the few people that when we had that week where everybody shifted over to telemedicine right before the lockdowns happened that I was like,
[00:06:08] Kym_: You're like, finally the
[00:06:09] Dr Sally: I'd already been doing it and working with psychosis, people are always like, oh my God, you can't do telemedicine with psychosis. The risk, and people will be paranoid and dah, dah, dah. And suddenly we had legitimacy and suddenly we had all of these like people talking about the licensure rules and how you were supposed to do it legally and ethically.
[00:06:31] And I was like, great. I've already been doing this, so let's lock down the procedure and I have been a hundred percent telemedicine since then. And really that was kind of in the back of my mind, so I've been watching your stuff right from the very beginning because it was already in my mind that I wanted to be doing this.
[00:06:51] Kym_: Right? Yes. Oh my gosh. There's so much in what you just shared that I would love to just pick apart and have a whole hour episode on. There's so much in there like that because that, that is something we don't talk enough about is the therapists that want to, you know, from other countries that want to work in the US and, and, you know, be a clinician in the United States.
[00:07:09] So that's super interesting. is your practice and business based right now in the United States. Through, is it through New York? Is that where your licensure is
[00:07:17] Dr Sally: Um, Original licensure was New York. I moved down to Texas December 24. And discussions with my lawyers and accountants. Ultimately, I do need to re-register here. I have A-P-L-L-C in New York. I do need to get one in Texas because ultimately I don't. Really wanna still be paying New York taxes.
[00:07:39] But that's a process. And you know, the PLLCs are always expensive, so it's like figuring that the right time to, to do it. But yeah, so officially I'm still registered in New York.
[00:07:51] Kym_: Now, do you see clients back in the UK also, or
[00:07:55] Dr Sally: I do not. Although interestingly, obviously, you know, the last year in the US has been an interesting time for all kinds of reasons and lots of people have been thinking about, okay. What if something happens in the US economically and we, you know, it's not viable to stay here long term. I've always been someone who likes to think ahead and have a plan B and a plan C.
[00:08:22] I don't really wanna live in the UK long term, just, it's not the right place for me. It's the temperature is too cold and it's hard to get ice in your water. But, I I did join a couple of Facebook groups. I did a little bit of private practice in the UK before I left, probably about seven or eight months, and in those days, which was 2007, really the only way to do it was through these kind of agencies that get patients from lawsuits.
[00:08:52] So people who have been in road traffic accidents, that kind of thing, and have been awarded X number of sessions for PTSD. So I was doing that one evening a week on a Monday after my regular job. And but things are very different in the UK now, and there are lots of people doing private practice and there are lots of people doing portable private practice.
[00:09:14] And the rules in the UK are a little bit different and it's a lot, lot more flexible in some respects because obviously once you have a UK license, it's the whole country. So there are a lot of UK based psychologists who were working all over Europe. And so I'm looking into options around that in case I needed to, not get my main income from the US for whatever reason.
[00:09:38] Kym_: That's smart. I mean, smart contingency plan, you never know. And you know, commenting on what I said before, there's so much I wanna talk to you about the psychosis thing, but I don't wanna get too far down in the weeds with that because you have so many other interesting things that you've got going on, especially for the purposes of the Traveling Therapist podcast. So you're super entrepreneurial as well.
[00:09:58] there's two things I wanna talk about. One is your really public journey of, you know, having long COVID, having a chronic health problem and still making work and being able to travel the world exactly how you want to, making a schedule for yourself like we were just talking about. And the other thing is you've sort of scaled out of the therapy world too, and you have a whole other, I don't know if you call it a side hustle or another business,
[00:10:22] Dr Sally: do call it a side hustle for now, but yeah, dreams of it becoming more than that.
[00:10:27] Kym_: Exactly. So let's, let's tell everybody about the side hustle for now. That's might become something bigger, and then how you've incorporated just this, this journey with your own chronic health issues and the long COVID into what you're doing now. I'd love to just touch on all of that.
[00:10:42] Dr Sally: Yeah, so I got sick. Obviously New York was hit hard with COVID and that first wave, and I think I caught it from a patient that last week before we went on to telemedicine. And, first, you know how it is. I was like, oh, great. I got it and now I'm gonna be immune and then I will be able to carry on with my life.
[00:11:02] And I just never recovered. So I have been sick for six years at this point, which is kind of crazy and kind of unbelievable that it's really been that long. But in the beginning I was very sick and, being self-employed in America, that's a very scary place to be, especially when you have an illness that is so new it's not covered by disability.
[00:11:25] I was diligently paying my New York disability payments, but they wouldn't pay out because they were not covering anything COVID related. And I've seen some people now manage to get SSD with long COVID. But it's a lot of work. You make yourself more sick in the process and then SST is not a lot of money.
[00:11:49] And then there's all kinds of factors around getting back to working again, where you lose it and then you're not making anything. And so, you know, it has been a journey. And there was certainly a period of time in 2021 where I was. Barely working at all. And that was rough. And I mean, fascinatingly, I think you learn a lot about yourself when you're going through something like that.
[00:12:11] And a big part of the healing and recovery process for me. Was realizing that I am a very type A person and that previously I had functioned in a very kind of, let me just push on through kind of way. And that wasn't going to work anymore and I was going to have to turn things around and restructure my life.
[00:12:35] I came across. Polyvagal theory and all of the sematic and nervous system work kind of in my recovery journey, and that was really groundbreaking for me. And so now I think very much about the nervous system and putting my nervous system first for everything. So even on a podcast, I'm sitting here, I've got a weighted blanket on my lap.
[00:12:56] I'm sitting in a chair that I know is gonna support my nervous system. I have my drinks lined up even though you can't see them. So I'm being mindful of my hydration. And I'm really thinking about all of those things and having lost. So much functioning with my illness. I used to be a marathon runner and I used to spend a lot of time kind of flying around the US and around the world to race.
[00:13:24] And suddenly you can't even get off the couch. That's a huge loss and a huge grief process that you go through. One thing that has been very exciting is that being a therapist throughout, that was always a good thing, and on the days that I was well enough to see patients actually being in a therapy session with a patient, I notice my heart rate is good, my stats are good, and being in that kind of flow state is actually a good thing for my body.
[00:13:57] So. That's kind of why I haven't totally abandoned the therapist thing. But it certainly made me look at other parts of my life. Before the pandemic, I had a busy group practice with a number of other therapists who were working for me. And fairly early on in 2020 I realized that I didn't wanna do that anymore.
[00:14:21] And so I just, you know, let them go into their own private practices and wish them well. And now I'm just a solo practitioner again, which works much better for me. I also had a big office in Midtown and I was. Subletting to lots of other therapists. And then of course that was very scary when they all refused to keep paying when we couldn't go into the office.
[00:14:43] And I had this huge monthly rent that I couldn't afford because nobody was paying me. And so we got rid of that and that was costly to break the lease and get rid of all the furniture at discounted prices and all the rest of it. But ultimately it was a good thing. I think that had also been a very stressful venture.
[00:15:05] And I think it's really interesting as a therapist, you start out in private practice and then you want to grow in whatever way and. It seems like there are certain things that you're supposed to do. There are pathways that everybody does, and it's very easy to fall into that pattern.
[00:15:27] So when you're a solo practitioner and you're so busy that you can't see everybody, everybody then moves into being a group practice, and then everybody moves into office subletting in order to, you know, you take an office, you take one that's bigger than you need because you can make some extra money.
[00:15:43] So those things are kind of. Everybody does that. And I didn't go through the step where I was like, is this right for me? Do I really wanna be doing this? So much as it has been horrendous to be sick and to have to find ways to get out of that, both financially and medically it has afforded me the opportunity to let go of things that didn't serve me and to really be thinking about building my practice and my business.
[00:16:13] To be helping me and not hindering me. And somewhere in the midst of that, as I started to recover, the idea of travel kind of appeared back in my mind again. And I think partly because my family's back in the uk. I was still going back to the uk even in the middle of lockdown. I have a British passport, I can always get in.
[00:16:36] And because I have an American passport, I can always get out. So I was still traveling during that time when most people were not, and even though it made me worse to begin with and I reluctantly had to cancel a couple of trips at my worst, as soon as I started to come up again, it was like, okay, how can we do this?
[00:16:57] How can we structure it differently? I remember doing, three day weekend trip to Chicago. A friend of mine there is a wonderful photographer and she said, well, if you wanna do like a little practice trip in the US beginning to build your, like muscle for travel again, come out, I'll do some professional photos for you.
[00:17:19] So it will be like a win-win kind of situation. And she was willing to like wear the mask and, you know, put it so that, 'cause obviously when you're doing photos you can't. Wear a mask and I'm still very high risk. So she was willing to do all that for me. So I did this little trip and you know, you learn a lot every time.
[00:17:38] Some things did go wrong and I've learned a lot from that. And each time you do another trip and you go a bit further and you learn a bit more. And so the travel piece was like, wow. I guess this is the one thing that I haven't totally lost and can I find a way to continue doing that?
[00:17:57] So somewhere along that way I was at a travel conference and I think I had put in, what do you call it? Like a proposal to speak on traveling with disability.
[00:18:13] And I had been accepted and so I was like, oh, this is fantastic. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna present in person for the first time in a long, long time. Because I used to do also quite a lot of public speaking before the pandemic. I at one point had wanted to do more of that and somebody at that conference.
[00:18:32] Was a travel advisor and she was talking about how if you are someone who travels a lot, if you become a travel advisor, your own travel becomes cheaper. Because obviously every time I book a hotel I get a commission for that hotel. And so the original idea came from that. Now, very interestingly, a lot of the travel agencies, 'cause you pretty much have to be under a host agency to get into the travel world.
[00:19:08] 'cause there's a lot of like psychology, like a lot of licenses and a lot of relationships that you need to have to be successful. And obviously it's much easier if someone else has already negotiated that and you can just step into their license rather than having to do it from scratch. But a lot of the agencies that offer that are essentially also offering a network marketing thing whereby.
[00:19:36] Kym_: MML,
[00:19:36] Dr Sally: Kind of, so you are working as a travel advisor, but if you create a team and you bring in others, then you kind of get a bit of their revenue and all of that. Now, I don't know a ton about the MLM world but initially when I signed up to be a travel advisor, which was goodness, I think the beginning of 2024.
[00:20:01] It was through this woman who I had met at the conference and she was working for one of those type of an agency. And basically for most of the time that I was under that agency, I didn't really make any progress because what tends to be the case for those kinds of agencies is that the actual travel booking process.
[00:20:24] They haven't really worked on the processes on the backend. And booking travel is actually quite complicated. There's a lot of different systems. And it was a lot of watching trainings and trying to understand different portals and not really making a ton of progress.
[00:20:42] Kym_: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:42] Dr Sally: about, I think probably August, September, I was like, I don't think this is working for me.
[00:20:49] I think I'm gonna stop this because I'm just basically paying the $40 a month subscription and I'm not using it really, aside from booking bits and pieces of my own travel. And to be honest, I don't think I ever got any commission from that agency
[00:21:03] Kym_: Oh, no.
[00:21:04] Dr Sally: Because it is such a lag period, right? When you're booking travel you book it, but if you don't stay in that hotel until six months time and then the payout happens six weeks to three months after,
[00:21:18] Kym_: Mm,
[00:21:19] Dr Sally: that's a long time.
[00:21:20] And so, yeah, I don't think I actually saw anything in my bank account.
[00:21:26] Kym_: Oh.
[00:21:26] Dr Sally: But what was really interesting was because I was in that world and I was thinking about it, I was then, you know how we do on YouTube looking at videos and other people in my orbit. Who I'd known for a long time, but never really talked to necessarily about this side of their life.
[00:21:47] Turns out I knew a lot of travel advisors and a lot of them were working for the agency that I now work for, which is called Fora
[00:21:56] and they are a wonderful agency. They are not an MLM. And their huge focus, I think they started in 2020, 2021, sort of the tail end of the pandemic, just as travel was kind of coming back again.
[00:22:10] And their focus was very much on sort of disrupting the industry and creating very simple tech platforms for their advisors to make the whole process much easier. And so that has been fantastic and working for them literally every month. It's a little bit like you, Kim. Every month they drop some new tech and every month it gets easier and easier on the backend and they're using AI and they're using this and that, and.
[00:22:42] They have a whole team. They're headquartered in New York and they have a whole team that is working on stuff all the time. And it's been a fantastic experience. So I've just passed. I signed up with them October 24, so I've just passed a year with them. And obviously this last year, 25, I booked a ton of travel.
[00:23:00] Not just for myself, but for other people. And really the focus that came into my mind was that I wanted to be also booking travel for other people who also have chronic illness, because having had that personal experience and just as I joined Fora. They were getting excited about accessible travel and they had created an in-house kind of working group for accessible travel, which I joined, and they now have a whole internal certification for travel advisors.
[00:23:31] Tons of resources. They're very, very forward. I think they even got an award with the accessible travel world. I forget. Yeah, so it's been a really fantastic year and I'm really excited for what 26 is gonna bring in that respect. But it's so fascinating when you then get into that world. There are so many people who have professional licenses in healthcare who are also working as travel advisors on the side.
[00:24:01] So in the disability space, I came across. OTs and PTs and all kinds of other people actually, there's a lot of teachers in there as well. And so it's so interesting that there is an opportunity, if you want it, for it to be somewhat of a side hustle alongside your existing business, which, you know, if we're looking for diverse streams of income, is something that is really appealing.
[00:24:32] Kym_: Yeah. And before we hit record we were talking about that a little bit and the traveling therapist group every day, somebody, almost every day, somebody says, how do I get out of this one-to-one therapy model and, and figure out something else to do? 'cause I'm burned out, exhausted, clients aren't coming in, whatever the reason. Sick, you know, I don't wanna rely on that one-to-one model like you were saying
[00:24:52] Dr Sally: And also it's more portable in the sense that you can just work from anywhere in the world. You don't need to worry about does my malpractice cover me, and is my license good in this other country? And all of those things that we have to think about as therapists.
[00:25:10] Kym_: Wow. That's so cool. So for somebody listening, maybe could you like, give us a typical day as a travel advisor? Like what, what it might look like for you or somebody that had a job like this.
[00:25:21] Dr Sally: I mean it's basically, and this is kind of where I think, you know, if you love to book travel for yourself, then I just kind of geek out and, and it's that type of a, like, if you hate booking travel for yourself, then don't become a travel
[00:25:37] Kym_: Okay. Good
[00:25:37] Dr Sally: That is not gonna be the thing for you, but somebody will reach out to me and in the case of, kind of my workflow process and, and there's a ton of flexibility.
[00:25:47] So you can set this up anyway, works for you. I have an extensive Google form. Being a psychologist that allows people to tell me all about their disability, what kind of accommodations they need where they wanna go, what kind of vibe they want, you know, because hotels are vastly different depending on, on your personal preference, where in the world they wanna go, if they've got fixed dates.
[00:26:12] All of that good stuff. And then, you know, if you are a wheelchair user, like what kind of wheelchair and all the different questions. So it's great for those of us who are therapists and used to doing an extensive assessment. I do that at the beginning with new clients or even just for a new trip.
[00:26:29] So then based off of that, I'm getting onto our portal and I'm taking a look at options pulling up pricing and then creating quotes for people. And this is where the tech is really helpful because we now have the facility where you can just pull quotes into a nice little itinerary and then drop that link over to your client who can open it up in this beautiful web app and make a decision based off of that.
[00:26:58] When I first started, we had to kind of cut and paste things over and all the rest of it, which gets a little bit cumbersome, but now it's, it's getting much, much smoother. And so I am picking out options for people. And then once somebody makes a choice about where they want to go and they make a booking, then I'm reaching out to the various different parts of their trips.
[00:27:22] So the hotel or maybe the guy who's picking them up from the airport or maybe the person who is doing their guided tour and talking to them about their disability accommodations and making sure that they're good with that and they're set up with that. And that everything is kind of smoothed over so that the person who's taking the trip doesn't have to worry about those things, but also.
[00:27:48] That they are provided for, because I think that's kind of the two components of traveling with chronic illness. We do need all these accommodations in order to make it happen. And if you haven't arranged those, then very quickly your energy gets used up, you become symptomatic and then you can't enjoy your trip.
[00:28:08] But also the energy that's needed to organize all of that. If you've got an energy limiting illness, you also kind of don't have the strength to do all of that on the front end. And because I have done it a lot with my own travels and because I'm now doing it every day for my client. It doesn't take as much of my energy because I've done it hundreds of times, and for us, reaching out to hotels is super easy because we get access to all of that information, whereas if you are just doing it as a consumer for yourself.
[00:28:42] How do I even email the hotel? I go on the website, there's not even an email address, or it's just the front desk and then nobody replies How do I get to the manager, or how do I get to the sales team? How do I know that what I've asked for is actually gonna be in my room when I show up?
[00:29:00] We know that because.
[00:29:01] A lot of the time when I visit places, I'm also meeting in person with these people and creating a personal relationship, and particularly in Japan this summer. And as I was coming home through Asia, I got the opportunity to do that a lot. And I've done it with properties around here in Texas too, which is.
[00:29:18] Super fun. I visited one right before Christmas in December and did a site tour, as we call it. And so then you create that personal relationship with the sales team. And so when you have a client, you just message them, Hey, I've got Jenny. She's coming in a couple of months. Can you make sure she's set up with this and this, and you know it's gonna be done because you know the person.
[00:29:41] Kym_: Amazing. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, just, I'm having so many thoughts right now. I have so many questions. We only have like 20 minutes left. So I, I have chronic illness too. I've talked about on the podcast. I, I have celiac disease on top of a number of other autoimmune suppression type things. But, I just love hearing about this because even for somebody with celiac disease, I oh,
[00:30:02] it's like, okay, can I go on the cruise ship? Can I, you know, even go to this, place that has this buffet every day? You know, that kind of thing. It's like so hard.
[00:30:10] So to just hear you talking about, just even nuances around like, I'm in a wheelchair, maybe, you know, and like, are the doorways wide enough in this hotel for me to even get through? Like it's amazing. How helpful this must be for people. Because, you know, like even in the traveling therapist group, occasionally I'll see somebody post something like, oh, must be nice. I could never go do that because I've got this, this, and this issue. You
[00:30:34] Dr Sally: And that's why I post so much about my own travel on social media. Not because I'm bragging, but because I really want people to see right as we were doing, you know how it is at the end of the year. And all of the people who are digital nomads in the travel community are posting those lovely, like these are all the flights that I took in 2025, and it's like.
[00:30:57] 400 flights or whatever, and I'm like, well, I'm gonna post all of mine too. And even though my numbers are not gonna be anywhere near the same as theirs, like I didn't take 45 flights last year.
[00:31:10] I only took 25. But someone who sees, oh my goodness, this woman has a chronic illness, but she managed to make it all the way to Japan and then she made it to this other country, and how on earth did she do that?
[00:31:22] And so I really want people to be able to see that it is possible. And I think that is a big part of disability advocacy is showing people that it is possible and also the, the mask wearing. I do still have to wear a mask every time I leave my apartment, and I know that in the US unfortunately, and in Europe, that's become very politicized and for me it's got nothing to do with that.
[00:31:47] But showing that it is possible to get on a plane with a mask on and make it. Safely somewhere. The flight from I flew from New York to Tokyo and it's 14 hours. And I've actually done that flight a couple of times now 'cause I also went in 2023. I didn't get sick. In fact, I have taken, I keep a little notes app in my phone of all the flights that I've taken since my illness started, and the only time I have gotten another infection in this entire six years.
[00:32:18] Was last summer, last summer, the year before we were in 26 already. 24 August, I decided I wasn't gonna go anywhere and I rented a little holiday apartment by the sea in New Jersey and I drove down from New York and I was gonna spend the whole month just like chilling out by the ocean, by the pool. And it's my birthday in August.
[00:32:42] I'd been there like 10 days, two days after my birthday. I get COVID for the second time.
[00:32:49] Kym_: No. Oh my gosh.
[00:32:51] Dr Sally: Not on a plane, not in a hotel, in some other far-fetched country, but in stupid, and I think actually I got it from a chiropractor's office oh no. back pain and I had to keep going to the stupid chiropractor.
[00:33:06] But these are the things that I want people to see, right? People get super anxious. I, I can't do a five hour flight. Like I won't be able to eat. I won't be able to drink. Like, and there are ways to do it. And so this is when people reach out to me to book a trip. Most of them have already tried to do it themselves and had a horrible time.
[00:33:28] And what you know, fills my heart is that I can set up an amazing trip for them. They can take it, and then afterwards they message me, oh my goodness, it was so much better. And that. You know, I don't care whether you make it to the end of your street for a vacation. You don't have to go somewhere fancy overseas.
[00:33:49] But having a different experience where you didn't immediately get symptomatic on travel day, day one, and then spend the entire time inside in the dark on the couch while everyone else was having a great time, then I'm happy.
[00:34:04] Kym_: Priceless. Oh my gosh. Yeah. That is amazing. So are there like a couple of things just from your perspective that would be surprising to somebody with a chronic illness like that they wouldn't think would be an accommodation they could have? You know, I'm just curious. Like travel wise, it's kind of putting you on the spot a little bit, but I'm just
[00:34:22] Dr Sally: I think, I think the big one that people come to me for a lot because I do wear a mask on my social media. And so they know me to be someone who has to do that is how do I stay in a hotel safely? Because if you are, you know, hotels have huge turnover, and if someone just checked out at 12 and then you check in at four, if they had COVID, how do you not get COVID?
[00:34:48] And what people don't realize is that. The vast majority of hotels with a very simple ask will put a HEPA filter in your room for you. I'm in a lot of travel Facebook groups for people with chronic illness, and I see people literally breaking down their HEPA filter, putting it in a suitcase and bringing it with them on their drip, and I'm like.
[00:35:12] Don't do that. You can just like, even in Texas because I do this so often now and I very frequently stay at similar hotel brands. I was recently at that hotel before the holidays and I didn't even ask them for HEPA filter because it was one of those that has a big balcony and so I knew I could just open the doors and get in lots of lovely fresh air like that.
[00:35:36] But they had put one in my room without me even asking, because the last time I stayed at that same brand, which probably was in Singapore, it was on my profile from that time.
[00:35:48] Kym_: Gosh. That is amazing. And then as, as a travel advisor booking for somebody, you might already pre-plan for that
[00:35:56] Dr Sally: right. Even before.
[00:35:57] Kym_: with filter in your room. Mm-hmm.
[00:35:59] Dr Sally: Even before somebody books, when I'm pulling quotes, I can reach out to the property and say, I've got someone interested in booking. How easy either, do you have windows that open or do you have HEPA filters and will they be available easily? So that for me is like the easiest thing to do.
[00:36:18] But for the vast majority of people that find me, like that's their biggest stressor, that's their biggest anxiety. Yeah.
[00:36:26] Kym_: Wow. That, that's incredible. Yeah. I never would've thought to ask
[00:36:30] Dr Sally: Right.
[00:36:30] Kym_: For something like that. That's amazing. Are there any other little things like that you could think of? I mean, that's just so like amazing
[00:36:36] Dr Sally: I mean, the thing I also particularly love about being a travel advisor is because it's all about relationships in the industry that when you book through us, nine times out of 10, you also get access to a rate that gives you a ton of additional perks. So things like free breakfast, a hundred dollars food and beverage credit.
[00:37:00] Early check-in, late checkout. Those are the things that make a huge deal. And in fact one of my colleagues was posting something similar to this I saw on her stories the other day, and she had put would, which of these four things would you choose? And one of them was early check-in and I being kind of slightly facetious, 'cause you know, we chat.
[00:37:24] Amongst all the different travel advisors. I put, well, I don't need early check-in because I haven't showed up to a property and not been given my room. I don't even remember how long because I'm always booking the perks raid or, you know, I have status with the hotel. I think even I showed up, I was flying to Hawaii a couple of years ago and I flew from, new York to la and then obviously I would need to get another flight across. And I'd taken an early flight from New York and with a three hour time difference, I arrived in LA at 10 in the morning and I wasn't gonna do anything for the rest of the day. I just wanted to lie down. So I showed up at the hotel at 10 in the morning and I said, can I please check in? And they said, sure. And they gave me my room
[00:38:09] Kym_: That's amazing. Just ask.
[00:38:11] Dr Sally: things like that make an enormous difference to us. Like I have never had to think, oh, I've gotta check out, I've gotta leave my bag somewhere. I've gotta come back and get it. I always just am in my hotel room until I need to go. And when I show up at the next one, they always let me.
[00:38:30] So those things make a big difference to us. And also like having free breakfast, I always, I know this is a question you ask in the Facebook often, what's your like routine when you're traveling? I always order rim service the first night in a new hotel, and I very rarely pay for it because I usually have a hundred dollars credit in that property.
[00:38:51] So
[00:38:52] Kym_: Okay, everybody booked through Sally. I'm already like, all right, I gotta call Sally. 'cause I wanna do, I'm, I'm turning 50. I'm like, I wanna take some cool trip
[00:38:59] Dr Sally: Oh my goodness. We can definitely find you some awesome trips,
[00:39:02] Kym_: Oh my gosh. I bet. Oh my gosh. This is just, I just think it's so cool and that you've got this niche, you know, like we talk about that in all aspects of being a therapist and in side hustles. You know, it's like define your niche and you've got this really specialized niche that you do, and you're gonna help so many people with it, and
[00:39:19] Dr Sally: And I think.
[00:39:20] Kym_: people go to for this. You know?
[00:39:22] Dr Sally: What's so fantastic as therapists is that I think it's a lot of the same skills, right? It's, you wanna do a thorough assessment, you wanna be detail oriented you know, just like we're setting up our practices to work for us, you wanna set up this business to work for you.
[00:39:39] So, like when I was in Japan and I was on a totally different time zone. I would finish work on a Friday in Japan at noon, which obviously is 12 midnight Thursday night in the us. So I had to put an auto message on my email saying, Hey guys, you're not gonna hear from me until Monday in Japan. Don't panic, but I'm taking some time off because I didn't want people messaging me being like, but it's still Friday in America. Um, Yeah, I'm already on my weekend. Thank.
[00:40:12] Kym_: Yeah. Oh my gosh. So many little nuances to think of, but it's really cool that you've already, walked this path in a lot of ways, so you can even plan for contingencies that way.
[00:40:22] Working with a therapist maybe that you're booking travel for, like, Hey, have you thought about the time zones and how to handle this?
[00:40:27] I mean, I just think it's amazing what you're
[00:40:29] Dr Sally: And then I think if you are somebody who works with even certain mental health niches, there probably is a similar niche in travel advising. So obviously autism is huge right now, and whether you are booking for kiddos with autism or adults with autism, like if you know autism, then. Would be great at booking travel for autism.
[00:40:50] A DHD is another big one. You know, people are gonna be super excited to have someone who knows more about A DHD and can kind of think about how that might impact travel. So I think there's a lot of crossover, which is fascinating.
[00:41:05] Kym_: It really is. Oh my gosh, I could just talk about this forever. Of course we're almost outta time, but Sally, so how do people find you? They want to, you know, learn more about what you're doing as travel advisor or book with you through needing a travel advisor. Like there, I guess there's two arms here we're talking
[00:41:21] Dr Sally: Um, Probably the easiest way is my Instagram because then I have my link tree and that has everything on there. So my Instagram is at doctor dot sally regs a lot of the kind of travel advising stuff, you can just DM me and, you know, like you've got set up, I've got some water replies that will get you into working with me. But also in my link tree. Then it's got all of my, all of my things in there.
[00:41:51] Kym_: And we'll put all this in the show notes too for you
[00:41:54] guys so you can find. Sally, thank you so much for taking the time today. It's fascinating what you're doing. I
[00:41:59] Dr Sally: Absolutely, Kim. Absolutely.