I Quit My VP Marketing Role to Build a Travel-Lover’s Dream Business. I Hit $1.3 Million in Sales in Year 1.

This as-told-to story is based on a conversation with Fora travel advisor Ryan Ali. Ali worked in healthcare advertising and marketing for about 15 years before becoming a travel advisor with Fora. He started a side hustle with Fora in April 2025 with the goal of reaching $500,000 in bookings by the end of the year. He more than doubled that goal, booking $1.3 million in sales in his first year, and has since left his former role to focus on his travel business full-time. Now he’s totaling $2.6 million in booked travel. 

Travel agent work wasn’t on my trajectory. I wasn’t like, I want to do this ultimately. But I was always planning trips for a lot of my friends and family, and I was always the go-to for questions like, “What trip could we go to or what can we do?” Then I thought, Wait, I can actually do this as a little side thing. That went on for years before I joined Fora.

But it was also a little bit deeper than that. In cancer care, which is the realm of healthcare that I worked in, and clinical trials, whenever someone was going through radiation or chemo, they would always say, “God, when I’m done with this I want to see the world.” That stuck with me. They weren’t going to buy a car or splurge on an expensive purse. They wanted an experience. And I saw how travel really made people happy. 

Meeting Fora’s co-founder, becoming a travel advisor

I first got introduced to Fora about a year and a half ago, way before I even thought this was a possibility. I met Fora co-founder Henley Vazquez at a random outing in New York. I was talking to her about what my passion was; I knew I wanted to start my own business. Something that would put me in the driver’s seat where I was the CEO, I was the full board, and I owned any decision I made. At the time, I worked in big hospital systems where one decision had to be made multiple layers up. 

So I was like, Well, let me try it. Let me make sure this is something good. And then I immediately knew this was not going to be sustainable with a full-time gig. My goal was always to get my income to basically what I made as a VP of marketing. I never thought I would’ve done that in six months. Last June marked the end of my first full year, and I don’t see myself slowing down. But what’s crazy was that, you know how you kind of dread going into the office or getting on a Zoom call? With Fora, I am still as happy as I was when I booked my first trip.

I interviewed four or five different companies before I went into the Fora sphere. I call it the Fora sphere because once you’re in it, it’s almost like that true kind of slice of paradise. Fora gives you a toolkit to become a $1 million advisor in six months. And it’s up to you. If you’re hungry enough, and if you want to use the right tools, it’s up to you to take advantage of all of that. And you’re surrounded with like-minded individuals. You’re not going to become a destination expert in everything. But within the community of people I’ve met through Fora, we’re all different experts in everything. We all rely on each other and help each other out. 

Booking $1 million of travel in six months, then $2.6 million

You advance through different levels at Fora. For instance, once you book $40,000 of travel, you get to the next step. The hardest thing for me was to replace a six-figure salary with a projected income model. You don’t get paid your commission, which could range from 10% to 15%, depending on whatever you end up booking, until the client travels. When I first started, I was booking trips into 2026, 2027. So say I book $1 million of travel for my first six months, and say my commission is $100,000 — I’m not going to get paid all of that until 2028. 

The harder you work at it, and the more trips that you book, the more successful you are. Six months into working with Fora, I booked $1 million in travel. I am now totaling $2.6 million. My goal is $3 million of bookable travel, at about 10% commission. So $300,000 would be my income from trips booked and trips that I’ve planned. So the volume definitely turned up. 

Fora makes it easy to grow a business built on trust

Whenever you go into a new business, you have anxiety and fear. Since I’ve grown my business, I’m still meeting with Fora weekly to discuss, “Okay, what’s your business plan?” And they’re incredibly invested in your business growth as an advisor, but also you as a company because obviously it benefits them, too.  

As much as this was a side hustle going in, I got to choose the clients I wanted. It was on my own terms, and not a lot of people have that opportunity. My background obviously was in marketing, so I knew sales and marketing. Both of those industries were built on trust. If you were going to go to a doctor, it was built on trust, emotion, whether or not you fully understood this new patient. I applied that same theory to travel and client relationships. I knew that that was easily translatable to what I was doing — building experiences. It’s not just booking a hotel. It’s about, let’s take your vacation and elevate it beyond any experience. 

Specializing in family experiences, 24/7 access

I specialize in family experiences. A lot of my clients are families who have kids who want an incredible journey. What will those kids see that their phones go down and they get to experience something new? I’ve been booking a lot of South America, a lot of Caribbean and Europe. And I think on the horizon will be some really experiential activities. Fiji is an incredible area for people to travel to. I start with the intake. When someone says, “I want to go to Italy,” I ask why. Why do you want to go to Italy in August? If the answer is, “Everyone says it’s a great time to go or a great place to go,” I’m like, “I’m going to give you four other destinations that will make you feel like you’re getting something unexpected.” 

Fora teaches us to, yes, do what your client wants, however, always deliver the unexpected. That mindset is what makes Fora a disruptor in travel. Yeah, you could go and book travel with credit card points or whatever, or you can actually have a real human who’s going to pick up the phone at 2 a.m. when your flight gets canceled.

When someone’s traveling with me, they have 24-hour access to me, which is kind of unheard of. I will have clients who are traveling in 12 time zones, and they know that they can call me, and I’ll pick up because they trust me to plan their trip. If anything is going wrong, I’ll know about it before they do, and not only will I know about it, but there’s already a solution in place. After the trip, we’ll do a FaceTime call to talk about the trip. I hear from them and the kids directly, and it informs other trips that I plan for that family, but also for other families. 

Remember relationships matter — and do your research

This is a relationship industry. Those relationships matter because when a client calls me and says, “Hey, I want to go to St. Lucia for a week,” I’ll call my contact over at Sugar Beach, who I know personally because I’ve met them and say, “I’ve got this really important client who’s coming down. What can you do? Can you do a great anniversary celebration for them?” That makes those meaningful moments happen. 

If you love to travel, I think everyone should be somewhat of a travel agent. But also, approach it the right way. Do the research. For me, Fora was the best opportunity because it allowed me to scale. I knew I wanted to build a business. Have a conversation with advisors. Let them tell you the good, bad and the ugly. That is going to be the most important thing that you’ll learn.