Inside The Secret Economy of Billionaire Travel | Fortune Daily

Trillions of dollars are expected to pass into the hands of the younger generations. Can you tell us about their purchasing power and instinct? Oh my gosh, they love to spend money. Hello from New York, I'm Ellie Austin and you're watching Fortune Daily. If you wanted to spend the day driving a Formula 1 car whilst wearing Cardi B's couture jacket and dining on the world's largest croissant, who would you call? Well, luxury travel has moved far beyond five-star hotels. For the truly ultra-wealthy today, it's about access and it's about money-can't-buy experiences. A crucial component of this is having an uber-connected, unflappable fixer who can make it all happen. Enter Olivia Fernie. She's built a career as a travel advisor to million and billionaires. She's also a content creator with over one million followers on Instagram, taking viewers behind the scenes of a business that runs on speed, on discretion and on solving problems that most of us can't even begin to fathom. She joins me now to talk about what the world's richest travellers want, how social media is changing the luxury business and how on earth billionaires relax. Olivia, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. So, you work for, run a company called Top Tier Travel, where you make amazing travel experiences happen for the ultra-wealthy. Tell us a bit about the company and exactly what it's doing right now. I mean, we're doing everything, I'm sure, as you've seen online. My fiancé, Troy, and I own the company and we've really focused over the last year on building our Concierge Plus program, and that is the program that's been all over the New York Times and everywhere. And that's a program where we charge $100,000 for the year, flat retainer fee, and we do everything for the client. Anything from the second they leave the door until the second they return on a trip, we're handling kind of all of that. And we're a big support team for a lot of their EAs and chief of staff and people within their team. And this Concierge Plus model is a modification, I think, on how the company started, where you charged a much lower fee, about $8,500 a year. So, tell me how that business model evolved and why. So, we actually were just doing kind of more of a traditional travel agent structure. So, anywhere from 8% to 12% on trips was kind of what we were doing. And over time, you know, when you have a lot of business coming in, and Troy's been running the company for almost 14 years now, so he had done a really good job of building an amazing book of business. But when I started with all the social media stuff, things took off and the caliber of clients for me personally went from people that were worth 50 to 100 million to billionaires. I have direct billionaires TMing me all the time, which is crazy, but when you have that much inbound, you kind of have to make a decision if you're going to really lock in on kind of one vertical and be really, really good at that for a certain type of person, or if you're going to try and service everyone. And I think across the board, anyone in business will tell you it's probably not a great idea to try and service everyone. So, that's where we put in the payment gate and we're kind of like, let's try and really focus on this. And it's been going amazing. Well, you have an enormous following on social media now, over a million followers. In a way, it's quite counterintuitive that you talk about your work so much as you do, because you're working with these ultra high net worth clients. It's crazy, I know. Usually are incredibly private and demand a lot of discretion from the people they work with. And you've very much become the face of the company. So, did you have to work hard to convince Troy, your business and romantic partner, to let you kind of open up? Because you record a lot of the conversations with some of your clients and they are asking for what we as a lay person might think are crazy things. So, talk to me about that process of going public with what you do. I mean, I come from a digital marketing background, so I know the magic that it can do. I don't know if I knew to this level that it would be able to change the face of a business the way that it has for us. Troy has been quiet for 14 years. Working behind the scenes. Behind the scenes, like no one of this caliber would ever want anything to be shown online. And then one day, it just kind of came to a point where I said, screw it, let's just go for it. And almost overnight, it just exploded. And within a year, we have over a million followers on multiple platforms. And it definitely is something that we're still trying to understand a little bit as well. I think the first time I had a billionaire DM me directly on Instagram, my heart sank. Because I'm like, there's no way this can be real. This isn't happening. And it's just kind of snowballed from there. And I think a lot of times what's happening is children or the children of an ultra high net worth individual are seeing the content and really enjoying it. And there's also a piece of the content where the rest of the world might think that we're making fun of or poking at. These people feel like they're being heard because they've dealt with similar issues. And not everybody understands how to solve those problems. And we're showing that we can. So the people who might want to become clients find it relatable in a sense. I was watching a video in Prattford talking to you where you were telling a father that his son had just lost $900,000 gambling on the World Cup. Are situations like that real? Talk us through how you get access to those conversations and how you record them and recreate them. So we have clients all over the map. I think what we show online is very exciting. And everybody loves to see that. But 80% of my business is very boring. And it's just dealing with the day to day and making sure things are happening without any hiccups and just making travel easy. Because that's what a lot of people struggle with is having ease when it comes to moving around the world. So for those clients, I don't always show that stuff. And for the 20% of clients that are giving me a little bit more difficult things to deal with, we do show it. And those conversations, I mean, it can be tough. But I consider myself, I mean, a small town Canadian girl. I'm very good at solving problems. So if I'm able to add myself to a conversation, even if it might not seem like it's an appropriate place to add yourself into as a travel agent, if I can help a father and a daughter or father and a son or a wife and husband get along a little bit better and kind of save them some angst in their daily conversation, then I'm happy to get involved. Do you ask permission to share those conversations? Absolutely. You get that permission. And is it the actual person on the end of the phone? Or is it recreated? I will never share which ones are and which ones are not. But most of our calls are recreated. Got it. Tell us a bit more about your clientele and the demographics. So where do they come from? What age are they typically? That is the hot question right now. Everyone wants to know where the billionaire is going on vacation, where their family's going. All of my clients are completely different. Different age ranges. They come from different parts of the world. And I don't think any two of them have taken the same trip at any point in time. Some of them are like seventh generation families that take the same two family trips every single year. They don't want anything changed. They want it perfect. And I have people that are in the crypto space, for example. And when the market's high, they call me and say, Liv, I want to spend a couple of million dollars really quickly and go to Ibiza and do the whole shebang. Go, get it done for me. So I don't think that any two of them are the same. And they definitely come from all different walks of life. And how many people do you have working with you to help execute? We have a team of 10. Got it. And you mentioned earlier, you're very plugged into the younger demographic. I think just the nature of what you do on social media. Tell me a bit about that. Obviously, we're about to see this great wealth transfer. Yes, they talk about this all the time. Yeah, so which is, you know, trillions of dollars are expected to pass into the hands of the younger generations around 2048, before then. How is that going to impact your work? Hopefully very well. I'm very excited. I think it's going to take a long time for people that are in my industry to understand the purchasing behavior of a lot of those people. And we're going to be ahead of the game because we're working with a lot of these kids already. So can you tell us about that purchasing power and instinct? Oh my gosh, they love to spend money. They love to spend money. And they're always kind of looking for stuff that's not done online already, which is kind of counterintuitive because you think they're looking on Instagram, for example, and they're finding me and thinking it's really fun and all the beautiful stuff that I do is exciting. But for them, a lot of times I'll get texts about finding unique items that they can't necessarily even purchase direct from Hermes anymore. Or they want the bag that Cardi B got from Chanel that no one can get their hands on. Or the world's biggest croissant from Paris. Yes, exactly. Which she flew to retrieve. All the way back to Miami. That was crazy. I heard you say one thing which I thought was really interesting, which is that sometimes millionaires are harder to handle than billionaires. Take me inside that. What did you mean? There's kind of a bit of a bell curve, I would say. And this comes back to where we decided to put the payment gate in front of our services because we found that we could be servicing 10,000 people and the bottom, I'd say 30, 40% were really, really difficult. And the middle got a little bit easier. And then the top was just completely amazing to kind of work with. And it seemed very, very simple. But there was a group of people that had money but not enough to travel like billionaires but wanted to travel like billionaires. And that causes a lot of post-purchase anxiety for them. Which means chargebacks, which means complaining, which is friction. Exactly, well said. The world is in a very uncertain state right now. There's conflicts, we're hearing about AI wiping out humanity, economic turmoil. How do you reconcile the nature of your work with the uncertainty and inequity that exists in many other places in the world right now? Is it something you think about? All the time, yeah. And I do get that question quite a bit. I'm dealing, it's kind of the worst nightmare of mine sometimes to think about it that way. We're helping so many people that don't deal with a lot of the problems that the rest of the world is dealing with. So I think it's my job as somebody with a platform to make sure that we're doing a lot of giveback initiatives. And we've sent a couple amazing families on vacations out of our own pockets over the last couple years. And yeah, just really trying to find interesting ways to give back. And of course, our clients are some of the most spectacular people in the world. And we've put charitable initiatives in front of them. And they've just donated random millions and millions. And they're also doing some really amazing stuff. And I hope that the content gives me space to share some of those stories at some point in time. Of course, it doesn't get views the way that the rest of the content does. But I'm hoping there's a world where we can start to really flip the tide. And of course, share the fun stories that everybody loves, but also give space for us to make a little bit of a difference given the reach of our platform. And you said, though, one of your kind of key tenets of your work is that you operate without judgment for the people that you're serving. Do you always succeed in that? I do my best, I would say. I think I've gotten to the point at the beginning of my career, it was a little bit difficult to understand those wants. But when you are in a place where you're trying to understand it, you're not going to be able to accept, or you're going to be accepting the word no a lot, is what I say. So I try my best. No is not an answer. And in our line of work, you kind of have to get everything done. And when you're judging, you're going to be a lot more accepting of the word no. So for me, yeah, I try not to judge. I just execute. And that's what I mean by that. But there must be some requests that you have to say no to. Of course, yes. Anything illegal. Illegal. Also, there's just sometimes it's travel. Everybody knows if you've been on a trip, stuff goes wrong all the time. There's such a fascination right now with the way rich people live. I'm thinking about all the television dramas that do well. There really is, yeah. In Nantucket or something like that. You mentioned that you didn't grow up in this world. You grew up in Canada. I think you said you had like a log cabin existence. What most surprised you about this demographic of people when you started working with them? What don't we understand? I think for me, it was kind of just watching the way that everybody moves together. Everybody really helps each other in these communities. They're always starting new businesses. Their brains are on work mode all the time. There's not a lot of downtime for the most part. Even the ones that are retired are constantly working on growing generational wealth for their kids. And the conversation around money is just flowing all the time. And I think that's not something that I grew up around. It was very taboo to talk about money and to talk about anything past your yearly salary. We just weren't in that mindset. So I think now a blessing of working with these people is that I feel so much more financially literate. And I feel like I'm able to share those skills with my friends and family. And that's been a very interesting shift that I don't think I was expecting. Do you understand the blowback to billionaires? I mean, right now in New York, we have Mayor Mamdani, for example, who's talking about taxing the billionaires and then potentially moving out of the city to help with the affordability crisis the tax would be. What's your take on that? For me, I think any of my clients that I've talked to about this that live in New York, for example, they've said, just make more money. That's kind of where they're at. Some of them have decided to move down to Florida and are kind of running around there, which is all good. I used to live in Florida, Miami. But yeah, it's totally a personal thing. If you feel like it's really gonna affect your day-to-day, by all means, get out of here. But yeah, try and make more money if you can. We're about to see a whole new wave of billionaires crowned with these massive tech IPOs that are expected down the line, particularly the big AI companies. Tell us a bit about what trends you're seeing with this new class of tech ultra-rich. Is there anything particularly unique there? I think for them, what I have seen a little bit that I would say is a real addiction to the big world events. So they want to have the mega suite at Super Bowl. They want to be on the track doing hot laps during F1. They want to be at Wimbledon, beside all of the celebrities. A lot of those people haven't been in those circles yet for their lives, unlike celebrities that are already doing it. So for them, they kind of want that experience, which is really fun to facilitate. that they haven't yet been able to have. Yes, and it works vice versa, too. It works vice versa. You said at one point that you don't believe the old adage that the rich are unhappy. Which is, I think it's another thing we're all fascinated with. From your perspective, being inside this world, when you look at your clients' lives, what do you think is worth having? And what is maybe overrated by society? I mean, a lot of them have really nice houses. So personally, I love that. I don't know, there's so much to it. I think at the end of the day, my clients that are spending a lot of time on prioritizing joy and whether that looks like a lot of big vacations with their families or working with a lot of wealthy CEOs, of course, that take a lot of time to do retreats. That's been really big, too. And I think that that's been driving a lot of joy to a lot of them, taking time to get off your phone and detach and kind of connect with yourself and your family and your people. I mean, that's a privilege that does come with being a CEO and having a lot of money. Of course, yes. You can't do that if you work a nine to five and you're making $50,000 a year, you can't afford to do that. You'll never be able to. And it's such a privilege that they're able to. But that's where I think a lot of the confusion is people say rich people aren't happy, but they have the wealth to be able to put themselves in spaces where their mental and physical health can be at a peak. And they're already at an advantage compared to the rest of the world. What do you want Top Tier to be doing in five years that it's not doing now? I hope just dealing with more and more celebrities and ultra high net worth individuals that I look up to and can learn from. I think we're building such a unique circle of people. And I hope we have like one of the world's most elite and amazing social clubs at some point. Olivia, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. Fortune Daily wraps up the summer by traveling to the Hamptons for the Fame to Fortune Summit, which is a gathering of investors and athletes on the beach. A tough gig, but someone had to do it. Next up, Kristen Sola interviews Joakim Noah on his partnership with NBA Africa for the business of sports. Thank you so much for being with me here at the Bank to Fortune event. Yes, it's an honor to be here. Thank you. So I want to first start, you're an investor in NBA Africa and you're an ambassador for the Basketball Africa League. Why did you decide to pursue both of these activities? What made it economically viable for you? I think for me, it was a no brainer. Just from my heart, this is my father's land. It was a way to give back to the continent. So as soon as I got the opportunity when I retired from basketball, I couldn't be more proud to be an investor in the league. And it also allowed me to be at the table with Adam Silver and Mark Tabe and the higher ups. These are the same guys that used to find me. And now all of a sudden, we're sitting at a round table on how we can make Africa better in terms of the basketball. So I couldn't be more proud. And the NBA has poured some real investment into trying to bring basketball to Africa and make it better, like you're saying. But from where you sit as an investor, what do you think needs to happen to make it big and more sustainable and something that'll actually really last? I think just like everybody here, even though we have different opportunities and come from different backgrounds, it's finding the right team and finding people that you are gonna wanna build with in the long term. So I think that that's why things like Uncharted and being out here are so important because it's always about getting better and how we can grow. And to me, I'm in love with the team over there. And I think we're just growing slowly but surely. But this is not something that I'm looking at as when can I get my money out? This is something that I wanna do for my life. Now you have a new show, Nomad. Tell us about that. How did that come about? And what has been your biggest challenge so far in making that? Honestly, it's one of my favorite things to do is travel the world. So I'm very passionate about this Nomad travel show that we started with the NBA. And basketball is global. It's all around the world. But it's also a great way to connect with people and culture and sports is the ultimate unifier. Even though you've come from America, you can go to Morocco and connect with people. And the basketball language is universal. And it's just a great way to explore the world. We went to Japan. We went to South Korea. We just came back from Senegal. So I'm just meeting so many interesting people. And obviously we start with basketball. But this is really about people and connecting with people and showing the human side and showing how, even though our cultures might be different, the emotions that we feel are the same. Now it's interesting because I feel like when most players leave the sport, they typically go into like commentary. They go into podcasts. Things are like a little cheaper to produce, but you're doing like this big travel style, like more documentary type, which is harder, more expensive. What made that the lane you wanted to choose, especially when there's much more of a commitment economically and also time-wise behind it? Well, thank God. I used to rebound the ball very well back then. So I have, I don't know. I think it's very important to do things that you're passionate about first. You know, obviously money is very important. But to me, it's about doing something that I care about, something that makes me happy. And I'm just like so proud of the team that we've built so far. We're 10 episodes in 10 different countries, and I'm learning a new craft. I went from playing basketball to interviewing people all around the world. So I'm really enjoying it. And obviously it isn't easy, but I'm really proud of the work that we're doing. Part of, I feel like your biggest message has been like, you know, real wellness made up of experiences, not just what you make on the court. What would you say is the biggest mistake that former teammates make with the checks that they get once it stops coming in and they retire you down? I mean, you know, sports is interesting that way. You know, you don't have a lot of, you don't think of people making millions of dollars and they're still teenagers. So, and you have, when you're making million dollars as a teenager, there's a lot of growing pains. And I mean, it's just the reality of what sports is. But overall, you know, it's a dream come true. It's been a dream for all of us athletes to play at the highest level. I was able to do that. And there's a lot of learning and a lot of values that come along the way. And now it's the next step in my life. And I'm just excited to keep those values and things that I've learned, like the importance of camaraderie. I know it's a lost art. You know, when you're in a locker room in the NBA, you have teammates from all around the world. So that is our strength. Finding a common goal, whether we come from different places to get it done. And that's what I learned as an athlete. And that's what I'm trying to keep doing in Miss Traverser. Next up, can fencing go mainstream? More business of sports next. Kristen Stoler speaks to superstar fencer, Myles Chamley Watson. Myles, thank you so much for joining us here at Fame to Fortune. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. It's a lovely crowd, great people. So I'm excited to speak today. Of course. I want to talk to you, obviously, fencing. You said you really want to take your sport from niche to mainstream. What do you think is the biggest economic opportunity to actually do? Yeah, it's a great question. I think for me, it's solving the issue of people understanding what's going on in fencing. So we kind of put a whole new tech aspect to it. And I think with understanding, we'll get more people kind of not in the world of fencing, which is how you grow a sport. And then I think once people can understand it, then there's, you know, the TV rights, all the sponsorships, and that kind of grows just to grow the sport. But I really started it because I hated seeing kids that had wasted talent and they couldn't pursue fencing post-college because there's no end goal to it. So I sat there and I said, okay, how do we kind of make a new roadmap and like an actual league where kids can really, really make money and just do what they want to do, which is just fencing. Yeah. Now I want to talk to you about the World Fencing League, which you're a founder of. And you have this great slogan that I saw on LinkedIn that I want to read to you. You said, think Star Wars meets UFC, but more fun. Talk to me, what does that mean? First of all, and then how, where do you see this going? Every human should keep the kid inside of them. I feel like the Star Wars kind of aspect of just whether you like, you know, that kind of genre of film, you still loved it. It kind of made you feel like a kid. And then fencing is combat sport. So like imagine UFC and then all lights are red and green, like a lightsaber. And I think just those two together, it's like a very unique kind of energy. And I think just Star Wars and UFC for more fun is exactly what our league is. And it really, really is light one. And how is watching the league for people who don't only see fencing in the Olympics or other things, how is it different from what they would see there? Yeah. So for instance, the Olympics is just, there's no video replay besides what we have. So now we have AI blade tracking, which is too dense. It was basically imagine the hockey puck in hockey and fencing, it's blade tracking. So if I'm doing this to you, it'll show you a line in red or green. And then now the fans can see, okay, someone's red, someone's green. So we kind of gamified what the sport really is, but still kept the intention of fencing. We also wanted to see where it's going to go in the future. I feel like for a lot of people, fencing is kind of perceived as this very elite, very inaccessible sport. What do you think it would take to change that perception? The World Fencing League. And I think when you see people like me, you know, I'm black covered in tattoos and a very prestigious kind of uppity sport. I think that's kind of why it works, right? It's because I'm kind of changing that narrative of what fencing should look like and what it should feel like. And I just wanted, you know, boys, girls, black, brown, whatever that might be, just feel comfortable and kind of feel like they're at home. And kind of when I was in the world of fencing, I was the only one that looked like me. So now it's really, really cool to see kids growing and parents, you know, telling their kids that now they're cool in school because they showed them pictures of me, which is pretty, pretty humbling. Where do you think the next major opportunities in sports are currently being overlooked, particularly in fencing? Because it's not as big as in soccer or tennis. I think it's the niche sports. I think like we have the ability to take a sport from niche to mainstream, which doesn't happen very often. There's gonna be another basketball, football, but there's never gonna be another fencing league. And I think that's the difference is those niche sports like fencing. And I think that's what's really, really cool is now seeing people here. Oh, you know, congrats on your league. So I know we're making some good progress. What are you excited about? What's coming up on the horizon? Well, we're gonna announce the WFL all season for next year. New countries, new formats, new rules, new camera angles, new sponsorships. So the next month we're gonna announce a lot of new things with WFL as well. Well, I'm very much looking forward to it. Thank you so much for joining. Pleasure. That's it for Fortune Daily. I'm Ellie Austin. Thank you so much for joining us. Remember to like, remember to subscribe and tell us what you thought of the topics in today's show. I'll see you next time.