After Running a Travel Agency for Four Years, She Switched to Coaching Women to Travel on Their Own Terms

Maria Kamau was driving from Boston up to the harbor town of Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, with a friend who lives in the United States, when the conversation turned casual. How many countries have you visited, and where have you been?

Kamau, a Kenyan traveler who built a career in data management, did the math out loud. She had been to 18 countries. Then she started wondering how many countries there were in total.

It was an early count with an outsized reaction. Back home, when people in forums talked about travel, some said they had been to one Kenyan county nearby, or two countries. When Kamau said 18, people stopped and stared. She began to wonder what to do with all that experience to help others.

Still working full time, she started a travel agency on the side. It grew slowly over about four years, and she said she helped hundreds of people plan trips. Then the funding ended for the nonprofit job she held, and instead of looking for another post, she decided to focus on the agency.

That was when she learned what full time entrepreneurship really meant. She called it a shock to her livelihood, and said, "It got real, real quick." She had to sit at a desk, which cut into the flexibility to travel that she prized. Trying to support clients from different time zones, paying for internet and making calls while she was herself in the United States, was messy.

She also felt the weight of responsibility once visitors from Europe and the United States arrived in Kenya and stayed until they left. One difficult safari booking, when a client called about a back problem on the rough road to the Maasai Mara and Kamau had to arrange a flight back, left her shaken. More clients, she thought, would mean more firefighting.

After a brief, unsatisfying turn in a multi-level marketing travel scheme, Kamau stumbled on coaching. It appealed to her because it was about empowering someone else to travel in a way that suited them. Through her business, Travel with MK, she now works one on one and in small groups, preferably with women.

Her pitch is permission. Women serve everybody else and forget themselves, she said, and they do not have to quit a job or a marriage to travel. A trip can be a weekend or a few weeks, taken alone or with a daughter, a son, or a friend, and shaped around what the traveler wants, whether that is rest or adventure.