One simple decision can change your life. No one knows that better than veteran travel advisor Susie Chau.
In 2013, after Chau’s husband was laid off, the newlyweds jumped at the opportunity to travel around the world for a year. Chau, 31 at the time, took a sabbatical from her career in management consulting, and the couple toured all seven continents.
When their adventure ended, Chau returned to work, but it didn’t last long. Friends and family members alike were interested in the logistics of her trip, looking for ways to recreate it, as well as advice on the best destinations to visit.
Transforming Her Career
After a chance conversation with a travel advisor, a lightbulb went off. Suddenly, Chau had the clarity and confidence to take a calculated risk into a new career path, quickly launching Carpe Diem Traveler as a side hustle. As she gradually built her client base, she shifted to full time, leaving her management position.
In 2016, Chau began creating her custom trips, one- to two-week personalized itineraries in Europe for couples and families. But her true passion was planning extended travel experiences; so, in 2019, she began focusing almost exclusively on sabbatical travel. “It’s so transformative to people’s identities, helping them expand their world in such a deep way,” Chau explained.
Then the pandemic hit, and everything came crashing to a halt. Chau eased back into booking trips in 2021, but it was a challenging time. The industry was still recovering, and suddenly Chau found herself on call 24/7. It wasn’t sustainable.
That’s when she identified a second opportunity for change in her business: a pivot to a consulting model so she could focus on helping clients prepare personally and professionally for extended travel. “I still create customized itineraries, but it’s much more about guiding the process than managing transactions,” she said.
Becoming An Expert
Though sabbatical travel is a type of specialty trip, Chau never worried about becoming too niche because she loved what she was doing. But she still had to be strategic as she began concentrating on promoting sabbatical travel experiences. “If you market and talk about what’s possible, that converts to clients,” she said.
Chau educated each potential client about possibilities for extended travel, painting a clear picture of what that could look like. She learned that most of her clients longed for a slower pace, but they often became frustrated with logistics. “You need to give people the tools to connect to how they can make it happen,” she said.
Chau, who takes a holistic approach with her clients, worked closely with them on important details, like what to do with their house for a year or where their kids would attend school. “There’s a solution to every roadblock,” she said. Once you help people with the specifics, the dream of a sabbatical is suddenly within reach.
Now, living in Denver with her husband and six-year-old son, Chau knows she made the right choice to narrow her niche. She just celebrated 10 years in business and has no plans to slow down.
Embracing Slow Travel
Not one to settle for good enough, Chau has made another career move. She joined forces with Ilo Retreat founder Maria Grabowska and parenting expert Barbara Mighdoll to form Roam Collective, an extended travel model for working families who want to visit a destination for one month at a time. Their first trip — five weeks in San Sebastian, Spain, in July 2026 — sold out immediately.
Roam’s philosophy is to help people step back and evaluate their lives, break patterns and take the time to make transformational changes.
“It’s a reversal of how most Americans approach travel, squeezing in as much as possible,” she noted. “It’s a chance to see how different cultures live and plant seeds to open up people’s minds to what’s possible.”
Most of Roam’s clients have kids between four months to 12 years old. Chau knew that figuring out how to balance childcare and work was the hardest part of planning this type of travel, so she came up with a unique solution. Instead of kids attending camp in the early mornings, Roam’s camp begins at 2 p.m. This allows families to experience slow mornings together and parents to stay on their U.S. time zone work schedule. Once this piece of the puzzle was solved, everything else came together. For Roam’s inaugural summer, they have 62 families across two groups. They’re planning to quadruple their growth for next summer’s programs and continue exponential growth year over year.
Leaving Good To Get Great
Chau enjoys constantly refining her career. “You can have something good, but it’s always worth it to go for something great,” she said.
This mantra guides how she shows up for her clients, too. She knows that when it comes to travel, it’s not what goes wrong that counts, it’s how you handle it. That’s why she’s always ready to offer a creative solution to turn a disappointing situation into a positive one.
That solution-oriented approach extends to how she manages her business behind the scenes: She tracks her time on Toggl and compares it to revenue per client. “That simple data — hours invested versus fees earned — lets you make informed decisions, including allowing you to raise fees confidently, choose your niche strategically and set boundaries,” she said.
She has also found that building a post-trip call into her standard process can make a huge difference. “Frame it to clients as a benefit, a chance to pause and reflect on what they experienced,” she advised. Making that call allows her to get honest feedback on what worked, what didn’t and how they felt coming home.
Chau prepares her clients for their trips mentally, too, not just logistically. “The question isn’t whether you can scale, it’s how you can scale without losing what makes your service special. That’s the real opportunity,” she said.
But the biggest lesson Chau has learned throughout her career is to have the courage to take that next step. “Success is not a metric,” she said. “It’s the feeling of being in alignment with what you want to do in life.”
Originally appeared in the Summer 2026 issue of The Compass magazine
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