TravCon changed our business.

By Rich Smith, 08-15-2019

Once a year we all gather in fabulous Las Vegas and share a weekend full of food, drinks and fun. TravCon, while not perfect, has changed our business in so many wonderful and positive ways. It’s become our one big event. The planning starts in May, and it really ramps up around July. When it comes to money, we spend more on this one conference than all other conferences combined. That isn’t an accident, that’s by design. 

Here’s the super ironic part. We’ve never once scanned an attendee’s badge. We’ve never collected one name or phone number from the exhibitor floor. That isn’t our style. That isn’t what TravCon means to us. That mindset is deliberate, it’s focused, and it has a purpose that goes deep to the roots of who we are. 

Atlas started in 2012 with the goal of doing things differently. But everyone starts like that right? Everyone says that in the beginning. We were super idealistic and naïve. What we found was that we were quickly mired in the day to day operations of running a travel healthcare staffing company. Placements and back outs, balance sheets and invoices. It became very formulaic and robotic. A year into the business we realized we weren’t building something different than everyone else, we were becoming everyone else.

Then our first trip to TravCon happened. And things changed. Everything changed. It reconnected us. You see, TravCon six years ago wasn’t anywhere close to what it is today. It was smaller back then, more intimate. There was so much more one on one time. That first year we operated from a shoestring budget. Honestly, we probably shouldn’t have been there in the first place, we didn’t have the money. We were barely keeping our head above water and a trip to Las Vegas certainly didn’t seem like money well spent. However, we learned two things this first year: the first was that if you go simply to collect names to add to your database, you’ll fail. I watched it happen over and over again. I even heard from other agency owners say that “the ROI simply wasn’t there” for them. Second, I’ve always understood the power of gratitude and empathy, and sincerely deploying it is a powerful thing. Simply saying thank you and buying that other person a beer with no motive produces stunning results. Results that aren’t measurable in the short term, but become very clear when you zoom out. When you are who you say you are, and your intentions are pure, the universe rewards you. We’ve been rewarded for six years now with some of the most talented traveling healthcare professionals in the country. 

For us, TravCon isn’t about a ROI. It isn’t about handing out business cards or collecting name and phone numbers to add to the database. It’s so much deeper than that. It’s a chance to have fun and give back to the community. Our community. A place where we all belong.