As Agent@Home celebrates its 10th anniversary this month, it seems to be the perfect time for those of us selling luxury travel from home to reflect on what we were doing 10 years ago. Back then I was at a major crossroads professionally and was on the edge of a major career shift. I was just about to make the transition from writing about luxury travel for magazines — which I had done since graduating college with a journalism degree — to selling it for a living.

I am now in my ninth year of operating a luxury travel business and have always done so from a home office. I was actually inspired to start my business and really go full force into it after reading the first few editions of Agent@Home. I quickly realized back in 2005 that it was totally viable to start a luxury travel business from home because nearly everything I needed to do so was web-based and easily accessible.

I made the decision to affiliate with a Virtuoso-member host agency and took a lot of my early cues from the columns and guidance provided by the articles and columns in Agent@Home. From Jeff Miller’s “Travel Law” pieces to the “How to Choose a Host” articles, the magazine has been a valuable resource for me throughout its entire 10-year existence.

When I shared my interest in launching a home-based business with James Shillinglaw, Agent@Home’s Editor in Chief and my former boss at Travel Agent magazine, he quickly came back to me with a proposal I couldn’t refuse. He asked if I would like to write a monthly column for the magazine called “Issues & Answers” in which I shared the challenges I encountered as a home-based travel agent, as well as the solutions I worked hard to find. Of course I said yes and eventually I took over this “Selling Luxury Travel” column space, which I was thrilled to do because luxury travel is my passion and expertise.

I continue to use my own experiences — both positive and negative — as the primary source for my monthly columns, and it’s always so nice to hear from readers who share my frustrations and triumphs. There are always going to be challenges for home-based business owners, as well additional challenges that go along with managing luxury travel for a high-level clientele. I share my experiences in the hope that they will allow others who operate a similar type of business to gain a new or different perspective.

When I started my home-based luxury travel business nine years ago, it was just myself as an independent contractor affiliated with Travel Experts. Now, nine years later, I have my own IATA number and am a standalone Virtuoso member agency with 20 independent contractors working for me around the globe.

When I launched my business, my goal was to target a younger, more affluent client base that typically would not have used a travel advisor. Having written about luxury travel for many years and having launched a magazine exclusively for the private jet crowd, I heard over and over how people just didn’t have the time or desire to book their own travel, especially complicated expensive honeymoons, family trips and even high-level business trips.

Despite all of the information and resources available to tech-savvy consumers that would easily allow them to book and manage their own travel, my theory from nine years ago holds true today. I continue to receive referrals from my existing entrepreneurial and executive clients to their like-minded friends, who are also just too busy and/or consumed with their own businesses and families to figure out their travel plans.

They want someone to manage this part of their lives, the same way a financial planner manages their money and a realtor handles their home purchases. They like the idea of knowing their travels are in the hands of someone who knows more than they do, and who can curate and edit all of the information they are bombarded with if they try to Google where to go on their next trip.

It’s been a really exciting decade watching the luxury travel industry continue to step it up in terms of product offerings. Turning clients onto places they would have otherwise not considered — such as Laucala Island, Ponta Dos Ganchos in Brazil and the Four Seasons Hangzhou, just to name a few — is probably my favorite part of my “job.”

I put quotations around the word “job,” because it hardly feels like work to help fascinating people plan wonderful travel experiences around the globe. Choosing to make the career switch from travel journalist to luxury travel advisor and host agency owner was one of the wisest decisions of my life.