Invested Entrepreneur

Entrepreneur Crystal Sargent

Merging Corporate Marketing and Travel Experience

Crystal Sargent launches Invested Traveler

By Jennifer Coburn

Crystal Sargent was enjoying an idyllic day along the French Riviera when her life changed in an instant. After dinner, Sargent and a friend joined a crowd of people in Nice to watch the Bastille Day fireworks. Soon she was running from the scene of the ISIS terror attack, where a truck plowed into civilian bystanders, killing 86 people and injuPatricia K. Wagner ring 458.

Sargent and her friend ran to a vestibule with a group of people and tried to open a door. When she realized the door was locked, “my whole body went numb,” she recalls. “I thought this is where it all comes to an end.” Just then, someone found another door and was able to open it. The group escaped unharmed.

The experience made Sargent ask herself if she was getting the most out of this short, unpredictable life. “There’s nothing like a near-death experience to catapult you in doing something,” she says.

Though Sargent enjoyed her role as senior vice president of marketing for Torrey Pines Bank, she was in the same role for 11 years and already knew it was time for a change.

“I’ve always been a believer in rotating talent across functions and disciplines to keep people engaged and have a deeper bench. Solving complex problems and challenges stimulate the mind which presents opportunities for growth. The work was no longer challenging,” she says.

Sargent decided to combine her 25 years of corporate marketing experience and travel expertise to create a “journey model of workforce engagement” through her venture, Invested Traveler. The company serves clients through their business cycle in several ways. It helps recruit and retain talent by producing employee and client events, retreats, and incentives and negotiating venue and vendor contracts to save the client money.

“We are the strategic marketing arm for human resources,” Sargent says, explaining that one of the biggest problems in organizations is employee disengagement. “Business owners are so good at what they do, and we give them an opportunity to step back” and examine strategies to maximize employee engagement. “It costs an awful lot of money to replace a talented employee, from the cost of recruitment and onboarding to time to prove their talents are equal to their resume,” says Sargent. She adds that it is usually wiser for a company to invest in developing the team it already has.

Sargent says businesses can focus on their growth strategies and operate more efficiently when they don’t have to worry about top performers leaving and going to work for the competition. Her company helps clients create incentive travel, from trips abroad to staycations. The Invested Traveler also steps in to create the collateral material that explains these incentive programs to staff.

This got Sargent thinking. If she could effectively help businesses market themselves internally, wouldn’t she add even more value by helping clients market themselves to their customers? She began offering advisory services such as branding, positioning, and event production. Sargent laughs and says she started out thinking she was launching a business, “but I accidentally built a business like a bank would, with divisions that offer complementary services.” She calls that enterprise Invested Advisors, with clients that include businesses like Culinary Concepts Catering, and Anne Sneed Architectural Interiors as well as start-ups like Etha Live Fully, a locally-based manufacturer of Kratom, in need of governmental affairs and consumer education strategies.

Sargent enjoys success in other ways besides business. She chaired the recent March of Dimes fundraising gala. “It was very successful,” she says.

The U.S. Department of Transportation uses Sargent as its facilitator to help business owners understand how to build their brand and market their business. “We travel across the state and generate clients in transportation and construction,” says Sargent. “For example, at Fleet Care International, we’re developing focus groups as a part of our efforts to rebrand the company as they reposition themselves to acquire other firms as part of their growth strategy.”

Melissa Fazio, director of marketing at Culinary Concepts Catering, says working with Invested Advisors has helped the company develop a strategy for its branding, website design, advertising, and promotion. “We never had a clear focus on our marketing, it’s all been by the seat of our pants,” she says, explaining that their energy has been spent on providing great food and service.

Anne Sneed says what she appreciates most about working with Sargent is she is focused on big-picture strategy and outcomes rather than individual projects. “She listens to my goals and tells me what I need,” says Sneed, explaining that Sargent’s advice is often different than what she expected. For example, Sargent suggested to Sneed that she needed to raise her profile and sourced a speaking engagement in Copenhagen for Anne because it is the design capital of the world. Her first talk is scheduled for the fall.

Sargent says, “I didn’t want to be in business without helping companies solve problems. What fuels me every day is a genuine passion for the possible – for solving a client’s immediate needs but also seeing something bigger for them than what they may see for themselves – and delivering on those possibilities. We’re doing just that every day, and I feel like the best is yet to come.”