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Love For Music, Love For God
Shanna
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By Ayana Bryant Photos by Seawards Dawson
Greensboro, North Carolina native Shanna Jennette is becoming the ultimate one stop shop for all your traveling needs. After five years in business, she is expanding her traveling agency, My Legendary Travel LLC to now include a fashion sector. Her creativity and desire to help others have served as a foundation to bring her business and ideas to life.
A graduate of University of North Carolina Greensboro, Shanna began her career as a special education teacher with the organization Teach for America. After accepting the position in 2011, she was relocated to New York City to teach in the public school system for the next two and a half years. Moving to New York was Shanna’s very first major traveling experience and the first time she had ever traveled by plane. This was the furthest she had ever been from North Carolina and as most could imagine this experience introduced her to a lot of new things. Living in New York City exposed Shanna to so much diversity, she became intrigued with all the new people she met and cultures that she was now exposed to. An interest in learning more about the cultures of her students and friends began to grow and she decided that she would travel to these places and see them for herself. When she began planning her first international trip, she learned a lot of new information and thought about how she could share this knowledge with others.
Shanna then reconnected with an old college friend via social media who happened to be a part time travel agent. After many conversations Shanna eventually learned of all the required classes and certifications that she would need to begin this new venture. “So that’s what I did, after completing my travel agent certification, I filed an LLC to begin my business and in 2016, My Legendary Travel was born,” she shares.
My Legendary Travel provides quality care and service for every one of its clients and their vacation plans big or small. International or domestic travel, cruise or land adventure this agency does it all! Now with their newly added fashion sector they hope to help women find functional and affordable swimwear for their vacations.
While planning her own vacations Shanna seemed to always find trouble picking swimsuits that complimented her shape. Swimsuits that provided the coverage she needed were never quite that stylish and the more fashionable swimwear that she would find would be too revealing. She figured that other women were probably experiencing the same issues, so she made the decision to begin creating her own pieces. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020 traveling came to a complete standstill all around the world. As you can imagine this would be a travel agents’ worst nightmare but not for Shanna, this situation shifted her attention and revealed an opportunity for her to expand the business.
During the lockdown she was able to forge new business relationships with a swimsuit vendor and a fashion designer that had made personal swimsuits for her in the past. Through collaboration with the vendor and the designer Shanna was able to produce multiple designs for monokinis, one pieces, and two pieces. Each swimsuit has a price point that ranges from about $25-$45 depending on the style. As of now Shanna is finding success with promoting her line via social media and by hosting pop up shops as she prepares for her big re-launch later this year.
Shanna finds motivation from the community of women entrepreneurs that she is now surrounded by. She stated that attending business workshops and seminars where other black women are sharing their success stories inspires her to keep going. “Going to those kinds of events allows me to network and build new friendships and business relationships, we are all able to help each other and keep each other motivated,” says Shanna.
The one thing that seems to make her the proudest regarding her business would be the rapport she has built with her clientele. “I get so many returning customers, and for me that’s big, I love that they always come back because it is a testament to the service I provided,” says Shanna. She also gets a lot of business from the referrals made by her previous clients which is something she is very grateful for. In the future Shanna plans to continue expanding the fashion sector of My Legendary Travel. The line will include swimsuit coverups, airport and lounge attire, as well as travel accessories such as passport booklets. Avoid the headache of planning your next vacation by utilizing a travel agent, My Legendary Travel might be the fit for you!
Connect with Shanna Jennette at www.mylegendarytravel.com or via Instagram @legendarytravel1
