Not Your Average Consulting

A project of Not Your Average American, LLC where we offer connection between North and South America.

Business Coaching

Clarify your vision and define your purpose to attract aligned clients.

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English-Language Editing

Write copy that translates language AND culture, connecting clients with your brand.

Branding & Marketing

Co-design a branded customer journey that resonates with your audience.

Fund-raising Campaigns

Work with teams to co-design fundraising campaigns focused on storytelling and human connection.

Website Design

Simple and effective websites are key to attracting socially-conscious clients. 

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Indications and Warnings

Advise people working in business, politics, and travel on events and trends in Andean Nations & the United States.

Plans and Pricing

Not Your Average American, LLC works on a sliding scale, adjusting fees based on many factors such as location and size of business, access to technology, and type of services sold.

Contact us for our updated rates.

What Our Clients Are Saying…

Don’t just take it from us, let our clients do the talking!

“I met Angie Drake in 2018 when her closeness with our community project began. We run a model of sustainable development for my indigenous community of the Kichwa culture of the Ecuadorian Amazon practicing ecotourism. Professionally, Angie gave us her support in updating and professionalizing our website which we invite you to see www.kichwalodge.com.

Our community is very grateful for her work and now it is very easy for tourists to find the travel information they need. If you want to have your website better designed, I recommend Angie Drake as your professional designer. “

See original recommendation on LinkedIn.

Edgar Noteno

General Manager, Kichwa Lodge

“In March 2022, the Refugio Paz de las Aves had a challenge to raise $155,000 to conserve one of the most important places for the conservation of birds and the cloud forest in Ecuador. We did a GoFundMe campaign and it was very successful thanks to Angie Drake. She is a person and professional that the entire Paz de las Aves family appreciates including her professionalism, her ability to communicate with people, and her writing of very in-depth articles. Her experience and knowledge helped us achieve our goal. We are infinitely grateful, and if anyone reads this comment, we give you the guarantee that Angie is a professional and a great person who will help you grow your business.”

See original recommendation on LinkedIn.

Vinicio Paz

General Manager, Refugio Paz de Las Aves

The NYAA-Consulting Team

After spending a few years writing her blog and searching for better ways to help US Americans connect with South American businesses, Angie decided it was time to start consulting. It seemed the best way to offer solutions to problems that consistently prevent a customer from making a reservation and buying a trip or a tour. At Not Your Average American Consulting, The Customer Journey, sometimes called the User Experience, is key. Ironically, connecting with the customer and providing a smooth journey often means understanding your own journey first. With that in mind, we think you might like to know a little more about us.

Angie Drake

Angie Drake

Co-founder and Manager

As a consultant and coach in sustainable and regenerative tourism models, Angie helps small businesses do big things. Her passion lies in helping freelance guides, micro-business owners, community tourism operators, and non-profits highlight their stories and connect with the appropriate audiences. She uses strong listening skills and strategic vision to provide innovative solutions for your most pressing problems.

Scott Drake

Scott Drake

Co-founder and Researcher

After serving 28 years in the United States Air Force, Scott left active duty service to travel the Americas. He reads several Spanish-language newspapers on a daily basis and has recently started to tackle Portuguese. From questions about budgeting and finances to team leadership and effective management styles, Scott is a wealth of information. He currently writes a Substack newsletter, Indications and Warnings.

For Our Clients - Website Management and Hosting

We are happy to announce our newest service, website management and affordable hosting with discounts for annual payments. Although our prices may be higher than other hosting services, be sure to check out all of our free ad ons: 

Additional Website Services

Language Translation

Enhance your WordPress website’s global reach with our expert Spanish to English, English to Spanish translation services, powered by the robust WPML software. Tailored for seamless integration, our service ensures your content resonates with audiences in both languages, offering an authentic, localized experience. Expand your digital footprint effortlessly with our efficient and accurate translations!

Reservation Systems

Transform any accommodations website into a booking powerhouse with MotoPress Hotel Booking. Also, for those selling tours, we help integrate WeTravel. Our seamless integration elevates user experience, enabling visitors to easily make reservations directly on your site. Streamline your reservation system, elevate your site’s functionality, and cater to a global audience with this intuitive and efficient tool!

Website Management

Keep your website running smoothly with our top-tier Website Management Services. We perform regular updates and provide comprehensive quarterly reports, ensuring your site performs at its best. Our dedicated team handles all technical aspects, from maintenance to optimization, freeing you to focus on growing your business. Experience peace of mind and enhanced website performance with our expert care.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does business coaching look like?

For our new clients, we recommend a basic package of 4 1-hour Zoom sessions with Angie. After the first introductory session, Angie will give you homework that usually takes 1-2 hours to complete before the next session. That will repeat for session 3. At the end of session 4, if you have not found the clarity you were hoping for, we offer a full refund.

Group coaching sessions also available.

What does the website design process look like?

This is client dependent but always we prefer co-designing, a process where we work together.

Some clients want to learn how to use WordPress or are willing to build some of the pages using Divi (which we provide with our hosting). We support that learning journey. Clients who learn these skills often find that they are better able to make changes to their website in the future, updating design elements and branding as they refine their future business.

Some clients have an already existing website and want to see it improved. We spend some time talking about the pros and cons of the old site and figure out if a complete re-design is necessary or if we can manage to update the current design using the Divi Theme and other WordPress tools. 

Our favorite approach includes a lot of back forth throughout the process, finding ways to work with our customer’s strengths.

Always, we look to build a website that highlights your business vision and purpose to attract aligned clients. 

What add ons and plugins do you offer for WordPress websites?

If you have found cheap hosting elsewhere, there is a reason why. Most tourism and travel websites need to purchase extra safety, security, and other plugins to operate efficiently. Here are a few of the items we include with many of our services:

Each of our hosted websites has the option to use the Divi Theme by Elegant Themes.

All hosted websites have security provided by DefenderPro including scans, blocklists, and firewalls and Forminator Pro for beautifully designed forms.

Some of our plans include speed optimization with Hummingbird Pro, image optimization with Smush Pro, and SEO management with Smart Crawl Pro, .

We can add language translation with WPML Multilingual CMS. We recommend using the Hummingbird Hosting plan at minimum for translated websites they need the extra storage and bandwidth to perform well.

We recently added the Moto Hotel Booking plugin to our agency. We have access to all the plugins as well! And while WeTravel is not a plugin, we do offer help in integrating their shortcodes. Simply add us to your WeTravel team so that we can help you out!

Why do you cost more than Bluehost, GoDaddy, or WIX?

We offer tons of plugins that you must pay extra for when using a basic website host. For example, we offer services like SEO, page-caching, and image optimization. Most hosting services do not include your WordPress theme (in our case, we offer Divi by Elegant Themes at no additional cost to you). With other hosting providers, you often need to purchase your SSL certificate and security plugins separately. We provide those.

In short, our services cost more because we provide so value.

Can my team manage our website for us?

If you would like your staff to manage your website, we are here to help make that happen. In fact, we love it when business owners want to provide training for staff members. We believe your website performs best when multiple team members understand the inner workings of WordPress and the plugin tools.

We are here to support your team build, grow, and soar!

Indications and Warnings? Isn't that over the top?

Having lived and worked in South America for several years, we know that conditions on the ground can often trigger warnings. The US American press often focuses on the most negative and stressful events, giving many people in the United States the idea that travel and business in Latin America is dangerous. We provide nuance in these situations.

For example, in 2016 Ecuador experienced a devastating 7.8 earthquake near Manta, along the Pacific Coast. Tourism stopped in its tracks. This made perfect sense in communities along the coast that were heavily impacted by the earthquake. However, tourism in the Galapagos Islands, the Amazon Basin, and along the Valley of the Volcanoes was severely impacted. It didn’t need to be. In fact, tourism to these other areas could directly (taxes) and indirectly (local donations and support from family in other parts of Ecuador) have helped people living in the most impacted region. Nuance.

We invite you to check out Scott’s newsletter to get a taste of the events we keep an eye on.

What if I'm not sure what I need?

Being uncertain is part of the process of creating a business. This is a step-by-step journey. Schedule a free 30-minute call and we’ll work with you to see if we can help you figure out those next steps.

What is your refund policy?

We offer no-questions-asked refunds for our coaching services. If you are not satisfied with your time spent working with Angie or Scott, simply send us an email and we will refund your purchase right away. If you have not enjoyed the experience, then we will part ways amicably.

For our other services, we are always open to the conversation of providing refunds. We do not want you paying for something that does not bring you value. However, some items, like website hosting, we cannot refund outright. Our promise is that we will make it easy for you to leave and take your website with you. No questions asked.

Helpful Documentation

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Terms & Conditions

Not Your Average American, LLC is built on communication and trust. That means sharing our ground rules.

Conditions of Use

NYAA Consulting is project of Not Your Average American, LLC. If you use our website, NYAA-Consulting.com, you accept these terms and agree to abide by them. If that’s not OK, please don’t use this website.

Website Terms and Conditions

Privacy

We collect two kinds of information:

  • the kind you voluntarily provide us and
  • information that is publicly available

We use this information to advise small businesses in South America about selling to North Americans and to help explain the South American tourism scene to North Americans.

Electronic communications

When you visit NYAA Consulting, send emails to us, or interact with us, you are communicating with us electronically. You consent to receive communications from us electronically. We communicate by email (including our newsletters), by posting on social media, and by posting on this website. If you request that we stop email or social media communications, we will do so.

Copyright

All content on this site, including text, graphics, logos, icons, images, videos, and audio clips are the property of Not Your Average American, LLC or have been provided with permission from the copyright owner to share on this website. We ask that you properly credit both author and to Not Your Average American, LLC when sharing our work. Using photos or text from Not Your Average American, LLC or NYAA Consulting without proper attribution is a violation of international copyright law.

Trademarks

We are in the process of filing the Not Your Average American Trademark. While we are undergoing a Trademark review, we respectfully ask that you refrain from using the Not Your Average American logo in ways that may confuse potential customers. All other trademarks not owned by Not Your Average American that appear on this site are the property of their respective owners, who may or may not be affiliated with, connected to, or sponsored by Not Your Average American.

License and Site Access

Not Your Average American, LLC grants you a limited license to access and make personal use of NYAA-consulting.com and not to download (other than page caching) or to modify any portion of it except with written consent from Not Your Average American, LLC. This license does not include any resale or commercial use of this site or its contents: any collection and use of any product listings, descriptions, or prices; or any use of data mining, robots, or similar data gathering and extraction tools.

This site or any portion of this site may not be reproduced, duplicated, copied, sold, resold, visited, or otherwise exploited for any commercial purpose without the express written consent of Not Your Average American, LLC. You may not frame or utilize framing techniques to enclose any trademark, logo, or other proprietary information (including images, text, page, layout, or form) of Not Your Average American, LLC and our associates without express written permission.

You may not use any meta tags or any other “hidden text” utilizing Not Your Average American’s name or trademarks without the express written consent of Not Your Average American, LLC. Any unauthorized use terminates the permission or license granted by Not Your Average American, LLC.

You are granted a limited, revocable, and nonexclusive right to create a hyperlink to the home page of NYAA-Consulting.com so long as the link does not portray Not Your Average American, LLC, its associates, or their products in a false, misleading, derogatory, or otherwise offensive matter. You may not use the Not Your Average American logo or other proprietary graphic or trademark as part of the link without express written permission.

Reviews, comments, emails, and other content

Visitors may post reviews, comments, and other content as well as submit suggestions, ideas, comments, questions, or other information, so long as the content is not illegal, obscene, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy, infringing on intellectual property rights, or otherwise injurious to third parties, or objectionable and does not consist of or contain software viruses, political campaigning, commercial solicitation, chain letters, mass mailings, or any form of “spam.” All content that you contribute must comply with these Terms of Service.

You may not use a false e-mail address, impersonate any person or entity, or otherwise mislead as to the origin of a card or other content.

Not Your Average American, LLC reserves the right to remove or edit such content, but does not regularly review posted content. If using our website to review guides or businesses or to advertise your own guiding service or business, you grant Not Your Average American, LLC and its associates a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully transferrable right to reproduce, publish, translate, distribute, and display such content, or portion of the content, throughout the world in any media. Any other material shared on our website can be done so without concern of our sharing without first obtaining your approval via electronic communications.

You grant  Not Your Average American, LLC  the right to use the name that you submit in connection with such content if they choose. You represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content that you post; that the content is accurate; that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity; and that you will indemnify and hold harmless Not Your Average American, LLC or its associates for all claims resulting from content you supply.

Not Your Average American, LLC has the right to cooperate fully with law enforcement authorities or comply with court orders directing or requiring us to disclose the identity or other information of anyone posting content on or through the website.

Not Your Average American has the right but not the obligation to monitor and edit or remove any activity or content. Not Your Average American takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any content posted by you or any third party.

If at any time you have questions about this policy, please contact us.

Privacy Policy

Not Your Average American, LLC and NYAA Consulting rely on honest communication and finding improved ways to share information between North and South America. That means sharing lots of information. Here is our privacy policy in everyday language.

INFORMATION WE COLLECT

There are two basic ways we collect information:

  • Information that you give to us.
  • Information that is publically available.

Here is a little more explanation of each of these.

INFORMATION THAT YOU GIVE TO US

When you interact with our website, you may choose to make an account to leave a comment or to send us information via a form or survey. We ask you for a lot of basics, especially if you are a guide or tourism business, like where you work, what your specialties are, or what your travel interests might be. Some information we require (like an email address) and other information is voluntary (like your education). We ask for lots of information so that we can help better market your services. 

COMMENTS

When visitors and members leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, including the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service. All user comments can be deleted by the user. We retain these comments for an undetermined amount of time.

REVIEWS

When members leave testimonials, we collect the data shown in the review form. If you would like to amend or delete a testimonial, please contact us in writing.

PUBLISHED ARTICLES

When members write blog posts, we collect the data shown in those forms. We use the information to publish blog posts.  The information given in these formats cannot be deleted after publication. If you would like a publication amended or deleted, please contact us in writing.

MEDIA

For members who chose to participate in our blogging platform, you may upload images. If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS). Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website. If you would like any media amended or deleted, please contact us in writing.

CONTACT FORMS

If you contact us using our contact form or similar form, we retain your email address and the content of the email indefinitely. We do not automatically add your name to our email lists. If you would like us to delete any past contact with our website, please let us know in writing.

INFORMATION THAT IS PUBLICALLY AVAILABLE.

We collect information using Google Analytics. This tool helps us know how many visitors we have on any given day, their country of origin, how old they are, and what their likes and dislikes might be. This information is never tied to individual names or accounts. To prevent your data from being used by Google Analytics, not just on our page but on others as well, please install this opt-out browser add-on: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/

There may also be information collected about you through other automatic data collection technologies, including details of your visits to our website, location data, information about your computer and Internet connection, including your IP address. The information we collect through these means is statistical data and does not include personal information, but we may maintain it or associate it with personal information we collect in other ways or receive from third parties.

Understanding our customers is key to helping South American business owners offer a better product.

HOW WE USE THIS INFORMATION

We use the information that we collect about you, or that you provide to us, to present our website and its contents to you; to provide you with information or services that you request from us; and to better connect South American tourism operators, especially the smallest business and community tourism projects, with North American clients. This is the basic mission of Not Your Average American, LLC.

If you have an account on this site or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

OUR PLUG-IN SERVICES

Few WordPress websites function well without plugins and ours is no exception. Many of these plug-ins use cookies and/or store data. Here is an alphabetical listing of current plug-ins and how we utilize them here at Not Your Average American.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Tracks user website behavior (page visits, clicks, etc.) to gain insight into how our platform is being used by our visitors. Google is constantly changing its setup so rather than address their current cookie usage, we ask that you confirm their latest settings.  To prevent your data from being used by Google Analytics, not just on our page but on others as well, please install this opt-out browser add-on: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/

MAILCHIMP

If you have signed up to receive our newsletter, your email address, zip code (if offered), first name, and last name have been saved on the MailChimp database. Some information from registration forms or account updates may also be kept in this database.

Word Press

If you leave a comment on our site, you may opt-in to save your name, email address, and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

WPML

WPML uses cookies to identify your current language, the last visited language, and the language of users who have logged in.

EMBEDDED CONTENT FROM OTHER WEBSITES

Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

If at any time you have questions about this policy, please contact us.

Don't Be Shy

If you still have questions, feel free to drop us a line anytime.