Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 240: How Travel Advisors Can Lead Themselves Before They Lead their Business
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K, travel agency owner, helping other travel advisors actually build a business. Today is day 240. Leading yourself first. Yesterday we covered ⁓ shifting from the doer identity to the leader identity. Because if you maintain a doer identity, that kind of lends towards micromanaging and And you might end up being the biggest bottleneck in your travel business, espe and it's gonna be really difficult for you to scale, and it's gonna be really difficult for you to have solid help. Today we're gonna go a little bit deeper and we're gonna talk about why you need to understand how to lead yourself first before you start leading in your business. And you're like, Rachel, we are 240 days in and you have not brought this up yet. I kinda have. And also, I doubt in two hundred and forty days that you have just magically built something. Like, you would have to have someone give you like fifty grand at least to build a travel agency that's scaled to the point where you need help in two hundred and forty days. That's barely that's like nine months or something. Sick? Nope. Eight months? No, nine months. I don't know. All right. Anyway, yesterday we talked about shifting from the doer to the leader. Today, a foundational piece that's underneath that entire shift. You cannot consistently lead a business. Well, if you haven't first learned how to lead yourself. So we're going to talk about self-leadership. What self-leadership actually means. It's a lot of discipline. Sorry, not sorry. And At the Unfam, ⁓ October of twenty twenty five was the inaugural Unfam retreat. We are doing a second one. And Cindy Calwell a full access vacations, if you want to connect with her. She is the travel agent that won the Unfam. So we are working together, we're aiming for spring of twenty twenty eight. ⁓ but at the first unfam, I mentioned I don't remember if it was like to the entire group or if it was just like a one-on-one combo I was having with somebody. But I remember specific TA was there and I was like, You gotta be your own butler. And she I remember that agent was like, What are you talking about? And I was like, You have to be your own butler. So I had what appeared on the outside in twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four, an amazing life. My travel agency was grossing three fifty. It did gross like three fifty and twenty-three. I was shooting for five hundred and twenty-four. and I was miserable. I was miserable in my personal life, and being my own butler was the only thing that kept me sane. It was like the sliver of happiness. And it taught me a lot about self-leadership and discipline because I had to sit and really think. How do I want my day-to-day to go? If I had full staff taking care of me and I built this empire, right? And I had a full staff, me being a butler, when you first get hired as a butler, by the way, they give you this big fat notebook of everything the principal and their family prefers. And then how they like their bed made, how they like their breakfast made, how they like their coffee or tea. How they like every little detail so they don't have to think and they don't have to boss you around. It's just done. So I was like, how can I be my own butler? And I'd be like, this is how I want my table set for breakfast. This is what I want for breakfast in my dream life. This is how I this is how I want my PJs folded. And this is where I want them placed on my bed after my bed is made. And this is how I would like my bed to be made. And this is where I want my slippers. To step into, and this is where I want like that's what I would do my day to day outside of working, just to kind of keep me sane. And it taught me a lot about what kind of habits, the focus, how I'm gonna emotionally regulate, and what my priorities are in life. And that's what self leadership is it's the discipline of managing all those things, and it has to be independent of anyone else holding you accountable. And this is like a big thing in like the self-improvement, quantum energy shift timelines. This is all it is. This has nothing to do with magical energy and screaming to the moon with crystals. Sorry, not sorry. This is all it is. If you were a billionaire or multi-millionaire, let's say. Let's just let's just go billionaire. Screw it. But if you were a billionaire, what would be your daily habits? What would be your main priorities, your main focus, and how would you respond to conflict on a daily basis? Because guess what? Having a lot of money doesn't mean you're conflict free and you got the easy street life. It doesn't escape you at all. How well can you manage it? And the whole quantum shifting timelines stuff. All it is is teaching you to become the person that you want to be. That's it. That's it. If you become someone who's like, all right, I'm a billionaire. This is how I run my day. This is how I want my day to look. I have no one else that's gonna give me this money or give me this business. I have no one else's framework that magically works for them and me. How am I gonna stay focused to maintain this revenue coming in and building the foundation of my business and building my team out and all that stuff. When a client or an employee or the website or a supplier is not doing what I want them to do, can I calmly address that? If I'm being criticized online, am I gonna screenshot it and email it to all of my clients and be like, go attack this person? Or am I gonna be like it's just like your opinion, man? And what are your priorities? Is it gonna be scrolling endlessly online? Nope, it's not. It's you won't have time for that. How are you gonna build your day out? What does that future you do? And even if you're like, ⁓ I have staff to help me with this, what does that exactly look like so you can train your household staff? Because if you can't even describe how your daily life is. You're how are you going to set up your business and then train people? This is how you do things. And we're gonna get into this a little bit more. So, first let's do a little history. Mystery history lesson. This is not a new idea. We're gonna talk about some people that are famous. Ben Franklin. And also when I talk about these people. You're gonna have opinions, good or bad, of these people, and it doesn't matter because they did what they wanted to do. You think any of these people are like, ⁓ I'm so concerned with your opinion of me. But anyway Ben Franklin, centuries before the whole self improvement thing was a marketing category, famously tracked his own daily habits and virtues in a personal journal. ⁓ you mean he was writing it down in a notebook? Because it's super important to write things down in a notebook. He was deliberately reviewing it and adjusting his own behavior over time. ⁓ you mean everything I teach in the success circle for your business? Write down the data, track it and review it? Sorry. Weird connection, don't you think? But that's an early structured form of self leadership. Warren Buffett has long been known for intense personal reading and a learning habit, treating his own ongoing education as a non-negotiable daily discipline. Not something that happens only when it's convenient. Not something that happens when he's scared he's gonna fail. Not something that happens when he's told, ⁓ you definitely need to do this training. Everyone else is doing it. He doesn't do what everyone else does. Clearly. Like if he was doing what everyone else does, he wouldn't be as successful as successful as he is today, right? Oprah Winfrey She has spoken widely about the role of consistent personal reflection. Journaling. another successful person who writes stuff down. Not typing it. Not using what is that called? A thing with a tablet. What is that? Stylus. There we go. With a tablet. Writing it down in a journal. Quiet time. Something else she does. Deliberate self-examination. She has said all of that is foundational to how she has led her business ventures over the decades. Now I'm gonna put a little religious spin on it. And I'm gonna do it from a Catholic perspective because I don't know any other Christian denomination and how they do it. But I was taught you do your morning prayer and be like, thank God for this day. This is gonna be amazing. Let's do it. I'm all in. Okay. Like I'm gonna, I'm making a commitment that I'm gonna live God's will and do the best I can today. And then in the evening, another prayer where you sit and reflect on your actual behaviors, an examination of conscience. And if you are like, oops, I've sinned, and it's like a mortal sin, then you need to go to confession. But if it's a venial sin, like you're just a little bit angry or annoyed. Or maybe you were getting a little bit lazy with something, you have to sit and reflect with that examination of your own conscience and your own behaviors and be like, is that truly aligned with like with God and his will for me? Right? Like we may not know God's will for us, but it's like, am I actually doing what I what Jesus taught us to do? Across different eras, different cultures, different industries, the common thread is the same. None of these leaders left their own habits or their self-discipline or their focus to chance. They built structure around themselves first. A business run, I feel like I'm very dehydrated right now. A business run by someone without a handle on their own habits, their own focus, and consistency tends to reflect that instability. Inconsistent content posting, in and inconsistent messaging and content, inconsistent client follow-through could be another one, inconsistent decision making. It's not a softer secondary idea. Leading yourself. Is what I'm saying. It is the foundation to everything in this podcast: the batching, the systems, ⁓ the outreach, the tracking. It should be the foundation for your entire life, because we all have free will. Build your life how you want it, and then build everything around it. None of it holds up if the person running the show hasn't built any personal structure underneath. And I am proof of this because. Remember earlier in this episode I was like, I'm gonna make five hundred K as a travel agent in twenty twenty four. That was the goal. That was the goal for the gross earnings for my agency. And then my entire world got turned upside down. I was in about up June of twenty-four, okay? And because of my life, what happened, not only was my life turned upside down and I had to completely real rebuild my life from scratch, I was also diagnosed with near combat veteran level PTSD. And it was 18 months of EMDR treatment. So June of twenty-four to January of twenty twenty six. I was being treated for the PTSD. It was a lot. And I had to cancel groups that I had lined up for 24 and 25. I had to ⁓ scale back my travel agency completely. Thankfully, I had done well in the past. So being on my own, I had enough income set aside to keep myself functioning and alive, you know? Because I didn't have any other support. I mean I did, but I didn't have any like financial support. But that whole time, if you have been around, you could probably tell inconsistent content, inconsistent messaging, in like the TA toolbox stuff back in the day, because it was like I I gotta survive. I can't focus on all of this. inconsistent decision making. And I'm still coming out of that shell. So I've only I'm only eight months post Limbic system being treated, and then May I started getting the MCAS flare and I was officially diagnosed end of July. So that is still something in progress that I'm being treated for from a physiological perspective. and thankfully I am in treat like I'm getting treated for that, and the medication is working fantastically, and I feel like the last 10 years never even happened. But I have like thinking back these last two-ish years, I was not being inconsistent because I had to rebuild exactly who I even was. I had to rebuild where I lived, what my house looked like, what my life looked like, and how I managed everything. And I had to get that emotional regulation in check. And I didn't want to do it with medication. So it took a lot for me to get. treated in a way that it's never going to affect me again. But that is proof. If you have been around since the TA Toolbox days, you probably know, like, shit was not consistent back then. Like, and that was right when TA Toolbox was like on the verge of like really taking off and then June happened. And I was like, well. So you do not need like Benjamin Franklin's Franklin? Fuenquin. Fuank to tank. Benjamin Franklin's level of tracking to begin. You don't need to go that crazy. I'm just saying, like, notice the pattern here. Start with one area of your life. Like I said, be your own butler. Your morning routine. How do you make your breakfast? What is it? How do you set your table? What options do you can have multiple options for breakfast, but like have a menu, a set menu you can choose from. Like you're walking into your favorite restaurant. ⁓ your weekly CEO time. Just block that off to plan your week. Your relationship with rest. That's a big one. you can work Monday through Friday. You also can work Saturdays and Sundays and take Tuesday off. If you like you can have your office hours in your email and on your calendar, but you don't have to necessarily work a Monday through Friday, nine to five. If you want to work more evenings, more power to you. If you want to work super early in the morning, great. I do my travel agency stuff because I am an early bird. From like 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. And then I go into the elevate stuff. And I'm usually wrapping that up around eleven, other than like filming this podcast I do in the afternoons. And then I'll take my lunch break, come back to it, check my emails in my travel agency. It's a different day than what I originally set up with my time blocking. I don't start at 8 a.m. I start at five AM and I've learned like and I'm fortunate enough to have zero kids, no spouse, no pets. I have I'm alone. You know? So I can get up at five AM and be like, la la la, I'm just gonna work ⁓ but you can build it out your way and you don't have to be super duper strict about it. And if you need to take a break on a Tuesday or a Thursday, whatever, and take a rest, as long as you don't have any appointments on the calendar or any deadlines that you gave yourself, don't worry about it. But if you do need to rest and you do have some deadlines, make sure those deadlines are met, make sure those up calls are done, and that's the only thing you gotta worry about for that day. But you wanna build consistency in these little tiny things first before expecting consistency consistency to show up automatically everywhere else in your business. And this is why I have the success circle be fifty-two weeks because I don't want to inundate you with all of these different principles and be like, try this, try that, try this, try that. I want you to like test things out, do things and slowly build the habits. And some of those weeks I do come back, I'm like, Hey, you doing that habit? Let's do a little refresher here. I'm trying to help you is what I'm saying. I'm not just like, ⁓ here's this magic framework. No, it's like let's build your business. Alright, tomorrow we're gonna build ⁓ even more on this by getting specific about your actual leadership style, which we've talked about before. Not the generic ideal. I've just gone over the different leadership styles, but the one that's generally genuinely yours to step to. Step two? Step two? Now I got a Leah stuck in my head. It's been a long time. ⁓ shouldn't have left you without a dope beat to step to. Now that song stuck my head. Alright, have a wonderful day. I will see you tomorrow.