Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 85 - The Travel Advisor's Quarterly Review
Transcript
- Rachel K: It's the Travel Agency in a Year podcast and we are on day 85. We are on the quarterly review. Is it the end of the quarter? Yes, technically it's about five days out from the end of the quarter. So this episode is what you need to listen to if you're doing your first quarterly review and maybe you're not in the success circle which teaches you how to do this and have all the data ready. No big deal. $35 a month. sign up. But maybe you're like, I don't need a quarterly review. No, no you don't. But also it's good to track your data. Whether you are... trying to get in better shape, whether you are trying to hit financial savings goals. If you're doing all these things in your personal life and you track the data to stay on track to hit your goals, why aren't you doing this in your business? ⁓ I don't know. Let's talk about the quarterly review. So hopefully you have three months of reliable data across your quote unquote departments. and some ideas for tweaking. Now here's the biggest issue I see with travel advisors is they can't get the needle moving revenue wise or sales and marketing wise because they always are like, I need to tweak this, well I need to tweak this. You do not need to tweak everything right away. Please think of this as like a science experiment and your mission statement is essentially your hypothesis that you're testing. Okay? And so your CRM, the social media platforms, your ICA, ⁓ your niche, everything are like the variables of the experiment. and you're constantly testing if I post this type of content will I get this type of ICA who will spend this much money and I will get this many trips and bring in this much revenue. If you're doing a science experiment, you have to collect the data too. So same thing. If you aren't tracking how many people are actually looking at your content, engaging with your content, converting into a warmer lead via a lead magnet or even signing up for a consultation, and then further converting into clients, what's the sales of your bookings, what's the revenue generated from your bookings, how many bookings are you averaging based on how much you're showing up and spreading the word about what you do. You're always going to have ideas for tweaking. you need to just kind of like, I would say, just make a note of it on a weekly basis. Look at it once a month. And then move it to the next month. And then at the quarterly review, that's when you can make a decision of yes or no. You can make these decisions for tweaking on a monthly basis. But make sure they're short, under 15 minutes, tweaks. If it's like a complete CRM overhaul, that's probably an annual review decision. If it's education investments that you want to make, that's probably a quarterly decision. Like, do you have enough revenue to A, hit all the goals in your business, pay all of your expenses in your business, pay yourself, pay your taxes, and also make the investment in this course. So it's kind of like, Let's say I don't know your financial background, but let's say you have problems with spending in general and you're like this year I'm going to overhaul my budget. And one of the big tips is if you are one of those like impulse shoppers, just go window shopping and not purchase anything and then sit on that. Or like I remember I don't have any tattoos, but I remember people saying like, if you're to get a tattoo, draw it on yourself and permanent marker first and see if you like it and do that for like a month or two before you actually get the tattoo. because that's not permanent. So you can write the idea down. You can kind of research it a little bit, but don't every single week or every single month just because someone's like, ⁓ there's this new product and it helped me. So therefore you got to get it. That's a big FOMO thing and that's going to turn into a big spending problem. And then you're going to be like, yeah, I made all this money, but I have nothing to show for it because I gave all my money away. Same thing, don't make your decisions every week. Conversely, you could just be spending money and not doing any sales and marketing because you're like, ⁓ I have to do this, I have to do this, I have to do this training, I have to set up this workflow, I have to do this and da da da da, and you're just not getting any business in. This is not about a complete do-over when you do a quarterly review. You're going to stick to your annual plan to the best of your abilities. It may be small tweaks like, ⁓ I need to take this training. Or, ⁓ I need to watch the recording of this webinar that I signed up for so that I can do this. Or, ⁓ I need to slightly modify my marketing and content strategy. This isn't like complete do-overs. You might not have to do anything at all. And then you can just be like quarterly review party, take myself out to eat or something to celebrate. So an example that I have here. My grandma cookies. I spent years, I'm not a grandma. I don't know if I'll ever be a grandmother. I'd love to be a grandmother, hence the grandma cookies. I wanted to some of the best chocolate chip cookies ever so that when I had my grandchildren over or have I may still have some I don't know because my son is grown and out of the house ⁓ that my grandchildren would be like yeah grandma Rachel with the cookies sweet totally want to do sleepover with her she's not weird at all So I started with the Nestle Toulouse recipe. And I was like, meh, it's all right. And then I, oh gosh, I think this is probably back in 2014. I was like. I need to make this a science experiment. I was like tweaking the types of flour, the ratio of brown to white sugars, the ratio of sugar to the overall recipe, the ratio of egg to egg white to egg yolk, brown butter versus chilled butter versus softened butter versus margarine versus melted butter. Like so many different things, like various amounts of flour. Do I want almond extract added? Do I want a little bit of cinnamon? Like am I gonna toast? I don't like chocolate cookies with nuts, but if I add nuts am I gonna toast them? What am I doing? Just semi-sweet? Am I doing semi-sweet and milk chocolate? Milk chocolate and dark chocolate. How am I doing this? And I finally figured it all out. I think 2016 and I wrote it down and I was like, these are the perfect cookies. And then I forgot. I lost the recipe and I forgot and I was like, no. So I had to go back to the drawing board and I think I got it down again in like 22. And I was like, yes. And now that cookie recipe, I don't need the recipe. It is in my brain because the ratios are super duper easy. I know exactly what to do. I need one bowl. I need one wooden spoon. I need one 1 quarter measuring cup. And then I eyeball the salt and baking soda because I don't really care. But it's the same thing in your business. You have the general plan. And you might want to experiment with adding a little bit of spice, a little bit of tweaking. The outcome is still chocolate chip cookies. And maybe... In your travel agency, your chocolate chip cookies are coming out cakey. Oh shoot, my original recipe has too much flour. Maybe I should reduce the flour by a quarter cup and see what happens next time. Let's try that the next time I make cookies. Same thing with your travel agency. Oh, I'm sending too few or too many emails in my newsletter. Let's decrease to two newsletters a month or let's increase to two newsletters a month for the next three months and see if that changes anything. Okay, I do recommend when you are doing your quarterly review, blocking off an entire day so you can focus on where you've been, where you're going, and any new tools that may help you to continue on your path and evaluate said tools because most likely they're gonna come with an investment at least of your time, if not your time and money. and then make decisions on when to implement said tools. You do not have to do it immediately for the next quarter. You could say, okay, let's pretend you're doing your first quarter review, like Q1, and you're like, okay, this is a great tool. I'm going to invest in it at the end of Q2 or halfway through Q2 and learn how to use it and fully launch it for Q3. Conversely, start in Q3, launch in Q4, or Q3, launch for the next year. It just depends on what the tool is how much time it's going to take, how much money it's going to cost to invest. You need to factor all that in and compare it with your financials and where you are in your business before you make this decision. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Any kind of trainings, any kind of changes will take time. Don't force yourself to cram it all in at once, but I'm known for that, so it's fine. I get it. You're probably going do it too. But even with like couch to 5K, you don't start out of the gate running a 5K. You start by just getting off the couch and walking for 15 minutes. It's the same thing with your business. Anyone that's like, I can transform your business in six weeks, they're, nope. I hope no one's saying that to you. It can't be totally transformed. Don't forget to celebrate your progress. even if it's the tiniest progress, say you are brand brand new and you had zero trips and you got two trips in three months, congratulations. Or you've been in it for a few years but you've really kind of like sucked at your marketing, that's okay. And now you're like being consistent and doing it and you go from like two trips last quarter. and now you've got six trips booked over this current quarter. Like that's something to celebrate. Yeah, it's only four trips, but that is like a 300 % growth or something. I can't math. Even just one new client is progress. Setting up and implementing a social media marketing strategy is progress. Getting five new followers is progress. technically. Because you're growing your audience, hopefully that will convert two leads to clients. Sticking with a new boundary that you implemented is progress. Celebrate that you are doing something. If you want to liken this, like back when I was a personal trainer, I would have clients that were typically over 40 and I did a lot of functional fitness training and a lot of them be like, I want to be super buff or super fit, bikini model, whatever, male or female. And I'm like, well, you're not going to get that. You are 50 years old and you've developed some nasty habits. You don't even know how to move properly yet. It's going to take some time. So when we would do our quarterly check-ins, it was usually around 8 to 12 weeks, we would do like, let's do your measurements and what your fitness levels are. We would celebrate. You couldn't even do a push-up again. Like you could barely do one against the wall when we first started properly. And now you can do 20 on your knees. You're almost ready to start doing push-ups, like full push-ups. And that was just in three months. You were 50 years old, and it took you two to three months to have that much progress that you haven't been able to achieve before. That's a very small win, but it compounds. Alright, review your habits and strategies during your quarterly review that have led to growth as well as any roadblocks keeping you back. And this could be mindset things. This could be the way your schedule is working out and trying to manage your work-life balance. Maybe things aren't working how you originally had them planned. Those are little tweaks that you can take and make. I like to treat myself to like a dinner out. You could do like a mani-pedi, massage, ⁓ a nap. Give yourself an extra day just to rest. This is why I recommend the extra week off each quarter. It doesn't necessarily have to be you traveling on vacation. It can be you just like resting at home and enjoying the life that you're building. ⁓ What was I going to say? Give yourself an extra day to rest, treat yourself. if you are doing the profit first method also, this is the time when you would give yourself your quarterly distribution, quote unquote. I say quote unquote because it doesn't really apply if you're LLC or not LLC taxed as a sole proprietorship. It's different from being taxed as an S-corp. S-corps you can do quarterly distributions and put it all on payroll. With sole proprietorships, it's just all passes through. But hide that money from yourself, and then be like, woo, I got an extra however much money I can reinvest in the company, or I can treat myself, or I can do both. Also, during your quarterly reviews, set or revise any new short-term goals. And remember, you're working backwards. So, way back in the beginning when I was talking about establishing your business plan and your annual goals, your annual review, this is like day two or three. Sorry, not sorry. I always say start with the big picture, what do you want to happen at the end of 12 months and then work backwards. if you want $100,000 in revenue, I'm just gonna do it again in this episode. $100,000 in revenue. Let's do $120,000 in revenue. It goes math. I'm trying to make it easy. I'm writing this down in my notebook and I was like, I can't divide 100 by 12 in my brain evenly. Let's make it 120. And let's say you get $1,000 per trip in commission fees, whatever, average. So you need to book 120 trips. You need to book 10 trips every single month. You need to have ⁓ gosh, man, you need to join the success circle because I tell you how to break down all these numbers so you have realistic goals. So have you booked 30 trips in the last quarter? Maybe you've only booked 15. Maybe you've only booked 20. So that means the next quarter you've to do a little bit of an extra push. And that's OK. You're going have to work a little bit harder. Maybe call some former clients up and be like, hey, do you want to do another trip? That's not that hard. And you could get an extra trip. So that's what I mean by setting or revising new short-term goals. If you aren't quite hitting the metrics you had, or let's say you're like, I don't really need $120,000 a year. I really only need $96,000 because that's divisible by 12. And I've already booked 40 trips. because you're in wave season or whatever. So now I only have 56 trips left to focus on for the rest of the year. Okay, I need to focus on, I can focus more on tweaking my workflows, whatever, I don't know, instead of so much marketing. I can continue my marketing path and know that I will hit this 96 trip goal, 96,000 revenues, revenues, I don't know why I said it like that. And I can also start to implement this workflow that I wanted to add because I'll have more time. Something like that. Alright, so that is the gist of the quarterly review. I've mentioned the success circle like three times in this episode. If you're not in it, it's $35 a month and we go week by week on learning how to manage, track your data, create the systems that you want to have in place in your business, how you're going to market, where you're going to market, and we do go over the quarterly review and I have workbooks for everything so it does drip out week by week so you aren't inundated with a bunch of stuff to do. It's about two hours of work a week and the first week is a nightmare because I'm like, let's look at how crappy you are with the annual review right out of the gate. How much money did you actually make? Did you spend it all on stuff you're not using? People do that too much. All right, so that is day 85 quarterly review. The next few days, we're going to have a little quarterly retreat episodes. So I hope you enjoy that. Anyway, if you like this episode or if you have someone that's like, I don't know how to keep track of anything, send them this episode. Don't know why you haven't subscribed yet if you are not subscribed. And I hope you have a wonderful day. And see you tomorrow.