Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / DAY 281 | Giving Back as a Travel Advisor: Why Generosity Helps You Too
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome back to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K, a travel agency owner and mentor for you. If you're a travel advisor riding the struggle bus, sick of getting burnt out and feeling overwhelmed with all of the things just thrown at you, this podcast for you is for you. This podcast for you. So this podcast is more about like business, mindset, leadership, just things to consider because you should be able to build your business your way, not someone else's way. All right. If you have any other questions, we are opening, or we just opened up our, sorry, I'm recording these in advance. We just opened up our Q4 success circle group. The next round will be January. But if you would like some custom one-on-one mentoring, you're welcome to schedule a call with me. Just head over to elevatewithrachelk.com and poke around there a little bit. And anyway, we're gonna get started with this podcast. Today is day 281. Giving back isn't just good for your business, it's good for you. So yesterday, we did the give more than you take. Which I've been a huge fan of forever. Like you like fill your cup first and then give as much as you can. So we talked about the research on reciprocity yesterday. We're gonna go a little bit deeper because it's not just a smart business principle. And I want to reiterate the idea of pretending to have charitable attitudes is not going to help you in any capacity. So we're gonna talk about this from like a personal perspective. Like you gotta be in it to win it. And it is tied to your own happiness if you are pursuing it that way. Like From a genuine standpoint, not just like, look at me, I donated this, you know. And it needs to be separate from anything that comes into your business. So my notes here say there is a study in the Journal of Science. I don't I don't that's not noted right. Anyway, there's a study. Researchers, Elizabeth Dunn, Laura Acknon, and Michael Norton, and they found that spending money on other people produced a measurably greater boost in happiness than spending the same amount of money on yourself. Even though most participants, when they were asked at at the start of the study, predicted, well, I'd be way happier blowing the water myself. And this wasn't like a small or isolated effect. It it held up across different amounts of money and in different contexts. It's not just about money though. We're just that study just happened to revolve around giving money. And then there's this other phenomenon called the helper's high, which I think I am addicted to. It's fine. it was a term popularized by Alan Lux or Lux. I can't pronounce anything. I just read a lot. After he was setting some volunteers, he was describing the measurable physical and emotional lift that many people report after helping others. Which was like a real felt sense of well-being that shows up consistently enough to be treated as like a genuine psychological pattern, not just that's a nice little sentiment. You know? So there are two sides to this coin. And I would recommend, and we're gonna get into that in a little bit in this episode, if you are like already in burnout mode, your cup is empty. So just consider this down the road. Don't make this an obligation. Make sure your cup is full first. Because you can't overflow if you're like just draining. Mmm, think about that. So Giving back can come back to you in business terms. That was what we talked about yesterday. Today's episode is a little bit different and I think far more important. Giving is good for you even if nothing comes back at all. So, if you've been thinking about generosity purely as a straight-up marketing and growth strategy, sit with this for a second because the well-being benefit is very real and super immediate, regardless whether or not you get a referral or a repeat client. Okay? So As a travel advisor, you are in an industry built around helping people access something genuinely meaningful for them, like real experiences, real memories, and content connection, learning about new cultures. Even if your niche is like resorts, all-inclusive resorts, you could be like, they're not learning about cultures, it's like totally Americanized. And also it gives them the opportunity to make friends with people at the resort, other guests, staff members themselves. And then you can learn about that staff's culture. if you are, let's say, if you were a client and you live on the East Coast, you could meet and connect with someone at that all-inclusive resort that's from the Midwest that has a completely different cultural experience than you, even though you're both US citizens, right? Anyway, because you have this type of business, you are already in a position that most industries don't even have. Like your actual daily work involves some form of giving. And and you can expand it. Like if you're in any service-based industry, you are giving something, right? And then, if you layer in additional generosity, like if you support a nonprofit, genuine community involvement, real client appreciation, that is something that compounds upon part of your work's natural structure. And again, there is real tension with this. So, like I said earlier in this episode. If you are already on the verge of burnout, don't beat yourself up if you're like, I don't have the capacity for this right now. And this is something I've struggled with: with rebuilding my travel agency and restructuring all of this from TA Toolbox to Elevate with Rachel K. It was a big investment. kind of like dipping into my savings to keep things afloat. Not just my personal savings, but my company's savings to make sure that I have this all restructured exactly how I want in both businesses. And at the same time, me personally, I was like going back to church. And I would tithe and sometimes I wouldn't be able to tithe. And I would feel really, really guilty about it. So please don't be me. Don't be old Rachel. So I went back to the Catholic Church and that's you want to give your time, talent, or treasure. Ooh, I'm gonna tell you story right now if you don't know what's going on in my life. So I would give treasure and then I was like, I don't have enough treasure to give. And then the ministry fair opened up right before I was getting confirmed. And I signed up. I was like, I can I can be a lector, I can play the piano at mass, I can join this organization for, you know, young families or families struggling financially with newborns. There were all sorts of things that I joined. I basically joined, if you're Catholic, you'll know, but if you're not, it's fine. I basically joined everything except being a Eucharistic minister. an altar boy or server, like altar server. and the Knights of Columbus, because Knights of Columbus is a men's organization. But everything else was like, I can go help people in need for everything. And I felt really, really good because I was like, all right, I'm gonna be able to give my talent. And then I started going to the meetings while I'm doing all this other work stuff. And then MCAS. So if you don't know what MCAS is, I have a syndrome where my mast cells, like your biggest white blood cells, that just like try to kill off parasites and bugs and stuff. Mine decided that everything could possibly be the enemy. So then I had to just turn into I couldn't go to church. I couldn't go to any of the meetings. Like, even just me playing the piano for fun at home would cause a mild reaction. And now I'm like being treated for it and hopefully going into remission permanently. That's my goal here. Who knows? Who knows? And I had to give up my talent. So now all I've got left to give is my time. And it's not very much time, which is why I steward my businesses for God instead of like my own personal things. Like that's a way I can give back. And that's what I'm doing with this podcast here. I'm not trying to make you a Christian. It'd be nice if you became one, but I can't force anybody. We all have free will, right? but I can give back my time. By helping travel advisors, and also when I am praying, I can pray for everybody. As like that's that's about all I can do right now. So that's what my capacity is to be able to give back and support a nonprofit at this juncture in my life. And so I want you to know if you are struggling with everything else in life. It doesn't have to be money. It doesn't have to be talent that you have. And it does it doesn't necessarily have to be your time. Like you just focus on one. And if your treasure I don't remember the story, but it's somewhere in the Bible. But if your treasure is like you can only give five dollars, then do it. Or if you just find change on the street when you're walking, which that's not happening anymore. But if you were to find some change on the street, just give that away. Like if you have like nothing, give something, but don't worry about it. Even if it's just a little prayer for your neighborhood or for you or your family, like something like that is good enough. You do not have to be at all of these nonprofit gala events. Like don't feel that kind of pressure. Now another thing is when I was building my travel agency up after I left the first agency that I worked for. And I started building my other one up. I didn't have the funds to donate to anything. And I knew, I was like, okay, I know I want to give back, but I don't know how I want to give back. And then when I was making multiple six figures, I was like, okay, how am I going to give this back? And then I was spending time figuring out which organizations I could truly believe in and support at that time. So don't feel like that you have to do something now. Because if you do something now with if you're like riding the struggle bus and you're like, I've got to build this, like go get that bag first. Like you gotta take care of you. Like I said, fill your cup up first. But if you're giving out of obligation or guilt, or you're already overextended and super depleted, borderline burnt out, or maybe you are like unknowingly burnt out, that's gonna produce resentment towards what you wanna give to, which is then gonna further undermine your own well-being and the quality of your giving. So say you feel the pressure to tithe 10%, and you feel like for your church or whatever. And you feel like if you don't do it, you're not gonna be good enough to go to the church, and everyone's gonna know I don't I'm just getting paranoid parrot here over for you. And so then you stop going to church because you're like, I don't want to be seen because I can't give anything right now. That's not what church is for. Like you give back when you can, but it's a community of supporting each other. and if you can't give back right now, just go be with God. Or whatever it is you worship. I don't know. But if you like do it out of obligation, like that's gonna make you not want to participate anymore. And that's gonna keep you away from your overall purpose that you've been put on this planet. Okay, I just went on a tangent. It's fine. It's fine. Okay. So make sure it's sustainable generosity. And what does sustainable generosity require? Genuine capacity and like a foundation of genuine capacity to be able to give, not an empty tank that you're stretching even further, and especially not an empty tank that you're stretching even further to benefit yourself. You need to be giving just to give. Okay. Alright. Recap time. Spending on others produces greater happiness. Which it could be time, talent, or treasure, BT dubs, then spending it on yourself. the helper's high shows that similar pattern for helping more broadly. It benefits you so much more personally, regardless of whether or not you are a travel advisor. And also you need to make sure your own cup is full first, because you have to have the capacity underneath so you don't develop resentment. Right, tomorrow we're going to talk about the discernment of nonprofits. How are you going to choose if you want to support something? and you like if you were me, like in my shoes where I was before like I even came back to the church, and I was like, it's time for me to give back. What do I want to give back to? So that's tomorrow's episode, so that when you are ready to give back with your time, talent, or treasure, you can. Alright, have a wonderful day. I will see you tomorrow.