Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / DAY 298 | How Travel Advisors Can Protect Focus as Their Agency Grows
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency in Year Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K, travel agency owner, who is helping travel agents through this podcast and some other things that I do, like one on one mentoring or the success circle, which has now transitioned at the time of recording to quarterly groups, instead of just join joining all willy nilly. Makes more sense. You can head over to elevate with rachelk.com if you have questions, but let's in the meantime listen to this podcast because the goal is to get you into multiple six-figure revenues. All right. Today is day 298. Maintaining your flow as you scale. Flow and neurodivergence. What works for your brain? Every brain is different. Even if you have the same diagnosis as someone else, you might be a little bit different, okay? your flow and your natural rhythm gets sacrificed in the name of a professional structure that was never really designed with you in mind. So we're gonna talk about protecting that in today's episode. So what is flow? There is a well-established psychological research on this, most associated with a name I cannot pronounce in my notes here. Psychologist Mill Howley. That no, this is like a Russian name, but Let's do it Midwest American bordering on southern. You know the Ozark out accent. Mehali Shiksimhali It's a long name. Let me spell it out for you. See if you can pronounce it. It's probably Zed Mali, but it's C S I K-S-Z-E-N-T-M-I-H A L Y I. if you'd like to comment the phonetic pronunciation of that I had a I've yeah, that's a that nope this just says a tahi Anyway, that psychologist, we're just gonna call him Dr. No, Dr. C. Studied and named the state of flow, which is a state of complete absorption in an activity where focus, performance, and enjoyment all rise together. Dr. C's research found that flow tends to occur under very specific conditions, clear goals, a good match between the challenge level and your actual skill, and minimal. External interruption. If you know, you know. I talk about all the time. Put your phone on do not disturb. All notifications are shut off. You can go as extreme as noise canceling headphones and earbuds, whatever. shutting your blinds in your office window or wherever your workspace is. My brain can get into a state of flow when I have any kind of music playing, because that for some reason I'm focusing on the sound and so I just go into doing the work. So when you're early building any kind of business, specifically we're talking about travel agencies here, you often have so much control over your own schedule in your environment, which makes flow states really easy to access. And it gives you that dopamine because you're like, look at me being a badass, building a business. As it scales though, more clients, more team members possibly, but probably just more clients. More travel disruptions, more trainings, more updating your services, more hiring a bookkeeper and going through all your receipts, that control starts to erode without a decision ever being made to sacrifice it. Okay, it's rarely an intentional trade-off. It's usually just growth happening around you until one day you realize your best working condition conditions have totally disappeared. Like, and that is a big disc discussion about like understanding what to delegate as well. Because you start to see more and more responsibilities with great power comes great responsibility, and you have to take on more than you initially thought and the number of travel advisors I say that a lot, I realize the number of travel a billion travel advisors that I've helped, which is why I've got like a hundred subscribers. No big deal. anyway, a large proportion of travel advisors go into this knowing how to plan trips And really thoroughly enjoying how to serve people. And that's their flow state. And then they get all that stuff done and they're like, I'm ready for business. Doors are open. And then they're like, what do you mean I gotta do my marketing? What do you mean I gotta find leads that aren't friends and family? And then they are like, I don't even know how to get into flow state with this because now you have a whole new skill that you've got to develop in order to generate revenue. which sounds like it sucks, doesn't it? And those of you who are like, all right, well, I'm just gonna do it anyway, and getting business, it's not that bad. It's not that bad. Okay, so for any travel advisors managing like ADHD, ADD, autism, any form of neurodivergence, this matters so much more because and you you might be like me, be like, I'm not I'm not even close to neurodiv I'm totally normal. And then you start getting random stuff when you're doom scrolling that's like you're probably an Audi HD woman, if blah blah blah blah blah, and then you're like, well maybe, maybe. I am a little neurodivergent. We all are. There is a spectrum. But this matters so much more because your specific conditions for focus and productivity may differ meaningfully from a conventional business structures to false assumptions. I will talk about this here in a second with my experience as a butler. but let me finish this: like so, like the standard nine to five. back to back meetings without a buffer to like chill. An open plan, constantly interrupted office environment is harder to work within for someone with a more neurodivergent brain, not because of any deficiency or there's something wrong with you, but it's there's a mismatch between the environment and how that particular brain functions best. So when I was a when I was bottling bottle bottle When I was buttling, I clearly was different from everyone else on the estate staff. Everyone else was about fifteen to gosh, maybe thirty to forty years older than me. And there was only three of them. But that was like I was in my 30s. Everyone else was late 50s to near to should be retired, but they legitimately my god it's insane this one woman was like seventy-five still doing yard work and the estate manager liked having that woman as her as his little pet and so he would just lie to the principal and be like, nope, she hasn't turned seventy yet Anyway, they were all weirdos to me. And they thought, I mean, they were nice, don't get me wrong, but like the way their day was structured was weird to me because we were all salaried employees. And so they would show up around 7 a.m., sometimes nine, just depending on the I think the two women would show up around 7, and then the estate manager might show up around 9. And the estate manager is very boomer old school 9 to 5 Monday through Friday. and they would have a one hour break at 9 a.m. And then a one hour lunch at noon, and then they would have another 30 minute break at like two. And I was like Y'all are getting shit done around here because you're here from 7 a.m. to 3 30, but you're spending, so that's five, eight and a half hours, but you're spending one, two, and a half hours. So you're getting six hours of work done, and half the time getting the work done is just sitting there watching leaves burn, by the way. And I was like, nothing is getting done around here. And I would be hungry, and this is probably like my Ellers Dan Low's dysautonomia stuff. Like I just didn't have an appetite. And so I would get there and I was supposed to be there like nine to five or seven to three. I don't really remember. Eight to four. I can't remember my original hours. And it was like Why am I taking all these breaks? I was like, why don't we get this stuff done? You know, if we get this stuff done, we can get more stuff done and actually take care of this property instead of reading the newspaper for three hours a day. plus I wasn't really that hungry. So then I realized I went to this is a story, sorry, I went to Manhattan maybe like a month in to go learn the ropes from the British butler in Manhattan. And She was like, You're salaried. You don't have to be there eight to four. The principal isn't there. You only have to be there when he wants you there. But you have every right to do administrative things like mm reconciling expenses, you can do that from home. You can do that from home. you have every right to leave and go shopping if he needs new things for the property. You have every right to set your own hours. And if you want to work 6 a.m to 4 one day and take off early on a Friday for it, so be it. You're salaried. And I was like, interesting. So then I started because on the way home I would get stuck behind the school bus. And the school buses in Osage Beach, because this is near Lake of the Ozarks, they were like absolute nightmare mode. Like they would get both, I would have to take Highway 42, and they would get in the left turn lanes for that highway and take up both left turn lanes. And then they would just have this massive because then it like merged into one lane. And so then they would just like have this big convoy takeover. And I was like, I hate these school buses. So I wanted to get home before the school. Buses. So I decided I'd just show up around 6 a.m. and then I would skip lunch so I could leave by 2. And I would just get my work done. Or I would I can't remember how I did it. It was something to that effect. It was like 6 a.m. or 6:30 to 2. And I would just skip lunch many days so that I could be my primary thing was beating that school bus nightmare convoy. because then I it was it was like a forty-five minute commute on like one lane highways with buses stopping every ten feet. No thank you. That w that turned it into an hour and a half on the way home. So I didn't quite fit in there. I don't do the nine to five. And sometimes I'd be like, you know what? I'm gonna take Friday off and I'll come in on Saturday. And that made the estate manager so mad because they were like, How dare you not work when I'm here? It was so weird. But clearly I was the problem. Anyway, as you build out your delegation and your systems, that was sorry. That was that was me explaining the mismatch. So as you build out your delegation and systems, we've talked about doing the audits, I think it was day 258 to 263. protect the specific conditions that let you do your own best work. If you do your own best work in uninterrupted blocks of time or particular time of day when your focus is the sharpest, or an environment that looks nothing like a conventional office. this isn't an indulgence. It's input into the quality of your actual output grounded in research on how your focus and performance works best. So for me and my travel agency, I like to move around like when I'm working. Some days I will work from my desk. That is very rare. I do not like to be at my like I literally o anymore only film my podcasts at my desk. So I do have a day bed in my office and I'll work there because being hypermobile, being reclined is much easier for me to work. Some days when I'm really, really sick, I gotta work from bed. Some days, most days, I prefer to work from my living room. And I like to have music playing, or I like to have a podcast going just to have that like noise for some reason that helps me focus. I have considered in recent weeks just going out to coffee houses like once or twice a week because I like the noises. And if you know anything about human design, which I am Catholic, I don't believe in this, but it and it's an interesting correlation. Something about my chart, my environment is market, so I need the hustle bustle, noisy, noisy, noisy of everything going around me, and that just puts me into a flow state, which is an interesting coincidence. If you are gonna build your team and bring on team members or hire out any contractors, consider structuring their responsibilities to protect your own flow conditions rather than working against your own flow. So if someone else is handling your interruptions, someone else is putting together your calendar, gosh. I yeah, I just need someone to tell me what to do. Like for me having to sit there and be like, all right, what's most important? And writing out everything each week and then I mean that's kind of fun. But then like maintaining my calendar on the daily after that, I'm just like, just do this. All the admin and tech stuff. Mm. It's not my cup of tea. I like to create the content and like the creative side of the travel agency. Anyway, figure out what works for you. anything that threatens your deep focus windows, delegate that ASAP. Even if it's like you can't afford much, so you have to use an AI agent. Do that temporarily. I would prefer not to stick with that long term because it would be awesome if you could provide jobs, right? So this can support both your scaling goals and the way your brain does its work best. Dr. C's quick recap: flow research shows that clear goals, again, you have to get clear on your goals. Well-matched challenge. Don't try to take on something you don't know what you're doing and not quite ready for. Do the baby steps, like in the book We Should All Be Millionaires, and minimal interruption for you. Produce the best focus and performance. Scaling can erode all of them if you are not deliberate about. Maintaining your flow state. So even if you're like scaling on your own and you're like, I don't have an AI agent to handle all this stuff, okay? Block time off every day, two to four hours a day if you can, and that's your flow time. And that's where you get everything you need to get done, done. And this is super important for anyone that's a little neurospicy because your optimal conditions are gonna differ from sitting in a conventional office and like putting in a coligan water cooler in your kitchen and just like talking to your dog to be like, so how's the weather? I mean you can do that, but that might that might be a thing where you like have to role-play that you're in an office because of your neurospicy brain. you might find that you work best at night and you don't want any morning appointments. That's how I am. I don't want to talk to anybody, preferably if I can swing it, before 11 a.m. I will talk to people until 78 p.m., but I want to focus on working on my business while I'm having my coffee and getting myself ready for the day rather than customer stuff. Okay. Tomorrow's episode is gonna be entrepreneurs who built awesome businesses because of their neurospiciness, not in spite of it, because I don't want to hear any of you saying I can't do this because I got a squirrel brain. You can do it. You just have to do it a little bit differently. Have a wonderful day. I'll see you tomorrow.