Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 243: How Leadership Styles shapes Your Travel Clients' Experiences
Transcript
- Rachel: The Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K with ElevateWithRachel K.com. If you have any questions, I'm a travel agency owner and I'm helping you all actually become the CEO of your business, not just make a hundred thousand in commission a year, because that's barely a living wage if you have no financial support other than you. We're talking like actual business here, okay? Day two hundred and forty three. Your leadership style and applying it to content co content I what what Rachel? Starting to get tired. Applying your leadership style to your travel clients. Boom. Nailed it. Not editing any of that out. If you're new to this podcast, I don't edit anything out. I just I don't edit. I don't use special lighting. I don't use stupid things on the YouTube screen. No. I you're just listening to me. So we've spent the last several days on leadership as it applies to your business, your team, building yourself leadership first. Today we're bringing it somewhere more immediate how your leadership style shows up in the way you work with your actual travel clients. Ba-pa-pa! Because you are leading your clients too. You don't just manage their bookings. This is why I went and got a degree in leadership studies, people. It's so important to building a business. Planning a trip well often means guiding the client through decisions they don't have the expertise to make confidently on their own. Or maybe they're little sassy pants and think they know everything, and you're like, heh, nope, that's not reality. You gotta lead them, right? That is a form of leadership, even if it's rarely framed that way. Your natural leadership style shapes how that guidance actually feels to the person receiving it. So I've talked about ICA and niching down and your leadership style now. I want you, hopefully you have your ICA thoroughly written out in your brain or on a piece of paper. To the point where you can picture that individual ideal client avatar in your head, and there are zero demographics, and you know their middle name, you know their rising sign. That's how well you need to know your ICA. You're like, what's a rising sign? That's neither here nor there. Moving on. how would that ICA resonate with your leadership style? Because you might need to tweak your ICA just a little bit, okay? But they should be pretty well aligned. And are they going to respect your leadership style? So the hands-on mentor with clients tends to walk clients through decisions step by step, explaining the reasoning and teaching along the way. A client working with this style often comes feeling more, like comes out of the situation, feeling more confident and more informed, not just handed a finished itinerary. If you lean or have like a stronger aspect of hands-on mentoring, you probably are the type of person to be like, this is why I chose this, this is why I chose that. And the toxic side of it could be you're people pleasing. And you're like, doing the J, justify I don't know. The A means justifying, defending, and explaining all of the decisions. So if you if you feel like you need to justify, defend, and explain yourself, that's probably not an aligned client. But if you're like, okay, this is why you're doing this, you're that you're kind of a hands-on mentor. The visionary with clients tends to present a big, strong, clear recommendation with confidence. Here's what I book, and here's why. Similar to the booking strategy approach, gosh, we've discussed months ago, leaning on a clear point of view rather than an open menu of options. The visionary is very important, especially if you are doing good old destination wedding niche. You need to and when you are niching down, this is why it's important to niche down, not only be like, I do destination weddings, but also now I know everything about 700 resorts, or gosh, there's thousands of resorts you could do weddings at just in the Caribbean and Mexico. That's not niching down enough, by the way. But if you know like three to five brands really, really deep. And with destination weddings, they need your help to create the vision. You probably need to lean a little visionary and be like, here's what I would book and why for you as a couple. Here's my top recommendation. Okay. That's also a good type of leadership style if you're niching into any kind of major milestone travel, whether it's group related or individual. The relationship first leader with their clients tends to build a sense of partnership and warmth first, making sure the client feels genuinely cared for and heard throughout, with logistics feeling secondary to the relationship itself. So that's like really, really, really strong active listening skills. A lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of empathy is involved. And that's really good for an agency owner that wants to maintain that boutique and slowly like the boutique model that we've talked about, not the mid-size, not the entrepreneur scalable model. not scalable, like the full size. Ladies and gents, I'm batching all of this, so I'm getting a little tired. I've been talking for like an hour and a half now. Anyhood, we're gonna get through this together. what was I saying? yes, the relationship first leader with clients. That's good if you want to keep it small and you want to like grow with your clients. like say you start doing a handful of weddings or honeymoon travel, and then you can grow and build that relationship. If you gosh, I'm gonna have to remember this. I'm probably gonna forget. It's fine. I don't have a pen. Like in the Know Your Numbers guide we talk about this, like having people go, Don't worry, I got a handy dandy piece of paper here. What is this? Day two forty three. Okay. Okay, got it noted. But in the know your numbers guide, we talk about like the lifetime value of your client. And in the actual course videos, I talk about like if you are low budget right now with your booking value, you can always shift to higher budget and then lead your clients. leadership, what do we know? It's coming up again. You can lead your clients from the budget bookings to the mid-tier to the luxury and high-ticket bookings over time. And the The relationship first leader would be really really good at nurturing people and establishing really really high lifetime gross profit, like long-term gross profit with their clients. The systems first leader. tends to offer clarity and structure, very clear packages, clear timelines, clear next steps, giving clients a real sense of order and reliability throughout what otherwise can feel like an overwhelming planning process. Like I don't know, planning a wedding. If you have strict deadlines and be like here, you gotta do this at six months, this month, this that this at three months, da da da da da da That's a really good way to get into the destination wedding sphere along with the visionary side. And then you can do a little bit of hands-on mentory, or you can do the relationship first leader. And yes, I'm referring to destination weddings because that was the majority of my business for a long time. Get over it. Think about it for your niche. So none of these are better than others for client work. A client who wants a strong recommendation might feel supported by a highly hands-off systems first approach. While a client who wants clear structure might feel overwhelmed by an intensely personal, relationship-heavy style not paired with real organization. A perfect example of this, I was on the phone with my aunt Sharon and she was talking about her financial advisor. And she said, He's a lovely guy. I have zero reason to be friendly with him. I wanna call and ask, I need to transfer these funds around or I wanna move this money around. And it ends up being fifteen minutes of him building a relationship with me. I don't know how to tell him I don't care about this. Like she cares about him as a person, but she doesn't wanna talk shop. She doesn't want to talk about what her kids are up to. She just wants to get this done and move on with the rest of her day. And that's a very good example of someone who wants clear structure, get it done. This is how you do it. And they don't want that heavy personal relationship. Understanding your own natural style helps you notice and adjust with your ICA and a specific client, maybe. What they might genuinely need, or when they might genuinely need something a little bit different from your default mode. Okay. So if you are like, I'm very relationship-first, and I do destination weddings. And they don't want a friend, they want someone who's a little more serious and has like strict deadlines and isn't all like mushy gushy and like this is gonna be the best day ever. Maybe you need to amplify the system's first side or the visionary side and be a little more authoritative. Maybe I don't know. But anyhood'll Whatever your style is, the biggest factor in client trust remains being consistent consistent. Showing up the same reliable way, trip after trip after trip, client after client after client. Just like any other business in the entire world. Your style is the flavor. Consistency is still the foundation underneath it. Okay. What was I gonna say? Guys, I'm getting tired. I'm getting tired. Thanks for listening today. I feel like I was gonna add something else. It's fine. And when you do change your leadership style, because I have had to do this in the midst of like 30 different weddings. So roughly 3,000 people. I had to change my leadership style and I had to change how I did things. Because I was leaning a little too much relationship first. I'm gonna be your bestie, everybody. Even grandma coming to the wedding. When you hit three thousand people to serve annually, you don't have time to be everyone's bestie. So I had to be like, this is the system. And I had to communicate it. And I was like, don't worry, I will be consistent with this and I have to stop this because there's no way I can do this for everyone. I am at max capacity and I have to go a more efficient route. If you want to sit and chat with me, just book a call with me. Also, I'm never available. Just kidding. I'm only available if I'm gonna make money. No, I'm kidding. So tomorrow we're gonna expand on this leadership even more. So much about leadership and connect it to something bigger, how this leadership can shape your business. Mission statement. If you're here 240 some odd days in, you're like, I don't even have a mission statement. With real example. Ooh, I remember writing this Chick-fil-A. I don't care if you hate Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A, the founder, is something to aspire towards in leadership and business. All right, that was day 243 of the Travel Agency to Year podcast. I hope you had a wonderful day, and I will see you tomorrow. And yes, I'm gonna continue filming, but I'm gonna take a break and get me some water and wake up a little bit. Have a great day.