Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 246: Build a Simple Travel Agency That Feels Like You
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K, with Elevate with Rachel K, travel agency owner, helping travel advisors really build their business and stop doing what everyone else is doing when the majority of travel agents aren't even making a living wage. Okay? Stop it. I'm like mind-blown. Today's day 246. Keep it simple and keep it. You all about Raising Kane's story and why it's fine to stay simple. Don't need to complicate things. This is one of my favorite stories. I just learned about this a few weeks ago, and I was like, that story's going into the old podcaster Rooney. So you can learn something awesome too. Because it's such a direct and stubborn. By the way, if you don't know me, I am also pretty stubborn once I'm like, I'm doing this. Like this podcast, I'm doing three hundred and sixty five episodes in one year. But it's a direct, almost stubborn example of trusting a simple idea and trusting your gut over conventional advice. Todd Graves, the founder of Raising Cane, Z first pitched the concept for his restaurant as a college business plan. A fast food restaurant built around a single item, chicken fingers. No burgers, no salads. No expensive expansive, sorry, menu. His professor gave him the lowest grade in the entire class, specifically because the concept was too narrow. At the time, the broader trend among fast food chains was like adding more menu items. We need salads and ranch. This is like supersize me time. So they're like, we better have something quote unquote healthy. Never mind, it's just a bag of salad with a pound of cheese and ranch dressing on it. It's healthy. Do you guys remember the pitas from Wendy's? I worked at that was my very, very, very first just turned sixteen job. And I was the sandwich maker. And I hated making those pitas. And I remember the nutrition menu and I was like, this is like the least healthiest thing on the menu. But this is also when I like Would you like the biggie sized? Anyway, neither here nor there. But they all these companies at that time wanted to appeal to more customers and avoid what the professor called the veto vote. Where all where one picky person in a group is like, I don't like that and then they steer everyone towards a different restaurant entirely. Graves didn't take that great as the final word. He believed that being able to execute one thing this is like the importance of niching down, and not just niching down to I do destination weddings, but now I have to have knowledge of thousands of resorts. Pick a handful of things you know deep. And it's like that in any niche. Like if you niche in Europe, pick three countries you know very well. Don't pick all of Europe. Anyway, executing one thing better than everything anyone else was a stronger foundation than trying to be everything to everyone. And here's a real life TA example. I do not know this TA, but I remember someone telling me about them years ago. This travel advisor, I think, ended up retiring during COVID. And like moving to Paris or something. That's what I remember about this man. He only sold sandals. And not only did he only sell sandals, he only sold one sandals property. That was all he sold. He made around four to five hundred thousand a year. You can do it too. It's the same thing as this Raising Canes story. Decades later, Raising Canes has grown into one of the largest and most successful chicken restaurant chains in the entire country of the United States. Built almost entirely around that simple, narrow menu, the professor was like that's not gonna work. Get with the times, dude, be a visionary. So, what made the simple version actually work? The lesson here isn't simple ideas are automatically good. It's that a simple and very narrow offer, executed with real excellence and consistency, can outperform the broad, more conventional approach that spreads focus thinner across more options. This is such a good story reflecting on the importance of niching down, but going deeper than just I do cruises. What cruise line? What fleets? What are your favorite itineraries? Go deep. Get narrow there. You can have the option, if you want to, to expand a little bit and be like, okay, well I'll do this line. Or okay, I'll I'll do this. I like this fleet too. I don't mind it. Or I I'll I'll expand to this itinerary. But the more narrow you go, the more specialized you become, and the more excellent you become at it. Okay? Simplicity was not a shortcut for graves. It was a deliberate strategy that let the entire op like operation focus obsessively on doing one thing extremely well. So if you've ever felt pressure to like broaden your niche, you know what I'm talking about. When some rando BDM comes out of nowhere. And it just plastered all over social and was you should totally book this. This is the new trend. Maybe add more services or try to appeal to a wider range of travelers because that feels like the safer and more conventional business move. This story is worth remembering. A tightly focused travel agency doing one kind of trip or or one kind of client experience exceptionally well. Can be far stronger and more memorable business than a broader one trying to be reasonably good at everything. And again. This is something that I was doing when I interviewed to be a travel agent way back when I was still a butler. I was like, I only want to do destination weddings. And I remember that agency that I think is out of business now was like, What? You offer everything to everyone. Nobody does destination weddings. They hate destination weddings. I was like, I've been in the wedding industry since I was nineteen. I want to do destination weddings. And then I kind of got crapped on because I was hyper focused on destination weddings. and it did scale tremendously. Like I tried to do with that travel agency, I tried to listen to the conventional advice. I tried to be everything to everyone. And then when I went on my own, I was like, screw this, because they didn't even want me to charge a fee. And I was like, I have to charge a fee because I offer planning services. And then when I went out on my own, I was like, I'm only doing weddings. That's it. I did my repeat clients. I still serve the repeat clients from way back in the day. But I was like, I'm only focusing on weddings and getting really good at it. All right. Keep it you. This connects to everything that we've covered across this entire batch of episodes. Your story, your leadership style, your mission, your specific way of doing things. A simple, narrow, genuinely you version. Just do you. Don't worry about what anyone else else says. We all have free will. You can live your life. You can wake up every day and be like, I'm gonna change myself. Y do it. It's you. It's your life. But the genuinely you version of this business done with real excellence is a completely legitimate and often more powerful path than trying to be broad enough to appeal to everyone, trying to do all the things because you're being told this is what everyone else is doing. The professor was wrong about the chicken fingers. Trust your own read on what makes your agency genuinely, distinctly yours, even if it looks smaller or narrower than the conventional advice suggests. I was actually just talking to an agent today that I'm mentoring and they were like, I have this crazy idea and they were talking to their mom about this idea and they've been toying with it and they're like, How do I do this? How do I do this? And I woke up to their WhatsApp messages and I was listening to them and I was like, I've been kinda like pushing her in this direction for a minute too. I'm like, do this But I d I I don't wanna be mommy. I don't wanna be mother goose about it. but then I did some quick research and I was like, Mm, yeah, there it's not a huge population in the US, but there's about fifty thousand households that would absolutely love this. So you have fifty thousand people you have to target. And of those fifty thousand, you're probably gonna get, I don't know, five or ten of them, and no one else in the industry is doing this. And she was like, Yeah, but no one else in the industry is doing this And I was like, Yeah, no one else in the industry is doing this. This good completely change your life and there are people out there who are desperate to have this happen and you are the one bringing it to So do something different. Do something different. Do you do something that really resonates with you? That's gonna be the best way to build your business. Okay. Sorry. Trust your own read on what makes your agency genuinely, distinctly yours. Don't worry about conventional advice. If you have any questions, if you're a student, like show up to the live Q<unk>A's. If you're just a student of any of the courses I've ever made, they're every Monday. If you are in the success circle, every Monday and then every other Wednesday, come. Share your idea. I'm happy to help you with it. And I'll be like, this is insane and not realistic, or this is a legitimate thing you should explore. And by sane, I mean like I've had some people that are like, I want a niche and something I know absolutely nothing about. Like a very specific niche and one that doesn't make sense in the travel industry. And I'd be like, mmm, you need to go get No, I don't know. Maybe. Anyway. Have a wonderful day. I will see you tomorrow.