Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 168 - How a travel advisor cuts off the employee mindset
Transcript
- Rachel K: Welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Kay. Thanks for coming on back. If you're brand new, feel free to hit that subscribe button to get daily notifications. ⁓ episodes do drop daily over here for at least the first year. It's just one year. We are working on another podcast that's going to be more interview style, but this is specifically for travel advisors that are like, I need help understanding how to run a business. And I'm not spending five thousand dollars giving it to somebody else who, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know. Like I need help and I need to understand the concepts of operating a business, not posting something on social media, right? That's what this is for. Although we do talk about marketing a little bit. ⁓ today is 168, 168, and it is all about shifting from the time equity to the judge equity mindset, which is super duper important. Okay. Anyone who's self-employed almost always comes from an employer, employee. Like you worked for another company at some point. From unless you are like fresh out of college and never had to work. Chances are you were an hourly wage-based or salary wage-based employee for somebody at some point in time for the bulk of your career until you started going into travel. I do coach and mentor some advisors who have been self-employed. That's not like that's not the norm, okay? In my experience, most people are like, what do you mean I'm in charge of running the show by myself? Okay. And so you go into this with an employee mindset, which means your effort equals value. If I sweat and work hard for eight hours, then I've earned my money. Doesn't matter if I earned a hundred dollars or a hundred million dollars. That would be really nice though. Like you just think I have to earn my money. Okay. And if you you might also think about this like some people, like in their early childhood, maybe your parents stress like you are valuable if you have good grades and if you have perfect attendance and if you do X, Y, and Z. That also kind of like creates this type of mindset. But most likely it's just working a job. Working in a regular job. So when travel advisors first start out, it takes forever. Your very first trip takes forever to research and prepare the proposal compared to what you where you will be in like six months in, twelve months in, several years in. Those of you listening that have been doing this for like a year plus, and you know your niche, you know what you like to sell, you know which brands. are best qualified for your general ideal clients, like your general audience clients that you serve, you know? looking back at your first trip request when you're like, ⁓ I gotta do all this training. ⁓ god, this proposal's gotta be perfect. Even if it was like your parents. You're like, huh We all went through that. It took forever. And now you're like, ⁓ another trip inquiry. Pay my invoice for my fee. And here's your three options. And it takes like 20 minutes for you to close it and get them to deposit. Like we all have that mindset. But here's the issue. When you scale and you still have that time equ equals equity, like time effort equals value thought pattern in your head. And maybe you're only doing like one trip a day, which that's still great. Five trips. Let's say a five hundred dollar average commission per trip, that's twenty five hundred a week. That's not you're not doing terrible, you're doing a hundred thousand a year. So maybe I need to redo my math. ⁓ but if you're doing that, like you're doing just fine. But now it only takes you like 15 or 20 minutes to get those throughout the workday. ⁓ and you don't celebrate that. You don't say, look at all this time I have. I can market and get more leads and I could be booking two trips a day and making a thousand dollars a day in commission. And fees if you have fees, right? And we all know we don't get paid until after everyone travels. I get that. But still, I like to when I was building up my group travel stuff. And I'd book all these rooms and I remember talking to my friends and I'd be like, ⁓ my gosh, if I actually got paid for the rooms I booked today, I made three thousand dollars today. That's something cool. You know what I mean? No, you don't know you don't know what I mean. Celebrate that. Like when you get a commission, be like, That was an extra two hundred and fifty bucks. No, I won't see it for four months. But if I got it today, I would have made two hundred and fifty bucks today. Anyway, so instead of being like, woo, I have all this time in my day, I can focus on myself, I can focus on my family, I can focus on generating more business, doing more marketing. ⁓ there's like a subconscious wave of guilt, especially if you start charging fees out of nowhere and it's like a premium and you're not used to it. And then also collecting a massive commission on a fast booking. Like I don't even I will tell you at the end. But ⁓ you f it makes you feel kinda like a fraud 'cause it's quote unquote too easy. So then you're like, hmm, what else should I do before I send this proposal or whatever? Then you're like, hmm, this is gonna be a fast six hundred dollar commission or three hundred dollar commission. I don't know what you sell. This is only gonna take me like an hour and I have all my workflows in place. So this is like gonna be maybe 90 minutes of my life serving them from start to finish. What if, and this is a big what if, but I still have the rest of my day open. What if I tested out a new proposal software? Or what if I decided to redo my branding before sending this off? Or what if you send it off and then you're like, hmm. I think I need to tweak all my workflows. Like this happens. I did it. So many advisors I work with have done it or in the process of doing it right now. And the chances are you're gonna do this, especially if you have that employee mindset. And why do we do this? Because you gotta make sure you earned that money. Gotta make you you gotta feel like you earn that money. Okay. What I did when I had like twenty five weddings booked, I was like, hmm, everything's pretty well streamlined. Hmm, I think I'm gonna completely switch CRMs in the middle of this. Instead of because I'm not good enough, so I better level up my service with a better CRM. Now I still use that CRM to this day, but it was a poor time to choose to implement it. Cause I was like, I had I did have people helping me, but I was like, no big deal, everybody. I'll set this all up. And so I would instead of Getting more weddings and booking fifty weddings that year. I was like, nope, gonna tinker with this new CRM for like two months or something ridiculous. 'Cause I didn't feel like that I had earned that. When I realized I if you just do the math, like twenty five weddings, like f average ish fifteen thousand dollar commission. I mean, I know I was breaking I was going to do over three hundred thousand in revenue that next year, and so I was like, Better work to earn it, better upgrade my CRM. CRM upgrade did not need to happen. And I chose to do it anyway because I didn't feel like I was worthy. Because I hadn't put enough time into that amount of money. Cause in my head, I was like, you're only worth like thirty bucks an hour, you know? And I was making far more than that, granted, down the road, but I was making far more than that. And you're probably gonna run into this too. So let's decouple the labor from the leverage. So time equity is getting paid for your labor hours. Judge equity is getting paid for the speed and accuracy of your decisions. And I'm gonna tell you a tale that I know has been told so many different times, at least like when I was in business school stuff, whatever. I've heard this story so many times. Maybe you haven't, but let's talk about it. As an example, CEOs get paid far more than like the sales managers or the employees, and people are like, that's not fair, you can't do that. However, can the lowest position, like the entry level sales rep at a massive multi billion dollar company, do they have the skills to make judgments quickly to lead everyone beneath them? Like if they were at the top as a CEO, can they judge that quickly? And can they be can they make good judgments? That is why there's such a huge pay grade between CEO and like entry level positions in a lot of companies. You are paid not for your ability to sit in a desk for forty hours a week. You are paid for your brain, your your ability to judge, your ability to make fast decisions. So when you start Freaking out and think you need to completely overhaul your business because you're actually generating decent revenue. You are in the employee mindset and it's time to step into the CEO mindset. Now, we're gonna use this story, like I said, the analogy of the master mechanic. So, there's this massive factory and one of their machines goes down. So they're like, we need the best mechanic in town. And he's got a company, this master mechanic has a company, he's got people under him that can do it, but the company is like, No, we need you. And he's like, fine. And it's after hours. And they're like, We need this now. This is gonna ruin the economy for the city. No one's gonna be able to work. Kind of stressful mentality. And he's like, Alright, fine, I'll come out there. And he walks in and he walks up to a valve. With his hammer and he goes Couple places. Machine springs back to life. And then he hands them an invoice. Because this is an olden days fable. ⁓ you can pretend it was emailed if you're like, what do you mean people hand wrote invoices? First line item, tapping with hammer, one dollar. Second line item, knowing where to tap, nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine dollars. Total ten thousand dollars. And that's just the mechanic. Like, I know people have judgments about different positions. Like, even travel advisors are like, ⁓ that's a fun little project, isn't it? Anyway. No, this is a business, sir or madam. ⁓ Same thing with a mechanic, same thing with plumber, same thing with any small business owner. And it sucks getting that from like friends, family, peers. But I want you to think about that story. Tapping with a hammer, one dollar. Knowing where to tap, nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine dollars. You are the master mechanic for your a agency. Your clients are not paying for your time. They're paying for you to save them time. It doesn't matter how long it takes you, they don't have to do it at all. They're buying your years of mistakes, your industry relationships, supplier relationships, all the ASTA meetings or like conferences you attended to build those relationships. All of the trainings that you've done, all of your experience failing. as a travel agent, over and over again, because yes, you're s you can still have your doors open and you can still have failures and that's okay. But that's what they're paying for, because you've curated a strong sense of judgment. Okay? Just like if you head on over to elevate with Rachel K dot com, you can check out the courses. We have live Q<unk>A's with every course. And you can listen to all the mistakes I've made because I don't want you to make them. And when you have a mistake and you're like having it come apart because I have this happen in our lives, and people are like, ⁓ this happened and my life is over. It's like, no, your life's not over. Here's here's what I did when it happened to me, and I also was terrified, but Just know it's not done. ⁓ Alright, so Let's no longer leverage your time and your labor. And let's focus on leveraging access to you. I want you to list out to get get your dang old notebook. I want you to write down. Physically write it down. If you are new to this podcast, writing things down commits it better to your memory because not on a tablet, because you are physically writing it down. A and B on a piece of paper you can recall it better. Because you see where it was on the paper in your memory, rather than like I said, don't use a tablet because tablets like a never ending piece of paper. So I'm a huge fan of writing everything down. It's so good for your brain. Write down and physically list out Any assets that are not Googleable that you have anything. Did you go on a cruise or what in my experience, did you stay at an all-inclusive resort once? Maybe it was a fam, maybe it wasn't, or maybe you've been to this resort three or four times, and you know an amazing bartender, and you know the head of concierge. And you've like friended each other on Facebook or w and then you like WhatsApp each other and you've like built that relationship? That's a non-googlable asset. Do you know anyone like that? Have you built that partnership? What problems have you solved with your past quote unquote failures? What problems did you have to solve with your clients when you felt like it was just like the worst experience ever? And you're like, I'm the worst travel agent ever, ever. But Now you have a workflow implementation from it. To avoid that ever happening again. You have these. These are your non-googlable assets. Just make your list. And then we're gonna talk about the speed. Sorry, I have my notebook down here if you're like watch on YouTube. I'm trying to make eye contact. It's I'm not very good at it. ⁓ anyway, moving on. Your non-googleable assets, let's move on. To the speed. Your speed is a luxury feature. It is not a shortcut. If you can solve a client's problem in like one text. Because you have the right contacts in place. Like you know the right people. If you can preemptively provide information before they even think to ask about it, they don't even have any problems. That's a ten thousand dollar service. Easily. 'Cause your clients d as long as they read. Your clients don't have to have any questions. When you are closing this, instead of like, here's what I'm gonna give you, you could think about shifting to here's what I'm gonna protect you from. So what I would do back when I did, I've shifted out a I did destination weddings. I did a ton of destination weddings. I'm no longer in that niche. I'm pivoting elsewhere, but I'm still doing groups. Okay. But when I would do destination weddings, I would not mention here's what you get with me on the sales call. I would always talk about, and I do this with like I don't like I just signed on like a little birthday group. I had no idea about my group travel process, but I was like, here's what I'm gonna prevent from happening to you. I will take care of this. I will make sure things don't get screwed up with the room blocks. I will make sure any events that you're entitled to per your concessions, boom, it's all done. I will arrange everyone's transfers. I will make sure everyone has their transfers arranged. And they were like, This is freaking awesome And I was like, Yeah because I'm protecting the group host from having to worry about all that. And they were like, ⁓ you just you just solved all my problems because it's like a small birthday group. It's like maybe eight or nine rooms. It's like a nothing burger for me. but I would do the same thing with weddings, with destination weddings. I'd be like, hey, I would review all the budget summaries the day of whatever event coordinators and the wedding team send to you and make sure it's accurate and be I would be there to negotiate where I can. Sometimes you can't, but sometimes you can't. ⁓ so that protects them from spending too much money on their budget, right? With their ceremony and events. I will be the one making sure everyone's aware of how to book and to book into the room block, and anyone that's booked into the room block, they're gonna get, you know, if you have two entrees, they're gonna get the meal selection form. ⁓ I will handle the transportation, blah, blah, blah, like I did with the birthday group. But to protect the wedding couple, like I'm gonna help you with I'm gonna help you make sure you don't go crazy over budget. I can't guarantee it because prices change, right? But I'm gonna make sure you can get as close to your original budget original budget as possible. And to this day, because I have been wrapping up my weddings, for the events budgets, I have never gone over anyone's initial budget. Sometimes it's like within twelve cents of the initial estimate that I provide that's within their original budget. But anyway But I'll make sure you don't sp you don't get hosed. I'll make sure vendors, off-site vendors or their preferred vendors that sign separate contracts, you don't get hosed by them. You know? I'm gonna make sure the day of timeline fits the photos that you want captured. And I will share that with the photographer so that they're fully aware of how you want this to look. And I when I do the day of timeline, I look up the golden hour sunset time and I'm like, here it is, and it's this far into your reception. How do you want this grand entrance to look? And then I send that off to the coordinators. But then I also do all the group travel management protect like this is what I'm protecting you from. People being confused, people booking outside of the block, you losing your concessions, you getting hosed by an event coordinator. 'Cause they've padded their commission a little bit and like fudged the numbers here and there 'cause I've seen that so many times on those budget summaries. And that's how you close it. That's how you close it to charge a premium fee and have premium clientele. Not I'm gonna give you a packing list. That's just that's just basics. Okay? It's not I'm gonna give you a packing list. I'm gonna give you a list of all the restaurants on site. I'm gonna give you a list of all the activities on site that is not protecting them from anything, that's overwhelming them with more information. But it's also helpful information, and it is important to have, but that should be like the base level of service. Okay. When you want to step into that premium mindset and know that it's your judgment and your speed and your accuracy for decision making, shift to Here's how I protect you from this going to absolute shit. Instead of here's what I'll give you. Like, here's how I'll protect you. Here's how I'm gonna help you with your flights. Here's how I'm gonna help you with your pre and postday. You need your pre and postday for a cruise so you don't miss your flights. And you don't miss getting on the cruise ship. I will protect you from this. I will make sure that it's not some janky Airbnb that has. Banquet tables from Sam's Club with a comforter over it calling it a bed. Okay. So the next time you're closing, like a five-figure or a group booking, like a five-figure figure commission or group booking. And you can do it in like 30 minutes. And you already have in your head, I know exactly what I'm gonna offer them. And you already have everything already automated for the most part, to where it's just like send a few emails. And you know, back to the wedding experience, but you know they're gonna book this exact resort, you know they're gonna spend this much money on the events, you know you're gonna get commission on the events and all the add-ons with this property, and you know that this is gonna be a 30 room block. So you know you just made about $20,000 in a 30-minute phone call. Don't ever apologize, don't try to find any extra busy work. Especially if they've like paid you a fee. Don't try to do anything extra to justify it. Sit in the reality that you have scaled successfully your judgment, speed, and accuracy. And you're leveraging that now in your business instead of your time. Okay. So your challenge for today is audit your current like average commission, your fee structure, whatevs, both. And then find where you are capping your price based on how many hours you think it will take you. Because honestly, and I have a whole lead magnet on how to calculate your hourly rate and what the minimum should be and not what you think it should be and you go no lower than that, okay? So need to find maybe there's an area where you're capping, like your fees are super low. Like you're like, I charge $25 per person for a fee. Like, why are you even charging that fee? Like, charge more, please. ⁓ don't worry, I did that. When I first started charging fees, I was like, ⁓ 25 bucks. Because in my brain, I was like, ⁓ Five bucks an hour is worth it, 'cause that was pretty anyway, we're not gonna talk about that. ⁓ But don't calculate any fees based on how many hours quote unquote it should take you. The price is based on the value of the outcome you deliver to your clients. Okay. Okay. All right. That was day one sixty eight of the Travel Agency in Ear podcast. Thank you so much for listening. ⁓ if you know someone that keeps calling you up, that's maybe a colleague in the industry and they're like, Well, I'm gonna do this now. Well, I'm gonna tweak this in my workflow, ⁓ ask ⁓ how's business going? And if they're like, ⁓ it's great. I'm getting like five bookings a week, well, you know, if you just left stuff alone, you could get 10, 15, 20 bookings a week. Here's a podcast episode about it. All right. Have a wonderful day. I'll see you tomorrow.