Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 161 - Becoming the Transformational TA
Transcript
- Rachel K: Welcome back to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. My name is Rachel Kay. Thanks for coming back. You already know who I am. I'm practicing slowing down the Travel Agency in a Year podcast because I say it too fast and the transcripts are be like travel agency? Travel agent sincere? What? I don't know what she's saying. Work in progress, people. Today is 161. And this is yesterday we talked about small tests. And we've been kind of talking about the lessons and the blessings of your quarterly review. So we're gonna go from testing to implementing actual improvements. So testing doesn't mean it's a guaranteed change. It's just a test. This is merely a test. If this were an actual emergency, you'd Being a tornado right now. I don't remember what that whole message is. You know what I'm talking about. ⁓ from the emergency broadcasting system. This is only a test. So once you have your data and your conclusion from your test, then you can make the decision to go with an in full improvement in that area and stick with that. Like this process works. Everyone has to abide by it. I'm I don't have any employees, but if I did, this would be in the employee handbook. This is part of my SOPs now. What can this look like? Because you're like, what are talking about? ⁓ let's say you want to test a new CRM. Because everyone's saying it's a great CRM, it's gonna change your life. And you're like, well, but I already have a CRM. Well, but you can get it at a discount. And you or maybe it's a lower cost, or whatever the reason, or this this CRM changed my life. So You can sign up. Usually they give you a little bit of a trial period. And it's the same thing with courses. Like courses should offer you some kind of money-back guarantee. And you can test it out. Now. You can just test it maybe on one regular client, maybe on yourself. How do you like the workflows? Anytime I onboard any agents onto my team, I tell them create a fake name account called BobTest or whatever the heck. Make the last name test so you know it's a fake person. I haven't had anybody with the surname test, by the way. Make up a fake address. Here's how like practice using the CRM, practice the workflows and look at it from the perspective of your ideal client. Would they like it? If you also want to, you can share it with someone who, like a trusted repeat client, somebody to provide the feedback before you fully implement the improvement of that CRM. Because you may realize, ⁓ this isn't what I want after all. This isn't what my clients want. So what you're looking for there is qualitative feedback. That is more like how do your clients feel going through that experience. Not just necessarily how you feel. The business is not about making you totally happy. I understand. Some people like the pretty layouts and things, but how easier is it for your client? Do they get frustrated by the process? So on and so forth. So that you're looking for qualitative feedback. Okay, even if it's from yourself, like go through it like you're eight years old and you've never traveled before as a test client and be like, is this a nightmare? And compare it to your current process. Same mentality. Another thing that you could be testing that could turn into a full improvement is a new encounting method. That is going to be quantitative feedback because you will see how well you're spending. Like can you manage your budget better with this new accounting method or like accounting service? Or are you losing money? Quantitative feedback is actual numbers data. Like one plus one is two. That's quantitative. Qualitative is this is how I feel about it. All right, another one you can test is your time management, which is both. That's a mix of both qualitative and quantitative data that you're going to be collecting or feedback. So the qualitative is how much more energy do you have? How much more productive are you feeling throughout the week? If you're a woman and you s have your menstrual cycle, like do you have it set up? Are you testing out, like taking it easy towards the end of your ludial phase and the beginning of your cycle? And does that work better for you? That's gonna be like a qualitative feedback side of it. And then the quantitative side is ⁓ how much more you're getting for your time and how much more revenue you're generating for your time. So that's like your time management can be a little bit of both. In case you're wondering, this is gonna probably be a short episode. It's fine. But in case you're wondering, this podcast offers possible variables, independent variables for you. Examples of like what's worked for me, but I'm not you. So I try to offer different ones, like different options because we aren't one size fits all. We are not clones of each other. How boring would life would be? Anyway, but I do talk a lot about what has worked for me and what has worked for like a lot of students I've helped, advisors I've mentored. and usually I like to try to get as like one-on-one case basis with the advisors I mentor as po as much as possible because the way concepts are understood are different for everybody. Okay. Once something has been tested and your data and your conclusion is like this is a good option, thumbs up, make sure you review it and any final refining needs to be done before it's fully launched as an improvement in your business. This is going to be a continuous process. Please know that. At least the review part. Not like don't get into the toxic, like every okay, everything in moderation, people. You get too much into self-improvement or business improvement, it starts to get real toxic because you can't just rest. You can't just be satisfied with what you have, right? I got this fingernail that's like half. It's my middle finger. I was going to show it to you, but I'm not going to flip off the camera. There we go. Okay. You don't necessarily constantly have to be refining everything. Just understand, like, review and monitor the situation. Eventually, once your business is on its own, just like raising a child, once a child gets to like elementary school, you can kind of like Pull back a little bit in the helicoptering and monitoring and be like, okay, they know how to make a sandwich. I can see it from the kitchen that they are making the sandwich. I can see, you know, maybe they don't clean up their mess. I'm picturing a PB and J and just a knife with peanut butter and grape jelly all over the counter somehow. Not terrible, but you know what I mean if you're a parent. and you could just gently say, Hey, clean up after yourself before you have your sandwich. Instead of being like, let me get that for you and like go into micromanaging mode and then have a long discussion about how they need to do better. No, that's like the constant need to refine and improve in your business. You should be reviewing, you should be monitoring, and understand you will need to test and refine things over time. ⁓ and that's just part of being a business owner. If a process is working for you, there is zero need to change any of it. So also keep that in mind. And that is the importance of the review as well. If you aren't continuously reviewing, ⁓ you were constantly being marketing to marketed to, someone's gonna create an imaginary pain point. And if you aren't reviewing your own information in your business, you're gonna be like, Yeah, I do feel that way because you don't see the actual numbers and then they're gonna be like, Well, give me your money. You know what I mean? And then you're like spending too much money and you're drawing like spreading yourself too thin because you now you have all these other things that you're trying to do and you're not managing your business. So if something's working for you, no need to change it. Okay. Practicing all of this regularly is going to help you develop a transformational leadership style because you're going to be able to spot when someone needs improvement, what how you can do it, how to be more adaptable, how to be handle things under pressure rather than constantly having to turn to someone else to fix your problem. And that is a Really good skill to develop, especially if you want to scale to the point where you have like VAs or a staff of some kind. Conversely, if you don't want to scale, it's going to help you step in as a leader for your clients. Because guess what? As a travel advisor, so many misconceptions. People seem to think that it's like planning trips, funsies, no big deal. It is primarily sales, marketing, and leadership. Because when your clients are feeling stranded and don't know what to do, you have to step up and calm them down. Period. It's not gonna be perfect every time, but you really need to focus on developing your leadership skills. And your leadership skills reflect in your business management as well. Okay. All right, that's day 161. I hope you found that enjoyable and entertaining and not terrifying 'cause I'm like, be a leader have a great day everyone and I will see you tomorrow.