Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / DAY 289 | Travel Advisors: Stop Competing and Start Supporting Each Other
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K, travel agency owner helping you build a business. I want everyone making at least $300,000 a year in commissions. SCO SCO. Today you don't know what that means. It's it's it's from King of the Hill. Anyway. If you want to know how I can help you, go to elevatewithrachelk.com. Today is day 289. Stop in the mean girl's attitude. Thank another travel advisor today. If you're ever caught in the Facebook groups quietly tearing down another TA, or you see TAs just attacking other TAs, and I'm gonna do my best not to. 'Cause I I see it. I see it so much. I see it and I hear about it. Like even on fam trips, the exclusivity mentality. Please don't be this person. we're gonna this episode's about knocking it off. And don't worry, I go there too in my brain. I'm like, no, stop it. Stap it. So back on day two twenty five, we talked about talking about like legal stuff. Ideas and strategies are not ownable. Okay, so I think when that episode was recorded, there was this chick who used Fruit Loops or something in a recipe as a creator and she had a cookbook. That had this recipe in it, but also she kind of ripped it off someone else, maybe. I don't know that part. But she had a cookbook and there was a recipe that called for like some kind of cereal, like Fruit Loops. And another creator was like, hey, I'm gonna try this recipe. And this creator was like, I own this recipe. And it's like, I think it was found out that she in fact did not own it, but because she put it in a cookbook, she tried to do a cease and desist. And that happens. It sucks so bad because people do fully copy someone else's content. And it's really frustrating and I've seen it recently, like when I do my doomy scrollies on TikTok. I've seen a lot of specifically like black American creators and they'll be like, I made this two years ago. I made this piece of content. And it'll just show just like I'm not trying to be racist here, but just like white people, verbatim, and some of them even get the exact same outfits and like create a different background or like the identical background and do everything the same. Just repeating the content. there is common law trademarks and it's really hard to fight those sorts of things. It's anyway, it's a big old mess. So we talked about that on day 225. We talked about how comparison tends to work from an incomplete picture of someone else's business. And there's another layer worth naming. And it's the competitive, comparison-heavy dynamic. Between advi advisors that serves nobody. Not the advisors that get caught up in it. Not the industry's reputation with the public who notice when a professional community treats each other with visible pettiness rather than mutual respect. And I s I see it. I feel like there's more of a mean girl mentality. And I'm not I know I'm not the only one, because we've talked about it before. in the success circle, just kinda like that feeling. so I know it's not just some crazy idea of mine. Like there is a lot of mean girl mentality in this industry. And I can't quite figure out what it is, like why the why behind it, but it's not supportive of women. It's anti-women, it's anti-empowering, and it's not cool. Okay? So yesterday we talked about the not only celebrating your personal wins, but celebrating the wins of your competitors. The vicarious reward. It isn't just a fun little brain fact. It's an argument against this pattern. If you are celebrating someone else's success and you're doing it like real deal holy field, it can produce a real felt positive experience in your own brain. That meme girl's instinct isn't just unkind toward the other person, it's actively depriving. you of an experience that would have benefited you too in favor of a much less satisfying feeling of comparison or superiority. And this you can tie to like mindset before I get into the rest of my notes in this episode. And I've been thinking about this as well. Like when you have a block and you are like let's see I'm trying to think of a good example. I'm gonna use an example of someone I have worked with and I'm going to Try to be as anonymous as possible for them. So this person was highly specialized in a specific industry. And we were talking a while back about how they don't understand why it feels like everyone else is doing so much better than them. And it makes them mad because they'll see their stuff and or like their direct competition stuff and be like, well, why are they so much more? And I talked to them and I said, well, first of all, you don't know their full business, which we've talked about, day 225. you don't know how much business they're doing. And a lot of the only the only information you can really get is like the vanity metrics, right? but secondly There is a block for you if you think they have this because they are doing all I don't know, there's something special or magical about them, or they're evil or unethical, something like that. And that's I don't remember this agent's personal thoughts about anything regarding that, but I do see that like the whole, if you have a certain amount of money, you must be unethical. That's blocking you from being able to receive up to that amount of money. Which you can be fine with that, but that might be your body might feel the same way about like a hundred million or billion, which seems like such an astronomically high number, but your body may also feel that way and perceive like 300,000 as like that's in that space. And when your brain I don't know if this is neuroscience, but this is more like mindset y energy stuff, limiting beliefs. But if your brain goes into that meme girl's instinct, is like, they made this much money, and you can't celebrate their wins. And let's say they made, I don't know, $10 million in commissions. And you're just like, well, that's just unethical because you aren't seeing the whole side of their story. But maybe a year prior they made three hundred thousand and your little what's going on with this person started peaking in your mind, then you might have that uncomfortable, you're not allowed to have that much money. I hope that makes sense. It does. It doesn't, because I just had to say I hope that makes sense. Anyway, so Thank another travel advisor today. Here's your assignment. Thank another TA. Not a competitor that you're trying to outdo. But someone whose work you genuinely admire. Well, and you can thank your competitor, honestly. Like, thanks for keeping me motivated because I want to kick your ass. That doesn't sound very nice. But like, thanks for keeping me motivated. You are doing so well. I want to be, like, I want to be your competition and make it kind of friendly. Any other agent that you genuinely admire, or maybe you learned something from them, or someone who's supported you, or all of the above, make it specific, make it a sincere message, and apply all the outreach principles from day 238. Make it all about them, be specific, keep it short. So if I let's see. I'm kind of ooh, excuse me, niching into something where I don't even know who my competition really is yet. I vague understanding of who my competition is. for my specific business model, my travel agency, I can't find anyone in the US doing what I'm doing, but it's like blowing up in other countries. Super sequit business model. but if I were to thank somebody today I made back when I first started doing destination weddings, I made Will Medina kind of like my nemesis in a nice way. Like I wanted to get on his level slash surpass it. and I wanted to do it as quickly as possible. to show people. I don't know what his messaging was with his coursework. I ne unfortunately I never got the chance to meet him because the second I was like going to be at the award ceremonies that he was at, he passed like just maybe a month or two prior. So I would like to thank him. For giving me that motivation. And I don't know if he was teaching advisors to dr to have that silly hundred K a year dream. I hope he was teaching them that you can be so much more than that. because I don't like that being touted in the industry. I think it keeps a lot of advisors small to like make that a dream income. but I would like to thank him because if it wasn't for him, Doing what he did with his business. I like, I don't remember how many weddings, I think I saw a Travify video interview. And he's like, I do I like 30 weddings a year. And I was like, That's my goal. Minimum 30 weddings a year. And I wanted to differentiate by adding in full wedding planning. Be like, I'm gonna plan 30 weddings a year and do the group travel, and then I'm gonna meet him, be like, you have been my motivator, thank you. I'm not buying your course, but you motivated me. So that's who I would think if I were standing on a podium for one of the awards I've won. Be like, thanks, Will. today in the industry, like I said, I've pivoted niches so like a complete 180 is a totally different business model. I can't even find anyone that does what I'm doing in the US. It's pretty, pretty new type of business model for travel. So I'm not gonna talk about it. But I don't know who my competition would be. Anyway, who would I think? I'm just gonna go through this episode. Be my competitor, my imaginary competitor that I would have thanked years ago, and I never got the chance to, so I'm doing that now. Someone whose work I've genuinely admired. Hmm. Someone whose work I've genuinely admired in the travel industry. I really do admire. Shout out to Well, there's so many. So with my host agency, I don't know if I want to name names because then it'll expose my host agency. Da da da. hmm. Someone I genuinely admire and learned from and have been supported by. Travel advisors. Okay. This is hard. Okay, so I admire a lot of travel advisors. And I've learned from a lot of travel advisors. I would also like to thank Cassie. She's someone I genuinely have learned from, admire, and I've been supported by through the deepest, darkest night of the soul. And rebuilding from there. Anyway, so something like that. Specific message. yeah. This doesn't need to be a one-time gesture either. make it an ongoing practice. And it gosh. Deborah, if you know, if you know, you know. Deborah's like, I'm not listening to your podcast. Everyone that's been in the success circle, I really do. I've learned a lot from all of you as well. Anyway, okay. Make this an ongoing practice. Engaging and supporting other advisors, their content, their milestones, real comments, real shares, congratulations. it's kind of hard with the algorithm though to be like, I totally support you and congratulations, because then different algos might be like, this content is for travel advisors. So that's kind of hard to do. Just don't do the passive silent scrolling. I like to always like I'm always saving on my social media rando travel advisors I've never met. I'll like like and comment their stuff just to be like, I support what you're doing, man or woman. But I'll also save their stuff. Because then if I really know their niche and who they're serving and I get something like that and one of my agents on my team cannot serve them, I might just reach out to them and be like, hey, would you like this lead kind of thing? I'm a big fan of that too. This is why I think you should highly, highly niche down as well, because it takes away the ability to be like psychotically competitive with one another. And if you specialize in I'm gonna call one of my people out Excellence and finest weddings in Riviera Maya and Cancun area and you get a wedding request for something in Grand Cayman, but you've networked and you know, then you can refer that Grand Cayman wedding instead of making your life difficult unless you want to write that challenge into your story, I don't care. But an industry where advisors are really supporting each other tends to produce more referral relationships, more shared knowledge, and frankly, a pleasant professional life for everyone involved, including you. Competitiveness is great. Comparison should give you a wake-up call as to what you need to be doing for your business, like tweaking your services, right? But when you get to like the mean girl side of things, like I've had agents on my old TikTok account, they're the only ones that have criticized my content. It's like, why are you even doing this? Go make your own money. Like why are you like I'm doing fine over here. But that doesn't serve anybody. If anything, it just helps boost their stuff and the algorithm if you're like, your camera angle is terrible. I've I've literally gotten that from people. I don't understand why your content would even appeal to anyone. Because it's not for you. So send a specific and real thank you to another advisor today. Build those ongoing active supports. with other travel advisors into your regular practice, not just the occasional gesture. And I know a lot of you are doing that. Like you have like your groups that you're forming where you're like, yes, this is our trust ecosystem. And I wish it could expand to just like the entire industry. But you know, there's always gonna be some bad apples. Tomorrow we bring everything together and we talk about champions. Champions! Why? When they win, they don't get excited. What? What do they feel? Disappointment? Stay tuned, subscribe, and get tomorrow's episode dropped to your phone or whatever. Tomorrow morning, six AM Central Standard Time. Have a wonderful day.