Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 207:Are you the Owner of the Steward of your Travel Agency?
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency Near Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K, travel agency owner. This podcast is for travel advisors who want to step into the CEO. Time. don't know what else to call it. If you would like to know about more about how I can help you, head on over to elevate with Rachel K.com. I've got some courses. I've got well I don't have it on the website yet, but in my brand new freebie, because I'm just like guys, I'm running a travel agency and this at the same time. In an old pump. So I think like a week or two ago I launched soft launched. freebie called Know Your Numbers. And in there is an opportunity for you to apply for highly customized one-on-one mentoring, not just a one-hour coaching call. Very structural. I used to be a personal trainer years ago, so it's like if you hired me to be the personal trainer for your business, essentially, is what that is. Anyway, we've got that. We got courses. We got Live QA's in our courses. Or you can just listen to this podcast. I don't care. All right. Are you the owner of your business or are you a steward of your business? Ooh. Do you tie your identity fully to being a travel agency owner or a travel advisor? Or are you merely merely a steward for that agency slash that current position you are working in your life? So this is kind of building on from way back in I think it's episode two five. T way back, two episodes ago, where I talked about the mindset of like watching someone else copy or replicate what you've built. And I mentioned something I want to kind of like bring back today. Your relationships and your lived experience, who you are, cannot be copied, even if your content can. And I wanna go under underneath that idea to something even more foundational because the real reason it's so painful when someone copies your work usually isn't about the content itself. It's about identity. Back in that episode I was like, there's two ways you can take it. You ask yourself this question, is this hurting my business and is it hurting my ability to generate revenue? Or is this hurting my ego? And most people are gonna answer if they think about it honestly, it's hurting my ego my my ego. You're not gonna lose some rando client. and there's so much more business out there anyway. And that's a lot of that's a struggle a lot of people face because a lot of us travel advisors, We have to develop our own brand and it's very hard to differentiate from like who we are as a person and who our travel agency is or any other business you start where it's just you, you know? travel advisors fall into this category. Some, if you are working under another agency, it's a little bit easier for you to manage and you can just shut this episode off. I don't care. others are maybe hosted, but they don't really get that they still tie their identity to their work. And a lot of advisors that I've like mentored lean a little people pleasy. So they're very heavily tying their identity to their business and like any kind of conflict or things can affect them. And also, that was me. Also me until like I think twenty Three is when I really started turning it around in my travel agency. I can't remember if it's twenty-two or twenty-three. Guys, I don't like being the age that I am because I can distinctly remember like 1998 every single day, but like for some reason, 2010 and beyond, I'm just like, it happened in the past. Like I have no freaking clue. I have to like think about like was that before or after I bought my car? Like, hmm, like it's weird. Anyway. I went through the same thing. And it's so, it's such a hard thake concept to break. Like, you are not your business. And I think I've done episodes on this because I see this happening with a lot of advisors. I've had to go through it myself, and we're gonna talk about it today. Okay? Woo! When you default to that ownership mindset without ever like you don't actively choose it, you just go into the ownership mindset as a default for travel advisor, especially when you're like, I'm my own business owner. When you own something, like this is my I have a if you're listening on Spotify, I have a dry erase marker in my head, in my head, in my hand. This is my pen, right? This is mine. I own this pen. And I created it out of nothing in this example. Or let's see. Ooh, no, that's not mine. Mm. I'm trying to think of something. I don't have anything I've randomly created. I've got my notebook. We're like this podcast, for example. This is my podcast. This is me speaking. This is me, me, me, me, me. I created this. I built it from nothing. It is very easy to let your sense of self get quietly fused to it. Okay? And this happens with your social accounts. And this is why a lot of people are afraid to show up on camera. We're gonna do a deep dive over the next few days. So you're not afraid to show up on camera because this Is a reason possibly you should explore. Your business does well. You're the greatest person ever. You're such a badass. Your business struggles, you feel like a big piece of poo. And you feel like a failure personally at the core. And the fusion feels so natural because, in a real practical sense, you did create this business. Your name is probably heavily tied to it. Especially if you're like brand newbie. So many travel advisors start out with their name until they decide on an LLC because they gotta make sure nobody else has that name. So most travel advisors are like, like my first quote unquote travel. business when I was working under under another agency I just went by Rachel K Travels. That's what it was. Because I was like, I don't know what to call my business. But I know my name is Rachel K. So and I know I'm not gonna get sued for using my own name. Anyway. So there's a high likelihood your name is also on your travel business right now. You might have the LLC, but you came up with that name. That's the name of your business baby, right? Your face is in all the marketing, your face is on the website, your voice is in like any captions you write. And there's a difference between having built something and being that thing. When those two merge in your mind, every challenge stops being a business problem and starts being an identity crisis. A slow month doesn't feel like a slow month. It feels like evidence you're not good enough. Someone copying your content doesn't feel like an annoying survivable business occurrence that happens in every industry. It feels like a theft of you. That's an exhausting way to run a business, and it's also a very inaccurate one. Okay? Now, I'm not saying if you're listening to this and you're like, I don't know what the heck you're talking about, I can completely separate. And you will still, even if you're feeling comfortable with the separation of your identity from your business, you may still be like, man, this month, numbers aren't good. But you can get back to baseline much faster. And like the whole goal of being like a mature adult is when you go through the ups and downs, how quickly can you get back to baseline? Okay? and being the business owner and you're so like like I said, fused to it, to your business and it's your identity. Ups and downs in your business, you're like, My life is over, my life is great. You can't you gotta be you gotta be even keeled, man. Okay. So I mentioned owner or s or steward at the beginning of the episode. What's a stewardship? Great question, Rachel. It's a very old concept. If you have any background in faith. Yes, I'm going there, but I'm not gonna I'm not evangelizing here. But if you have any background in faith, you've probably encountered stewardship before. It's the idea of being entrusted with something, responsible for tending and growing it well, without that something ever belonging to you at the deepest level. A steward manages, protects, and grows what's been placed in their hands, but a steward never confuses themselves with the thing they are stewarding. Okay? So, whatever you believe in as a higher power has given you the opportunity of running this business. This is the whole concept over like the next few episodes. It's given you the opportunity of running this business, and you are not, it is whatever's up there, whatever you believe in, the divine. It is the divine's, it is not yours, and you you you do your best to manage and grow it and protect it. So here's how I came to think about this. I like to think of it like everything I do in my day, like I've gone, it makes my life so much easier, by the way. everything I do is because I'm taking care of something that the divine has provided for me. My body. My composure, my diet, how clean I keep my house, checking in on friends and family, running my businesses. Everything I do is because it's been like assignments handed to me. And it's just like here you go, Rachel. You get to do this now. This is your purpose, do it. And you also have to consider this may not be your forever purpose. This isn't your identity. This is what you're doing today. Okay? And it's something that I've been trusted to carry and grow in service of something far bigger than my own ego, my need to be seen as successful, my need to make millions of dollars. No, I'm just the steward. This probably also like got into my brain because I used to be a butler. I I would like treat the estate the same way, like this estate is my task. And when my principal came, I'd be like, the menu is my task. And any kind of like whatever it costs to create whatever it was that he wanted me to do, I would just be like, Here's here's the budget, approved or denied. Okay, I'm gonna go get it. And that's how I just treat all my business. It's how I treat everything in my life, honestly. But the business, the purpose behind it, that belongs to something larger. to the divine mission that y we've all been given. Not to me n not to me, as like The business is not something that belongs to me as a fixed little fragile identity that rises and falls. You know? This isn't about caring less. Good stewards care very, very deeply, arguably more consistently than owners, because their care isn't dependent on how results make them feel in a given week. That's another thing. Pull the emotions out. Of running your business. Like feeling is not permanent. Feeling is almost always an instantaneous reaction and not a response. Especially when you're just like, come I don't know, like super happy you got this amazing booking. Yes, definitely celebrate your wins. And also let that feeling pass, okay? Anyway, good stewards care deeply because it cares not dependent on how they feel. A steward tends to what has been entrusted to them, whether or not they're in the mood to do it, because its well-being was never actually about their own mood in the first place. That's the shift from this reflects who I am. To this is something meaningful, I've been trusted to tend well. This also could potentially, if you like reframe how this business is, this could potentially really help you instill discipline. Because it's like it doesn't matter how I'm feeling this day, it doesn't matter who I'm mad at or what I'm happy about. I've been entrusted to care for this because this was given to me by the divine and it has a purpose much bigger than me having a fun, fancy lifestyle, or whatever, or stress, or like conversely, like me having a lot of stress or me winning awards or me getting all these trips or whatever. It's bigger than that. I'm not full asking you to fully rebuild your episode mindset in one episode, sorry. It takes a lot of practice, so we're gonna spend the next few days like building it out further. I just want you to notice honestly which posture you tend to default to. When something goes wrong in your business, does it feel like a business problem or does it feel like proof of something's wrong with you? Entrepreneurship is a mirror, and it's not, I'm not saying like nothing's ever wrong with you, because there could be things wrong with you, and that's yet another reason why you've been entrusted with this task. Because the divine is like, you might need to work on this a little bit. So it's not all one or the other, but if it's all like I'm the worst or I'm the best. If you lean towards those extremes, like I'm the best in the industry, or I'm the worst in the industry, or all the time, every single time, that might be you're leaning more towards an owner and fused identity with your business rather than steward. Okay. There's no really wrong answer here though. we all default to the ownership more often than we want to admit. Like the whole stewardship idea. That's a practice for me. And there are days where I feel like absolute shinola. And I'm like, I have to get this done. And maybe it doesn't it gets done, but it's not exactly in the way I wanted it to look in the morning. You know what I mean? But I tell myself I gotta get this done. I'm not perfect at it. Nobody's ever gonna be perfect. But noticing is the first step to separating yourself from your business and have your own identity. Okay, we're gonna get into why this distinction matters so much for your day-to-day stress and worry tomorrow. Because we're all pretty much sole owners. I mean some people have VA's and things. Some people might have ICs on their team. But you're also like the owner. But carrying your the business as the sole owner versus carrying it as a steward definitely feels completely different in your body. Not just in like theory, but like let's do an instant vagal nerve, vagus nerve reset by being like, I don't need to worry about this so much. I just need to get it done. All right, that was day two seven. I will See you tomorrow for day 208. Travel agency in a year. Ever belonging to you at the deepest level. A steward manages, protects, and grows what's been placed in their hands. But a steward never confuses themselves with the thing they are stewarding. Okay? So, whatever you believe in as a higher power has given you the opportunity of running this business. This is the whole concept over like the next few episodes. It's given you the opportunity of running this business, and you are not, it is whatever's up there, whatever you believe in, the divine. It is the divine's, it is not yours, and you you you do your best to manage and grow it and protect it. So here's how I came to think about this. I like to think of it like everything I do in my day, like I've gone, it makes my life so much easier, by the way. everything I do is because I'm taking care of something that the divine has provided for me. My body. My composure, my diet, how clean I keep my house, checking in on friends and family, running my businesses. Everything I do is because it's been like assignments handed to me. And it's just like here you go, Rachel. You get to do this now. This is your purpose, do it. And you also have to consider this may not be your forever purpose. This isn't your identity. This is what you're doing today. Okay? And it's something that I've been trusted to carry and grow in service of something far bigger than my own ego, my need to be seen as successful, my need to make millions of dollars. No, I'm just the steward. It's probably also like got into my brain because I used to be a butler. I I would like treat the estate the same way, like, this estate is my task. And when my principal came, I'd be like, the menu is my task. And any kind of like whatever it cost to create whatever it was that he wanted me to do, I would just be like, here's here's the budget, approved or denied. Okay, I'm gonna go get it. And that's how I just treat all my business. It's how I treat everything in my life, honestly. But the business, the purpose behind it, that belongs to something larger. to the divine mission that y we've all been given. Not to me n not to me. As like The business is not something that belongs to me as a fixed little fragile identity that rises and falls. You know? This isn't about caring less. Good stewards care very, very deeply, arguably more consistently than owners, because their care isn't dependent on how results make them feel in a given week. That's another thing. Pull the emotions out. Of r running your business. Like feeling is not permanent. Feeling is almost always an instantaneous reaction and not a response. Especially when you're just like come I don't know, like super happy you got this amazing booking. Yes, definitely celebrate your wins and also let that feeling pass, okay? Anyway, good stewards care deeply because the cares not dependent on how they feel. A steward tends to what has been entrusted to them, whether or not they're in the mood to do it, because its well being was never actually about their own mood in the first place. That's the shift from this reflects who I am to this is something meaningful I've been trusted to tend well. This also could potentially, if you like reframe how this business is, this could potentially really help you instill discipline. Because it's like, it doesn't matter how I'm feeling this day, it doesn't matter who I'm mad at or what I'm happy about. I've been entrusted to care for this because this was given to me by the divine, and it has a purpose much bigger than me having a fun, fancy lifestyle or whatever, or stress, or Like conversely, like me having a lot of stress or me winning awards or me getting all these trips or whatever. It's bigger than that. I'm not full asking you to fully rebuild your episode mindset in one episode, sorry. It takes a lot of practice, so we're gonna spend the next few days like building it out further. I just want you to notice honestly which posture you tend to default to. When something goes wrong in your business, does it feel like a business problem or does it feel like proof of something's wrong with you? Entrepreneurship is a mirror. And it's not, I'm not saying like nothing's ever wrong with you. Because there could be things wrong with you, and that's yet another reason why you've been entrusted with this task. Because the divine is like, you might need to work on this a little bit. So it's not all one or the other, but if it's all like I'm the worst or I'm the best, if you lean towards those extremes. Like I'm the best in the industry or I'm the worst in the industry or All the time, every single time, that might be you're leaning more towards an owner and fused identity with your business rather than steward. Okay? There's no really wrong answer here though. we all default to the ownership more often than we want to admit. Like the whole stewardship idea, that's a practice for me. And there are days where I feel like absolute shinola, and I'm like I have to get this done. And maybe it doesn't it gets done, but it's not exactly in the way I wanted it to look in the morning. You know what I mean? But I tell myself I gotta get this done. I'm not perfect at it. Nobody's ever gonna be perfect. But noticing is the first step to separating yourself from your business. And have your own identity. Okay, we're gonna get into why this distinction matters so much for your day to day stress and worry tomorrow. Because we're all pretty much sole owners. I mean some people have VA's and things. Some people might have ICs on their team. But you're also like the owner. But carrying your the business as the sole owner versus carrying it as a steward definitely feels completely different in your body. Not just in like theory, but like, let's do an instant vagal nerve, vagus nerve reset by being like, I don't need to worry about this so much. I just need to get it done. All right, that was day 207. See you tomorrow for day two eight, travel agency in a year.