Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 145 - Resilience is CRUCIAL for travel advisors
Transcript
- Rachel K: Welcome to the Travel Agency New Year podcast. Today is day 145 of the year. If you are new, thank you so much for finding me and joining us. And if you are returning, ooh, that's like, that should be like, anyway, it rhymes with attorney. Anyway, if you have come back, thank you for coming back. My name is Rachel K, your host, and today's episode. is all about resilience. Why would a travel advisor need to be resilient? So there's a number of reasons. First of all, our industry can be pretty volatile over a very, very long term. ⁓ It's not like every three months Mexico's on fire or Jamaica explodes, you know, but things happen in the travel industry. It is... One of the largest just so you can like remain calm about the situation and this is just from the top of my head so it might not be totally accurate. I know that travel and tourism is such a huge component of the global GDP. I think it's like 10 % of the global GDP. So don't fret my pet your career isn't gonna be over if there's like minor setbacks. This is why you need to develop resilience. It allows you to get through any situation. And I am going to give you the Google AI overview of resilience just because I thought it would be hilarious to do. So you don't have to Google it. Resilience is the ability to adapt well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedies, threats, or significant stress. A lot of this will happen just being self-employed in general. and also in travel. Essentially, quote unquote, bouncing back from difficult experiences. involves mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility to adjust to internal and external demands. It is not a fixed trait, but a developable skill involving behaviors and actions. That is referencing the US State Department and the American Psychological Association. That's how Google AI came up with that. ⁓ There are different types. I'm just gonna keep reading this. I have a whole episode written down, but I'm gonna keep reading this, because I like reading Google AI overviews. And I'm like, how accurate is this? So examples and context of resilience, psychological and emotional bouncing back from a job loss, illness, or death of a loved one. That's the psychological, emotional resilience. Physical resilience. Doesn't really apply in this episode's case, but maybe you have suffered from a physical injury or you will. The ability of your body to regain its original shape after being bent, stretched, or compressed. Elasticity. Excuse me. ⁓ Business or economic resilience. So the psychological one, these are all kind of important, but psychological, emotional is important for you to develop as a TA. and the business, a company or economy's capacity to recover quickly from market disruptions or crises. Community disaster risk resilience is the capacity of a system or society to resist, absorb and recover from hazards like natural disasters. We're not gonna do, no. It's not just toughen it out. There's often significant distress going on. So if you've been around in the travel industry for the last five, nope, sorry, I'm old, six to seven years, it's not just toughening it out. When the world shut down, we were all significantly stressed out. 2020 was the year I was gonna be able to quit my butler job, because I had 70K in commission on the books. And I was like, cha-ching. working for myself. Nope. It is a muscle that can be built and ways you can develop this muscle are through self-awareness exercises, practicing mindfulness, self-care and positive relationships, not the toxicity. Nope, nope, nope. Because the toxicity is like crabs in a bucket and they'll be like What do you mean you're doing better? You gotta be on our level. Okay? And it's continuous process. A side note that you're not gonna care about at all. I recently completely changed my spirituality and faith practices, like total 180. And it has been so much more fruitful for me than what I had been doing. And I had the realization. probably two weeks prior to recording this episode that A, I was so lost where I was and B, while I've been going through this new faith journey, I have these moments where I'm like, oh, I'm just like totally perfect and clean. I'm so good. I'm such a good, faithful person. I'm the best. I'm gonna get in heaven. I have these moments. ⁓ And then it's like, but wait, let's peel back the onion a little bit. And then I'm like, ⁓ I'm still a really shitty human being. I'm just slightly not as shitty as I used to be. And so that, it's an exaggeration, but not really, not too far off. ⁓ Where I'm constantly going back and forth like, ⁓ I'm doing so good. And I'm like, ⁓ no, there's still things I need to work on. And it has gotten me through some very dark periods in my life. And it has also had me see how weak I was in past dark periods of my life. All right, so we're gonna talk about resilience a little bit more. From the perspective of entrepreneurs, small business owners, things you can do, things you need to understand to help you kind of strengthen this resilience muscle. 84%, fun fact, of anyone who's self-employed suffers from imposter syndrome. Just take Lexapro. You will have excessive diarrhea, but you won't have imposter syndrome. I don't know what Lexapro is. It's fine. Maybe, what if it's like diabetes medicine? Let me look up Lexapro quick. Lexapro. ⁓ it's for depression. Okay, that kind of tracks in. You may have suicidal thoughts or whatever crazy side effects all medications have, but you won't have imposter syndrome. Okay, please don't just do quick fixes. I understand some people like medication is super duper helpful. ⁓ And also there are some things you can work on yourself as well in conjunction with that medication. That was just a stupid joke. ⁓ But we... Pretty much all of us has imposter syndrome. save this episode, come back to it later when you need to or when you have the time. I recommend writing down a list of things that you've accomplished in your life, even if it's just like nothing to do with your career, okay? Like you rescued a feral cat from behind a dumpster, now it's your cat Marvin. I don't know your life, but that's an accomplishment. You saved a life and you made a friend, a furry friend. ⁓ Any other accomplishments? Like you, A, are starting your own business. That's a pretty, like if you still have it alive and there is still cash flow to keep it running, that is quite the accomplishment. Most businesses fail, I think, in the first three years. Let me look. I wish I had a producer so I could be like Chuck can you Google this for me? Okay 20 to 25 percent of small businesses fail within their first year. 50 % fail within five years, 65 % fail within 10 years. So think about how long you've been around. If you've made it a year, congratulations, you were not in that 25%. That is quite the accomplishment. Out of 100 businesses, 25 of them had to close their doors on average. If you have been around five to like five years, like, You're in the two to five year range. Congratulations, you are now in the 50th percentile of success. And then you have to think also how few people actually start their own businesses. So you are like doing some amazing stuff just by being a travel advisor. All right, so have a list of accomplishments written down, written down. Do you have children? That's an accomplishment. Are you still somehow married to the same person you married 15 years ago? Great job. Not a lot of people can do that. Do you wake up every day? That's an accomplishment without a total sense of dread. There's a lot of things that you can consider as an accomplishment, and I'm kind of just being silly with it. Write down your strengths and your skills. Even if it's not really related to being a travel advisor or being self-employed, I can make the best salsa. I make amazing enchiladas. I'm craving Mexican food right now. ⁓ but write it all down and have a place that you can reference it easily, even if it's just like on one single piece of paper and go get it laminated or something so it doesn't get destroyed and shove it in a desk drawer or tape it to the second monitor you don't use very often. I don't know. And you can refer back to it when you're like, I'm such a fake. If you get stuck in imposter syndrome, The effects of it, if you don't have an exercise like that to be like, I'm a valuable, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me. If you don't have that mentality, imposter syndrome stalls a lot of momentum in your business. And most importantly, it affects your marketing because you don't want to put yourself out there because you don't believe you can do it. You can do it. Why did you start this if didn't think you could do it? Less emotion, more logic. So another thing that you can work on, which we've discussed in other episodes, I have a whole series of like limiting beliefs and fears associated with them back in the like day 74 to 85 or something like that. There's a whole bunch of episodes about that in this podcast. And if you don't, you haven't thought about it, take some time to really explore what are your limiting beliefs specifically. I also did an episode on this with your relationship with money. If you're afraid to charge, if you're afraid to ask for that fee, if you think with your own wallet, not with what's best in mind for your clients, ⁓ those are all limiting beliefs with money. Like you don't deserve this, right? in some capacity. I don't know what your Limit Team belief is, but it's you want to understand your Limit Team beliefs with money because you are worth it. You are worth the fees that you charge. You are worth offering your expertise rather than thinking with what's the cheapest deal. And if you have issues with that, you're going to have issues with being confident presenting your offers and presenting like, Hey, I need this fee upfront. A good way to help figure this out and alleviate any limiting beliefs like you not deserving anything is gratitude's the attitude everybody. Get a gratitude journal or post it notes. don't care. Write it down. I'm a huge fan of writing everything down. It's so important to write pen to paper, not stylus to tablet, not typing in a Google doc. Write down three things you are grateful for and three accomplishments that you did today. End of your day. Three things you're grateful for. I'm so glad it rained because I'm old enough now to say we really needed it. We really needed this rain. I'm so grateful for it. That's something you can be grateful for. ⁓ Anything. Anything you can be grateful for. Especially do this on the shittiest lowest days you're having. where you're like, I'm the worst human being on the face of the earth. Everything's falling apart. You have internet. You have electricity. That's something to be grateful for. You have electricity, hopefully, if you have internet and you're working as a travel. If you're listening to this, you probably have water. You have a roof over your head. Those are three things you can be grateful for right off the bat. Three accomplishments can be as simple as I took care of myself. I stepped away when I started getting frustrated. That's an accomplishment because you're not forcing yourself to deal with unnecessary conflict. You're not giving into that anger or resentment. Another accomplishment could be I created one social media post. I started my content calendar. That's an accomplishment. Do this every single day. At the end of your day, it will give you the best little dopamine hits. that you're trying to get from social media, but you can just get it from being like, blackout, I'm the greatest person ever. And look at all I got. Okay, focus on the relationships you're creating everywhere in your career, not just your rankings, not your Google rankings, not your ⁓ rankings with a supplier or whatever. ⁓ but the actual relationships you're building. Maintain your own well-being. cannot stress this enough. Take care of your mind and take care of your body because you are the most important asset in this business that you are building. If you are mentally unwell and you are physically ill, the business is not gonna go well, right? Everyone gets bouts of sickness. Everyone gets like injuries and things like that that they have to go through. I'm not saying like... ⁓ you had to have your wisdom tooth removed and you're kind of out of it for a few days, your business is going to fail. No, just like take care of your wellbeing. This will help you develop resilience. Focus on the overall big picture when you're going through like these crises of how you want your life to look and how this business helps you get your life to look that way. Not just what's going on today, not just what's going on this week. And this is why I advocate so much for the time blocking and CEO time specifically. Like, I call it CEO time on my calendar. I block it off. No one can bother me. I don't answer the phone if someone calls me because that's my time to see is the big picture coming. I like to think of it as like a paint by numbers. Big picture of my dream life, you know? And I'm like, okay, this business is right now we've got all the greens painted in. Now it's time to do yellow and then we're going to do the purple and the red. it like the big picture, is it filling in? Are you still on track? Oops. You're out of the red paint and that's coming up next or like, Nope, you're out of purple paint and that's the next color, but you have blue and red. let's adapt. via some resilience and mix the blue and red together to make the purple. And you can see it coming and you can, you get, you get what I'm saying? Picking up what I'm putting down over here. Those are some exercises you can implement daily or weekly, or just whenever you're feeling down to help you build resilience and you can feel down. Just, you can have off days. You can have like weird interactions with clients that are frustrating you. you can have something. Global or national or regional going on that's affecting you and your business, but it's never gonna be forever, okay? And another thing I Was gonna say it and I forgot it it came to my mind. It was something with client interactions ⁓ Another thing to keep in mind every time you end up with a client that randomly decides that they're gonna like Try and push you around and bully you You have every right to fire them. You have every right to put that in your terms and conditions before they even start working with you. Like we need to be respectful to each other. If you're not respectful to me. You just call it, don't, let me just say this real quick. Don't be like, but they've already deposited and it's like $400 commission. Is that $400 worth your integrity and your self-worth? That's another limiting belief with money. You should consider that I mentioned earlier in this episode. That's tied to a limiting belief that you're only worth that much money when you let people shit all over you. Somehow that's a limiting belief. It might not be exact, but something like that. And just so you know, if anyone ever does put you in a situation where you're feeling that way, you can always call the supplier and release the booking directly to them. Regardless if you're hosted or not, you can contact them. and you can just let them know, I need to release this directly to you and you can forward all the communication to them so they're on the right page and they'll handle it because they don't, they're already making the money, they don't care. That's an option, okay? Anyway, that was day 145, resilience. You can do it. You can sacrifice that $400 commission if anyone's ever treating you like crap and I don't know why it's $400 in my brain. You can give that up. for better treatment and way better opportunities, okay? I hope you found this episode helpful. Save it if you need it, and I will see you tomorrow.