Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / DAY 284 | Thank the People Who Help Run Your Travel Agency
Transcript
- Rachel: Travel agency to your podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K, travel agency owner, mentor, here to help you build the business that builds you up. Let's get you well past multiple six figures. I want to see everyone making like upper six to seven figures a year. This is my dream. I think it's totally capable because literally every other industry is possible. And I'm confused why so few travel advisors can't even break past 30k a year. That's what this podcast is about. That's what my mentoring's about. That's what my success circle program is about. Period end of story. Story I want you to make money. I want 100K in your first 15 months to be the norm, not the exception. Right? So today's day 284. We're going to talk about appreciating everyone who contributes, not just your clients. So we've been talking a lot. This is like part four of part two. So this is like part eight, probably. I have no freaking clue. Of client appreciation, giving back to your community, all sorts of things. So this is all about giving. And you know what I just realized? This is like right before Thanksgiving. That was not intentional. I'm sorry. Ha ha. I hope you're not. What what if you came to this podcast? I'm like, it's thankful Thanksgiving month. Today's November first. Here's what I'm thankful for. And I just did that for every episode of November. You'd be like, unfollow. anyway. Qu oddly convenient though, that I have it set up this way. Okay, anyway. Please don't think that I'm Trying to put pressure on you before the holidays, but also think about this. Anyway, too many, anyways. A lot of people do contribute to your agency success, your personal success, who are not your clients at all, and they deserve genuine acknowledgement as well. Who is in this success? Who is in this circle? For real, real think beyond your clients. Any DMCs. Any contractors, like VAs that you've contracted out, team members, even if you just like fibered and you're like, I really like this person, I'm gonna hire them again. From when we were talking about delegation, if you're like, what? I need to delegate things, yeah. You should as soon as you can. That's day two fifty-three. The BDMs, the tourism boards, the hotelier contacts, the sales manager contacts for the hotels, resorts, cruise lines, if you get that deep into it. The if you niche in destination weddings, the wedding coordinators at the places that you sell the most, and anyone, honestly, any resort, absolutely thank them because they do a lot of. Of the heavy lifting for you and your clients, anyone that's provided you with their time and their expertise, even if it's just like a colleague, your local DMC vendor partnerships. I've got a list here, and I think I've repeated myself, mentors, or if like you're in a mastermind. who've supported all of your growth this year, friends and family who actually showed up for you, because this is incredibly difficult to build a business. And I've mentioned this in recent past episodes. So there are two options. You're either creating a very high-paying job for yourself or you're building a business. Well, there's actually the third option is a really expensive hobby. Okay? It is incredibly difficult to get hopefully not expensive hobby, to get from I can pay myself very well, but I'm I'm if I leave this business, it falls apart. That's a high paying job. And it is so hard to get from there to I have a business. And you really don't have, you are not, if you go read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, he talks about this extensively. And this is just in the entrepreneurial sphere. You don't have a business if you can't sell it. And you can't sell a business if you have to do all the work. So you are just giving yourself a high-paying job, essentially, if you aren't like working towards that path. But you are stuck in that bottleneck between high paying job and actually having a business sometimes for years. And it's a lot. It's a lot you have to do and take on. So your friends and family supporting you to actually show up for you. During those hard, hard stretches of scaling and growing from the starting point all the way up to hopefully what I would like for all of us to have are legitimate businesses, not these high-paying jobs. Anyway, that was a bit of a rant. It's easy for appreciation to flow naturally towards your clients because they bring in the monies, right? And they're the most visible part of your business. The people supporting you behind the scenes can often go the longest without any real acknowledgement, precisely because that contribution is far less visible in the day-to-day. And if it's left left unaddressed, this can quietly erode the goodwill in relationships that are genuinely important to your business's foundation. I have ex I have experience this personally mentoring heavily travel advisors, and then I see them publicly state they did it all themselves. And I'm like, Bitch, I got the receipts. And now they come to me and they're like, Can I pick your brain? for $300 an hour, you can. Because Why? Why? Like it is that destroys goodwill. When you go into something and you're like, I learned everything all by myself. I'm just a master genius. No, you're not. Okay? And so I've personally experienced like the destruction of goodwill from someone I've poured my heart into for them to turn around and be like, I'm just really good at business. Mm-mm. Nope. For a contractor or team member, genuine appreciation might mean specific verbal acknowledgement on a regular basis for particular contributions. Like you have been employed, most likely, hopefully, you've been employed. And how great was it when you were part of a team? And someone on your team that you reported to was like, really good job on specific thing you did. That was amazing. I have noticed you have improv imp blah blah blah blah blah improved dramatically with your sales skills or with your organizational skills or with your interpersonal communication skills. Like that always feels really good. So why aren't you doing that for your team, right? Not just a generic great job, but naming exactly what they did well, why it mattered, and how it helps you. not just revenue okay for BDM or like any kind of industry contacts a genuine thank you note thank you email after particularly helpful training or piece of insider info or you had to cc them in because there was like Major damage control that you had to mitigate for something, and you're like, I don't know what else to do, BDM help me. Thank them. And I've been in situations where, like for destination weddings, as an example, I've had to thank everyone on the team for stepping up because things just went weird. like maybe it was a weather thing and like people got emotional about it, but things just went weird and I was like, thank you so much. And when I can, I'm gonna ask, like, I'm gonna tell other agents to ask for you specifically because you are the best. that's specifically for like wedding planners. So if they've been at the property long enough. I'll be like, you need to talk to X, Y, and Z at this property. If they're doing a wedding there, and they're like, what do I do? And I'm like, find this person. They will take care of you. and tell them that, like, I sent you because they went we were in the trenches together with the situation. They will remember me. Anyway. It's always fun when. You may not even work with someone in person for something, like a destination wedding or some kind of group travel. But when you're with them over and over again, like even at like I work with classic vacations. That's like classic is one of my favorites. And so like being in the trenches with my group's coordinator, like she knows what's up. And I'm like, Yep, we're in it together. And she's like, ugh. Anyway, that kind of stuff goes so much further than you would expect, given how rarely advisors take the time to do this. And how do I know? Because I've heard these people be like, you actually appreciate me? Like, I don't get that from a lot of other advisors. I've heard like some, I'm not gonna name names, but some top producing advisors Don't do this at all. And I'm like shocked. Shocked. Shock and awe. Like, why aren't you grateful, man? It eases your anxiety. A. If you have gratitude in your mind, you can't be nervous. Because you're just like, that's great. I'm so grateful for this. Anyway, that's just kind of mind-blowing for me. Just acknowledgement on the specific impact anyone has made towards your growth this year. Mentors, anyone in like if you are in a mastermind or like a group of colleagues and you guys are like, we are just gonna fail forward together, thank them. Okay. And don't do it like once a year. Don't do it like, I booked a million dollars in sales. I'd like to thank like, you know what I mean? Like those ex award acceptance speech type posts where it's like, I'd just like to thank da-da-da-da-da for all the support. Like just thank them directly. That is so much better than posting it for everyone else to see. Also, if you're Christian, thank God every day. No. that no-tick? You don't know me, but that no-tick came from some people I knew way back like 20 years ago. Nope. Where you just instantly say no. It's coming back. That's weird. That was the thing for a minute. I don't know why. Okay, so in the spirit of this theme of like giving back and we're that everything we've built. Moving it forward for the next few episodes, this kind of appreciation doesn't need to be big. It doesn't need to be a grand, showy gesture, like thank you so much, friends and family. I'm posting this thank you post on my business page, which you're probably not even going to see unless I tag you in it. So everyone else can see how grateful I am for you. Like, don't do that. I mean you can. You don't need to. Just like a well-timed, specific, genuine acknowledgement that's quiet and real tends to land for these people that have shown up for you way more meaningfully than an elaborate but generic one. We're gonna dig deeper into this, like celebrating your team specifically in the next couple of days. so like with my team, we'll talk about it in future episodes. This is going on too long. Maybe? Let me look at my timer here. no, we're only at twelve minutes. so I'll spend a few more minutes on this. Mm-hmm. I really do appreciate it. Like I I do get a lot of gratitude myself. Like I said, some people like refuse to acknowledge that I helped them at all for some reason. And then I'm like, Pfft, well I'm not helping you anymore. But the people who come to me and just send an email and be like, Thank you so much. This has changed my life. And it's just private. It's just between us. And then I know it's genuine. and I know I didn't have to like Like I know it's real, you know? And so if I feel that way, I feel like anyone else that you thank or have gratitude for, or for me personally, thanking you without the pomp and circumstance probably feels more real and genuine to you. Like, I just want to thank all of you listeners out there. No. I mean, I do really appreciate the I like I'm not even really promoting this podcast and I am spamming content daily because I made a commitment to do daily episodes. And you you guys come back and it's growing. And I'm just like, wow, I hope this is really making an impact. And I really do appreciate everyone that actually listens to my craziness. Like that episode back where I'm like, you really like cats? Volunteered Habitat for Humanity. If you don't get it, go back. I think it was day 284, 285. I was just laughing at myself for about three minutes. So, more than your clients, more than your community, like local community, your contracted workers, your BDMs, if you have teams, your team members, your vendor partner, DMC, your mentors, anyone who's genuinely contributed to the foundation of your travel agency that you're building. To turn it from a high paying job into an actual business. They're doing their best they can to help you with that, right? Make that acknowledgance acknowledgement specific rather than generic. Favor the quiet, genuine gestures over the elaborate and impersonal ones. So tomorrow we're gonna talk about celebrating your personal wins, which I do this quite a few times because I know a lot of you are working so hard and you can't see the good. It's hard sometimes you need to pause and look at what the personal wins can be, rather than just be like, I mean Grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding, getting to burnout, getting resentment. And when you start getting towards the edge of burnout, pause for a minute. Give yourself a day off or two. Rest fully one day. And then the next day, you can be like, well, how awesome am I? And celebrate your personal wins. All right, that was day 284 at the Travel Agency to your podcast. Have a wonderful day. I will see you tomorrow.