Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 79: It's lonely being a travel advisor
Transcript
- Rachel K: Welcome to the Travel Agency in a year podcast. I am Rachel K. We're on day 79 and I'm so grateful to have you coming back or if you're brand new, buckle up buttercup. All right. We're on the series of fears entrepreneurs face. Excuse me. And I did the top 10 on day 74 and now I'm diving into each fear on a daily basis. Yeah, welcome. Pontificate. on each of these episodes to see is this a fear that I have? Is this something I need to work on? If you say you have zero fear, you are a liar. At some point, you will have one of these 10 fears most likely as entrepreneur, CEO of your travel business. All right, so this one is the fear of isolation and networking. And I have, also if you're watching this on YouTube, chicken scratchy notes. You can't even read that notebook anyway. But now everything's kind of become globalized and very corporatized. kind of been, our has been influenced to not do anything for yourself, to be safe and get a nine to five and have a good salary. So a lot of us do go that path and when you do this, ⁓ you get lot of crabs in the bucket pushback mentality. Here's some stories of my own experience when I started my travel agency. Not even when I started my travel agency. A couple years later, after I had started it, started as a travel agent. I was working for another agency, and then I went out on my own. And this was like, I went out on my own during ⁓ hey girl, how's that little travel thing going? What? Little thing? Every time saw this person, for years, ⁓ and eventually time I was like, ⁓ it's going well. ⁓ I make $50,000 a month now and she just like jumped back. Well how'd you do that? Well I work very hard. So. and I work for myself so I have the ability to make that much money if I want to. Another one I got, you realize this career is just a trend, right? This is just trending. Yes, ⁓ now at the time of recording this in 2026, Travel Advisors is the fastest, one of the fastest growing careers in the United States. ⁓ have a sneaking suspicion it's a lot of realtors who are like, ⁓ I can do this. because they're not having so much luck with real estate maybe? I don't know. I just noticed a lot of realtors have funneled themselves into travel now. Why would anyone need a travel agent? Also, can you tell me how to get to the Pig Island from the Bahamas to go swimming? you tell me the way to get to Belize? What areas Belize I need to stay? Can you tell me if I flew into San Jose and Costa Rica, ⁓ can you an entire Alaskan cruise for me and help me get it booked because I don't understand the cabins? And then proceeds to it on their That particular couple, ⁓ nightmare. They desperately want to be travel advisors, but they're so scared of losing their stock options because that's 90 % of the money quote unquote they make for retirement. that they can't quit their job, they're slaves. And I've heard those people at parties after people be like, ⁓ could you help me with da da da da. I've literally heard them go up to them afterwards and they're like, I can find you a better deal. Like, then fucking do it for a living. Like, you are too wimpy to quit your own job. you're going to run into that a lot unless you're ⁓ nice people ⁓ But that's the crabs in the bucket mentality. ⁓ is people who see you ⁓ out and bettering your situation and they have to pull you down ⁓ they're like, no, you're not allowed to be with your life. You have to be miserable like us. Keep drinking. drinking every day. Be miserable. Yes, I've had a lot of people do this to me in my life. if haven't experienced that yet, go watch the Princess and the Frog, Disney's Princess and the Frog. In the very beginning, Tiana is like working her butt off, and she's like, I'm going to own a restaurant someday. I'm going to own a restaurant someday. I can relate to Tiana quite a bit. And their friends are like, girl, why don't you just get off work so you can come party with us? Because I got that a lot from people too. And I'd be like, I have to work. I don't have someone paying my salary. I have to create my own income. And then the reaction her friends have, oh, she never goes anywhere. She never does anything. She's so boring. And it like sucks because you have this passion to build this dream. And it's just. Rachel I think, also mentions, the more success you have, the more isolated you become. Because just don't have that mentality. And I'm not saying, like, I'm super successful. ⁓ I've won bunch of awards or whatever. And also, I'm, everything down. So I'm like, I don't need all that. I don't need that lifestyle. most of your time with, unfortunately. sorry for being super weird ⁓ trauma on all of you. These are horrible people I've known. ⁓ Didn't name names. ⁓ All right. Then there's networking challenges. You could be in an extremely isolated area. I was in ⁓ rural Missouri when I started all of this. ⁓ I remember, like, well, I'm just going to go around Lake of the Ozarks and talk to people. But it's a tourist trap. I would to people and they'd be like, why do need to go anywhere else? This is the most beautiful place on earth. And I'd also get from, ⁓ like, friends family, well, I'm going to get kidnapped in Mexico. I'm not doing. I'm not going anywhere that requires a passport. Really, you went hunting in Canada. that's different. That's having assumptions about different parts of the world and being afraid to go anywhere. We're not to get into that mess either. Anyway, so it's very, hard to network in small ⁓ areas that not your ideal client's spot. And you may have to do online networking. And networking is a lot like dating. So you've to put yourself out there. Or like being the new kid at school. How many of us have been the new kid at school and you just go in the cafeteria like in Mean Girls and everyone's all segregated. You're just like, I don't even know where to sit. I've been there. It's fine. You just sit down. But if your local network is really, really small and there's like not a lot of opportunity and you can't even like meet with BDMs for strategy sessions, consider moving to online networking because there are plenty of other entrepreneurs in general. who are in your position and understand it. be afraid to join Facebook groups or other online communities, Discord, Reddit, whatever, and make friends and do some networking. Put yourself out there. All right, was my crazy rant episode. It's very short. come back tomorrow for more drama llamas, I guess. ⁓ Bye-bye.