Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 108 - Sorting out Immediate vs. Future Actions as a TA
Transcript
- Rachel K: It's day 108 of the Travel Agency in a Year podcast and I'm reading my notes, which is why I'm not making eye contact with the camera if you are YouTubing it. It's fine. Today's episode is sorting out immediate versus future actions. So we've talked about discipline the last few days and then decision-making. You are the deciser, the decider in your business and how you want it to look. And so maybe you need some help learning how to make decisions. Today's episode, featuring yours truly, Rachel K. Sorting out immediate versus future actions, which is further building on yesterday decision-making. Why? Because I don't want to give boring 45 minute to hour long episodes, all right? I want to keep it short and sweet because you got stuff to do. Okay. An example, you need to invest in upgrades, but it's not always an immediate need. Why? Why is that? When does something need immediate action? Great question. Disruptions. Number one, immediate action disruptions, travel emergencies, any kind of crises. That is immediate. That is your client missed their flight, they didn't get to the airport on time. You got to resolve that. Your client gets to the hotel or on the cruise line for some reason and they're like, they don't have a room. What are you talking about? That is a crisis. That's not common, but that's like, let's dramatize things per usual. ⁓ When you have identified a bottleneck in your business that is drastically affecting revenue, the example could be, what did I do back a few days ago? It was identifying bottlenecks. And I think I gave the example of like having this super complicated intake form after someone scheduled a consultation. which is leading to more people ghosting on the consultations and a lower close rate and less revenue. That is an immediate thing that needs to be addressed. At least temporarily remove that stupid intake form. And if you realize that's the problem, like this is the problem, let's just remove it. Consult scheduled, I can use this intake form during the consultation, right? Or you can send it afterwards, okay? Like after they're like, yeah, I want to work with you. Great. I have this form. I'd really like to you fill out however you want to do that. But if it's the bottleneck remove, ⁓ high impact opportunities that will generate revenue immediately. high impact opportunities that will generate revenue immediately. Immediately. Those are immediate actions. Let's say a post of yours went viral. That's an example and you have 15 inquiries and consultation schedules. Like those are things you need to be focusing on first and foremost. Or let's say you have a colleague that's like a good friend of yours, they have a family emergency and they have you as their emergency TA help colleague. So they're just like sending you all these trips. Like those are immediate things to handle. Okay. And they will generate revenue immediately. Okay. Future actions. What are examples? I have one, two, three, four. I have my piece Lily way too close to me. The pollen. It's fine. It's for ambiance. Future actions. Number one, actions or steps towards your long-term goals. Anything that's like one, three, five, or 10 years out. Those are future actions and they're gonna be little baby steps for now. Not this is top priority. An example, you're changing your business model. You can't just do that overnight. If you do that overnight, everything else is gonna fall apart. Maybe you wanna switch CRMs. That's gonna be a slow progression. You're probably gonna have to have both for a few months while you transition fully. Or you're switching niches. Again, slower transition. Can't do it immediately. Can't be like, dropping all you because I don't do Italy anymore. No, you gotta serve those clients, right? That's like a longer term action. Developing or expanding on your services. Like this one. You're gonna have to kind of like test it out a little bit, little baby steps, but you don't have to implement it right away and be like, this is now my process. Why? Because that'd be like, like, okay, back to my fast food reference, because I feel like everyone understands fast food. I think everyone listening to this has been through, been to some kind of fast food restaurant at some point in their lives. So like when I'm trying to think of something modernized, I don't really eat fast food. But when like, they started adding the kiosks where you could order instead of waiting for the cashier. If they don't just abandon the cashiers, there are still cashiers. Like if you dine in, you can just opt to do it. Eventually though, they're gonna cut back on the cashiers and the number of registers, and then there will be no registers and they'll just be ordered at these kiosks. They aren't doing immediately because that would frustrate people who are used to the old process. And when you implement any changes, you wanna do it slowly and subtly. Okay. Okay, future action number two, tech upgrades. Like you get an email, I have HP products, so I get emails from HP all the time. It'd be like, ooh, this new thing. And I'm like, delete, I don't need any new things right now. But if your PC or laptop just completely craps out, explodes, I don't know, then that's kind of an immediate action. Otherwise you don't. have to have the latest and greatest technology. You can save up for it and get it later. Even if you get an email, it's like, ⁓ flash sale, who cares? ⁓ Any kind of like standard operating procedures development or like changing what a VA does, again, like the kiosks and McDonald's and the registers slowly going away, you can slowly implement the changes. And you can have a discussion with them for feedback first before, like, here's how we do it now. Here's how I'd like to see this go moving forward for the next quarter or year, like in terms of like your team that you already have. here's how I see it going. How do you think it should go so that we can get this and we can get there as a team. Okay. Brand authority takes time to build through consistent action. So changing your branding every year. because a new font is trending is no, that is not an immediate action. Stopping everything to update your branding, that is a future action and you should really just pick your fonts and stick with it. I mean, you might want to update the actual logo, because I know a lot of travel advisors do the logo where there's like an airplane and a palm tree and a cruise ship and a globe and it's like, that's a lot. But that doesn't mean you got to change your fonts. That doesn't mean you got to change your colors completely. You can every few years, but just know that brand authority and recognition takes so much time to develop. If you are an established travel advisor, I wouldn't do it ⁓ more than every like five or 10 years, like most brands that are like well established do. And they barely change their stuff. Like they might simplify their logo, but the fonts are the same. Or they might make the font bold. instead of whatever regular font, they don't do drastic changes. Remember what happened to Cracker Barrel? Don't do that. Don't do that. ⁓ Okay. Research R &D for your business. And this is kind of like, like which CRM do I want to upgrade to or what software systems would help me? ⁓ What's trending in my niche? Like those are future actions. not immediate. You don't have to put everything else on the back burner because some BDM that you've never even heard of got your email from your host agency or some other consortium you're a member of and was like, did you know this is trending? Because I said it's trending, come to this webinar and try to sell this now. Like don't do that. Okay, strategizing to stay disciplined, moving on. Number one, categorize your short and long-term goals and tasks. This is why I'm a big fan of the annual, quarterly, monthly, and weekly reviews. And then CEO time categorizes those tasks. Is this gonna help me this week? Is this super urgent? There is the Eisenhower, I think it's the Eisenhower method, where you can see if it's like urgent, not urgent. shoot the Eisenhower matrix. Let me Google it quick. Let me just give a little Google. Eisenhower matrix. This is something I learned from a business coach many, many moons ago. Okay. Let me pull up this image. Urgent, not urgent, important and not important. So the urgent and important, you just make like a little two by two box. I have a really terrible YouTube video about this. that I filmed in like four minutes. But urgent and important are the things you need to do. Like if your email is not working at all, you need to figure out a solution for that to communicate with your clients. Important, but not urgent. That's where this decision making thing comes from. And today's episode of sorting out what needs to be immediate decisions and what needs to be future decisions. So those will be in this little, well, I need to mirror it. So this is urgent and important. Do not urgent and important. Decide. This is like marketing strategy for the next quarter, content strategy. ⁓ Do you need to do your tech upgrades? That kind of thing. under the urgent and not important, you can delegate it. Okay. ⁓ under the not urgent and not important, why is this even on your to-do list in the first place? It is not urgent. It is not important. And that's going to be like reading emails from suppliers you're never going to book with. Like, why are you reading those emails? There's no reason it's not urgent. It's not important. Okay. When you have those categorized properly your short term and long term goals and your tasks aligned with said short term and long term goals invest wisely in The short and the long term that's what this whole episode was about and Have a clear reason why you have determined a task is immediate versus long term Or versus short term versus long term so immediately I got to get this done now versus short term is like I got to get this done within the next month or so, like week or month, it's pretty short term or the next quarter. Long term is like this needs to happen next year. So what is your clear reason why? And if your clear reason is because there's a sale, I gotta get this done now, please know that there is a sale cycle and if it's not necessary, you can put it for the sale for next year, okay? All right. Really appreciate you coming by and listening to my crazy ramblings again. Have a great day and we will chat tomorrow.