Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 107 - Discipline & Decision-Making as a Travel Advisor
Transcript
- Rachel K: It's day 107 of the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K. Today is the last episode about discipline for now. For now. I used to be a personal trainer and I'd just be like, do it. lots of bootcamp classes back when bootcamps were like on trend in the fitness land, the land of fitness's. I even had a bridal bootcamp. Like I had this idea to go to bridal expos and be like, let's do bridal party bootcamps. Not so I was it wasn't like I'm on a tangent right now, but it wasn't like. ⁓ you're fat. Let's fat shame everyone for the wedding party. It was more of like, let's do some fun workouts to gain confidence, feel better, and maybe look better for the wedding. But the looking better part was the least of my concerns. It was more of like, let's all get together and be healthier and happier. Anyhoodle, that was a little digression there. Discipline for decision making. Okay. I like to schedule off CEO time every Monday morning before, like I don't, like I'm technically working in my travel agency or in elevate with Rachel K. Don't get me wrong. However, that time is blocked off. That first hour of my work damn Monday is CEO time. And I review all of the data I've collected from the prior week and make these silly little reports. So I review like, how are we doing with our revenue? How are we doing with our marketing? How are we doing with our ⁓ operations? Do I need to make any changes? How is service going? Like all the little things. And I kind of set up my to-do list for the week during CEO time. When I have my monthly, quarterly, and annual reviews, that is a much longer meeting with myself, me, myself, and I, with me and my other personalities. I'm like imaginary boardroom arguments with myself. Okay, I'm not gonna talk about that. But they will be longer meetings because there are more, there's more data to review and there's bigger decisions to make, right? So today's episode, we're gonna talk about the decision making process. I also do this daily and this was a practice I actually implemented. I don't recall if I implemented it. in a previous business I owned, but I do remember when I was a butler, I would structure my tasks for the week because I had no job description. I asked for one and they were just like, no. I was like, well, what am I supposed to do? So I had to kind of create my own job description as a butler for most of the day to day and weekly and things like that. So I do remember Really implementing this practice when I was a butler the daily tasks. I Do like to write down on a piece of paper My to-do list and this is just kind of like brain dumping Everything that you are like I got to get this done Okay Because otherwise if you have it all running in your head then you just live in an anxious state of mind because they're always like in the back of your mind and you're like You need to care this you take care of this you take care of this And that leads to stress. We don't need no stress. Let's brain dump it all out and sort it out for the week. Don't know where that accent came from and I don't know what region that's supposed to be. I don't do anything in specific order. It's just whatever comes to mind first. And it can be like 30 different things. And then you look at that paper and you're like, oh gosh, that's a lot of stuff on my mind. Okay. So now we're going to break it down. to where it's not so overwhelming once you brain dump the things you need to do. So for weekly, I pick the top 10 tasks during CEO time. I picked the top 10 that gives me two big tasks each day for the week. And these top 10 are needle moving, not basic admin daily stuff. An example or examples of this could be like you have a new client outreach program you want to implement or process. ⁓ you have an idea that could really, really grow your business and you need a meeting with your BDM. That's a big, that's a top 10 task. Yeah, it's an email, but that is like the needle moving stuff, even though it doesn't feel like needle moving. But if you have this idea, you want to implement it and you need to build a partnership with a BDM. Yep. First step. BDM meeting. ⁓ Your content strategy. Like if you reviewed your content strategy and you write down, need to tweak this, like that's going to be top 10 tasks for the week. And it's probably going to go in your marketing time that you have time block. Sometimes it can be things like taxes, like quarterly taxes or annual taxes, meetings with CPAs. Like those are gonna be important because they are not necessarily needle moving, but maybe you could have some new programs like you wanna do a SEP IRA and you need to talk to your CPA about how that works and what are the tax benefits. That's kind of needle moving for your life and the future. Okay, once you get your top 10 tasks, you still have the others, don't worry about it, keep them around. But once you have your top 10, then what I like to do is order them and number, like number them in order of importance. And then I categorize based on time blocking. So some weeks you might have a lot of marketing stuff and you have to think, well, do I have time in this? whatever, however many hours you dedicate throughout the week for marketing, do I have time to get all of these things? If not, I need to order of importance and just make sure I at least get these two done if there's like four marketing tasks. I also like to make them like top priority, like the harder the top 10, the big needle moving things like top priority every day and every week. So then you have kind of an idea of like what your week looks like once you do this. Okay. And then you allocate throughout the week and then on a daily basis, you know, you have those top two and you can add up to eight more tasks. So you have 10 tasks a day and this could be like, check your email and reply to emails. That's not gonna be hard, right? Process payments, also not that hard. ⁓ I would put like building itineraries and travel docs as like a top 10 task because I do groups. So my groups all like, they have their process and I'm like, I wanna get this done so I make sure they have all the information they need before they travel, right? But if you do a lot of FITs, you could be like, okay, in the pipeline, I have these three itineraries, I need to build them and get them ready to go. It could be filming the content. You've already created the content strategy, so like a less important thing, I mean, it's important, but like a less priority, because it's just a habit at this point, would be like filming or scheduling out the content. Do the hard stuff first. you'll realize 90 % of the time the things that are hard and scary are like five minutes of your life, maybe an hour max. And then once it's done, it's done, okay? And then everything else is easy for the rest of day. And I talked about dopamine, I think on day 105 a little bit when you're chasing the sales and you're doing really well and you're just like more, more, more, and then you can possibly get overwhelmed with too much work. But if you get the hard stuff done, that is also a little bit of like a brain reward of like, well, look at you being awesome. So often the overwhelming, like I said, it usually ends up being five or 10 minutes. And it's usually something tied to your mindset that's like preventing you. We talked about procrastination, I think also on day 105, could be day 104, I don't really remember. Let me check, because I got my notes right here. It is day 105, what triggers your procrastination. Okay, so you want two big things daily as a maximum. You might only have one big thing daily. You might only have two big things daily for the week, right? And I don't like to do more than 10 for the entire week. If you don't get something done, like say, like I said, in the beginning of this episode, you brain dump and you're like, I have 30 things I need to do. And you prioritize them in order of importance throughout the week and then throughout each day. Let's say you don't get everything done because life happens. ⁓ Maybe you have a lot of disruptions for one reason or another. Maybe you have a lot of people traveling and you're like, ⁓ this week's going to be super easy. I've got five things for this week that I'm going to do. But then clients traveling have travel issues and then you're on hold for hours. We all know how that goes, but you end up on hold for hours and that takes away your time to get those tasks completed. those need to be top priority for the following week, okay? And if maybe you could decide to just work a little extra, it's not that big of a deal. So again, you wanna number the daily tasks based on your schedule and logic. Like if you have email time, any email-based tasks, like I have email twice a day, check emails twice a day, 11 a.m., 3 p.m. So if you have your email blocked off, 11 a.m., 3 p.m., checking emails, checking emails, and you have email-based tasks, that's where you're gonna put, okay, even if it's a big thing. That's where you're gonna do first thing the first time you check your emails. Another thing that I like to do is the 3 p.m. email check. If it's something I can easily answer within like 30 seconds or less, I will just reply and be like, okay, yeah, no problem, here you go. But if it's something where I have to like double check with a supplier or like confirm things are good, that goes top 11 a.m. emails the following morning. If I feel like it, I could do it in schedule, send the email, but that's like my top priority for emails. And I write down at the end of the day what I need to focus on and put towards my list for tomorrow by checking my emails, okay? You're like, that doesn't make sense. I know, I know. Okay, so as an example, let's say 3 p.m. An email comes in from a client and it's just an FIT trip and they're like, hi, I'd like to make dinner reservations for blah, blah, blah resort that they're saying at or something about excursions. Something to that effect. They are not traveling for three months in this example. So it's not urgent. And I could, if it's like a property that I book a bunch throughout the year, I could reply easily and be like, yeah, we'll have that information. to you or we can request this stuff around this time. We can't really do it now because the restaurant schedules haven't been posted. This is typically like two weeks out. As in just in my brain, this is all made up, you know? So I could fire that off right away. Another example of a 3 p.m. email that I would put to the next day, it could be that same email and I could reply by 11 a.m. or I could reply right away. ⁓ But let's say the next day email, it's from a bride and groom doing a destination wedding. And they sent over a proposal for an offsite photography or vendor service, right? And they are seeing if the price is comparable for competing photographers or whatever type of vendor in the area. And they wanna make sure that they're not gonna get screwed over. but I said, photographer, do you know anything about this photographer or vendor, whatever? I do get those emails a lot with my destination wedding couples. and they might have some questions. That's going to be one I would have to spend some time with. And I don't like, I'm wrapping up my day at three o'clock. I'm answering other emails and I'm kind like doing my to-do list for the next day. So in that case, I would put that on like, okay. I need to do this research tomorrow and answer in the 11 a.m. email time slot. That's an example of that. Okay, mark off anything as you go. I love to check things off to-do lists. Again, that dope main like, look at me being awesome doing stuff right-handed even though I'm left-handed. It's fine, I'm ambidextrous today. If you're having a hard time making decisions, now we're in the decision making part because maybe you did this brain dump in this episode and you're like, this bitch is just rambling on. I'm just going to do my brain dump now. And you're like, well, how do I do this? How do I decide what's number one? Set a deadline or a time limit. I can't say it, time limit. If you're having a hard time making a decision and you could do like a five minute timer and just you get five minutes to figure out what to prioritize. Or like if you've ever watched The Office, there's an episode of The Office where Dwight is trying to sell back Andy's Xterra or something. It's something like that. And Dwight's like, you have five seconds, five, four. buy it, buy it two, one, and Andy's like, I'll buy it. So you could do that to yourself and be like five, four, three, two, one. And tomorrow this episode will go into deeper dive in like future versus immediate actions. What the difference is. You can also set a deadline. Whatever choice you make, if you're like, I don't know what to do here. I got to make a decision for this task. Whatever choice you make, stick with it. Okay. Detach from the outcome for the, I don't even know how many times I've said it in the last 10 days. So a lot of successful people typically make decisions with no more than 60 % information or knowledge because they are okay with the failure, because they know how to detach from the outcome. And this isn't a permanent set in stone decision. You could make a decision if you're like, should I set up my online social media presence on reels or TikTok or YouTube? I don't want to do all three. I need to pick two, pick two and go with it for like three months. If it's not working, change your mind, go in a different direction, but detach from the outcome is what I'm saying. Be okay with not doing okay on one of those three platforms or the two that you choose for the next three months. If you do not learn how to make decisions quickly, and if you do not learn how to detach from the outcome and be okay with failure, you will just sit there being stuck because it's not all perfect. And every advisor I have interacted with who sits there with indecision does not bring in revenue. Like they don't bring it, they might bring in some revenue, but not nearly enough to even like survive on. Or build the business the way they want it to, because they can't make a decision. And so you can't build the business how you want to, because you can't even decide how you want it to look. Does that make sense? Yes. Yes, it does. All right. Come back tomorrow. We will go over sorting out immediate versus future actions. So if you did this brain dump, like this is not all super urgent people. These are lessons. Okay. This is just like. little tidbits and tips. So come back tomorrow and you can learn how to sort out what actions need to be immediate and what actions can be put off towards the future. This is super important if you are feeling pressured to invest in anything for your business due to time constraints. This will help you be like, ⁓ I don't care. All right. I hope you have a wonderful day and chat tomorrow. I need to come up with a better outro. All right. All right. Bye. My voice just cracks. It's fine. Bye.