Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 165 - The Horizon Effect Explained for Travel Advisors
Transcript
- Rachel K: Welcome back to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K. Today is 165, and we are gonna talk about the horizon effect, explained specifically for travel advisors. I wanna thank you again for coming back and checking out this podcast. You're more than welcome to subscribe. We have episodes dropping every single day for an entire year. So Plenty of resources and content for travel advisors that are working on becoming the CEO and really building that entrepreneurial mindset as a travel advisor because it's totally doable. This is not a side hustle. Okay. What is the horizon effect? It's a strategy that you need to implement. And I've been through this. You're going through it, or have been through it, or will go through it. Don't worry, this happens to all of us. It is a solution to this scenario. ⁓ which can there's a number of reasons why this occurs. But let's say one day you're like, ⁓ badass CEO. You got this big fat commission check. You got new clients. You got people paying fees, and this is all happening over the course of a day or a week, for example. And then the next day or a few weeks later, nothing. Just quiet. And this could span over the course of several months. You could be on that like roller coaster hot roller coaster high of this ain't never gonna stop. I'm just gonna keep on growing. And then you hit. A month or two or six of just stagnation. So then you're like, well, I'm clearly a fraud. I'm clearly the worst person ever. And travel advisors love to chase those highs. Everyone loves to chase those highs. Travel advisors love to chase those highs. So when you feel like a fraud and you feel like you're like my inbox is empty. My dashboard numbers aren't looking right. This episode, and I'm gonna expand it over the course of the next few episodes as well, has solutions and strategies for you to prevent that from happening. Okay, let's enter the horizon effect. Horizon effect enters the chat. What is the horizon effect for entrepreneurs? You can Google this, and it will most likely be something to do with AI. And there's also a concept for entrepreneurs and I'm gonna teach it to you 'cause you're a business owner. You're not just side hustling over here. That is a much older concept. Why am I teaching you this stuff? Great question. Because this is a huge part of my ⁓ college education. I have had other businesses in completely different niches. I am a travel agency owner. I have been through the mud, and I'm helping you get out of that scenario because it will happen if it hasn't already. Okay, so the Horizon Effect is basing your tasks in your day-to-day. Stuff which I talk about this extensively, not only in this podcast, but in the success circle. Over a time lag like over a span of time. Okay. So it's the boring side of your business. It's the it's not the high of getting that fee. It's not the f high of closing that booking. And a lot of you may be marketed to I know like part of my marketing strategy for my courses is be like, hey, I can help you get that high. And also understand that should not be the norm in your business. So the horizon effect Teaches you to set up your business on the boring day-to-day that moves the needle slowly but surely. And that is like a huge part of this podcast, like I said, and the Success Circle program. If you don't know what the Success Circle Program is, head over to elevate with Rachel K dot com. And I think there's a button that's like courses offered, and you can enroll in that for 35 bucks a month. Or not. I don't care. Listen to the podcast. So what you see in your inbox and on your dashboard is most likely the result of 90 days prior, or six months prior, or 12 months prior. It really depends on your niche and the timeline from when your client books with you initially to when they travel. So let's just use 90 days as like a standard. And it's really, really hard for TAs to get over that dopamine hit. And it's really, really hard for TAs because you you're working in an office alone. You have to cheer yourself on. That's it's very, very difficult when you log in to like your CRM and you're like, ⁓ I don't have any inquiries. I don't have any consultations today, especially when you had that high of like boom boom baby, I'm just getting all this business. So anyway, let's take a look back ninety days. Your day-to-day actions from three months ago. are why your dashboard looks as like awesome or terrible as it does. Now, before I go into like strategies. I want to discuss like ADD, ADHD, because I do work with a lot of advisors that are like diagnosed ADHD. I am not a specialist in that in any way, shape, or form. I've just noticed I've been helping a lot of people that are like, ⁓ I'm diagnosed ADHD. So if you have ADHD, it makes it very difficult to maintain that horizon effect. It makes it so difficult to do the boring day to day things in your business in anticipation of results in three, six, twelve, fifteen, eighteen months out. And I see a lot of advisors really struggle with this. So I'm gonna give you some tips. If you and you might not be fully diagnosed ADHD, you might not, you might be like, I'm perfectly fine. These tips might help you too. Okay, so why is this a huge issue with people with like ADD or ADHD? ⁓ someone that has an ADHD diagnosis always strives for today's firefighting and swooping in and being a hero and not the small things that bring in the results. They're often very based in the Not like a dramatic drama queen need to create stress, however they tend to put things off until the very, very last second, because they kinda it's not that if anyone has ADHD, you can relate and also know that I'm not saying that you're like a problem. This is just how you work. But it's like you need a stressful now. Like I need it now. I need to get this done now. And so even if you set up a horizon effect strategy where you're like, okay, I'm gonna do boring things and this will lead to this result down the road, you're gonna fall off the wagon because you're just like, Well, that's not stressful enough right now. Like, maybe I should go enroll in a course instead and stress myself out that way. Maybe I need to completely switch niches. Maybe I need to, ⁓ Chase that dopamine in another way. So it's really difficult for like ADHD specifically to focus on the small tasks that bring the results in over time. ⁓ and they tend to succumb to shiny object syndrome far more easily. So here's some tips. And even if you're like, I'm not ADHD, this might help you. And we're gonna expand more into just general population, I guess. I don't wanna say like neurodivergent versus n I don't even know, neuronormative. Is that even a word? I feel like we're all like nobody's identical. There's a reason we're all different. But anyway. ⁓ you can use a big whiteboard. I brought this up in past episodes, but a big whiteboard, a planner, having it like in your face on your desk, or even just like a large poster board from the dollar store with like, you need to get this done. ⁓ you gotta keep it in sight. You can't have it in a spreadsheet that you close out one Friday evening because you're like, work is done. I'm shutting it all down. Cause guess what? You're probably gonna forget about it. And then two days later you're gonna be like, what am I doing again? ⁓ here, here's a new thing I can work on because your business has become boring in a good way. So keep that all st like all of your goals in sight. Okay. Break down your long-term projects. Like say you do weddings. Weddings are usually like At least nine month timeline from the moment they work with you until they travel. That's a tight timeline in my opinion, but I know it's at least it can sometimes be as little as six months. But nine months out, that's really, really hard for someone with ADHD to like manage and focus all the way to the end. ⁓ or and a lot of other types of group travel are typically gonna be like if you want to market go with me groups. You gotta be marketing that several months before you officially launch it, like at least one to two months prior to gain the interest. And then you've got to maintain that momentum. And usually they have like three to six months before they need to pay in full. And that needs to be done three months prior to travel, sometimes four months. So then you have that other three to four months before they even go. So you're in a long time frame with groups. So break down those longer-term projects into frequent short-term deadlines. So, and I talked about this a little bit in the destination wedding planning process. You want to have like your deadlines in place to make sure you're ahead of the game. And you can do the same thing with your FITs and your group travel, especially if they have a very long timeline. It's really, really difficult to maintain. So break them down and be like. Deposits have to be put in. and you can even do it, ⁓ like some room block contracts, for example, will set things up where like, ⁓ you need fifty dollars for the initial deposit to secure the room block per person or whatever. And then they might have something like 10% is due at this time, and then 50% is due at this time, and then final payment is due at this time. And I Have a course called Group Travel Made Easy, and we talk about why that can be really frustrating for travel advisors and how you can manage that much more easily. But if you have like ADHD or if you have a hard time managing timelines where it's like deposits due this date, and then six months later, deposits do this, like a second deposit or whatever's due this date, and then final payments three months down the road, and you've have a hard time managing that. And staying on top of it. ⁓ you can do the same kind of process, like the group host pays $50 per person. People have to reserve their room with like $200 or 10% or whatever by a specific day. And then 50% is due this time, and then finals do this time. It is frustrating for clients in many cases, and it's an option that you can go for. So you want to break down those long term projects into short term projects. Goals. Another thing could be like over the next year you want to serve 50 new clients. That's and I talk about this so much, but that's just four clients a month. So you can break that down to short-term goals, like I need to get four clients this month or five, whatever, so that you're while you're over your goal, ⁓ in order to maintain those long-term results. And you can even break it down by week, down to day. However short term you need to make it. Okay, automate anything that is too far out. So if you're newer, you probably don't have a whole lot of workflows set up. You can invest in I can't remember any of the names of the companies. You can invest in different companies that will help you set up your workflows and provide templates for you. Or you can do it yourself, either way. But anything that's too far out for your capacity, just start automating it. And you can consider hiring someone to do that if you have the funds. So however you want to do that. Why normal people, I'm just gonna say normal people, everyone's normal, but why people who aren't diagnosed with ADHD or similar also fail here because we all have that immediate feedback loop. It's wired into our brain, like, ⁓ this fire is hot. ⁓ this berry is delicious. And you know what I mean? ⁓ the clouds are coming in, it's going to rain. Like we all have that immediate feedback loop. And especially with ⁓ the advent of social media and specifically short form videos, which yeah, it's fine. We all do it. But that's made that dopamine loop like shorter, shorter, shorter. And you need more, more, more, more, more to maintain your levels of dopamine. So we all have it. No big deal. When things get slow and boring, most TAs. will panic and they're just assuming that what they do today isn't gonna be working. And if it like lags on for like several weeks or months and they may start breaking things. And we're gonna talk about this in future episodes because this is so much information I had to break this up into three episodes. So, like I said, they're gonna implement unnecessary changes. This is like if you were to plant a garden and you start from seed, and I've done this with my own gardening. I've killed a lot of seedlings because I'm like, ⁓ it needs more sun now. ⁓ it needs to harden off. And like I I tinker with it too much. You tinker with it too much, or like dig up the seed you planted because you're like, the true leaves haven't come up yet. You're just killing the plant. Instead of just letting it breathe and grow and be. All you need to do is give it some sunlight and some water. Instead of being like, Do I need to analyze the soil again? Do I need to move it? Okay, so for all of you advisors listening today, let's do a no judgment look back. Not just the numbers. I know we've covered that in the quarterly review stuff episodes back I think around Two weeks ago. ⁓ not just the numbers, but we're gonna look it back at your calendar. Let's take a trip down memory l memory lane three months ago. What were you doing in your life in general? Did you have like a really extensive vacation? Did you go on a bunch of fam trips or maybe just one fam trip? Were you or someone else in your household very ill? Was there like a death in the family? Like I feel I felt weird asking the were you or someone in your household? ⁓ were you so were you on that roller coaster high where you're like, I'm serving all these people? I got all this business coming in and I'm serving my clients. I don't need to market anymore. And you just start marketing and prospecting. Like, were you doing that? Were you maybe going through something causing you a lot of stress? And you're just like, I'm just I need to rest. I need to veg out. And then that may have led to too much rest. There is no judgment here. We're just looking at the facts. Like, you should have already been or soon be, because we're nearing the end of the quarter if you're listening daily. Fit pretty much wrapped up with your quarterly review and ready to start the next quarter. ⁓ and so you should have a good look at the numbers from the last three months. But three months ago, what were you doing in your personal life? So you already have the Quantitative data, which is the numbers. Do you have the qualitative data? Were you going through a tough time? Did you have like a medical emergency? Did your pets die? Did you have to put them down? Like, did you move? There's so many different things. And those little things can affect you maybe making the decision three months ago or more to just be like, I need to pull back on my. business a little bit and focus on X, Y, and Z. Like That could be it. So whatever's going on in the past brought you where you are today. No judgment. It could be good. You could be like three months ago, I was psychotically working on my marketing strategy and posting daily and prospecting, and now my business is doing good. That's what I would like to hear. And also it's not gonna be the case for everyone. Some people could be like I was marketing actively and prospecting and I still have goose egg. ⁓ but were you in kind of like a resting on your laurels and you don't need to produce quality content mode because you were doing really well in your business? Or maybe you started to get that scarcity mindset or still had it and you aren't presenting yourself confidently in your messaging? Or maybe you were like, AI's the answer, and you just had AI write everything. You didn't you didn't bother to look at it, review it, and revise it. So now you have a lot content out there, which is great, but maybe you weren't getting the best clients coming to you because it wasn't targeted and it wasn't really in your brand voice. Maybe. Which I know real quick, this episode's it's fine. We're almost done. You almost made it. And I know AI is a very helpful tool. And also, there's been recent like an evolution sort of. I'm really excited about ⁓ CRM's bringing about agentic AI and still it's not gonna be perfect, okay? It's gonna be great. It's not gonna be perfect. Okay, so Sorry, I'm looking at my notes. Back to your garden. If you ever do have a vegetable or herb garden, like you know ⁓ if you want your fruit to bear or vegetables or herbs to be ready by summer, by like end of June, early July, you gotta start those seeds probably indoors in like February, right? And that is four to five months away. And you gotta water them and you gotta make sure they have enough lights and you gotta make sure the soil outside and the bed is prepared and there is no fruit coming in, which could be like revenue, right? For your business. There's not nothing's happening really. Like you're like, ⁓ leaves are coming up. You don't know what's gonna survive, but you keep doing it anyway. If you want another reference, you started three months ago, say, a workout program. A diet and exercise program because you're like, I want to improve my health, and here's how I'm gonna do it. And you've been maintaining it consistently for three months. And in your head, you may have thought, I'm gonna drop 40 pounds in three months, which is highly unrealistic unless you're using certain medications that can aid you in that. It's like, no. ⁓ but anyway, so if you're looking at the numbers with regards to like health and like weight loss in this example. Just like revenue in your business, you're like, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, especially women, because we have a stronger whoosh effect. You might be like weighing yourself every day and every week and getting discouraged, and then you stop that program and then you try something new and you go for the shiny new object. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna get a vibration plate. I'm gonna clean my lymphaticness system. I'm gonna go gluten-free. I'm gonna go carnivore, I'm gonna lift weights, I'm gonna do Pilates, I'm gonna do like. That's the same thing. It's the exact same thing, except instead of your business, you're doing it with your health. And nothing really ever changes because you aren't maintaining that consistency and just being bored with what you got and being okay with not having the results right away. And if you stick with it, especially women, you tend to get a whoosh effect ⁓ where you'll just drop like, I don't know, eight pounds. practically overnight after like months and months and months of just sitting, nothing moving for months. And then all of a sudden you can lose eight pounds one week, seven pounds the next week, because your body's like women especially, we are more prone to stress. And so your body has to adjust to the change in your diet and workout. And it has to understand this is a safe place and it starts releasing the endorphins and then you can start to lose the weight. It doesn't happen automatically. And that's why your husband or boyfriend loses weight so much faster than you when you guys are like, let's start walking at night together. Okay? It's it's not a you problem. It's just how we're made. Okay, so back to the horizon effect. It is the armor against this ⁓ delayed echo that we just went over. The last 90, like what you were doing 90 days ago affects what you're doing, like how your business is today. That's the delayed echo. So you know you need a consistent, ⁓ gosh. You need to consistently market, network, and prospect. These are the actions taken. I'm reading my notes that are like chicken scratches straight up. And what you should be focusing on market, network, prospect. Those are the inputs in your business. Those are the investments. That's the water for your plants. That's doing that one extra push-up when you're like, I fucking hate push-ups. That's the input that's gonna get you the results down the road when you're like, versus just seeing the money made or seeing the bookings come in. That's the output. And so back to the gardening or weight loss reference. If you're staring at your plants and you're like, why don't you have flowers yet to start fruiting? ⁓ I don't think that's as good of a reference right now, but like the weight loss when you're like, ⁓ I'm gonna measure myself, like with you know, how much do I weigh, whatever size clothes, I don't know how you decide to do your measurements. But if you're doing that every day, that is so bad for you to maintain consistency. And that's the output. The money made is the weight lost. The bookings that were confirmed is your muscles toning up, even if you haven't lost a whole lot of weight yet. But that's the output and that's what people are always looking for when they set goals instead of can I do one more push-up? Can I add five more pounds to this set of squats? Can I do a sixty second sprint today when I was only able to do capable of doing a thirty second sprint yesterday? Like if you're runner, whatever. All right. Point in this episode is stop managing your mood based on your numbers on the dashboard today. And you need to build for that horizon. Build for the horizon. Build for three, six, nine, twelve, fifteen months from now. Do the work for three, six, nine, twelve, fifteen months from now. And also don't expect exact results. Don't expect, ⁓ in three months I will guarantee have this many bookings. That's just like saying, ⁓ if I just cut out on two sodas a day, I will guarantee lose this much weight. Like I'm not gonna talk about that much more because this episode is running over. But that doesn't necessarily gain that doesn't necessarily guarantee it because just because you cut out two sodas a day doesn't mean you aren't secretly eating six Oreos a day and replacing it. You know what mean? ⁓ All right, that was day one sixty five. We're gonna expand on this. I should have broken this up into two episodes, honestly. These are all there's so many notes. ⁓ thanks for listening. Have a great day and come on back tomorrow. Bye.