Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 151 - The TA's guide to the "Look Back" and the "Look Forward"
Transcript
- Rachel K: Welcome to the Travel Agency New Year podcast. We are on day 151. Thank you for joining me again today. I am Rachel K., your host, travel agency owner, and I do this podcast. If you would like more information on how I can help you outside of this podcast, head over to elevatewithrachelk.com. Today is day 152, nope, sorry, back it up, day 151. I write all my notes out for these episodes in a handy dandy notebook. and I skipped a day. Okay. We're gonna talk about working backwards, talking about the look back and the look forward with your quarterly review. Because you're like, what the heck do I do each quarter? The look back and the look forward. We've kind of touched on little concepts with the quarterly review, monthly review, tracking weekly data. ⁓ And I'm just baby stepping in to just being like, I'm such a business person. Not boss babe. Not, I'm the CEO. Like yes, you wanna be the CEO. Hopefully, if you're business someday. But you know what I mean. There's a difference between being like a smart, disciplined business owner and then the one who's just like, I'm a boss babe. Okay, we're trying to avoid the hustle boss babe mentality here and go to I'm making smart decisions. So we're gonna talk about the look back and the look forward in your quarterly review. There are six points. that I have here that you need to focus on. I always recommend, and this is something my dad taught me, I think I was like 23, and I was like, Dad, major quarter life crisis. Dad, my life is over. I don't own a house yet. That was the actual conversation. I wanted to buy house in my early, early 20s. And he was like, ⁓ No one owns a house at 23 unless their parents buy it for them. What are you crazy? And I was like, maybe, but I want to buy a house. And he's like, OK. And this is what he taught me. And this is what I talk about a lot of times when I say start at the end and work backwards. So this is how he taught it to me. And I'm sure I've mentioned this in other episodes. I don't care. I'm repeating it. Save this episode for later if you want to hear the story again. So he said, well, when do you want to buy a home? And I said, OK, let's do no less than five years, 28 years old. That's when I want to be a homeowner. And he's like, that's pretty freaking ambitious of you, considering you are still struggling through college and have no money. I was like, that's fine. He's like, yeah, you can do anything if you put your mind to it. So how much is the average home? Where you wanna live? Like, where do you wanna live? And I was like, well, I wanna live in this, you know, my hometown. I'm gonna buy a house in my hometown. Okay, what's the average price of a home here? And so we looked it up, and I think back then it was like 90, $100,000 for like, I didn't want anything swanky. I like older homes. I love homes built before like 1990, because I'm old enough now, but back then I was like, homes built before 1985. I've moved it up a little bit. I'm like, well, you've been around long enough. I can trust this construction. And so we kind of looked at the neighborhoods I wanted to live in and then the average home price and he said, okay, so in five years from now, let's estimate what the value of the home is. So back then it was like $80,000 in the neighborhood I wanted to live in, because I was renting from my parents in that neighborhood. And he was like, okay, so let's just say $100,000. And he said, in five years, you're gonna need $20,000 down payment to avoid PMI and you're gonna need a credit score for an FHA, I can't remember, like above 585. And he's like, what's your credit now? So we looked at it and he's like, okay, you can get better interest rate, but we'll co-sign for you. Don't worry about it if you don't have a very good credit score. And I was like, okay. And he's like, so your main goal is $20,000 in the next five years. And then he's like, how much is that per year that you need to save? And he said, we're not even gonna factor, you know, return on investments in the stock market or interest earned in a savings account. Just how much do you need a year? You got five years. I was like, well $4,000, Dad. He said, okay. And it was like February or March of the year. I think it was like in 2006. No, it would have been fall of 2006. Anyway, fall of 06, summer, fall of 06. And he's like, okay, so you got five years, $4,000. How much do you have saved now? And I was like, nothing. I don't know how much I had saved back then, honestly. maybe $1,000 to my name, I don't remember. And he was like, all right, so you're halfway through this five years, so you have six months to save up, you know, three, $4,000. I don't remember how broke I was, but I was broke. I was like, yeah, and he was like, what are your bills like? What's your income like? And I was like, this, this, and this, and he said, okay, so you need to earn an extra... What was it? Let's just say it was $3,000 over six months. He's like, you need to bring in an extra $500 a month or cut $500 a month from your bills in order to get this $3,000 goal this year. I was like, yeah, you're right. And he was like, OK, what can you cut? And I was like, I can unplug my refrigerator when I'm not using it. And he was like, that's extreme. I was like, I can unplug my stove to save on electricity. And he's like, Okay, or maybe you can earn more money. And I was like, ⁓ true. So we worked backwards and this is what you should be doing when you have big goals and it seems overwhelming. Like buying a house at 28. then you work backwards and you, what can you do next week? What can you do tomorrow to get you closer to this goal? And that's what he taught me very much in depth. It was like probably a two hour conversation, if I'm honest. And I did end up purchasing a home, I think in 2010. So I was 27. So I did hit the goal. It didn't, it wasn't like exactly per the plan. But I did it, I got it done. Okay, why did I bring that up? work backwards for the next quarter. That's the whole purpose of this episode. And that's the story. So now we're gonna talk about the data for the look back. The look back is all of the information from like just writing it down or putting it in a spreadsheet or running a report. I highly recommend writing down anything that you find to be important for your business somewhere on paper because you'll remember it better. If you're just looking at a report in a CRM, ⁓ you're just going to be like, well, that's good information. And, whoop, it's out of your brain. Who cares? But if it's like you really want to improve your open rate or your click rate on your email newsletter, writing that down, getting a little $0.75 or a dollar notebook from Dollar Tree, whatever, like a little one, take a Sharpie and write, email newsletter data on it and that's all that notebook's for. And then you open it up, captain's log, start date, whatever day it is on that day of the week you're doing these analytics reviews. And then you write down the open rate and the click rate. And then you sit and you look at that email and read it like your ICA. It should take you five to 10 minutes if it's just an email newsletter type thing. And read it and be like, what can I change in my next email to improve this? open rate and click rate. Okay. So you should be collecting that data for your look back, your marketing, client feedback, your average time spent on a trip. If you can, track all of that, like how many hours you're working, your revenue coming in, your sales for future revenue. ⁓ I don't know why I'm blanking, because I don't have it clearly written down. All the things. Definitely write down what's most important for you to be tracking once a week, and this is going to help form your look back. So like the P &L statements, that's going to give you a look back on your finances. Biggest complaints, biggest ⁓ accolades, guess, happiest reviews from people, that can be part of your look back. Your overall social media stats, part of your look back. Now, when you are looking at all this data, I like to, if you haven't, if I haven't already told you, I highly recommend the book, The E-Myth, because he makes you break down your different executive office departments, even if it's just you, and then you create your little management team underneath them, and then the people underneath them, like who's sales, who's admin, who's service, and you just build this little. imaginary empire and then you sign contracts with yourself. You're like, I'm hiring you to be the CMO. It's pretty fun to do. But the E-Myth is a very good book that you can purchase ⁓ that can be very helpful in this kind of stuff. OK, so when you have this information, do it. When you're doing quarterly reviews, it's going to be a lot of information to review. Monthly should be a little bit easier. Weekly, you're just writing it down. Monthly, you can glance at it all probably in about one to two hours a month. And then just, is this an immediate action I need to do or future action? Quarterly is gonna be a little more in depth and annual is definitely gonna be very much in depth. ⁓ You want to see all the information and do it per department, quote unquote, in your business. executive CEO should be the last one that sees all this stuff. So you want to like put on like the emith, put on your COO hat. operations and look at your operations and make recommendations based on the look back data over the last quarter per your operations. Okay? And then you make recommendations as the COO for immediate and future actions comparing it to the overall company's goals. Then you take that hat off. This could take you like 30 minutes to an hour just for the operations. Then you put your marketing hat on and you do the look back. Marketing is gonna be a big, big part because you're in sales, sorry. ⁓ And put on your marketing hat, look at all the data, whatever your marketing strategy is, are you consistently showing up? Are you actively getting leads? Is this working? Do you need to make any tweaks? Make recommendations again. Take your CMO hat off. Put on your CFO hat. I'm going in a specific order for a reason. CFO hat. Look at the money. Glance at any recommendations that marketing has sent off to you or operations and like, need to upgrade this software CFO, right? And then you look at the P &Ls at this point and you make the decision, hmm. I would recommend to the CEO that we need to invest more in marketing versus upgrading our website to have prettier colors or whatever. The latest fonts from Envato or whatever. then the CFO makes those recommendations as well as forecasts. Here's what the anticipated revenue is coming in and you might need to do some budget cuts per the CFO. You are the CFO, but play the CFO. And you take that hat off and then you gather all the recommendations from each department, put your CEO hat on, and then you make what are the immediate decisions and what are the future decisions. Now, that's the look back. and we'll talk about the look forward in a second. When you are putting on these different hats, for each department, look at your own, or if you have any assistance, whatever, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, or threats, okay, when you're wearing a chat, individually. The SWOT analysis, this is like business 101, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You can do up to, 10 opportunities or tweaks, like a combination, right, for each department. Don't go crazy and be like, I need to completely redo everything. Calm down. Remember, no emotion. What are 10 opportunities that your CMO spots with your marketing? Or what are 10 tweaks? Or six opportunities, four tweaks, whatever, no more than 10. You might only have like two tweaks because you're like, everything's fine in this department. You might have zero. Once you have all that to your CEO self, I know, I feel like I'm telling you, just have multiple personality disorder, it's fine. Once you present this to your own imaginary CEO self, you want to make three, no more than five priorities for the next quarter. You can still have ⁓ your goals, whatever. your forward annual goals, but three, no more than five priorities for the next quarter. And this is known as your look forward, okay? And each department can do a look forward with recommendations. If you're like 10 things is too much for each department and you have a lot of fires that you're trying to put out, then just do a look forward for each department and then send it to the CEO of self and then you strategize the top. five priorities from marketing operations and finances. The main ideas that you could focus on as an example, maybe you have found an opportunity and have a tweaked goal of $200,000 in bookings for each month in the next quarter. And the opportunities have been found not only in marketing, but also in your operations. You have a new thing you want to implement there and you have done well enough with your revenue and scrolled away, invested back in your business wisely so you can make an investment to potentially hire someone who can help develop the strategy to bring in $200,000 in bookings each month. That could be part of your look forward and that is now your main idea. You are still, that's one of your main ideas, right? hire this social media person because it makes financial sense and it could get you to this goal and it's going to help you with your marketing and your operations. Whatever, right? It could also be something like hire and train one person. You've got the finances to cover a few months of their expenses up front. ⁓ You have a lot of SOPs in place. Operations reports, you have a thorough training program that's easy to do. ⁓ And then the CFO reports, yeah, we have the money for that. So you as the CEO can be like, ⁓ And... Operations did the research and was like, this organization has da-da-da-da-da. I feel silly being like, you're imaginary operations person. Just do it, it's fun. It's fun. We all have free will, we're all adults. Come on, enjoy your life. Play. Get a big fancy board table and big, spinny executive chairs and then get a white cat and spin around and be like, I've been waiting for you, Mr. and conduct your meetings. I don't care. But anyway. Um, you could have both of those priorities. It just really depends on what you're seeing in your look back and then making decisions for the future. So with the look forward, the $200,000 sales months, if you are teetering on that right now, like 120, 150 a month, that's very feasible to start the next quarter with that. If you are like at 60 a month right now, You'd have to be like, let's have a goal at the end of the next quarter to break 200,000 bookings. Okay. In terms of hiring, again, it's your urgency based on your look back. Do you need to hire someone like tomorrow or do you need to hire someone halfway through the quarter? How prepared are you? All right, when you are setting your goals, smart, this is like The silly, I know, I know, I get it. You're like, I've already heard smart goals from everyone everywhere. I know. The acronym, you can do it. Set smart goals. ⁓ Break everything down into your steps, task by task. Mise en place, if you were cooking, like you're cooking a recipe. You don't want to like wander around your kitchen and let something burn in the skillet because you don't like your garlic. Burn garlic because you're like, oopsie. I forgot to get my bottle of wine open for this sauce. Well, it's ruined anyway. Get everything in place. So like hiring, you've already done the research or maybe your CEO self decides now's the time to start researching to hire someone. How do I want this to look? And then the following quarter, start that process. Just to be sure, you can always refer back to your annual, prior year annual as well to make sure you're still on alignment. You don't really need to. It is nice to reference. If you had a goal at the annual to be like, I want a billion dollars in sales and you got like five bucks on the books, it's like, uh-oh, something's going on. We are not in alignment. What's happening? Okay. All right, final note on the super long episode. Regular reviews are super important. This is like more of an in-depth of the quarterly review. ⁓ Be sure to be flexible. Like don't fight yourself. Look at the effort versus the impact on things. let's say, all right, so my program, the Success Circle, is pretty in depth and it's like two hours a week. I'm sorry. And it's a full year. ⁓ It will have a different type of impact on your business versus doing like a webinar every week with various suppliers that you don't think you're ever gonna sell. And I'm not like, ⁓ my program is so much better than everything else on there. No. What I'm saying is always look at the effort involved, financial or mental time efforts that you are putting in versus the impact it will have on your business. OK. Now, once you do this quarterly review, say you haven't done any monthly reviews and you're like, I'm screwed. And then you do the quarterly review and you're like, ⁓ this is way more fun than I thought it would be and I actually feel like I'm gonna accomplish something because I'm bossing myself around. Like you have to be your own boss. Start implementing a monthly review and then you can also do like a mid-quarter review and reset if you need to, okay? Alright, this was day 151 of the Travel Agency New Year Podcast. Please save if you need to refer back to this later. Because you're like, I'm not doing a quarterly review for another month. I'm not doing it the Rachel way. I'm not. Fine, fine. Have it your way. And I hope you have a great day. Thanks for coming by and listening.