Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 105 - Why does a travel advisor need consistency?
Transcript
- Rachel K: It's day 105 of the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. the next few episodes, yesterday's episode was Discipline is Freedom. And I'm going to be expanding upon that over the next few days. So today is about maintaining consistency in marketing systems and systems in general. Again, the discipline is super important. If you aren't disciplined, you aren't going to stick with it. You aren't going to hit your goals. And it's all little baby steps. You don't have to do everything. all at once. Let's just slowly work it out. And also understand, I cannot reiterate this enough, just because you have this system in place now does not mean you have no capability of revising it down the road. Okay. So we just finished the first quarterly review. If you are regularly listening or if you are using this as the companion to the success circle, head over to elevatewithrachelk.com if you want more info about that. We just finished our first quarterly review. Congratulations, you made it three months. Whether you're new or seasoned, you're three months into the year or 13 weeks. So you might have some new changes to your marketing. or strategy, your content strategy, your operations, they shouldn't be full revamps of your entire business. That's more like the annual review. However, monthly reviews, which we'll get into later on, ⁓ and quarterly reviews and even weekly reviews, you might have tiny little tweaks that you'd wish to make to your business. ⁓ You might be, after reviewing your revenue, you're gonna be feeling one of three ways. You're going to be like, I'm in a sales slump. Or if you're new and you aren't, you don't have a whole lot of revenue generated. I am the worst travel agent ever and I can't do this. That's option one. Option two is you are generating a lot of revenue. And so you're like, I'm the best travel advisor on the face of the planet. I'm doing so good. Hyped up, amped up, right? Things are going well. ⁓ option three is I was doing really good last quarter and I kept up that momentum and now I'm super overwhelmed. So those are your three states that you're probably in after this first quarterly review. And this is why I think I talked about, I can't remember. I record so much dang stuff. I can't remember if I discussed this in the success circle or in the travel agency in your podcast and past episodes. But I touch on detaching from the outcome. So you are gonna have one of those three feelings, like super pumped, because you're amazing and awesome, like that big, big dopamine hit, because you close, close, close, close, close. Maybe you started charging fees or you always have and you're like, ⁓ I made all this money in fees, I'm the best thing ever. You're just on this high of how great you are. Or you're in a slump and you're like, I'm beating myself up. You don't have that dopamine. I don't know the opposite of the dopamine hit. EOR-tism? I don't know what to call that. The EOR mindset. So if that is the case, it's the opposite of dopamine. And that's going to lead you to not be so hardworking. And same with the overwhelm. Like you kept it up because you had that dopamine hit and you kept going and kept going and booking more and more and more last quarter. And now you're starting to kind of feel overwhelmed. This is why you detach from the outcome. Okay. So you can make. Continue with your discipline. Know when to say no, know when to stop, and know when you are being lazy and you need to step up in your work, okay? What discipline tactics do? I don't know why I wrote this down in my notebook. You're like, what? Why did you just jump to this? That's the second thing in my notes. What discipline tactics do? You do need to implement your discipline tactics that you create. You don't have to have them right now. Just like take some time to journal. I'm a big fan of journaling, but it'll help you maintain consistency despite how your business is doing. because you are truly detaching from the outcome. It is not about I'm not making enough money or sales or I'm making so much money in sales and I'm the best thing ever or I made too much money in sales and now I gotta honor these promises I made with my clients and now I have too much work and I'm like barely thriving or surviving. If you keep your discipline tactics, hopefully if you don't have it developed yet and you are overwhelmed, sorry, not sorry, you're just gonna have to get through it. Honestly, like you could hire someone to help you. You could make some investments to help streamline everything and understand that if you are overwhelmed because you have too much business, this is a time for you to be disciplined and be like, okay, can't take any more trips on. But you are detaching from the outcome when you stick to just the discipline, the SOPs and how you want your business structured versus how you're feeling about how it's going. Okay? So if you get in slump mode and you're like Euritis, then you're probably not gonna be consistent with your marketing. You're probably not gonna be consistent with following up because you're just like, nobody likes me. Nobody wants to book with me. Never gonna make any money. I might as well just go get another job. This was worthless. Give it some time, okay? Like you can't, Rome wasn't built in a day, people. And neither is your little empire. Okay, remember to eliminate that scarcity mindset. And the scarcity mindset is, I need more bookings, I need to stay on top. That is also scarcity mindset. I don't have enough is scarcity mindset. Even if you are very successful right now and you keep pushing more, more, more, that is a scarcity mindset. Similar to nobody wants to book me. It's just like a different. belief, but it is scarcity mindset. ⁓ so you need to focus on practicing, eliminating those limiting beliefs, leading you to scarcity mindset. If you're in that boat, you need to be able to address your fears. Back in the day seventies, I did a whole series on the top 10 fears for entrepreneurs, specifically how they applied to travel advisors. Detach from the outcome. You can succeed. You can fail either way. You are you. Okay. You're not like you are not your travel agency. You at least did the work and you tried. If you fail or if you succeed, you did it. I don't like saying tried. I don't know why I said tried. Okay. So how do you do this? How do you address all these fears detached from the outcome? Let's talk about it. Number one, step number one, identify your motivation dips. It can be Again, success resting on your laurels and being like, I'm so great. I can take a little break. And then all of sudden you're like, ⁓ I'm not getting any new clients. It's been three months and now I'm not getting any more trip inquiries, but it can also be, I'm not getting enough book bookings. It can also be, I have too much work that I don't like doing. And if that's the case, then you should probably delegate those tasks out or figure out a way to automate them. So that's step number one, identify your motivation dips. Step number two, what triggers your procrastination? Ooh, ooh, ooh, I got some notes down here for this one. ⁓ What can trigger procrastination? Great question. Here's some examples. Any fears you have, any fears you have, you're like, not yet, not yet, not yet. This is me when I have to get my annual physical, because I'm like, needles, I don't need a blood draw. Not yet, let's reschedule. That is me procrastinating, making sure my cholesterol is fine. I'm like, mmm. Maybe I'll just have a heart attack and not worry about it because the needle, ugh, like my arm instantly. Nope. But that's like an example of fears that you might be having leading to procrastination. Or a lot of people don't like going to the dentist. They're very afraid of the dentist. So you're just like, I don't need a clean or a checkup at the dentist. I can wait another six months and then. Fast forward, it's been like 15 years and then you're like, I'm gonna do it. And then they're like, this is a big old mess. Hopefully not, but maybe. ⁓ Again, overwhelmed. Maybe you've taken on too much work because you were chasing that dopamine hit of, ⁓ they want a book with me, close, close, close. That is such an amazing high, not gonna lie. when you're just like on that streak and you're like, I got 20 bookings. Especially if you do groups like limit, limit to the groups, limit the larger groups is all I'm saying. But you chase that dopamine high and then you get overwhelmed. And so then you're like, that can kind of lead to fears triggering of I'm not good enough or imposter syndrome. I can't do this. And then you start to procrastinate. So you're like, what's the point? Maybe it's something you don't know how to do and you took it on anyway. And so now you're like, maybe I just won't do it. It could be really boring stuff. That's a huge problem for me. Like the stuff that I find boring in my business, I'm like, I do not want to do any of this. So I will put it off until the last second. It could also just be hormonal. And I'm not saying hormonal as in like, oh, you must be PMSing or in your luteal phase if you're a woman. Hormones are affected by stress alone. both male and female. That's why there's this huge thing about cortisol. Well, not a huge thing, but it's like discussed a lot in the, I don't know what to call it, nutrition and health sphere, like maintain your cortisol levels. But cortisol is activated, supposed to help you wake up in the morning and it's supposed to help you with adrenaline when you are facing stress. But if you have too much stress, it just doesn't really turn off. And that can affect other hormones like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. ⁓ I'm not saying like, ⁓ you have to go get your hormones tested because you're procrastinating. I'm just saying if there's no other logical reason and you just feel super overwhelmed and fatigued, it could be stress or hormone, stress and or, why can't I say this? Stress and or hormone related and I, would suggest like maybe managing your stress first for a few weeks. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a doctor before resorting to get hormones tested. ⁓ Step number three, come up with an accountability measure or measures to strengthen your discipline muscle. Maybe you need to have more check-ins with your clients on their trip progress. As an example, ⁓ for me, I have Trello boards to track and establish deadlines for tasks. I have two separate ones. two separate ones, one for the sales side and one for the admin side. I did establish like bi-monthly email systems for the, like my groups and room blocks. Like here's the updated information and I have the same emails for every single group that I manage. Like here's how this works, here's how this works and it's like every two weeks. So they have more knowledge, like the group hosts have more of an update. Not only for like, here's your room block, also like here's how the events management is going, especially if they have like offsite vendors. ⁓ okay. I also recommend doing trip audits. Hopefully you've heard this before. I do monthly group audits and I do monthly trip audits to make sure everyone's where they need to be. And. Sometimes I miss a task, even if it's like a workflow I may have forgot to click to set up and save. So I can go in and set that up when I do these audits. Always follow your SOPs as best you can in as much as possible, okay? So that's another way that you can have an accountability measure to maintain consistency, okay? So if your SOPs state specifically for like marketing, because we haven't really touched on marketing, When in the beginning of this episode, I'm like, this is marketing. Marketing is involved. But if you have time blocked off on your weekly schedule, content creation, and it's like, write the drafts or whatever, or if it's a lot of video content, record today and you aren't following that, follow that as your SOP. Maybe you need to revise it a little bit, tweak the times and days of the week. But also when that pops up. as a notification, like do this next, like follow it, okay? Okay, step number four. My desk squeaks if you hear that in this, by the way. I don't know why it's like squeaky all of a sudden. But step number four is identify your bottlenecks. And since it's a new quarter, don't be like, have to fix this all immediately, because that's just gonna stress you out and overwhelm you. Just be aware. You're just looking for the awareness and possible quick temporary tweaks. And by quick, mean five to 10 minute fix once a week. Okay. If you are not identifying your bottlenecks, you're probably gonna run into some problems, okay? So bottlenecks can be like, maybe you're avoiding specific tasks or when you see the bottlenecks, are you avoiding these bottlenecks? How often do these bottlenecks occur? Where do they occur? Are they in your financial side, marketing side, operational side, service side, sales side? And what is each bottlenecks impact on you and your business? because it's different for everyone. So I can't say. So as an example, ⁓ bottleneck could be you have people book consultation phone calls with you and you're finding that you have it automated set up after they've scheduled the call that they have to fill out this intake form and most of them are not filling out the intake form. And then when you get on the call, they either don't answer and ghost you, because you didn't make it easy for them, honestly. Or maybe like though you'd got to look at the intake form on it. I don't know where your intake form is, but if it's like 15,000 questions or 20 questions even like that's no, that's too much. I don't want to do that. So maybe you didn't make the intake form easy for your clients. And that's creating a bottleneck in your funnel. to get them from like social media or whatever to scheduling a call to working with you. So let's say you get 10 consultations a week, only three people actually fill out the intake form and because of that, the other seven ghost your call, they don't fill out the form. ⁓ And then you're only closing one of those three or two out of those three trips. You're not gonna hit your goals and that is a bottleneck impacting your business. And I'm not saying like your intake form sucks or anything, I'm just saying as an example. then that's going to lead to fewer actual conversions in your consultations and therefore fewer closings and therefore less revenue. So that's kind of a way to see the avoidance, how often an impact the avoidance is you neglected to look at that bottleneck in the first place and realize and take accountability that like, ⁓ this is, this is a me problem. I need to make this easier for them. Okay. By doing all of this and maintaining consistency and maintaining discipline, it helps set you up for freedom because you're taking full accountability for what's not working for you and your business and you're implementing discipline measures to offset said issues. Oh, that's end of my notes. So I hope this will help you if you are struggling. either super pumped by sales, like be very careful of that dopamine hit A. Don't give into your emotions behind your results for each quarter. It's okay. You could have something unexpectedly come up and you're on a roll and then you're like, ⁓ I had to take my pet to the event and I had to put them down or I had a family emergency. Like that stuff's gonna happen. So you've gotta like, when you don't have that stress going on, or those outside things going on that could affect your sales, like it's really good to strengthen your discipline muscle and implement consistency regardless of the outcome. Because you'd never know if something's gonna come in your life that's gonna cause you to have to maybe lose a little bit of revenue for a while, okay? All right, I hope this episode was helpful for you and share this with anyone. Again, this whole series the next few days is gonna be a lot about discipline. Tomorrow's episode is gonna be a how-to guide for group and FIT audits, if you care. If you're like, I already do this, then just stick around for laughs, even though the last few episodes I've been like very boring. Just like, bleh. All right, have a good day and I'll talk to you tomorrow.