Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 245: Doing What Every Other TA is Doing is Keeping You Small
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I am your host, Rachel Gay. I'm a travel agency owner helping all of you travel advisors listening. And I know some of you aren't even travel advisors, but thanks for listening. Building a business that actually works for you and your life and understanding even how to build a business. Cause most of y'all didn't get an MBA. Okay, day 245. Doing what everyone else does is keeping you broke. Duh. But why blending in is costing you more than you realize? If your content, your offers, and your messaging look nearly identical to every other advisor in your niche, this episode is a direct and friendly wake-up call. Why sameness is expensive and it is not safe at all? It is the biggest risk you can take in your business. Copying what everyone else in your industry is doing feels safe because it's you're blending in with the herd and the flock. It's proven, quote unquote. It's familiar. Nobody can criticize you for doing what's already been accepted five years ago, right? Sameness has a real hidden cost. When you look and sound like every other option, the only thing left for a potential client to compare is the price because you haven't given them any reason to choose you specifically. Also The average travel advisor five years in is lucky to grow sixty K a year. Buff gross, which means before expenses. If you are doing what everyone else is doing, you are average. That's not enough money to even be considered a business once you get all your expenses and stuff down. And if you are under that There is a very good chance eventually you will no longer be able to take advantage of any tax deductions. You will be considered a hobby by the IRS. Okay? Alright. Let's talk about real business examples. Southwest Airlines. We all know what they've been doing this year. We all know how many people are pissed off at it. But when Southwest Airlines first launched, the dominant airline model was full service, assigned seating, meals, a broad route network, major hub airports. Southwest deliberately did the opposite. There was no sign seating. Remember remember the old Southwest. It was minimal frills, point to point roots, no. And a relentless focus on lower costs and quick turnarounds. It looked nothing like the rest of the industry at the time. That refusal to simply mirror the established players is widely credited as Central to Southwest becoming one of the most consistently profitable airlines in the industry's history in a sector where many normal full service competitors struggled or failed entirely. TWA, anybody? When did that go away? And remember like O'Ha was it O'Hare Airlines that had the jer that had the Gershwin song, Rhapsody and Blue? I'm old. It's fine. Warby Parker. Mm-hmm. If you got glasses, you know who Warby Parker is. They entered the eyewear industry dominated by a small number of large players and expensive in-store retail models. Instead of following that same playbook, they built a direct-to-consumer model. Try on at home, significantly lower prices, a distinct brand voice that looked totally different from how eyewear traditionally had been sold. That departure from the standard model was a large part of what allowed a whole new entrant to build real lasting brand in an industry that hadn't seen much disruption in decades. So, what does this mean for your travel agency? Let's back it up. Let's talk about how I was shit on by travel advisors in 2020 for saying, hey, we should be on TikTok. And hey, we don't need to have beautiful curated feed, curated feeds. We don't need to have everything matching our branding. We need to show up and build trust with our audience. So many people in the industry was like, I don't understand. Why don't you have a Facebook group? I don't understand. Why are you not on Instagram? And I was like, that's not where my ICA is. Well, how come you don't wear makeup or use filters? Because my IC da my ICA does not care about makeup or filters. My ICA wants information, not pretty pictures. I don't understand why anyone wants to work with you. Well, I'm Just crushing it over here. And sidebar, yes, be on TikTok. If that's where your ICA is great. Fantastic. But why are we just being why are travel advisors just now in the last like year, year and a half, two years maybe, being told to be on TikTok? Who is giving this dinosaur information? Sorry. I don't know because I keep my head down and I do my travel thing and I am doing my marketing my way for my travel agency. I always have been this way. I do things how I want it to look, what my ICA wants, and I don't worry about anything else. but then now that I'm mentoring travel advisors and I have like so many live QA's and stuff, it's like Well, you're supposed to be here now. You're supposed to be here now. And I'm like, who is telling you this you need to be here now? Who is who is this? No, like you go where your clients are, first off. I'm not gonna get into that today. I've talked about it in several episodes. You don't need to reinvent the wheel and you don't need to reinvent the travel industry to benefit from this principle. What you need to do is you need to identify the places where you're currently doing what's expected simply because it's expected, and maybe you gave someone too much money, so now you're like, I have to trust what they say. And ask honestly whether a more specific, more you version might actually serve your clients and your own business better. Your business, like just focus on your offer, who you serve, very clearly, the avatar of the people you serve and how you serve them. Find out where they are and speak only to them. Build your processes out to serve them in a way that you can do it with the skills you have. and skills you know you can continue developing in a way that makes them happy. That's it. That is it. That's it. anyway. So this connects ever like to this entire year so far. Your founder story, your brand story, your ICA, your leadership style, how you show up as a leader for your clients. Sameness blends in an average average tasks and average systems and average everything is going to get you average results. Go Google the average travel advisor salary. If you want those results, do what everyone else is doing. If you don't want those results, do what works for you. Be different. Specificity gets remembered, and remembered is what gets referred or booked. One more episode. More fast food. Raising canes. What? Why staying deliberately and defiantly simple and doing things? Sidebar preview for this episode. The founder of Raising Canes. presented the idea of raising canes in business school to his professor and his professor said that's the dumbest idea ever. It's never going to work. And then he was like, watch me. That's tomorrow's episode. And why you need to consider doing something where everyone's like, that's the stupidest thing ever. Why aren't you doing what are the rest of us doing? And I almost want to make sheep noises, but I'm not gonna, I don't want to go that far. Let's get you motivated to build your business your way that builds you up. Okay? Have a great day. I'll see you tomorrow.