Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 80 - The Fear of Rejection
Transcript
- Rachel K: Hi, it's day 80 of the Travel Agency New Year Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Kay, and we are going over the top 10 fears the last few episodes and for the next few episodes that travel advisors have when you're starting your own travel business. Today is the fear of rejection. Everyone has the fear of rejection. This is a super common thing. Oops, some window randomly popped up while I was recording and it's popping up again. Ugh, what is going on here? Okay, any hoodle. So this can be as little as like you're kind of, we've talked about the fear of inadequate marketing, but you're kind of hesitant to post and share anything on social media because you're afraid of random. comments from people, like why do you care? Don't even fight with them. Just be like thank you and move on. But that is a big block that people have. Because if you consistently get comments on your social posts like ugh, this is just terrible, you're being rejected. And so you might not want to put yourself out there because you're gonna get those comments. Typically when you first start out posting, you're not gonna get a lot of those comments. In my experience, it's when you really start to affect a lot of people, kinda like with reviews. You're always gonna get five star reviews if you're only booking your friends and family, right? It's when you are dealing with people you may never deal with again or never would have had the opportunity to meet. That's when you're gonna start getting more negative reviews and negative feedback. and that's okay too. I like to celebrate that. Like your first sub four star review is actually should be a celebration. Cause it's like I've actually affected enough people that there's someone out there who's not afraid to tell me they didn't like working with me. And they also... weren't the best fit. Typically if I were to receive any kind of negative reviews, it's almost always someone I never worked with that just mistook my business or like a random wedding guest. So it's like, sorry, your friends hired me to do the wedding. You know what I mean? Like, sorry we didn't get along. Okay. You're also more likely to have a larger fear of rejection because this is your brainchild. Your business is your brainchild. It should be very much aligned with who you are and it is putting yourself out there and it is projecting you into the world and be like, you give me money and support me for who I am, for who I truly am? That's terrifying. You can't just be like, ⁓ I work at a post office. This is a normal job, do to do. Because you can always fall back and be like, it's the office's fault. They're not rejecting me, but when it's just you and you have no nothing else to fall back on, you're gonna be rejected and that's terrifying. And because it's your brainchild, you're going to treat your business, hopefully, how you would raise a child. If you have children, you'll get this, but if you've never had children, you'll be like, what are you talking about? But your brainchild operates much like bringing a real human being into the world. ⁓ You have all these aspirations and goals and dreams of what this thing is going to become. It's probably not gonna work out that way, and you still love it anyway, and you gotta go through a lot of bumps and ups and downs to make sure that this thing can sustain. itself, whether it's a business or a human being. And that's why I said thing. So you might lean mom a papa bear and get super defensive if someone is kind of just being mean in your comments on your posts. Or you might just choose to stay small and almost be like a helicopter parent, like I'm going to protect you from everything so you can never grow. That's also bad. You're gonna go one of two directions and at some point your brain child has to get on that imaginary bicycle without the training wheels and fall over and skin their knee. You have to put yourself out there. So this fear of rejection is also a big hesitancy with taking risks in general. You've already taken a huge risk by starting your own business. Know that. And if you don't do anything with it, you're taking a much larger risk of letting it just sit there and do nothing versus tending to it and maybe not doing it perfectly, but at least doing it. But I get it, everyone has the fear of rejection at some point in some aspect of their lives. So how can we get over this fear of rejection? I think that would be my voice if I were a Muppet, by the way. Numero uno, let's celebrate all of your accomplishments and know what your strengths are. Yes, when you are all by yourself, you have to wear every single hat in your business and it's a lot. And that is actually so awesome because you get to truly understand what your strengths and weaknesses are and know this is exactly what I'm delegating out. But understand what your strengths are. You are doing this for a reason. You have certain strengths and abilities that other people don't that allow you to be able to book and manage trips much easier than most, right? So that's like one strength. I don't know you listening out there, but I know if you're a travel advisor, you probably are very good at organizing things. You also need to celebrate your accomplishments. Did you file your LLC paperwork? Hooray! Did you buy your domain? That's an accomplishment. Did you get your first trip deposited on? That's an accomplishment. Did you even come 50 % to two-thirds of the way to your quarterly goal? That's an accomplishment. It's better than not doing anything at all. Did you have a goal to put yourself out there on social media four times a week and you only got two posts out that it's still better than zero? That's an accomplishment. You did it. Rejection is natural. People are going to reject you. It has nothing to do with you and it is not a reflection of your worth. You need to understand that. You have this fear, it is not because of who you are. People will reject you. People will be like, I mean, I'm sure some weirdo found this podcast that is not a travel advisor and is like, your face is weird and rejecting me and swiped on. Like there's a reason why watch times aren't super high for a lot of content. I don't care. I'm still talking to the five people that actually listen to me. Hope you enjoy it, five people. Okay, also back to the growth mindset. If you have a growth mindset. Rejection is an opportunity to learn. So let's say it's not just on social media. Let's say you're really struggling to close consultations and everyone's rejecting you and you can't get trips closed. That is an opportunity to learn. I would highly recommend if you can, because I know different states have different laws, like recording a consultation, you've to get permission from the person, be like, hey, I'm just doing this for my own quality assurance. listening to it or even just like doing a practice walkthrough with a colleague for a consultation if that's where you're struggling get some feedback from another perspective so you have the opportunity to learn of where your weakness is and You can tweak and improve I'm not saying you're never gonna be perfect and you always need to be improving because that's exhausting you do need to take some breaks and be like I'm fine for now, but if things aren't going your way. And if you feel like you are being rejected, so therefore you're like less likely to continue trying, consider ⁓ employing your growth mindset. If you don't have one, that's a real issue there. Find a colleague and get some help, okay? Also understand if you're being rejected, if you're being ... getting crappy comments on your posts, whatever. You're not being bullied. You are not the victim. Like you are not. Like don't victimize yourself. Don't develop the victim mindset because it takes so much away from the growth mindset. Every lesson is a blessing. Every bit of suffering that you have leads to something beautiful and you can't have joy without experiencing suffering. If you are just always perfectly fine and nothing's your fault, like you're never gonna learn anything. So please do not think that you are the victim if you are being rejected. It could just be, in many cases, it can just be like, just not aligned, we're just not, we're not supposed to work with each other. But if it's a consistent part of your consultations, and they're just like, I don't like that idea, I really liked you, I was warm enough to book a call with you, but I don't wanna work with you, that's more of a you problem. Kind of like in dating, when you're like, those people that are like. ⁓ all of my exes are crazy. Mmm, the common theme is you, sir or madam. ⁓ Back to the colleagues. Please, please, please, please, if it's not through your agency, you could possibly find it through your own host agency. You can find it online. Guidance and support from peers and mentors. This is why I have the success circle. 35 bucks a month. People that are in the same boat as you, maybe people that are doing better than you, all welcome on these calls. There's a lot of learning going on. Everyone likes the calls a lot in the success circle that show up. They're like, well, this is my life now. But there's not only just for me being like, you should totally do things my way. I know everything. Instead of me just spouting a bunch of crap from a soapbox to you. There's other people that provide feedback as well. They're like, well, my experience, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Seek out more opportunities. If you're being rejected, let's say one of your social media platforms, don't recommend posting social media, every single platform, everywhere all the time, no more than three. But if one of them's not working at all, then that's not the space you're supposed to be in, and maybe you should consider another platform. Conversely, if you are really, really struggling with social media, you might need to seek out opportunities locally. And maybe you do much better with one-on-one in-person interaction. I don't know, we're all different. Everybody's different. But there are more opportunities than just what... you're being told you can do. I hope that makes sense. There's like tons of networking opportunities locally and nationally ⁓ that you could employ if you're like, just don't, I'm not feeling like I'm good on this platform. You can find alternative ways to leverage social media platforms to do networking instead of posting. ⁓ And there are so many different platforms. Again, your ICA is gonna be aligned with like maybe two or three platforms. But you can also experiment with other platforms and social media is constantly changing. So people are hopping from one to the next. I would say about every five years, a new platform is gonna come out and be like, this is the it one. And that's probably where a lot of younger people are gonna be. Anyway. There's always more opportunities. So yeah, we're all gonna get rejected at some point and that's okay. And you still need to put yourself out there because every no is one step closer to a yes. All right, so that is day 80. Thank you for listening. If you like this episode, share, please also subscribe. I think like 50 % of our listeners do not subscribe. If you want that daily notification of these episodes, subscribe. If you don't, just hope you find my channel again. And I do appreciate for you just listening today and I hope to see you tomorrow. Have a good day.