Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 250: Why Travel Advisors Need to Celebrate Business Wins
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K. Today is day 250. If you're brand new, I'm a travel agency owner helping travel agents like build your business. Head over to elevate with Rachel K.com. I offer mentoring and like kind of like a DIY program with a lot of coaching involved. So you have like two options. If you want to go deep one-on-one with me, great. If you are like, I don't think I can swing that right now, and I'm brand new, great. I got something that's like a buck fifty a day for you. Okay, today is day 250, the habit of celebrating all the wins. If you're the kind of person this is like a good one that I see a lot of advisors that like really really really strive for a success and they're like kind of there but they're like they get stuck around that hundred and fifty two hundred K in commissions they just kinda get stuck they can't grow past it. So if you're the kind of person who finishes a quarter That's amazing. And then you immediately are like, what about next quarter's goals? Without even pausing to actually acknowledge what just happened. This episode's for you, because I can guarantee you, you have probably sold over a million in sales for multiple years in a row, but you can't hit that two, three, four million dollars in bookings. And that's where a lot of advisors get stuck. Because you just keep moving forward. We gotta calm it down, everybody. Driven growth-minded entrepreneurs often have the default setting of what's next, which is genuinely useful for momentum, but has never really like it's very, very, very, very costly when it those people don't pause long enough to register that a win is a win. it's a psychological pattern. Called the arrival fallacy. The assumption that hitting a goal will produce lasting satisfaction, followed by the surprising, not so surprising, in discovery, that the satisfaction fades almost immediately and the attention simply moves to the next target. And this is why you do it for the love of the game, people. You don't do it for, I booked a million in sales. I booked, well, now I'm stuck at between one and two million. I can't get over two million. Because you get to that million in sales. And if you aren't doing it for the love of the game, you're just doing it for the love of the money and the love of the accolades, you're gonna stay stuck for quite some time in that phase. Because you can't even register that that's a win. Anyway. Entrepreneurs are very, very prone to this because the habits that make someone good at building a business, which is restlessness, super high standards, constant forward motion, are the same habits that make it hard to sit still in the moment of actual accomplishment. I remember Hmm. My first like certificate award, it wasn't really anything big, but I remember I printed it off. I was one of the top agents for bookings with my host agency for that month. And I printed that one off. And I was like, look at me go building my business. I think it was my first hundred thousand dollars in bookings month as well. And that gave me more momentum to keep going because I was like, I'm just getting started. I'm just getting started. And then I remember winning my first like Group Star Award thing. And that's when I had that feeling of like, I've arrived. Like my first like top agency under the host or top agent sales award thing. That was cool because I had a goal. My dad got Agent of the Year in Life Insurance when he was 41. And I got it when I was 39. And so in my brain, I I have my dad's trophy. It's this giant eagle thing. And it lists the year. And it was 1994. Do the math. And so I was like, okay, my goal is by twenty twenty four to get an agent of the year award. And I hit it in twenty twenty two and I remember taking a picture of the little agency one next to his giant eagle thing. Because back in the nineties they actually spent money on these things. No, I'm kidding. And I was like, did it? I actually beat my dad. Like I used he die he passed in 2008, but I was using his accomplishments as like, I can do this too. If he could do it, I can do it. but that was still like I was still in momentum mode at that point. And it was when I for got the first group star thing. And I was so excited to celebrate with the other top group people. And a lot of people at that place were just like not my not my scene. And so I was like, I've arrived to this. This isn't what I like. I don't this is not there were some really awesome people that I met. There were a lot where I was like, ugh, brother, ugh. And that made me really question, do I want to keep going? And I thought about pulling back, so I was like, well that was my main goal was to get up to those levels and then I like, maybe I should pull back a little bit. And I started to pull back and then life turned upside down. But now I'm I really do love the game. I've had to sit quietly and heal and rebuild. And I'm like, nope, I love this too much. And so now my plan is I'm coming out swinging. You've been warned, all of you. I've secretly, I've secretly been swinging this whole time. And The yeah, I'm really excited about it. Anyway. When you don't celebrate those wins though, and you don't give yourself a time to rest and really acknowledge it, you're teaching yourself over time that nothing's ever quite enough. and that's a big pattern that leads to burnout far more often than it leads to sustainable ambition. Like, this is why you gotta do it for the love of the game. Not for I gotta hit a million in sales or I gotta hit two million at sales. And no, it's not for that. It's also this Keep going, keep going, what's the next goal and not like stopping to be like, hey, I'm actually pretty awesome. Ironically, a form of the same kind of identity fusion problem that we've been talking about the past few days, but it's showing up in reverse. Instead of a bad number becoming a verdict to your worth, a good outcome gets discounted so fast it never gets the chance to actually inform your own sense of any sort of competence that you have at all. 'Cause it's never good enough. Alright, we're not doing a therapy session today, but also talk to your therapist about that. If every good quarter immediately dissolves into the next set of goals with no acknowledgement in between. Your business can grow substantially, but your internal experience of it never actually really improves. You could double your revenue over a year and still feel exactly as anxious and behind as you did at the beginning simply because the habit of acknowledgement was never built for you. And maybe you're like, but I do acknowledge my wins, but maybe you aren't like sincerely and authentically acknowledging your wins. You're just doing it because you read a book that said you should do it. And that is such an exhausting way to build anything. it undermines the discipline and the consistency that we've been talking about building. It's much harder to sustain consistent effort towards something that never seems to reward you. when it objectively is constantly rewarding you. Ooh, think about that. And let's get let's get a little Catholic about this for a second. False humility is I think that it it might be tied to false humility. I'm sorry, I'm just thinking right now. so false humility is you can do all these amazing things, but you don't allow yourself to acknowledge that you're capable of doing all these things. And from a Catholic perspective, like God gave you these gifts to bring this about into the world. And if you're like, I don't need to be acknowledged, it's fine. And he wants you to take a break, people. There is a Sabbath for a reason. And if you just keep going, keep going, keep going, you're just gonna get stuck. You're gonna get burnt out. You're not doing it for the love of the game. And you're coming at it from an angle that you're never going to be enough. And guess what? You won't be able to get much past that. So I make Sense. If I ever ask, does that make sense? I know it does not make sense. And I'm trying to convince you that it does. Does that make sense? Yes, it does make sense. So anyway, there's often some kind of quieter belief underneath the skip celebration habit. I think it's tied to false humility. Just went into that. Because even acknowledging a small win privately could be viewed as arrogant in your mind. It's not, but it could be. That could be your thought process. I don't know you. or that you're jinxing yourself and there's gonna be bad luck, or that real professionals just move on to the next thing without making a fuss. Really? Then why are so many companies doing corporate retreats and incentive trips? That is the biggest thing in the tech industry because all the AI jobs have been or sorry, all the jobs in tech are being replaced with AI. So now they want party planners, big corporate event planners for the people that remain so that they can connect because they all work remotely. But okay, professionals just move on and go to the next goal. You keep believing that. Okay, if any of that sounds familiar, I don't know who I was arguing with that like scenario, by the way. Just imagining someone arguing with me about that. But if any of that does sound familiar to you, it's worth like naming it, acknowledging. Genuine accomplishments. It that's not arrogance. It's arrogance is dismissing all the effort and the skill that it actually took to get there. That's what the arrogance is. That's why it's false humility. Because it's like, I'm too good to even do this. I don't even deserve like no. Arrogance is telling yourself, well, I'm just such a badass boss, babe. I can't even celebrate anything or rest. I have to keep going, going, going. But Honestly, a lot of the agents I've met and mentored in that space don't really make a lot of money because they're stuck, because they can't rest, they can't celebrate their wins, they don't view themselves as worthy, and it's all over their marketing messaging. The energy is there. This doesn't need to be elaborate. When you're doing your review, if you're having a good quarter, explicitly write down what actually went well. Even if you have a crappy quarter, write down what went well. Not just the big numbers, the specific wins, like a client relationship issue that you handle beautifully, any kind of conflict that you handle beautifully, a system that you finally finished building after months of meaning to. And putting it off, and you're like, no, I finally got this workflow ready. Any kind of fear that you decided to carry with and move through. A difficult conversation you had to have, and you did it with real grace. Say it out loud, write it down, tell someone who's gonna actually celebrate with you, rather than immediately redirecting to, well, what's next? Like, don't dismiss how awesome you are. But don't do it every day. Like, don't be like, I'm awesome. Well, you should be awesome every day. But don't get narcissistic about it. The goal, there's a balance. So your goal here, though, is to like let that acknowledgement actually land for you rather than rushing past it towards the next goal setting exercise. And again, if you're like, wow, I can't believe this happened. This is amazing. I'm so grateful for it. Every moment of gratitude is a moment your brain cannot be anxious. Mmm. Think about that. Consider building a few tiers of celebration into your own actual quarterly review practice. I like to treat myself well before MCAS. I like to treat myself to whatever kind of dinner I want. Any anything that I want. And like it could even just be, I just want Wendy's. That's what I want today. Or it could be like I want sushi or I want to go to a nice steakhouse. Once a quarter after my review, I take the wins and the L's and I go celebrate. I made it another 90 days. Hooray, I'm still alive. But like a good client call piece of your content that you were really proud of, even if it didn't go viral, could just get like a little note running in the wins document. Maybe open up a little document and be like my wins. I like to schedule time off for my quarterly reviews. So once it's done, I have the next day off and I get a three-day weekend. I try to put my three-day weekends, like try to do my quarterly reviews or on the three-day weekends I want. Big milestones hitting the revenue goal you've been working towards for a year plus or landing a client you've been building towards for a long time deserves something that actually marks the occasion, something that you remember later as the moment you celebrated that particular wedding. Back to my cleaning business days. I remember when I got my first billionaire with a bee client. This was before I was even a butler. And That was a secret little goal that I had when I first started making $35 a week, by the way. And I got a call from them because it was a referral. And I remember I went out to this Japanese place that I love that night because they were like, we want to hire you. And I was like, holy garbage. I'm super excited about this. Building an agency is an absolute long game, and you gotta have love for the game for the millionth time this episode. We've already talked about in past episodes the five-year plan. And this business will hopefully involve many, many, many, many, many, many quarterly reviews over that time. A practice of genuinely celebrating the wins along the way is a part of what makes that long game sustainable. Rather than the endless treadmill of goals that never feel satisfying because you don't say they're w you're worth it. Like what? No matter how much you achieve, it's never enough. What? I mean, realistically, if you were on your own you would need to make a certain amount of money, but you gotta build it it takes a lot of work to go, like to build it from especially in travel. You start at zero. You can't just walk up like my cleaning business, I went to my ex-husband's best friend's house and I was like, Your house is disgusting. This is why you can't get ladies. For thirty-five dollars a week, I'll clean your living room, your kitchen, and the main bathrooms. When you bring ladies over here, they'll be like, wow, what a Responsible adult instead of wow, this is absolutely disgusting. You can't do that in travel. You can't just walk up to a friend and be like, you suck at planting your own trist, let me do it for you. So it's really, really hard to start. it has a low cost, a low barrier to entry. It's really hard to get that first client. The advisors I've known who have lasted in this industry decades plus, rather than burning out in year two or three, they tend to be the ones who just built in genuine moments of acknowledging they're good, they're pretty even keeled, they don't react to things, sometimes they're frustrated, but they can move on within a matter of two minutes. And they aren't just the ones who worked the hardest. Okay? So today, why don't you open up a document and call it the wins document at some point if you remember? Because I know some people listen to this while driving. And just add it to each quarter. Like put the date down for your wins. Even if like you want to do a daily refract reflection? Reflection. And put your wins down. You can do that and then just look at it once a quarter. Tomorrow we're gonna think of seasons instead of days. With the that's why you do a quarterly review also. Have a great day. I will see you tomorrow.