Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 194: Turning your story into content
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome back to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K, and we are on day 194. If you have not listened to yesterday yesterday's episode about creating your founder story, stop right now. Go listen to that and then come back. Okay? Cause today we're gonna take those three questions. If you answered them, and that's at the end of the episode, I review them. Quick. Answer those questions and come back and listen to this episode. Or not, just keep listening. Who cares? So, but hopefully you wrote down the honest version of why you started your travel business. And today we're gonna take it and put it to a little bit of work because a story that only exists in a notes app or on like your notebook. doesn't build trust at all because it's like not out in the world, okay? And you don't just tell the story once, you can tell it many different ways. There is a creator out there that I've like been observing. I love watching content creators and be like, hmm, what are they doing with their brand voice? Like, I'm a I probably need to go get some kind of testing. I don't know. but they talk about where they were five years ago only making two thousand dollars a month and within eight within six weeks of launching something they made forty grand and now they make a million dollars a year and they're just great you know and I'm like interesting and that story is told so many times in their content so the misconception that stops travel advisors from using their founder's story You think it's a one-time about you post, just told once, or the about me section on your website, then it's retired. Your founder story is a well that you return to again and again, told from different angles depending on the moment. So the full version might live on your about me page. The complete arc, the turning point, the stakes, and the payoff, but pieces of it show up. constantly everywhere else. Like a single line in like your I don't know Instagram bio is that a thing? TikTok bio? a story that you tell in the middle of your newsletter when it's relevant to what a client is going through. Like a short video answering why did you become a travel agent or travel advisor that you can point new followers to again and again. Those are different ways of telling this story. So, three places that you can put your founder's story duh, your bio, and about page. This is like the full big, you can refine it over time, but this is your about me section or page that anyone can go read when they want to know who you actually are. You can have a pinned on your social page. Like or like an ever like a video that's like maybe two or three minutes if you have. I know some short form content. I think it's gotten longer now. But anyway, like a two or three minute video filmed one time telling that real version the context, your turning point, and your payoff. new followers if you can pen it to the top of your profile will find that for years because it's not that already it's a story that already happened. You don't need to revise it. And then this is the part that a lot of people miss. Weaving it into your ordinary content. So your founder's story doesn't need its own dedicated post every single time. Like I mentioned earlier, that content creator I've been monitoring like almost every other post, if it's not like a skit or a story, she's like actively acting out. She will tell this story of how she made it, right? And I'm like, interesting. Anyway. When I left my corporate job to do be could be a full-time travel advisor, I promised myself I'd never let a client pay way too much for a trip they didn't fully understand just for my own personal financial benefit. That's a st that's part of your story. Just dropping it into any other kind of post about pricing transparency or why you charge a fee or ⁓ that kind of thing. That does more work than a standalone story post ever could because it's contextual rather than performative. It's actually like this happened and I did this, right? Once you've written your story down, you're probably gonna get tempted to keep editing it until it sounds impressive. Don't the version that connects isn't the most polished one. It's the most specific and honest one. If part of your story involves like you genuinely doubting you can do it, or the financial risk, or failure before it even worked, that's not a liability to smooth over. That's the part that makes someone trust you enough to hand you their vacation and say, take my money, okay? If you are that's the whole sincerity and authenticity argument. if you aren't a part of my newsletter, I did a wacky series, a wacky, wacky series, ⁓ in May of twenty twenty six into early June where I told the story of why I've kind of I kind of fell off the face of the earth and a part of the reason why this whole well, travel agency in a year is not a business. So Outside of my travel agency, I have Elevate with Rachel K, but I had to tell this whole story. And it was very vulnerable and horribly shameful for me and embarrassing. And I told it anyway. And it a, I wanted to filter out all the faky magoos. And B, I wanted people to see like life is not easy for everyone all the time. And even if you desire success, like yeah, I I've been like I was doing just great with my travel agency. I decided to expand to start mentoring travel advisors. And then shit hit the fan and my life was completely upside down. ⁓ But those kinds of stories, A, I wanted to filter out anyone that just thought that this was a quick buck. And like, I don't know, like There's a lot of people that get into this industry that don't realize how much work it takes. And they're just like, ⁓ it's gonna be so easy. It's not. Okay? I wanted to filter those people out. I wanted to show that, you know, I wanted to kind of filter out the people that like live in Instagram filters, if you know what I mean. Like they have been posting. on social for so long that I don't think they have a sense of how they really feel about anything in their life. No shade to anyone. But you kind of catch my drift there. And I did get replies from some of those people. They're like, this doesn't even make sense to me. And it's like, that's because you aren't really living a life. You're very curated. That kind of thing. ⁓ anyway, that was a tangent. But don't be afraid to tell your story. Because it can connect you with like not necessarily identical or like-minded people, but it will connect you more with people if you really show who you are, rather than having this curated persona. To an extent. You don't want to tell everyone you all of your business, you know. Okay. So This was a little bit more about the founder story. We're gonna build on it tomorrow and add on to the brand story. Because that's a little bit different from your founder's personal story. They're connected, they're not the same. Conflating them is a mistake. I made very early on, and they can be very dangerous if you do that and like get intertwined with your branding. Also, there's a specific student, if you made it to the end of this episode, because I know you listen to these sometimes go into your appointments. ⁓ I did a whole human design chart comparison between my chart and my business's chart, and you can do it too. And I hope I see you on one of the live QAs so I can have a little convo about that. Alright, have a great day. Today what is this? Day 194? No. I'm batching like a fiend. That was day 194 of the Travel Agent Senior Podcast. Have a great day, and I will see you tomorrow.