Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 170 - Taking time off shouldn't destroy your travel agency
Transcript
- Rachel K: Welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Kay. Today is day one seventy. I need to look at my notes. One seventy, yes. Thanks for coming and listening and joining me today. It's always nice when everyone comes back to listen to more of my crazy ramblings. At least you at least I hope you find it like entertaining, you know? ⁓ today's episode is the strategic disconnect. Okay. When you go to go on vacation, or maybe you get like a weekend away, ⁓ do you have to brag? I still check my emails from the beach because your business just cannot run without you. Oof. Trust me. Been there, done that. It's really, really hard to disconnect, especially when you are the only person running the show. And you're probably gonna have to do that for a few years. It really just depends. Like there are sacrifices you have to make. But if you have like a VA, why are you still checking your emails when you're on vacation? Hmm. So many entrepreneurs in general are like, I want freedom. No, you don't. You're secretly addicted to the validation of being deemed indispensable. Being constantly interrupted makes those people feel important, powerful, and needed. Ooh. So how much of this is tied to your self-worth? ⁓ agents I know who have staff and they're like, I just can't get away are struggling. I think like mm it could be it could vary, but definitely some self worth issues, even if they're like highly successful entrepreneurs, but that's why they are so good at succeeding, because they need more more more validation. They're addicted to if I make more money I'm worth more mentality. ⁓ instead of just I'm doing this and I love what I do and now I'm taking a break. If your travel agency, here's another thing, because this happened to me with my cleaning business and it's happened with me with my travel agency. And it is a self-worth issue for Rachel K. That's fine. But if your travel agency like breaks or stalls or goes into panic mode, the moment you turn off your phone for forty eight hours, this is not an asset that you're building. This is a hyper demanding job where you are the single point of failure. This is not you're not some business guru. This is a job that you created for yourself and you are the single point of failure. So high performers do not build systems to prevent glitches while they're away. You should treat your vacations and like your weekends away and your weekends off ⁓ as like an intentional absence diagnostic tool so you can really find out what is broken. So back to my cleaning business story. I went away for when I went away for my honeymoon, everything was fine. There was I didn't even think about it. So I'm not really sure where this developed in my mindset along the way. But it's definitely for me, it was tied to self-worth. And then I went on another vacation, and that was like 10 or 14 days, ⁓ while I had that cleaning business, and it was like everything was on fire while I was gone. And I was kind of I was fine the first like excuse me, five or six days of the trip, and that's when I started getting my manager. I can't remember if it was email or phone, but I remember having that panic and I was like, Why can't I just have a vacation? I remember I remember thinking that and I was in Mexico on a trip. And then when I started my travel agency It always was like, I have to do something, I have to do something. And it was a really hard boundary for me to break. Every time I was on vacation, I was like, I gotta work, I gotta work, I gotta work, everything's gonna fall point. Because even though I had staff, I was the single point of failure. Because I was the face of the company and I really felt that I was the single point of failure. Okay. So I get it if you are there and I was doing a lot of business, but I was just like, gotta do it. And on this last It was a work trip for an event management deal. But this last trip I mean, I referenced my laptop. I brought it with me. I did have to close a birthday group in my spare time. ⁓ but that was time sensitive. ⁓ but nope. I'd and then I did email, do a couple email blasts for that group for my laptop, but it was literally like maybe 30 minutes over the course of seven days and destination that I actually open my laptop and I was like I need to do this. Maybe it was a little bit longer, but there wasn't a lot of necessary work being done. And so the intentional absence diagnostic tool You when you step away and you shut your laptop or shut your desktop down and you put like DD notifications or out of office notifications on your email, you are conducting, you should be framing this as you are conducting a stress test on the architecture of your business. How well can it just like be with your calendar? No appointments can be made. With your ⁓ out of office autoresponder on. How well is it gonna be? Are you gonna start getting crazy phone calls or crazy text messages? Why aren't you answering your email? Why aren't you answering the phone when your voicemail says, Hi, I'm currently away for a work trip or on vacation and I will return, bada da. You need to answer the phone, trust me. I've been there. They're all just stress tests. It's not that your business is gonna completely go under if you take five to ten days off. So let's talk about the data that you're gonna collect. Let's say the payment link in your CRM just breaks while you're gone and people are trying to process payments at their convenience. There's not even any final payments due. But they're trying to submit payments at their convenience. And the site's broken. Okay. Like that's data. Like what that is a technology issue. Is that a common issue with your software? But that's just data. ⁓ maybe ⁓ one of your automations didn't go through. Like for me, all my clients have a monthly payment reminder that goes out. And on one of the groups that we had for some reason that an agent o of mine was working on, the monthly payment reminder didn't go out. There was no record of it. And I was like, What in the heck? 'Cause it was selected. ⁓ and that happened while I was gone and that agent, it's fine, like They thought it was all set up and ready to go, and then all of a sudden we both get an email. Nobody got a monthly payment reminder. You promised us monthly payment reminders. That sucks when you get that kind of stuff. But it's just data. It's not that you're a terrible human being. It's not that your business is gonna go under. It's just data. And you can collect information about with this data, like what operating procedure or automation you have set up or boundary. What did you miss? What is missing that's causing people to have a come apart? Or be slightly upset. Maybe you didn't put in your email signature important out of office dates and list them so that they know you're out of office. Maybe you forgot to set your autoresponder. I forget to set my autoresponder, but that's why I also have the email signature with the important dates. Out of office. Maybe you did forget an automation and it just didn't go out. I don't know. Like where when chaos happens while you're away is like amazing because it's just telling you where you're missing steps that you shouldn't be manually doing doing all the time. Okay. So designing the 48-hour disconnect is what we're gonna work on. And this was really hard for me. I'm gonna tell you this because I have been here. I have known other advisors who have also been here. Not everyone has this issue. And a lot of people do. Forty-eight hours? What are you talking about? That's a weekend, Rachel. Yeah. For a lot of us, we are so paranoid parrots about everything falling apart. We don't take weekends off. We might take half a day off, like on a Sunday, the first couple years. Hopefully it's less time than that, but like the first year or two. It's just like, ⁓ I just have to slave my life away. Okay. So you need to train your clients first off not to expect instant weekend replies. And a lot of us have that, I gotta work seven days a week because there's a lot of travel advisors out there that are like, I'm available 24-7 because I book two trips a year. That's not a feasible I'm sorry, if you were like, I'm available twenty-four seven, don't worry. I used to say that too when I first started. I was like, I will be available twenty four seven for you. And then I was like, ⁓ you cannot physically do this. Or like, I guarantee to answer every single email within like twelve hours or less or same day. Like, that's freaking ridiculous. Unless you just want to be answering emails all day. And you're never gonna be able to scale. So you gotta start preemptively letting your clients know, like, hey, we're shifting to a new communication philosophy in our travel agency. And now during normal business hours, I will answer your email. I check it twice a day. I no longer am available for one off phone calls. They must be scheduled by appointment only. And I do not do social media DMs or text messages. And if it's like a repeat long-term client, be like, I know you're gonna mess up. And that's okay. And I will gently remind you, I'm not doing this. And I will be taking this weekend off. I've gotta start giving myself time back for me and my family. Sorry, I'm yawning in the middle of this. And start implementing that. Also, fun fact: when they start traveling, you don't have to be the one 24-7 customer service. You can be. the supplier that you booked the trip through has a 24-7 customer service line. In probably all cases, I don't know every supplier, so I can't say that for certain, but everyone I've ever worked with. has an in destination like travel number that they can call twenty four seven. It's listed on their travel documents. I took the for my group emails, like from my group's coordinator that I work with primarily, with the supplier I work with. I literally took their email. Like now that the group has entered travel, here's how you contact anyone with issues. And I put that in my workflow for any group booked with that supplier. Mm-hmm. Game changer. Because nobody bothers me. So that's something else you could do as well. If you have people traveling and you want a weekend off and they're flying out on Saturday morning, yes, if there's an absolute emergency, you should be available for them. ⁓ and guide them, especially when they're just like getting there or getting back home. I don't book flights. I do I am there in the trenches with them when there's like nightmare travel situations and I'm there to help them. and I'm ready for that to happen. So I am more like on call with that sort of thing. Only with flights, even though I don't book ⁓ but I'll be like, here's what you need to do next. I'm gonna do this. All right, break, hang up, and then I make some other phone calls and we both see who can get it done faster. ⁓ But That's about what I do unless they have like after they've talked to concierge at the resort and they get nowhere, after they've called the twenty four seven customer service line and nothing's happening, then they send me a WhatsApp message. And WhatsApp is all I use when people are traveling. They do not get that information until they start traveling. Another thing I do, 'cause you're like, well, Rachel, how do you like sit around and be on call for flights if you take time off? Great question. ⁓ I take my I schedule my time off on my calendar like 15, 18 months in advance, where I'm just out of office and I don't book trips around those days. I don't book final payments. Like if there's a final payment, I bump it up a week. So I'm not dealing with that while I'm taking my time off. Okay? That's what you do. Like give yourself your own PTO, schedule it out. And then don't book any trips traveling over that time because that's not gonna be fun. Okay? All right, set up your simple rules. when you're out of office. Have your out of office email set up. You could also hopefully go to your virtual assistant, like you're managing this. Okay. But they'll have the twenty four seven travel info if they're traveling while you're trying to take time off. You could have your VA working weekends. I don't know what kind of deal you have with them. And you could let them know and train them, like if X happens with blank supplier, then this is who they need to be contacting or who you should be contacting. And it's usually just a simple email. Like you can call in to the supplier lines, but also email them. And then once you set it all up and you're like, I could take this week off or take this weekend off, you're gonna be like, Nothing's happening. It's quiet, a little too quiet. Uh-oh, ghost vibration syndrome. It's gonna be turn into overwhelming anxiety that you need to check your phone and you need to check your emails because you are the single point of failure. Your brain has been trained to be like, you are the only thing keeping this alive. Everything's crashing and burning around you. ⁓ it's just anxiety and your ego fighting for you to remain the hero. It is not reality. So when you start having those thoughts, if you are trying to do this and it's very, very difficult, trust me, trust me, I went through it. If you are in that situation, you have to understand it is not the end of the world. You do not need to check your phone. You do not need to check your email. You do not need to check on anyone traveling. Take it away. Shut off the phone. You don't need to be the hero, okay? Because the true net worth of your travel agency is measured by the length of time that you can completely step away from it while revenue continues to climb. If you haven't heard this before, when you are self-employed, you have to work for yourself and you cannot step away from the business. You cannot say you are an entrepreneur, like fully in entrepreneurship. We are all on the path of it. Like anyone who's like, I'm an entrepreneur, but they're like the face of the brand. They create all the products. They're doing if they didn't exist, the company wouldn't exist. They are not an entrepreneur. Okay, we are all on the path towards it. But that is not, we are all predominantly self-employed, right? And that's the difference. If you can fully step out. of your business and you don't need to be around at all to do any kind of operations, to do any sales calls, you don't really need to be around, then you have an asset, then you are an entrepreneur because you can sell all of the employees, all of the copy, all of the any software, whatever, and your book of business. This is why when people are like, I'm gonna sell my travel agency, once I make 200,000 a year, mmm, okay. service-based businesses are very, very difficult to sell because you can only offer a book of business until you have an entire ecosystem set set up to where the owner doesn't have to be in the day-to-day at all. The owner doesn't have to be around at all. No one's clients know who the owner is. That's when it kind of becomes an actual asset. Because then you have a brand that's separate from the name of the owner. You have ⁓ the owner doesn't need to show up every day, right? Like this whole podcast thing and like elevate with Rachel K. I don't I mean, I could have people on my team that I hire to also help mentor and coach travel advisors. That'd be nice, but the odds of me being able to fully step out of this because it's named after me, I could never sell it. I could I so this is not an entrepreneur. Thing. My travel agency, I'm working on that. Okay, so anyway, that's the true test. Like, and if you can step away completely, and if there are some fires that happen, and it's not the end of your world, you are on the path to entrepreneurship. If you step away completely and you psychotically check your emails, or random clients start texting you because your VAs or whatever isn't working good enough for them, then you have created a nightmare st high stress job for yourself. That's it. Okay. They're challenged for deny. give yourself forty eight hours zero digital. Not even the doomy scrollies. We're not doing that. Forty eight full hours. Digital connection. Sometime in the next month. I would if you have a spouse at home, be like, take my phone from me and hide it. shut down my laptop and also hide it. Hopefully you've got a laptop. It's gonna be really hard to do the desktop. Maybe just remove the monitor or something. ⁓ so you cannot use your computer and you cannot use your phone and fully disconnect because you're letting your business consume you rather than you living your life. You are doing, not being. So let's be for 48 hours. Completely disconnect, see what breaks. 'Cause guess what? That's something you can learn about the flaws in your business. And th flaws aren't bad, but good thing you picked it up like when you had a random weekend, rather when you had this huge volume of business down the road, right? Alright, thanks for stopping by. That's my Minnesota accent. I told my friend Sana, every time I talk about my aunties, I tell her I talk like this. And I'm like, Well, this auntie said da-da-da. This is my sign off, by the way. And then she met my aunties and then later on she came up to me and she said, You know, your accent is spot on with your aunties. And I was like, ⁓ really now? And she said, I thought you were exaggerating. It is one hundred percent identical. That that wasn't a very good one. Anyway, have a wonderful day. And I'm sorry if you're from Minnesota and took offense to that accent. Or didn't even notice I was doing an accent because you sound like that. Sorry. Alright, have a good day. Bye.