Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 244: A Travel Agency Mission Statement You Actually Follow
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome back to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K. It is getting dark. I need to start setting up my lighting. If you're watching this on YouTube, I don't know if I'm gonna be that worried about it. Anyway, I'm a travel agency owner helping travel advisors actually build a business. So this podcast is an episode a day. We are on day 244. Thanks for coming back. If you have been coming back every day, I know a lot of you do that. If you have not subscribed, I think it's something like sixty percent of our audience, sixty to seventy percent, has not subscribed. But I also understand because that's a lot of content. Anyway, day 244, leadership style and your company mission statement. We've been doing a whole series back to I think day 239, all about leadership, self-leadership, different types of leadership, famous people, and their styles of leadership. And today, your leadership with when communicating with your clients is yesterday. Today is leadership tied to your me what? Mission statement. So this is the last episode of this whole leadership series inside of the Travel Agency New Year podcast. If you are brand new, I tend to do a whole stretch of about a week of episodes that have to deal with specific topics. because if you don't have time to listen to all of it, you don't need all this information, just listen to the 15-minute episode and be like, that's the only one I needed. But if you want to binge it all, binge it all, baby. Anyway, we're gonna connect all of this back to something qua concrete, and that is your mission statement, the actual mission statement, and why it should be shaped by your genuine leadership style and values, not a generic template. if you don't know what a mission statement is, it's the purpose it's the statement for the purpose of your business. Okay. So if I remember my travel agency's mission statement, I don't. But it's something if you've ever worked for me in my experience as a little gal, I remember the mission statement for any restaurant I worked for. back in the late nineties, early two thousands, would be like plastered somewhere in like the break area or like as you're walking around the corner to go back into the kitchen, it would just be on the wall. And that was something all of the employees had to memorize and that was the purpose of Their mission working for that company. Okay. So most business mission statements can be forgettable like mine because they're written to sound impressive. To who? It's just you. Rather than to reflect anything the founder actually specifically believes. I think my mission statement was something gosh, I cannot remember. It was eight years ago. Eight years ago? I don't remember. It was years ago. A mission statement built this way. rarely shapes real decisions when it's like built to be impressive because it was never really meant to guide anything. It was meant to fill a section on a business plan template. Which by the way, if you're like, wait, I don't even have a business plan. Why do I need a business plan? go to elevate with rachelk.com, scroll down to the I think at the very bottom of the main page. It's like more free resources. And the one on the far right is business plan 101. I'm probably gonna redo it, but this was a webinar I did for like MexBirds or something, like three or four years ago. And everyone got the business plan template and what to fill it in with. And I just taught them and the questions. People thought a business plan was estate planning or the articles of organization. No, a business plan is completely different from the articles of organization, and it's completely different from your estate planning, and they are not the same. And I remember when I was hosting that webinar, I was like, wow, these people really need some help with building a business. All right, anyway. we're gonna talk about Chick-fil-A. I don't care how you feel about Chick-fil-A. The founder did some amazing stuff. So, Chick-fil-A's founder, S. Truett Kathy. Built the company's mission around a specific and deeply held set of personal values, including a decision made all the way back in 1946, 80 years ago, at the time of recording this podcast in 2026, to keep every restaurant closed on Sundays. Why? Because he is very Christian, and I understand there are people who are not happy with that. Because he's very Christian and so his entire mission is very heavily tied to his Christian values. And in Christianity, you keep the Sabbath day. You do not work on the Sabbath. It's in the Ten Commandments, and the Sabbath is Sunday for Christians. Okay? When the operators of a mall that he opened a location in in like the nineteen sixties pushed him to stay all like open all seven days, like every other tenant, he declined, choosing to hold that value even under real commercial pressure. So he was only like twenty years in. You're like only 20. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you're in this for the love of the game. This is your life now. Welcome to it. But that policy still remains in place today. Eighty years later, despite the company itself estimating it costs well over a billion dollars in potential sales on an annual basis. And that's a striking example of a mission statement actually functioning as a real binding decision-making filter, not just a plaque on the wall that I mentioned at the beginning of this episode. And that's another reason why there's been controversy because of the value alignment. So, whatever your own personal values are, the lesson isn't about the specific policy, it's about the mechanism. So Kathy's mission wasn't written to sound good. It was written to reflect what he actually believed mattered more than maximizing revenue. If your mission statement is I'm gonna make a bunch of money, that's not a mission statement. But his held up under real pressure when it was time for compromise. Like there was pressure to compromise. No, not backing down. And that's honestly a fascinating example of leadership. Like, no, this is how I'm doing it. This is how I'm running my business. And clearly, we all know what Chick-fil-A is, right? So, what does this mean for your business statement? Your business mission statement, sorry. A genuine mission statement should come directly from your own leadership style and values, the things that you'd hold on to, even if it cost you some business. Ask yourself: what would I refuse to compromise on even under financial pressure? And this is so important because it's going to take you out of that scarcity mindset. It's a game changer. Like you won't even worry about misaligned clients if they don't align with your mission. What do I want every client to feel is true about working with me? Regardless of which package or destination that they end up choosing. The answer to those questions, written honestly, are far stronger mission statements than any generic phrase about your passion for travel. So let those questions guide your decisions to writing your mission statement, and then your mission statement runs the show of the business. It is like your own personal Ten Commandments kind of thing. This is how it is. It's not a full business plan. It's the main idea of your business. So if you've ever written a paper in elementary school, I'd see we started getting taught this, the thes the thief what? The thesis statement. We were being taught that as early as like fifth or sixth grade. And that's the main idea of your paper. That's kind of like your mission statement for your business plan in your business. What's the thesis? A real mission statement should occasionally cost you something or it likely isn't a real mission statement. If yours never once caused you to turn down a client or an offer or shortcut that didn't align with it, it might be worth revising, whether it reflects something you generally hold or just something that sounded good when you wrote it. This was a very short episode. Let me check my timer over here from yeah, we're not even ten minutes in. So, with that in mind, you can comment maybe you don't want to share it. You don't have to share it, but you can comment if you're on YouTube, what your mission statement is. I can go dig mine up somewhere. I clearly need to rethink my travel agency's mission statement because I've revised my overall business model. And I don't think I've really written down the actual mission statement of what I'm trying to do now. All right. That closes out our leadership series, day 239 to day 244. Five episodes. The doer to leadershift, leading yourself first, finding and applying your leadership style. Letting it shape a mission statement that actually means something. I have one more. Doing what else w tomorrow is a an amazing one. And that's really gonna make you wanna go rogue, baby. Why are you doing what everyone else is doing when no one else is making money in this industry? Hey, that's tomorrow's episode. have a wonderful day. I will see you tomorrow.