Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 78: Why travel advisors fear the unknown & how to change it
Transcript
- Rachel K: to the Travel Agency in your podcast. I'm your host Rachel K. We are on day 78. We're in the series of fears, wah-wah. So I really do appreciate you coming and listening every day to all the listeners that do so. And if you're brand new, you can go back to the beginning if you want or just start here. I don't care. It's fine. It's all fine. So today is going to be addressing the fear of the unknown. And you're like, what do mean the unknown? Well, did you just do something illegal accidentally? Did you forget to file your taxes or like whatever, your quarterly taxes? Were you not aware of certain registrations you need to keep your business compliant? This happens to a lot of small business owners at some point. I remember back when I had, by the way, if you don't know who I am, I am a travel agency owner and I've had a couple of other businesses in the past that I've like sold and I just keep kind of build stuff and sell it and just kind of do my thing. Anyway. But I remember back when I started a cleaning business, I didn't know you were supposed to be licensed with the city to do business. And I was like, oh, whoopsie. It was not a big deal. It was like a $10 filing. And then every year after that, was based on whatever your gross revenues were. And I was like, oh, not a big deal. These things happen all the time. Now, what I see is people spend. I'm not saying jump in completely blind and be like screw it we're going to just do whatever and hope we don't go to jail. I do see people use this I need to make certain everything's perfect before I go put myself out there. ⁓ kind of as an excuse to not get started because then something else always comes up. now this new bill was passed and now I got to do this and now there's this and ⁓ this needs to be totally compliant which yes it does don't get me wrong or this law has changed yeah you do need to have all those things and like updated and up like have the upkeep And I see people who like make goose egg for sales being like, well I need to triple check the driver's license requirements for someone to rent a car in Europe. As an example, a US person renting a car in Europe. And it's like. basic understanding of it. You don't have to waste two entire business days, psychotically and anxiously going over all of the procedures and processes to make sure you know everything. And I'm not meaning psychotically in a bad way. I'm just saying like people ruminate over making sure they've got every angle covered. You're never going to have every angle covered. You do the best you can to mitigate. And I'm not saying like anything that's going to cause a lawsuit or any, but this is why errors in omissions insurance exists, by the way. On the off chance that you're like, ⁓ yeah, to my knowledge, it's da da da da, to a client, this is why you have errors in omissions insurance. Sitting there when you have ENO doesn't make any sense for you to be like, have to be 1 billion percent sure that everything is up to snuff before I even start marketing. Because then you're never going to get anything done. It's just going to lead to stagnation and constant research. And you're going to have all this knowledge, but no one's going even know that you are capable of doing whatever it is. I'm not saying, again, full disclosure, I'm not saying go in blind, go break a bunch of laws and be a complete sociopath and have no regard for anything. I'm saying I see a lot of people like, I'm considering niching into Iceland and then they decide to read the entire constitution and every law in Iceland so that they know all the laws in Iceland. That's an exaggeration, but not really. And I'm like, you don't need to know everything about Iceland. Or like they want to niche in a specific resort brand and they're like, have to know. everything about every property or something like that. And it's like you don't have to know everything about every property. You can take the general training and have a good idea and you can always go back and study further when you actually get people who want a specific property in that resort brand, right? Or they have to know the deck plans of every single ship on a cruise line they're interested in selling. No you don't. No you don't. That's what I mean. They feel like they have to have all of the knowledge instead of just some like knowledge on things. So. And this can stem to other like branch out into like, I didn't realize I was supposed to have this filing on a business level. So I recommend if you're newbie, if you're totally new, or if you've been doing this for a while and you're like, what do you mean I should have a separate checking account? for my commissions from my personal checking. Consult with a business attorney, not just a travel attorney, but a business attorney in your area and or CPA. And you should have a, I've got CPA, business attorney, and then travel attorney I can consult as needed for the different parts of my business. Because... And you also may want to consider having your business attorney be your registered agent when you come to the time to file your LLC. You might have penalties, whatever, but if it's a one time, first time thing, they often waive them. It's not the end of the world. ⁓ Not every client's gonna sue you or do charge backs. It can happen. So why don't you have the right team helping you to make sure that if that scenario comes up, you are protected to the best of your ability. The economy consistently cycles too. ⁓ and what people put their value on cycles as well. That's also the unknown. We don't know if we're ever going to be going to war or when we're going to be going to war or if there is a major economic downturn. Nobody had any idea about like COVID back in 2020. And that I think honestly the whole 2020 nightmare has really scared a lot of people of making sure everything is perfect, perfect, perfect because they're afraid what if I even book this and then something happens and I don't get any earnings from it. you should do it scared if someone comes to you and says I want to sail around the world or do like one of those around the world cruises. If it's something that you're passionate about even just a little bit don't be afraid like if you're a cruise niche person why would you turn that down? Don't be afraid to be like, hey man, this is great. I want to do one of these someday. Lucky you, you can afford it. Let's go on this journey together. I've never booked this before, but I'll do my best to serve you. It's fine. You need to be focusing on your niche, your mission statement for your business, and how your niche is being affected worldwide. If there is an economic downturn, are people more likely going to be booking trips to your destination to escape? Or are they going to be pulling back on spending on that niche? to conserve funds. Think about those things. But if there's a drought in Africa or something going on in Africa, it's not going to affect all the people that want to go to the Caribbean. I'm going to tie this back to this book called The Four Agreements. It just came into my brain. The Four Agreements are be impeccable with your word. So I better pull back from selling. That's an excuse to not keep doing what you're doing. ⁓ What else is there? Always do your best. So even if you don't know what you're doing, always do your best and be impeccable with your word. Always communicate. Excuse me. I can't remember the fourth agreement. always communicate like, I don't really know what I'm doing here, but I'm going to do my best for you. I have these on my refrigerator. You think I'd know. Okay, I'm not going to buy the book, people. I'm just trying to Google it real quick. we go. Don't make assumptions. There we go. We all know what assuming does. It makes an ass out of you and me. ⁓ So just don't assume that they're not gonna wanna work with you because you don't know. Okay, so that is that episode. Fear of the Unknown. Woosh. This one I see a lot too. Like all of these fears in this series, I have heard people, they don't exactly outright say I have a fear of the unknown, but when I'm coaching people in the success circle, I'm like, there's your fear. I don't tell them that, but I'm just like, hey, you know could do this instead. All right, I hope this episode helped you. If it did, please subscribe if you haven't already. Share this with somebody who has a fear of the unknown. and everything's gonna be fine, okay? Have a great day.