Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / DAY 301 | Why Travel Advisors Need to Think Bigger Than Today’s Bookings
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency in the Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K, and I'm also a travel agency owner. Welcome to the game, everybody. Let's make some money. So that's what this podcast is about. Learning how to build a travel agency and that lasts. Okay, today is day 301. The 301st day of the year. Whatever the date is today. I don't know. I feel like it's The end of October maybe? so the case for thinking big, even a little delusional. So if you are in the success circle, you know that I've been spending some time or I was spending some time a few weeks ago talking about get delusional with your goals. reason number one is if you're like, I'm gonna make five million dollars next year and you work towards that goal, even if you don't hit five million dollars, you're probably gonna hit a lot of revenue, which is awesome possum. Okay. So this is episode is all about why productive delusion has research behind it. Because I like the science for science! this is gonna be a new stretch like series. If you don't know about my podcast, I tend to do episodes in conjunction with my success circle program. So this is tied to week 44, which is the big delulu week, dreaming big, before you start next year. And this is part of that series. You don't have to be in the success circle. You can join. I have redone it to where it's only opens up on a quarterly basis. All right. We're gonna embrace thinking big and the little, a little bit of the productive delusion. And what does that actually do for your agency and your own sense of purpose? Let's dig in with the research. Positive illusions. let me see if there's a name here in my notes. It's psychology. If you don't know, my degree was organizational what is it? Organizational development, communication development, and leadership studies. So a crap load of business psychology and sociology blended into one somehow in a four-year degree. It's fine. It's such the coolest degree. I feel like it's like I chose that major because I wanted to go to school online so I could still work and support my son as a single mother. And my other option was like, bachelor's in administrative crap. And I was like, no. I want to build a business. I'm doing this degree. All right, so the researchers named Shelly Taylor and Jonathan Brown. They call that pot they're the ones that coined the term positive illusions. They found that mildly unrealistic, optimistic beliefs about yourself and your future are actually associated with greater motivation, perseverance, better performance, not worse. This runs counter to the intuitive assumption that pure cold realism is always the healthiest or the most effective mindset. And oftentimes people can misconstrue pessimism for realism, by the way. So, research comparing entrepreneurs and managers to employees has consistently found that entrepreneurs and managers show meaningfully higher dispositional optimism than employees do. They have there's a measurable pattern here, not just the stereotype. This optimism appears to play a real role in the willingness to take on the uncertainty and the risk inherent in building something from nothing. So back to what I was saying about like What was the what was it? unrealistic goals. where am I? Okay, yes. mildly unrealistic goals. So I have some travel advisors I'm mentoring one-on-one, and I was talking to one the other day, and I threw out a random number to vis for them to like visualize in their brain in their business checking account. And their reaction was, ooh, I had a tight knot in my stomach. So like the big deludeloo goal, if you feel anything like that, like if you're like, I'm gonna make a million dollars, you and you aren't actually feeling that, you may not realize that there's some kind of internal subconscious block for you to receiving that. and that number might be significantly smaller than you think. So for me, I've been doing a lot of Vegas nerve meditation stuff and EFT tapping. And for me, that number is half a million dollars in my bank account. Like gives me that kind of like scared, wanna run away, no feeling in my gut. So I've been working on tapping so that my travel agency can bring in more revenue because my goal next year in my travel agency was $500,000 minimum in gross revenues. so when you are thinking about these delusional goals and you throw like a crazy high number out there. From that number. Like let's say you're like, I'm gonna have five million dollars in my checking account in three years. Okay, so break that down to smaller numbers and just say as though it's already in your checking account, I have two and a half million dollars in my checking account and see how your body responds to that. That is a somatic response which is tied to your nervous system. Anyway, back to other stuff. optimism is a great thing. So here's where the research I was talking about with the optimism for entrepreneurs and managers and the positive illusions, this is where it gets really useful rather than just permission to be delusional, full on Dululu. Studies distinguish between your optimism, which is generally associated with positive outcomes, and overconfidence, which that is the single strongest negative predictor of business survival when it isn't balanced by anything else. So this is like where you need to be careful with the delusion. In other words, if you believe really, really big, really hopeful things about your future, Believing you're immune to any risks on the other hand and any problems or your current like the realities currently in front of you, that's completely different from believing the really big hopeful things. Okay. So this is where it you need to look at yourself and take some accountability. So if you are immune to your business failing, and you're like, God put me put this in my life, and there's no way I'm gonna fail. That's not being delusional. That's not a positive illusion. That's not assessing the fact that maybe your business is like hanging on by a thread. Maybe your marriage is suffering from it because you aren't looking at the realities in front of you. And that's linked to failure. Okay. So the useful side of this, the productive delusion. The useful version of thinking big isn't absolute blind overconfidence. It's holding a bold and even improbable sounding vision for your business while still staying grounded enough into the real world and the real obstacles required to get there. So if you're like, I'm gonna have a million dollars in my agency next year and this is gonna be easy peasy lemon squeezy, you're probably gonna fail. Or if you're just sitting there and you're like, well, I just I just want to make a bunch of money. I don't make So much money next year, but you have no idea of the reality of how much more marketing you're going to need to do, how much you're going to have to assess your messaging and your marketing, how much you might have to step up your service, and you're just like, no, I deserve it. I'm I'm being delusional. Like, there has to be a little bit of grounding there because that side where you're just like, it's just gonna come to me. Without having to do any extra work. That's insanity. That's not delusion. And then when everything fails, then you can just say, well, God just hates me, or the universe hates me, or whatever you believe in. Anyway, this matters so much for the rest of this stretch, and we're gonna build on it over the next few days with this. Like you cannot be blindly overconfident. You cannot think if I just will it into existence, it will happen. And now we're gonna go back to my dad's famous phrase that he told me when I was like having my quarter life crisis. And I was like, I don't have a house and I'm 22 and my life's over. Because I was comparing myself to my mom who was like married at 21. but that was the seventies also. But I was like, dad, my life's over. And then he was like, Well, what do you even want from your life? I'm like, I don't know. And he's like, figure that out. And you come up with a plan to get there. And you can be absolutely delusional. So I was twenty two. Here's an example, perfect example of this. Delusional with the confidence and not overconfidence. So 22 years old, my dad's like, what do you want? And I was like, I want to be a homeowner, I want to have a retirement account, and I want to be able to make a decent living and have a decent work-life balance and be able to support my son because I became a single mom at almost 17. And so he said, Okay, when do you want this done? And I said, 27. And he said, Okay. Well, you don't have to have a lot of money in your retirement account to open one, but let's what's your current budget? And so I laid out the entire budget. And then he was like, Okay, what's your current revenue, like income? Because I was always kind of like side hustling so I could be home at night with my son. It was really hard for me to have a job and afford daycare, all that fun stuff. so I'd look at my income, and then he's like, Okay, well. Now you have to build out a plan. How much of a house could you afford? So I looked it up at the time and I wanted to be very safe, so I looked up what I could afford if I were stuck in a minimum wage job. How much of a down payment I would need, what my credit score needed to look like compared to where my credit score is today. Those kinds of things. And then I wrote out a plan. To get there to buy a house around the time I was 27. And I now my current plan is I'm 43 this year, but when I turned 27, because I did hit those, yeah, I had hit the I had hit all of those goals. Which is crazy. I mean it was only it was five years, but crazy to me to think that someone I still didn't have a bachelor's degree. I didn't have a regular job. I wasn't married. I didn't have my husband with a decent career buying the house for me. It was like I bought this house. I set up my retirement account. and I was working by the time I was twenty seven, I think at that time I was a personal trainer. And working on finishing my college degree still, my Tommy Boyd College, and looking into becoming a physical therapist. And so once I hit those goals, then I was like, okay, now what's the next thing? And so I made it to where I was like, okay, by the time I'm 45, I want all of my student loans paid off, because God knows when I'm gonna actually graduate from college. And I want zero debt and I'm only going to be working if I want to. At the time of recording this episode, I am far t three years old. And I love being in my 40s so I can like do my janky Irish accent accent. I'm far t far. I'm far t three. Anyway. So I have a little less than two years to get there. However, I'm not that concerned with it because it right now as it is, I don't feel like I'm actually working. And so upon reflecting about that, like building my travel agency and building up this elevate, like mentoring and things, like none of this feels like work. And I have bigger plans to make things much bigger in my travel agency, and it still doesn't feel like work. It just feels like I'm pouring my passion out into the world, which is crazy. So I'm like, well, maybe I have hit that goal. I don't know. Anyway, so that's my explanation of what I'm saying. Like, if I said I wanted to own a million-dollar home and I had no plan behind it and no idea of where it currently was in reality. At that time, the big Dululu goals I had but at 22 for when I was 27 probably wouldn't have happened unless I whined and threw a fit and had my mom pay for everything. But I knew I didn't want to do things that way. So when you are doing your Big Delulu goals, like you've got to consider is there a number that when you say, I have $126,347.38 in my business checking account, does that say that out loud? Like, say that out loud, visualize that number in your head. Like you are logging into your banking app or your banking website for your business. And does that cause a weird pang in your stomach? Or does that feel like this is reasonable? Because if you have the positive illusion of like my travel agency brings in $300,000 a year, even if you bring in $300,000 a year or more, whatever that number is, your subconscious will figure out a way to keep your balance in your business checking account. Lower than that 126,000 or 30,000 or whatever number that your body reacts to is like, ooh, I don't like that. And then that's a matter of like assessing where that fear comes from, because it's a fear response. I'm not a doctor, but I like to talk about this stuff. All right, Taylor and Brown's research on positive illusions shows that the mild optimistic unrealism is associated with better motivation and performance. Entrepreneurs measurably run more optimistic than people who are fit to be employees, and this optimism supports the real uncertainty of building something new. But Again, clear line between optimism and overconfidence. The latter is a stronger risk factor for failure. If you don't have and overconfidence is not even considering having a plan because you're just like, it's gonna happen. I pray to the moon with purple candles on the 14th of the month. That is overconfidence, and that's where failure's gonna end up. Productive delusion means a very bold big vision held along real honest groundedness, not blind confidence, and assessing what steps you should take to get there. And that will help you also develop your discipline because if you constantly consider that big delulu goal, and then also apply The plan and like force yourself to do the plan every day is a choice. If you have the Lulu goal, if you have baby steps to get there, and then every day you wake up, regardless of how you are feeling, and you still take those baby steps, that's going to help you develop your discipline, and that's a Going to really help you with your goals. Even if you're having an off day and you're like, I really don't want to do this, just do a little bit of it. So when I was a personal trainer and I'd be like, you gotta walk 20 minutes a day when you're between sessions or 30 minutes, whatever. And I would get clients that are like, I just didn't feel like doing it this week. And I'd be like, okay, so next time, just set a timer and make yourself do it for 10 minutes. And 90% of the time, those 10-minute timers that they would set, they would blow past them and do the 20 or 30 minutes because it was just a matter of getting into the motion because they didn't feel like doing it, but it's still good for them. All right. Sorry, I'm going on tangents today. Tomorrow we're gonna look at the entrepreneurs who thought impossibly big and made it happen to inspire you to do really, really big things. Really big things. Have a wonderful day. I'll see you tomorrow.