Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 82 - Fear of Burnout as a travel advisor
Transcript
- Rachel K: I'm gonna lean back a little bit in this episode. Ooh, my back just popped. Hi, welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. My name is Rachel Kay, I'm your host, and we are on day 82. going over the fears, and we're gonna talk about the fear burnout. And I'm gonna try, I know I just said this in beginning of the episode, and I'm not editing it out. I edited it. Gonna get comfy cozy in my chair here. So I might be further away from the microphone, but I feel like the last few episodes have been like super loud, like way too close to the mic. All right, fear of burnout. ⁓ We all I've said in previous episodes when you are starting out with this you are doing everything all by yourself unless you magically have someone else that you can fund to pay for but most of us start this off as like I Don't like the term side hustle but many of us do start this off as a side hustle to fill a dream to Expand it into full self-employment and or entrepreneurship you do you? Ladies and gents. So, with that being said, we have to wear all the hats. Almost all the time. And it's... A lot, it's a lot. So the fear of burnout can prevent and also kind of lead to some procrastination. It can prevent you from actually putting yourself out there, especially if you're doing this as like, not straight out of college first career choice, but if this is like a career transition and you've already experienced burnout in like your 30s, maybe 40s, 50s, whatever. you're probably going to have this fear of burnout because you've already experienced it before or you're in it right now and you're like this is the solution and then you get excited about it and then you're like but then the burnout is going to come back so why even bother? So, let's talk about your work-life balance. What do you prefer? There are some people, like the guy I used to work for when I was a butler, he, I don't think would ever get burnt out because he truly loved just doing business stuff all day. Like he was just like. He enjoyed other things as well, ⁓ but he was well past retirement age and he was still up at 6 a.m. before breakfast working at his computer. And I was like, my goodness, this guy is a hard working man. That was his work-life balance. He still raised children with his wife and grandchildren and did all of these things and he still got to walk in every day. sometimes maybe took a nap or whatever. He got to go shopping. He got to go out to eat. He just set up his work-life balance his way. So what are your goals in relation to your your preferred life balance? If you're like, I want this to be a seven figure business and gross revenues. your work-life balance will reflect that. And if you don't have an aligned work-life balance to the seven figure, which either means you need to invest a lot in getting help to scale very quickly, or you're gonna be working a lot and not spending time with anybody and your work will be far overtaking your life in terms of balance. And if you are like the stay-at-home parent, on top of it and you have these big aspirations for the revenue in your business and how you want your business to perform and you're taking the kids to school, picking them up from school, taking them to doctor's appointments, doing grocery shopping, doing meal prep, dinner prep, up the house, all of those things. It's going be very difficult to really, really make like seven figures, honestly. Like you will have to delegate something. to create that balance. Okay, so if you just want to make like $100,000 a year as a travel advisor, you could do that as a full-time. Maybe slightly less than full-time. ⁓ I will just say right now, my gross revenues last year, I'm trying to think because I had to pay out subs. My gross revenues last year were around 80 as a travel advisor and I was not working very much as a travel advisor. So it's possible. ⁓ All right, number two, number two, fear of burnout. I also was recovering from some severe burnout, both professionally and personally. That's why I didn't really work that much. was like, I can't do this. All right, number two, your mind and your body is all that you are guaranteed in this lifetime. Take care of them. You have got to make sure you set aside time to take care of them. You have got to make sure that you set aside. that you understand even if you have big, big goals, you still have to take care of your mind and body first and foremost. I think it was back in the 50s, the day 50s, I think like 54, 55. I talk about how important it is for self-employed people and entrepreneurs really, really, really, especially need to take care of their mental and their physical health much more so than anyone just working a nine to five. because of how much we're doing. Give yourself time off also. Do not, and I think Marybeth Lynn with Assistants at Work does talk about this. I don't know if she teaches it in that course. I don't really remember, but. I know that she does talk about it. As a travel advisor, if you've been doing this for a few years, you go on a FAM, 90 % chance, first of all, FAM is not time off, but 90 % chance you're also working from your laptop in your room or your cabin late at night, schedule sending emails, right? That's not gonna work, and you're doing the same thing on vacation. I have been very guilty of that. And it took me maybe like a year or two of really practicing like no, no, that is not me. And it took me a while to say that's a tomorrow problem. It took me so long to be like strict with my boundary, like my time is done, my day is done. Any emails after 3 p.m., that is tomorrow's problem. That is not anything I need to even think about for the rest of today. Like I do not check, I check my emails at 3 p.m. and I'll make notes, but I'm like, this is not urgent, okay? My eyeball itches, sorry if you're watching this and it's, scratching my eye. Okay. Outsource, as soon as you can afford it. to prevent burnout. If you are fortunate enough to have a spouse or family members who can financially support you, maybe they could make an investment to help, hire out help for you. I don't know, maybe not do that. Or, Allocate via like the profit first method, go pick up that book, create a reserve account that would be the estimated cost to have something outsourced for about a year and make that a percentage of every bit of revenue that you earn. And once you hit that goal for the year, hire it out. Because you know you can pay for it for a year, right? And if you don't like it after three months, you can be like, no, back to the drawing board. We'll find something else. ⁓ Number five, set up workflows to alleviate your work. ⁓ duh. You should know this. I hope you know this. There are many, think Teak has a lot of workflows for different niches for travel that you can purchase and make the investment in. Tweak, set up, set it and forget it like Ron Poppio. ⁓ Nobody gets that reference, it's fine. But set up your workflows and make sure it's the same process regardless of the type of travel, the type of client. This is your process. This is how you make your Big Mac. This is how you make your cheeseburger. Period. The end. They don't want pickles? Okay, throw the pickles off, wrap it up and give it to them. But have your workflows set up. And last tip is gonna be you are allowed to change your goals. What? You are allowed to take a break and say no. I'm sure you've heard that. The only reason it's gonna be detrimental to your business with regards to changing your goals, taking a break, saying no, is if you don't clearly communicate it with everyone you are working with. So pretend if you wanna change your goals. and you need to take a break. So, ⁓ gosh, I keep confusing the podcast with the success circle. Week two of the success circle is all about crisis protocols and when to implement them when you were hitting burnout, by the way. and what to do, you are allowed to take a break. And you can notify all of your clients. Now if you are like, I'm taking a break, maybe it's like a day off thing, just put your autoresponder on that you were out of office for that day you'll be back as soon as possible. If you just need like one day. If you're to the point where you're like, I need three days of nobody bothering me or I'm gonna scream at everyone, you probably need to schedule that out and. put a notification and give yourself like two weeks notice and all of your clients two weeks notice. Think of your clients as like your boss and you have got to put in your PTO request, except you're not requesting, you're just telling. And ⁓ if you don't clearly communicate that, that's giving no call, no show. They're not gonna book with you again. So. My computer is about to die as I record this, so I'm going to stop. Thank you for tuning in. Fear of burnout. Go get some rest. My computer needs a break. It's burning out. Danger Will Robinson. Have a great day.