Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 254: Rest Is a CEO Discipline for Travel Advisors
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency in a Here podcast. I don't know what's happening here, by the way. I've been filming this and I keep adjusting my camera. And then I like to lean back and then my head's really tiny. Like, I don't know. I can't sit still. Welcome back. It's day 254. I'm your host, Rachel K, elevate with Rachel K.com. I own a travel agency and I help travel agents. Okay, that's what it is. As you're reviewing, we're doing a whole series day 247 to day two fifty-seven. If you're brand newbie or you haven't been back to podcast for a while, as you're reviewing, it's all about the quarterly review and CEO mindset stuff. So when you're reviewing this last quarter, coming up in the next few weeks is the quarterly review, and you're planning for the next one. I would like to make the case for something that often gets treated as an afterthought, which is a rest and pace more broadly. Okay? Not a nice to have if there's time left over. This is why in the success circle. In week two, I talk about give yourself one three-day weekend a month. Mm-hmm. One full week a quarter. Hmm. Maybe you should do it right around the time of your quarterly review, whether it's at the end of the prior quarter or the beginning of the new one, and then two full weeks in a row per year. Block it all off a year in advance. Anyway. That's week two. We're on day two hundred and fifty what now? fifty four. You should give yourself some rest. A business run by someone operating at an unsustainable pace tends to reflect that instability at one point or another. this decisions, like the quality of the decisions, decline. There's shorter patience with clients and with the team, there's more small errors slipping through the cracks, and a higher risk of burning out entirely at the exact moment the business most needs the steady leadership. your pace and your piece isn't separate from the business's success. There was a lot of S's in that sentence. I'm sorry. It's a direct input into it. In the same categories, your numbers, your systems, developing your team if you don't have one yet. You know, you can just pretend your other personalities are a team. It's fine. There's real research behind diminishing returns from overworking. Studies on extended working hours have repeatedly found that productivity and decision quality do not just plateau after a certain point, they actively decline, meaning the extra hours often produce less real output, not more, while simultaneously increasing the risk of costly mistakes. No No, we're not doing that. The instinct to push harder when things feel behind is understandable. But at a certain point, once you're past it, it works directly against what you're trying to achieve. So you want to think about your pace. As part of this quarter's review, you need to ask yourself, be honest please. What was my actual pace like this quarter? Was I running from the tiger constantly or running from the bear, whatever? And I need to separate it from the results that was produced. What was my actual pace separate from the results it produced? Because you cannot run full speed ahead just because you made some good money, but you cannot continue on that pace. Or you did a lot of bookings. Okay? Did you have real protected time off? Did the business quietly bleed into every day, every week, every night, every time you woke up, the first thing you thought was your business? Every time you sat down at dinner, you couldn't listen to your friends, family, whatever, because you were thinking about the business. Every time a ding goes off on your phone is a Pavlovian training that that's for my business. I'm losing money if I don't answer that. This is a genuinely different question from did I hit my numbers? And it deserves an honest answer because a strong quarter built on an unsustainable pace is often borrowing against the next quarter's capacity. mic drop. No, I'm not dropping the mic. It's not 2012. Was that twenty twelve? I feel like anyway, we're not gonna talk about the mic drop. It's a bill for an unsustainable pace in like Q two. Frequently comes due in Q three. It's the form it comes in the form of exhaustion, resentment towards the business, resentment towards your clients, a health scare that forces you to take the rest that you didn't choose to take voluntarily. A lot of entrepreneurs, especially in the early years, and by early years I mean 10 years or less. Like if your LLC's been open less than 10 years, you were still in the early phases. Like you can grow to seven, eight figures in that time, but this is an experience. This is a lifetime, okay? but in the early years, entrepreneurs carry a lot of guilt around resting. Because the sense that time off is the time that the business could have been used to grow or that a real business owner wouldn't need a break. everything would fall apart if they don't take a break. Y you don't really have a business if everything falls apart when you do take a break, by the way. But it's worth directly challenging that belief. Real isn't the Resting is not the opposite of productivity in a well-run business. It's one of the inputs that makes a sustained productivity like possible at all. the alternative to having protected rest usually isn't more output, it's a slower, more painful decline in the output that arrives later, often at a worse possible time. That's why I do the 12-week quarterly reviews because I do take one week off a quarter, one three-day weekend a month, two weeks off a year. Shaboom, doors are closed, I rest. I also will not work on a Sunday. Like I have to really feel like it and enjoy it, but I know that I have to give myself rest. I go to mass at Five PM on Saturday, and that starts my Sabbath. From five PM on, I do not worry about anything regarding my business. This or my travel agency. Nope, sorry. Not worried about it. I that is my time to go to Mass, get the Eucharist, be ready to go spiritually for the week, do whatever I want all Saturday evening, all Sunday day, rest, rest, rest, rest, rest, be ready for Monday. This is a structural decision, not like a willpower thing. And that's why it works for me or and it has worked for me over time. if rest depends purely on you remembering to prioritize it in a busy week, it will consistently lose to whatever feels less urgent that day. And if you are not giving yourself that time to rest, you are reacting yet again, and you are in your feelings, not reality. But if it's structurally built in, like naptime in preschool, build nap time in into your day. It happens regardless of how busy any particular week feels. You don't need to close your doors for two weeks out of the year to apply this. I just this is just what I like to do. You are welcome to borrow anything that I say. Rust can be built at several different skills simultaneously. Since I've had my like MCAST diagnosis, my whole time blocking, and I mentioned this a few days ago, I can't do my Pilates and bar training, whatever stuff that I do. not safe for me to do anything like that right now, but I still have it on my calendar. But also my entire workday is just shifted completely around because I have to actively take more rest and lie down and take naps and because even just sitting here recording this these podcast episodes being excited and taking the energy to be like, Hey everybody, look at me even though I'm really monotone and boring. that still takes a lot of energy out of me. So once I'm finished with this batch, I'm gonna have to lie down for a good hour and a half. when I have to do a bunch of deep mental work or trainings, like I have to I have to work for an hour and rest for like thirty minutes. It's a weird thing. So I start working pretty much the moment I get up now. and I'll work until I go to sleep, but I'm taking a crap load of breaks in between. Anyway When you're doing your quarterly review, don't just evaluate this past quarter's pace. Actually, schedule the next quarter's rest right now. I like to do it a year in advance, personally, while you're already looking at the calendar with some distance, zooming out, and clarity. Give yourself time off. It's okay. Block the day off, the whole weekend, maybe just make it a lighter week. Give yourself a week off. I don't care, you're the owner. You give yourself your own PTO. Give yourself rest. I don't know how else to say it. If you haven't put it on your calendar, put it on your calendar right now for the next quarter. Have a wonderful day. I will see you tomorrow.