First Takeaways from Prep for Wave Week

Welcome to this strategic travel entrepreneur. My name is Rita Perez. Hello. I've been a travel Advisor for over 10 years and am navigating this winding road of entrepreneurship with you. I created this podcast because I wanted to share all the things I've learned from leaders both in and out of our industry that I really wish I would have known way back then. But alas, the important thing is I'm aware of them now and I want you to be too. Ready for this week's show. Let's jump in.

Hello. Hello everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. I am hoping, fingers crossed that this is going to be a really short episode because there is a jam packed week going on and if you have been missing out or if you are just finding me. Hello, I am Rita Perez. This week I am hosting amazing, amazing information sessions, educational sessions, something called Prep for wave week. There's 10 sessions happening this week and right now we are midway through this podcast episode is coming in the morning so you have six episodes to still left for the rest of the week that are happening already. What have we talked about? Avoiding burnout this season, contracts and agreements, determining your goals and numbers and aligning with a trade association.

Coming up today, Wednesday IS systems and SOPs and supplier relationships. And then Thursday and Friday we're going to be talking about updating bios, profiles, web copy, building relationships, attracting clients without social media and crafting a memorable client experience. So if you have not registered already, please head over to travelbiz training.com that gets you on the email list and I send updates daily just to keep you posted on the upcoming attractions. Registering will also give me access to your email address. And why is that important? Because if social media happens to go down and I cannot stream live on social media, I can shoot you an email and give you directions for another way that we will be putting out this information live. We have had so many industry experts coming on and it has, it has just been so, so incredible. This event is freeing. There is an upgrade if you'd like.

It's just $25. It's called the study hall pass and you get extra time. With myself, there's a couple of other advisors who have joined me and we have just had really great conversation. Q and A Like diving in deep from the session that just, that just happened because they're 30. So each session in prep four wave is 30 minutes and then study hall pass is an extra 30 minutes. With me and other fellow agents it's really like a co working session but it has become almost mastermindy slash, let's break down everything and kind of like give concrete plans. I've also been putting out a couple of spoilers to the people over in study hall. So just really insider information and if you would like to just to get to know me on a personal level because I have enjoyed getting to know the few advisors that we do have, I just please, please come and join us for study hall.

I made the pass like really sustainable, just $25 to come join us and get some extra attention and a little bit of one on one. But I wanted to go over a little bit of what we've talked about and avoiding burnout. This wave season, our first session for me, it was a reminder to take lunches and the immediate thing that I had done that day was take a dedicated lunch break without any distractions. So now today, Tuesday, as I'm filming this, that did not happen. But it's just a really great conscious reminder that it's something that I need to do as well as meditation, putting these practices into place and kind of being aware of what the signals are when you're approaching burnout, I think are just super critical to help put the brakes on whatever you're working on so you don't get to that breaking point where you are so, so overwhelmed. This wave season we had Steph Lee from Host Agency Reviews and Shannon Cunningham from Gifted Travel Network on that workshop. So if you want to visit any of these recordings, they're going to be available through November 14th for free still. And those are on the Take the Helm Virtual Business Solutions Facebook page.

The second session that we had was Contracts and Agreements with Tom Carpenter. Tom Carpenter is both a lawyer and he works in the travel industry. He is also a travel advisor and he's worked on my contracts. He's worked on many people's contracts within the industry and he is just a really great guy to know if you need help putting together. So he broke down kind of like the basic contracts and then other contracts. So basic contracts are kind of like your terms and conditions, your agreements, your website terms of use and privacy policies and then extra things that he's been working on for a couple of agents. Something that I want to get done is a group leader contract. So if you're working with the group leader, having a contract in place for what their responsibilities are, what my our responsibilities are as the advisor are going to be really important.

He's been doing a lot of advisors who are wanting to move on from the business and wanting to sell or come up with some sort of agreement to give the business to another travel advisor. And then he's been doing a lot of independent contractor and virtual assistant agreements. So if you need Tom's information, please do not hesitate to reach out or watch the session because his email does pop up in the session. Then Tuesday morning we talked about determining your numbers and goals with Stephanie Cannon. And and I think the most important thing that came out of that is that she is hosting a her own series that is going to be happening December 9th and 10th and that like, well, we were talking about this, get the scoop at the replay. But when we were talking about her session, it is exactly what every travel advisor needs. And I'm not even going to say just travel advisors. If you are a travel supplier, if you're a travel business owner of any kind, you need to be going to this session and that she, she's going to be breaking down a lot of things, determining what your goals are, what your number goals are supposed to be and supposed to be in the sense of what you need them to be to cover all of your expenses, what kind of like a healthy monthly budget looks like and, and all the expenses that are entailed in there and all the fun stuff that you'd like to do as well.

Everybody is different and I think that's something that we talked about in study hall, that I may want a full time income because I'm still in working age but somebody else is in retirement and they don't want to be working 40 hours plus or whatever or even if I do work full time, I don't want to be working 40 hours. Maybe I just want to work 20 hours. So what do I need to do to adjust so that I can work less but earn more money? And so those are the types of breakdowns that Stephanie is going to talk about. How many people do you need to be talking to? How many people do you need to be closing? How are you going to be evaluating if you're on track for sales or not? What needs to be in your product mix in order to get the sales that you're wanting to get. So many incredible things. I always learn something new from Stephanie and I'm so glad that she is like the numbers resource in our industry right now and then finally aligning with a trade association. So that includes asta, CLIA and the Travel Institute. I think the biggest takeaway from me and for many people is that we were able to identify the big differences within the organizations and Travel Institute was very evident that they are all about making sure.

There's quality education within the travel industry. Ask this biggest priority is to what what was. Somebody said defend. Is it defend and protect? Maybe it is defend and protect our travel industry. And they have done so much for everybody to especially get ourselves back on track and get assistance for travel advisors this past year. And then clia, another huge player with getting the cruise lines back to sailing this year. So if you would like to hear more on aligning with the trade association. I had even asked the question, if somebody can only pick one, why should they pick your organization? And man, it was just a really great group.

And no one was like, well, mine's best because of this. It was really a collective effort and it just made me feel great because that is the type of energy that we need. And in the industry we need to be working together, not fighting against each other and coming together to make this the best industry that it can be for everyone that's involved, our clients, the different suppliers, ourselves, everyone who supports the travel industry. That, that was a really, really great bunch of people. There's Jackie Friedman from Nexion who also serves on the ASTA board, either the board or board of directors. I forgot, but she does address it in the session. We have Gita Botello from the Travel Institute and then Shy Boston from CLIA represented on that session. Today we are having systems and SOPs and I'm having some really and very different.

They all do something different within the travel industry or the system space. So systems and SOPs. You're going to find David Natal who is the river cruise king, and Anna Ruiz who is a travel coach and also recently started the travel biz va. And then finally we have Alicia Lozano and she is a Dubsado expert and I wanted her expertise to come in as someone who's not in the travel industry but is well versed in different Systems and creating SOPs in those systems for supplier relationships. Later in the afternoon at 3pm Eastern Time, Chanel Knight from Regent Seven Seas and Jeanette Baba from AMA Waterways. Coming up tomorrow, Thursday, November 3rd, we have Emily Matrix talking about, of course, all things Copy. And then in the afternoon at 3pm building relationships. And that's going to be with a Lynn Blanco of the Travel Agent Podcast and Margie Jordan of CCRA International on Friday.

Attracting clients without social media. Two amazing social media. I mean they're all amazing. They all are super experts in the things that they are going to be talking about. Courtney Nichols is going to be talking about how you can use values to attract clients and Michelle Woodson Howell is going to be talking about joint venture partnerships, which I know is a like hot word. So I know it's going to be so, so useful to so many of you. And then finally we're going to end it with myself and and Nicolette Reynolds, who has been on this podcast before, and we're going to talk about creating a memorable client experience again that doesn't really have anything to do with social media. So stay tuned.

I feel like we've been building the foundations the past couple days and we're starting to like get into the fun stuff. So again, make sure you are registered. I cannot wait to see you. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to me either at the Take the Helm Instagram Take the Helm Facebook page or make sure to join the Strategic Travel Entrepreneur Facebook group to definitely get all the updates and notifications of when we are going live for Prep for Wave Week. I look forward to hopefully seeing you at the rest of the week and if not, make sure that you pay attention to the recordings that will be available for a limited amount of time. You have a wonderful day, wonderful week and I will see you here. Well, I will hopefully see you prep for Wave Week. If not, see you here on the podcast.

Next week I am going to go a little bit behind the scenes of how I set up for Prep for Wave Week and how that relates or correlates with the travel business and giving you things that you can utilize to help you in your travel business as well. Have a wonderful one. Thanks for joining me on the Strategic Travel Entrepreneur were. Please subscribe and leave the show a rating on your favorite podcast platform. Oh and don't forget to take a look at the show notes for important information and links. See you next week.