As an advisor, what would make the biggest difference in your travel business right now?
A first client? More consistent bookings? Perhaps just a way to handle the business you’ve already earned without giving up every evening and weekend?
Our network has advisors at every one of those stages. Your days may look very different, but you share a common question worth stepping back to consider:
What part of my business needs to get better for me to move forward?
When you’re getting started, it might be how the right people find you. If you’re having plenty of conversations but making few bookings, it might be how you turn interest into a commitment. And if business is growing faster than you can comfortably handle, it might be how you deliver great service without personally pushing every task along.
Your effort matters, but translating that effort into results requires that you place that effort in the right places.
That was the central idea in my keynote at WORLD26 last week. Whether you joined us in Cancún or couldn’t be there, I want to share a practical way to find your starting point and do something about it.
As I mentioned, I’ve just returned home from WORLD, and though I’m extremely tired, I’m filled with energy for us to do this work.
But first, what a week!
We’re home from Cancún, very tired, but even more grateful.
WORLD26 brought together so much of what I love about our network. It was simply awesome!
Between the sessions, supplier conversations, celebrations, and time together over meals, we had a chance to step away from running our businesses long enough to think about how we’re building them. Thank you to everyone who joined us, our partner sponsors, and the entire WorldVia team who made it happen.
Now comes the time to start putting it all into practice.
In my keynote at WORLD, I described something called the Effort Trap. You spend so much time doing the work of today, being “The Operator,” that you never get time to design and improve how the work gets done, being “The Architect.” So, tomorrow brings the same scramble, and the business doesn’t improve.
The cruel part is how productive it feels. You ARE helping clients, solving problems, and making sales. But every piece of your business still needs you to personally push it forward. Effort only gets you so far. To build sustainable growth and success, you need systems.
I learned that lesson the hard way running a restaurant. I understood the importance of systems, but I still thought I could outwork the problems.
For a travel business, I think about five core systems:
1. Sales: How prospects become clients.
2. Marketing: How the right people find you on purpose, not by accident.
3. Service: How you deliver an experience that brings clients back and earns referrals.
4. Knowledge: How you deliberately build and apply your expertise.
5. Management: How you handle the cash, commitments, risks, and decisions.
Here’s the starting point I gave everyone at WORLD: Find your weakest system, then choose one manageable process inside it.
How do you find your weakest system?
Give each of the five systems a score from 1 to 5:
1: The work is informal, inconsistent, or depends entirely on your memory
3: You have a repeatable process, but you still have to personally keep everything moving along
5: Your processes are documented and reliable. Some things are automated.
Routine work moves forward, and important decisions that need your judgment are surfaced for your input.
Use a 2 or 4 if you fall between those descriptions.
Once you've identified your weakest system, then pick one small process inside that system to improve. Maybe inquiries slip through the cracks. Maybe post-trip follow-up happens only when you remember. Pick one process in your weakest system.
Once you do, then write down three things:
1. What starts the process?
2. What happens in the process? What are the steps?
3. How do I know the process is done?
For a post-trip check-in, that might mean reviewing the client’s trip notes three days after they return, sending a personal message, and recording the next follow-up action. Define the steps clearly enough that you could pull in someone off the street and they could follow the instructions.
Then put it to work, note what works well and what doesn’t, then improve it.
Finally, protect one hour each week to do this kind of building. I call it your “Architect’s Hour." It’s the time to work ON the business, with the same commitment you bring to serving a client.
One hour won’t rebuild your entire business, but if you can consistently chain them together, week after week, your Architect’s Hour will change the way it runs.