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Accountability: How can it help you improve your travel business.

Announcer: Welcome to Travel Agent Achievers! The place to learn how to grow your travel business and have fun with it. Join Roslyn and her guests as they walk you through proven steps to a fulfilling and profitable business. 

Roslyn Ranse: Hello there Travel Agent Achievers. Welcome back to this podcast. I'm Ros and your host. Of course, I'm always here to deliver some great information for you, have some fun that help you with your travel business.

Today I want to talk about accountability. What is it? Why does it work? How can it help specifically for you in your travel business, and the reason this has come up is because over the last few months, we've been talking, and I've been sharing amongst our achievers mastermind members, the progress that they have in their business.

Now I get to see it, because we check in with them monthly and almost weekly, sometimes, which is fabulous, and I love it. But I can see the progress, I can see how they're moving forward. Sometimes in our business, we are so stuck in it, and doing the work that we may not actually be able to see how far we've come or where we're heading to in the future, even if we do have a bigger plan. 

So today is all about accountability, let's jump straight into it. Now accountability for me, it's been a really big deal and part of my business journey for many, many years now. But what is it? So one of the official terminologies of it is that it eliminates time and effort that you spend on distracting activities, and other unproductive behavior. Now, this actually made me laugh, because when I talk to a lot of business owners, not just in the travel environment, but I think in general, we can get caught up on the day to day,in your work, there's always little bits and pieces that come up. But a lot of things just distract us, your email, pings on your desk or on your computer, and you automatically jump to it. And it's a distraction. 

Other unproductive behavior, I mean, this could be anything, a phone call could come in, or the washing machine finishes, and you feel like you need to get up and go ahead and change it. I know this sometimes happen for me. You know, I'll admit it, I need to step away from my desk sometimes, but it's not going to help me in my travel business. So accountability can really just help you value the work that you do. And I think it's a really special part of any business. Because when it's done right, it can certainly increase your skills, it can increase your confidence, and of course, your productivity. 

As you know, in a nutshell, accountability just really keeps you on track, helping you commit to one thing and moving forward, day by day, week by week, month by month. It said that accountability is vital to sustaining long term success and also mastering your inner critic. Now I was talking about this on stage the other day, your inner critic or the little thing, person, whatever it is that sits on your shoulder and tells you ‘no, you can't do that’. And that inner critic can really throw you off your course. It can throw you into a spin, it can throw you into this whole mindset spiral, things can get out of control. 

I can guarantee if this has happened to you, it can knock 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, and even a day, off the journey that you're supposed to be on the productivity, the work that you are supposed to get done. So when you are accountable, you are also responsible for your actions and the results of the choices that you make in life and also in business. This is one of the things that I love about being accountable, you are responsible for your actions and the actions that you take, then have the results leading towards the choices that you're making in your life. 

Now, the actions that we take always have consequences, whether they are good or bad. It's your choice to make your thoughts, your words, your actions. It's your choice to actually bring them all together and work in a more positive way to bring about the results that you actually want for you and your business. So we take ownership and ownership in our business and that helps you move always, as part of the process. So we always have to accept what we can't control. But I love that as business owners, we also get the opportunity to accept and take ownership of where we want to steer our business.

We get to be responsible for the actions that we take on a daily basis to help us move forward. Now, one of the reasons why I love our travel business accelerator program so much because we talk about designing our vision and the goals that we want for the future of our business. We look towards the future, and then know how to bring it back into monthly targets, weekly targets, daily targets at times, and each month as part of our Achievers Program. Also, as part of the travel business accelerator program, we set the goals for the future. Then we break it down so that we know how to achieve them. 

Part of that process, I firmly believe, is having accountability as well. Because we then take ownership of the goals that we set, and the goals that we want to achieve. It gives us this bigger picture that's not just ourselves in our daily life, but what we actually want for the future.  I see this in hundreds of business owners that I work with that if we don't have this ownership and we don't have the goals set, then a lot of us can just be floundering around and working in the busy tasks, the day to day actions without the forward thought of what we could potentially be achieving down the track. 

So the process of accountability, how it all works, we've got that goal, we've got the dream, there's always going to be hurdles that come up and challenges from time to time. I know that where you're feeling right now, it could be the same as somebody else sitting next to you or down the street from you or across the world from you. 

There may be that uncertainty, there may be that I don't know where to look right now. If you ask yourself what you want, and then you have a support structure around you or the accountability around you, you can work through even the toughest of times in business and the challenging times. Now it's not bulletproof, there can be hurdles that come up along the way for everyone, but it does create awareness for you. 

Having accountability as part of your business and a part of your surroundings. The people that you are closest to having that accountability can really just give you the peace of mind, or the ability to go block times and know that you can keep moving forward. So I want you to be able to have that focus on change, I want you to be able to follow through on the steps that you set for yourself and the dreams and the goals and the desires that you have. I want every success for you. But I also know that in order to get to some of those places that you desire, then we need to have other things in place as well in our business. 

I share this with you because accountability for me, is really what kept me on track when I joined my very first business coaching program over 10 years ago now, maybe even more than that. I remember being in the room and sitting on a table with two other guys, Alex and Andy, two of my close friends. We were the youngest ones in the program.  I remember that we just stuck together throughout that whole conference. We shared what we were going through and how we were building our businesses and what was happening for us. But we made the conscious decision that after that we would meet. I think it was every Tuesday initially. Then we moved it to every second Tuesday because we were finding that our productivity was ducking down a little bit. But we made the commitment to meet with each other and we would go to a cafe. And we're all different in terms of our businesses. Obviously, I had a travel business, and the other two had their own businesses as well. 

We're all very different. Andy was an engineer, and very numbers driven. I have to say, being part of that first accountability group is definitely what helped me not only with discipline, but also with the goals that I set and being accountable to it, but also they're being challenged at time. As I say, we're all very different. We all wanted to build our business though. We're all learning similar principles from this group. Alex has now sold his business. And that was one of the things that when we were initially catching up, it wasn't even a dream. It wasn't even a goal. But it just got bigger and bigger. 

But these two really challenged me, and they would call BS on things. They encouraged me to look at my numbers and the facts, because for me, I was starting out in business and having my own business or close to 15 years ago now. So maybe it's been longer than that, that we have the accountability. Actually, it probably is. But these guys, they would call me out, they would encourage me to look at the facts, not necessarily just the feelings, because I would go in and go. I think that, their social media is doing this right now. We would just say BS to one another, because it wasn't about the feelings. 

We needed the hard principles, we needed the facts. So that would help us make smarter decisions in our business. I love that I wouldn't be where I am today without those two guys being there to support me and encourage me, but also to call me out. So having an accountability group, it doesn't have to be somebody who is in your business, that can also work as well, it also doesn't have to be somebody that is completely different to you. But having someone that or a group of people that,  have walked the journey before you or are going through similar things, it allows you to also bounce off one another as well, especially if you're early learning the same principles. 

If you are all together in business, and you can bounce ideas off, somebody might be really good at marketing, somebody might be really good at sales, somebody might be really good at operations, or technology, and you can be there and support one another and get the help that you need when you're stuck. 

The encouragement as well is just so good. Now, I know one of my most recent mentors, she calls me out in accountability calls now. When she can see because, as part of accountability, we share our goals, we share our dreams, what we want for our businesses, and if she can see me wavering, or if I'll turn up to a session, and my mindset is totally off, or I'm having a negative moment or a poor me moment, or things are just not who I usually am. She'll call me out on it, if the imposter syndrome is kicking in, or something has thrown me for a sixer in my travel business, then she will actually call me out on it. 

I can immediately recognize when somebody else will say something where I'm at, and how I'm spiraling. She'll be there to say, okay, cool. Now, what are you gonna do about it? So I think when it comes to accountability, it doesn't always have to be a really nice, fluffy thing. I run accountability calls inside of one of Australia's largest business coaching programs. There's times where I have to pull back a little bit. There's also other times that I can be very direct. It isn't easy, but it works. It depends on how you are as a human, some people really like direct feedback. Other people need a softer approach.  I think that it also comes down to the facilitator, as well. 

Now I see inside our Achievers Mastermind all the time, and it's one of the reasons why I love our community so much is because we can be there and we can hold space for one another. We can see when somebody's really struggling and surround them with the right words, or the tools or the tips or whatever they need in that moment, we can hold space for them. But when there's also the good stuff that happens in business, which I don't think we celebrate enough, and it's something that I talk about a lot.

I love how as an accountability group, you can then celebrate those awesome moments, you can cheer one another on. Now, a mastermind or a support group really can solidify the relationship and the process, adding support to your business, whether there are issues that come up, whether you need help finding solutions, but also celebrating the good stuff as well. So what I want for you, I mean, in an accountability group is really an opportunity and people there to empower you to acknowledge what's going on for you to accept that things aren't always going to be in your favor or you know that there are great things happening around you and then giving you the space to also dive a little bit deeper and see what might be going on for you. 

I'm not a psychologist, I never profess to be one. That's why I have amazing, incredibly intelligent humans around me to work through different things. But I think that there's always a root cause or there's something deeper down, that stops us from moving forward in business. This is where an accountability group can really help you. The other things that I love about accountability groups are they is that if there is an issue, that the team and the group can help you come up with smaller or more attainable goals, because we might often say, "oh, I want to be able to sell a million dollars worth of travel this year", but being able to break it down and say, "How am I go to get there", or ask for advice or tips or support from other people, that environment is really safe. 

The trust that you have with other people in that group can help you achieve massive change and positive change. Because it also helps you realize that your long term goals can be broken down. There are always solutions. The other thing that I love about and what I want for you is that it helps you with the list of actions, the things that you're going to achieve each month to feel, to get to the objective that you set, and also having a time limit. 

I love being on the accountability calls now and hosting them and being a part of them where I can say, what are you going to achieve this month. Then having those members come back the next time and say, I smashed this, this is exactly what I want said I was going to do and this is what's been achieved. Now it's not about if you don't achieve it, that you're going to be beaten up or you know, Negative Nelly or any of those sorts of things. It's about acknowledging and trusting yourself that, "hey, I made this commitment to myself, I want to achieve more, I want to do more". So therefore I will make that progress. 

So you can absolutely achieve what you want and I love our accountability groups. Because it's a support team. As I said, if you don't have an accountability group, or people that you trust around you, I want you to find these people, I want you to encourage yourself to say yes, I need a great team around me, because it will vastly improve your business, especially if you've got this with you. So accountability helps you with the follow through with your tasks and projects, it helps you become more efficient. So as I said earlier, there are so many times that we might be sitting at our desk and an email pops up. So we jump over to that and then something else and we become busy in our work. 

But having accountability helps you become more efficient, because it keeps you on track. Now it's not about being perfect in what you do. It may not always deliver the results that you want. But it will definitely give you the opportunity to move forward and be in control of your own progress. Now if you feel as though you might need some accountability in your business and your life, then I highly recommend that you grab some business buddies and you team up together. 

You set a schedule of when you can meet or join us at Travel Agent Achievers, because I want us all to rise together. It's about the trust. It's about the support, the encouragement, being goal-driven. We check in with each other, we stay on track, we come up with the ideas. We help you decipher where you might be struggling and what is the next step forward. But accountability also helps you value the work that you do and the progress that you're making. Like I know we've got a gym trainer as an example. You don't want to let them down. So you show up for those sessions. Right. 

This is exactly what accountability in your business can do for you as well. Our travel business accelerator program has monthly check-ins as part of its four month program. We are opening that next week. So if you feel as though you want to have some goals in your travel business, you want to be able to break down some marketing to know what to move forward with. Have a look at your sales and say yes, this is what I want to achieve next year, even diving into the back end and the operations as part of your travel business to set up the systems to structure your business, to move forward and grow in a way that works for you, and also have that accountability to move forward in your business over the next few months, then please make sure you sign up, you join us inside the travel business accelerator program, because you will get those monthly check ins for the next four months. 

Then for those of you that have already done this program, and the next step, part of that will be to join us in the lounge and also our achiever’s mastermind, because our mastermind members meet monthly to go through their goals, keep the momentum going and absolutely reach those dreams. It's one of my favorite things that I get to share with our members every year the progress that they've made. They know that you too, will be able to do this as well. So you can build the travel business to your dreams. I know you can. It's time to take action. I hope you've enjoyed this very quick podcast to give you some insider tips on accountability, how it can work for you in your travel business. I look forward to chatting 

with you very, very soon because you deserve to have the travel business that you desire. You can build the travel business of your dreams. I know you can, and with the right people around you. It's going to happen a lot faster. All right guys. Have a great week ahead. I look forward to chatting with you very soon.