Week One-ish of My Travel Agency

If you’ve been following along, you know that I’ve been actively working on my agency for months. If you’re really in the know, you know I’ve been passively working on this agency for about 4 years now. So, why am I saying week one? Well first, I’m starting anew with Rainbow Getaways. That means new tech, new-ish partners, and new collogues. It was a great week and also a rough week. Second, I was hoping to officially launch my agency in a full-circle moment when I returned home to Salt Lake City this week.

Needless to say, the launch didn’t happen.

If you haven’t seen the photos of kids the morning of their first day of school and pictures the end of their first day, I need you to Google it. I’ll wait. I need you to have that visual, not just because it’s funny and adorable, but because that’s what my first week was like. I was so gung-ho to start each day and also each day had a lesson to teach me.

Day one, complete overwhelm. There are so many new things to learn when you start a new career. I thought I knew travel because I’m an experienced traveler, but I did not. I was humbled and also told that this is normal for new advisors.

Day two, it’s a great day to test your luck. I contracted with an agency to work on my website. I was so relieved to not be hacking it on my own. That didn’t stop me from making one more modification. Then, one more last modification. It was just about right and then… it was gone. I lost access to my WordPress account. I’d just bought a new domain and custom email too, which made it impossible to recover.

Day three, if you just keep working hard enough… I kept telling myself that. I blew past midnight of day two. By 4am I had created a new WordPress account and built a second website. After I finally got some sleep, day three was a lot of phone calls and emails that got me exactly no where.

Day four through seven, I won’t put you, nor myself, through rehashing every day. These days were supposed to be full of friends, family, and networking. Instead, I continued to work around WordPress.

I was so bummed. I was so excited to start building a travel network in my hometown of Salt Lake City, but I gained some valuable insight instead. Working harder and pushing things through by sheer willpower is a bit of a myth, I learned. I fully support hard work, but at some point, you cross the line, and you sacrifice how you treat people and how you treat yourself. Don’t cross that line. As soon as I told myself that, I began to relax. Plans don’t always work out I told myself. Conversations changed and I began to recover and rebuild my business infrastructure a little bit at a time. When I couldn’t move things forward anymore, I got to play tour guide a little bit in Salt Lake.

This helped me appreciate a new perspective. I need to pace myself. As they say, this is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. In other words, I’m in this for the long-haul. That’s shifted how I approach travel too. When I used to return back to Utah, I’d have a list of all the things I wanted to do. This time I threw that list out. I already knew what was there, so I let the moment dictate my direction. For the first time traveling back home it felt like a vacation. I felt recharged and energized. I had more moments with friends and family and less pressure to check off a list.

I’m still very excited to offer y’all a guide to Salt Lake City and the amazing outdoor recreation around Utah, but it will have to wait. In the meantime, know that I’m here and ready to help you plan your next trip. If I can experience the transformation of travel when returning home, you can experience it too on your next trip. I’m so happy to be there for you on your journey.