Motherhood and Travel Business Ownership: You Don’t Have Certainty

Hey there! Welcome to The No BS Travel Advisor. This is the solo edition. Just me, Marcie Muensterman, my mouth, my mistakes, and the real stories from 19 years in this wild-ass industry. There will be no guests here. No censorship, no filters, just the truth behind how I burned out, rebuilt, and finally learned to run this business like the CEO that I am. And if you're an independent advisor who suspects your host might suck, hate Hates working for free and appreciates a well-placed F-bomb, you're in the right damn place. So let's go! Good morning, afternoon, happy car line. I hope you enjoy your walk, whatever you're doing right now listening to this podcast. Whoo, I am so exhausted ever since I had COVID, you guys. I am waking up unrested, I'm going to bed really tired. I can't seem to get out of the post-COVID funk, and the more I read about it, the more I realize it's pretty normal to feel this way for a couple of weeks after you have it. So thank you for being here. I, I might sound a little drowsy this morning, but I wanna make sure that I get my podcast done. I have so much to share with you and I'm really excited about today, despite my voice being a little bit on the slower side or not as upbeat side or not as bossy side, whatever you wanna say, right? So welcome back to the No BS Travel Advisor Podcast. I am Marcie Muensterman, your fellow advisor, coach, course writer and a woman who is very much figuring out life and business and all things as I go. Before I dive in today, I want to give you a little content note. This episode does include mention of pregnancy loss, and I know some of you are childfree, not on purpose. I do talk about becoming a parent in this episode and how it relates to being a business owner. If it's not something you're in the headspace for today, I totally get it. You can skip it. Or you can come back another time. For anyone else listening, even if you don't have children, whether that's by choice or circumstance, you do belong here too. What I'm really talking about today is not just parenting. It is about building something from nothing and doing it even when you don't have all the answers. I really believe that having a business is a lot like having a baby. And raising them up. Every time I think about parenting, I always think about my dad and I still get so choked up talking about him. He's been gone a little over a year now and he's everywhere, you guys. He's in all parts of me and all parts of my day. And there's something that he used to say about parenting when he was giving advice. And oh man, if you ever wonder where I get my advice-giving mindset from, it's him. He felt himself an expert on anything he did well. And he would freely give advice to anyone who would listen. And he thought he was always right. He was a fellow Leo as well, July 24th. I'm July 27th, and we love to take up space, right? Well, one of the things he used to say about parenting, if, you know, you're discussing it, you're like, I'm not sure I'm doing a good job. I'm doing the best I can over here. He would say, well, you won't know if you're good at it or if you did a good job raising your kids until it's too late. And that has always stuck with me. And it's funny, but it is one of the truest things I have ever heard about parenting. As someone with 2 teenagers, I do wake up some days and wonder, I really hope I'm getting this right. And I think that we can all relate to that in business. We make decisions every day in the dark and you keep doing your best, right? And then one day, years later, we're going to wake up and we're going to find out if it worked. That is running your travel business. And that is parenting, right? You're building something while you don't know what happens next. When I first became a mom, I wasn't even sure I wanted to be a mom. I don't often talk about this, but Eric and I got pregnant on a trip our very first year of being married. And when I got home, I didn't know I was pregnant. You know, was— I was a travel advisor at the time and I was just working, working, working. And I realized after a couple of weeks I had missed my period. So So I took a pregnancy test and it came back positive. I made an appointment at the doctor. I've never been pregnant before, so I didn't know what the protocol was. And for anyone who's been pregnant, you know that they usually ask you to wait. At least back in 2008, they asked me to wait a while before coming in. Feeling well, and a couple of weeks later, I did have a miscarriage. After that, I realized maybe I do want to be a mom because I felt such deep loss. After having the miscarriage, and I struggled a lot during that time to work, but I really didn't talk to anybody about it. My friends had not been through anything like that at that point in our lives either, and I just kept on keeping on. And we did talk about it and decided we do want to be parents. I can tell you that my 24-year-old self would have disagreed vehemently, but By that time I was 27 and I was married to a great man and we had a great house and I just wanted to have a baby after the loss. I didn't know what we were doing, but we got pregnant again and I had another loss. It was a really tough experience, but we kept going and I got pregnant with Max. My pregnancy was rough, you guys. And when I say I was in physical therapy for 27 weeks straight because my sciatica and my rib were hurting, it was Literally so tough on my body. I was also violently ill for quite some time and just emotionally wrecked. I really was having a difficult pregnancy, and I did not enjoy being pregnant. I really think at that time I think I wanted a refund. You know, I really didn't realize how much my body was going to change through the process of growing a baby, and I didn't. know what I was going to do when they sent that baby home with me. I just kept reading books and going through the motions of baby showers and going to the doctor and learning how big he was. And, you know, Eric and I did not know what the fuck we were doing. We also didn't have any money. We had zero certainty. We didn't even know if we could do it. And that's kind of the scam of getting pregnant and having kids. Just the complete unknown. When Max was born, a couple days later— by the way, he was a week late. My sister was getting married in 5 days and they were like, here's your baby, have fun. They do not send you home with instructions. No one checks your credentials if you're a good enough person to be a parent. No one really tells you what the next step is. I'm not saying you don't get advice because, you know, as parents we all get so much advice and I'm so— glad that the internet was not what it was now in 2009, because y'all, I don't know how some of you new moms do it. There's so much information coming at you, which is a lot like being in a travel business. So every time I think about parenting and I think about business, I think there's so many relevant things that come into play because starting a business is like having a baby in many, many ways. It's, you have this brand new thing, you don't know what to do with it. You might file your LLC, design a logo, but then you realize, what do I do next? And there's plenty of information, but nobody's really telling you how to do it. Every single piece of your confidence goes out the window. I really was not very good at being a mom, especially when my kiddos were younger. And of course, like anyone else in the Midwest, we went back to back. Like, I had Jude 23 months later after I had Max, and her pregnancy was just as difficult, but Very different. So that's the other thing I think about when I think about having a baby and having a business. It's like you could talk to 30 women about their pregnancies and their birth stories, and they're going to tell you 30 different stories. And some of them are going to be so good and magical, and some of them are going to be so horrifying that it makes you, if you're not a parent, never want to do that. You'll just be sitting there listening with your mouth agape. And I always call this Whenever, like, we would all be sitting around in groups with different women and moms would start telling their birth stories, I always felt like that was hazing to soon-to-be moms because I was like, we should not be talking about our horrific birth stories in front of a pregnant woman. But sometimes that's just what happens. And just like in business, things can be so good or they can be so shitty and you're like, do I even want to fucking bother? Especially now that we have so many Facebook groups. You see it run the gamut. You see new advisors who are just thriving in their business, and then you see veteran advisors who can't seem to get their shit together. And you're like, is this how it's going to be forever? There is no sure thing, and that is normal. Your confidence is probably feeling on the ground some days. Maybe it's even vanished. Maybe you have no confidence at all. I know there were days after I brought Max home from the hospital that I was a shit show. I didn't know even how to change a diaper very well. Some of you will laugh at this, but I didn't know you were supposed to cover up his private part when he was naked on a table. And of course he peed on me like several times. I didn't learn my lesson until maybe the 3rd or 4th time he had done it. 'Cause I was usually so exhausted, so over it. And I used to get so frustrated and like, how do I not know how to do this? So I eventually learned, right? Like you have to keep it covered before change it out. It's just trial and error sometimes. I've even read this. I've even— children raised in the same house are not raised by the same 2 parents. And I believe that having 2 children who are very different, who are being raised in the same house by the same people with the same rules. So that's why even comparing yourself to another business, to another business owner in this industry is silly because we already know. That their business is totally different than ours. No matter what they're sharing about how magical it might be, there's no way to actually know. There's no way to actually know what that business owner is actually experiencing inside their office. And that could not be more like having kids. There's going to be challenges, you guys, and you're not going to have it all figured out. While you're making decisions. Having a travel business is extremely unpredictable. It doesn't mean that you can't prepare, right? During my pregnancy, every month we did something in preparation. One month we built the bed. One month we put together this beautiful light fixture to hang in the room. One month I had a baby shower. And all throughout this, I'm doing these activities that actually have nothing to fucking do with parenting. That is how we are in our business. We create a website, we take a training or a webinar here and there, but at the end of the day, we're not going to get good at this until we're actually doing it. Until someone actually experiences something, they can't be good at it the first day. It's just impossible. Babies and businesses are fucking high maintenance. Let's be real. You may have all kinds of things going on in your business that you can't quite get a handle on. That you wish you had all the answers for right now. I can tell you that is so relatable as someone who's also building a coaching business now. It's crazy how much I don't know, but my business is only 3 years old. Think about how old your business is. Are you doing it part-time or full-time? Are you hyper-niched or are you doing everything? These are questions you have to ask yourself as far as where you want to go next in your business. This is a tough episode, you guys. I am like so emotional. Because for years I did not feel like a good mom. Okay. I showed up, I provided, I loved them. I tried to do all this organic stuff. Like I made my own baby food. And for a while I tried to cloth diaper. And then I chose easier paths, paths of least resistance, because Max was not a good sleeper. He was just a screamer sometimes. And I just felt So helpless. And of course Eric and I would argue sometimes. And here I was also trying to run a travel business, and I was a workaholic. I genuinely felt like I had no idea what I was doing most of the time. And then I decided to get pregnant with Jude, and it was like, okay, now I'm pregnant, have a, you know, 1-year-old, and I'm trying to run my business. And I worked 14 hours a day most of the days, even though I was Super sick. I was sick with Jude well into my third trimester. But recently, recently, things have altered in my parenting journey. I love parenting teens. I love it. I'm really good at it because to me, they're more relatable. I can be myself a little bit more. I can talk to them like normal human beings. I hated the years that they couldn't communicate. I hated the years that they couldn't get themselves in and out of the car. There were days where we would stand in the front Of the, like, the door at our house to the garage to get into the car to go to daycare, and they wouldn't want to go, and they would like throw themselves on the ground and scream and yell about not wanting to go to school today. And I was like, I have to fucking work, like, we're going. Those memories stab me in the heart still to this day because I know that if I have any regrets in this life, it was not paying more attention when they were little, not giving them more of myself. And even though at the time I really was doing the best I could, I look back now and realize I made a lot of mistakes. I was learning as I went. I did not have the wherewithal, the self-awareness to realize it takes a while to learn how to parent. It really does. But now in their teen years, I look around and I'm like, okay, maybe I didn't totally screw this up. Knock on wood, right? Like, I don't want to jinx it because they're still young teens at this point. But I do have quiet pride in the realizing of my efforts that I didn't give up on myself, that I learned how to do it. And every day I make decisions as a parent without knowing if it's the right decision. I just do it naturally. It's a muscle memory thing, right? Because when they were little, you were doing that out of almost like sheer desperation to get it right. And now I've learned in many cases, I need to take a breath, take a beat, pause before I make a big decision with my kids. I need to think about the consequences. I need to think about the repercussions of how it's going to affect everyone. I also think about, do I have to make that same decision with my other child? What does that look like? These are all things no one really tells you when you're raising kiddos. You might not feel like a good advisor right now. You might feel behind. You might feel frustrated. You might not feel like you're a real business owner at all. But that first time that you make a difference in travel for somebody, You're going to feel different. And then the next time something happens and you're able to fix a problem, you're going to feel different. There is a lag between the activity, the action, the motion forward that you do without knowing the result and when it shows up. You can't skip it. You have to push through it. And when I first started travel, I just naturally took to the service side and I do have natural sales abilities. So I started selling. Rather quickly, within the first couple of months, I had my first sale. And some of you are a year in and haven't had your first sale. That doesn't mean I'm better at you than being a travel advisor. It means I'm good at this one thing, but I have a lot more to figure out. And maybe you've figured out a lot of other things, but just haven't made that first sale. That is okay. We have to make decisions and keep moving forward even when we feel like we're failing, especially when we feel like we're. failing. What I was really terrible at was having a lot of good boundaries, and that meant in all parts of my life, guys. I was a people-pleasing crazy person when my kids were first born, and in that same breath, I was also learning how to be a travel advisor. And I was always trying to prove myself in both arenas. I was always like, I want to be the best at these things. But you can't. You can't be the best at everything all the time, especially when you're learning something and you're new. And in travel, as we know, there is There's always something to learn. And I have felt that way about parenting too. Like, there's always more I don't know. There's always things coming I don't know. My sister-in-law says bigger kids, big— bigger problems. And I've never believed that. And for me, it's not true. I don't have bigger problems as they get older yet. But she, she did have some bigger problems as they got older. And her kids are 10 years older than my kids, so she has more experience at parenting. She's seen more. She's done more. That How it is in business. Sometimes you need a break. And in my case with travel, I burnt so far. Like I just burnt all the way out. Like I could not function anymore. I was having panic attacks under my desk. I was trying to do all this mom stuff. My husband was so frustrated. I was not being very nice to my friends. I was bailing on plans and just overall, just a mess in my travel business. And I was a mess in my personal life. Both went out of control around the same time and it was on me. But at the time I didn't recognize that. I just thought, I'm doing the best I can. I'm trying to do it all. Like, what more can you ask of me? So I left. I left travel for 3 years and I don't want anybody else to have to do that. And that's why we share our stories. That's why moms tell their birth stories. That's why we in business need to remind people, hey, this is not going to be easy. I honestly wish That someone had thought about telling me, this is not going to be easy running a business, having kids, doing these things. But I wouldn't have listened anyway. Like, I think back to that time in my life, I would not have listened. So I hope that if you're sitting there going, yes, that's me, I'm so tired, I want to just take a break, I want you to take breaks. I want you to put your out of office on sometimes. I wish someone had just said, Marcie, put an out of office on for 3 months. And rest, regroup. But they didn't, and I didn't. So I'm glad I had that time off. I was able to rededicate myself as a mom. I was able to decide if I wanted to come back in my own time. But when I did come back, it meant starting over, and I still had my kids. Duh. That's one thing you can't stop doing, right? But I didn't have any followers in travel anymore. I didn't have any visibility in that arena other than just The few times you know I would talk about my own trips, no one was calling me an expert. It really was just me, a laptop, and a gut feeling I could get back into this. I really did not know what it meant to be a parent when I chose parenting, and I don't think many of you knew you were choosing to be business owners when you signed your U nine, and that's okay. That's what I love. About this business. I love that we don't have all the answers all the time. I love that we have to build the net on the way down. I love that this journey is unpredictable. I like that there are challenges almost every day in some parts of the business. I love how fun it is. And I want you to start trusting yourself in the figuring it out piece. I believe you can figure this out. I believe that my journey is going to be super different from your journey, and that is acceptable. It's wild to me that I can look back on my parenting journey and all the growth that happened over the last 16 years, and in that same peripheral, I can look back on my business and see the growth, all of it mostly happening in silence. You guys, Instagram, Facebook, it's all a highlight reel. It's all just what people are willing to show you. It really is incredible what you can do when you decide to do it without all the answers. The things you don't see in someone else's journey is the stuff that brought them to this moment that you're comparing yourself to. And I don't know about anybody else. I don't know about the moms out there, but I know I used to compare myself to other moms. And I catch myself doing it to this day, but I'm a lot more comfortable and confident than I was 16 years ago. And I know I'm doing it the best I know how to do it. And that is the same for travel businesses. None of us are qualified to be parents when we first become parents. And very few travel advisors are fully qualified to become travel advisors. And that is why I remind you that everything you've ever done, you're bringing into Becoming a travel advisor. And what really inspired this conversation was something that someone said on a comment last week. She said, it doesn't matter. I never kept a job. I was just a full-time parent with a special needs child. And here I am. And I don't have any of the skills you talk about in being a travel agent. I don't have— I didn't bring anything into this. Her son is 24 years old. Of course she fucking has things that she learned to do as a mom that she is able to bring into this business. She took care of him and loved him every single day, and she did not have all the answers because he is special needs, and she is still doing that for him, and she's learning as she went, and she's navigating doctors. And that's my sister too. My sister has a daughter with Down syndrome, and her journey of motherhood with McKenna is so different than the journey I had with my kids. And sometimes I look at my sister in awe, like, how are you doing this? Still every day. And it's obvious with kids you have to, right? There's obligation, but it's still looking at it in awe going, here you are showing up no matter how hard it gets. And if you are passionate about your business, that is how you attack it. You do it under any circumstance. And yes, you need breaks. You need time off. You need help. You need your village. My sister. Is amazing. She does some incredible things with her kids. We parent so differently. And I look at her sometimes, I'm like, oh my gosh, you were so busy. Like start saying no to like the Headless Horseman Festival. But her mother journey is I want my kids to just have the most fun all the time. And she loves taking them to that stuff. And I'm over here like, I refuse to go to the Strawberry Festival in Florida because it gets a little crowded. Right? We get to decide those things. What's right for us, what's right for our family. She's navigating some really tough situations with McKenna where she has to drive 2 hours one way once a month and stay all night at the hospital for this transfusion thing that McKenna gets. And it's like, my God, I don't know what I would do if I lost that weekend in my life. You know, guys, this is a journey from birth to the moment you get to say it's grown up, it's running itself. And some parents never get that. And that just blows my mind every time I think about it. You really don't know how to do this, and that is okay. When I first became a travel advisor, I had no fucking clue what I was doing. I knew I could do it. I knew I was qualified because I had come from other places where I had done some sales, and I've always compared like my bartending job to sales because I was upsold the drunkest people in the bar to make more money. And so I've taken these skill sets and brought them into travel advising. And once I did take a break from travel and really poured into parenting, I now bring a lot of the things I've learned as a parent into travel advising. Patience, solving problems on the fly. You know, these things are skills, you guys. And if there's anything in your life that's been uber, uber hard and you don't have kids, start to think about that. Like how far you've come. Maybe you're a nurse and you had You know, you're getting your master's. Like, that is fucking hard. You have to show up every day. You don't know all the answers on the first day of nursing school, but you did it anyway because you're excited to learn. You have to be done waiting for certainty in your travel business. In a few weeks, I'm going to start Lead the Manifest. It is a live 14-week coaching experience around escorted group trips, and there are 54 women Who are coming on this journey with me. And some of them want to know right this fucking second what we are doing, and they want to have it done and dusted before they start on what they're going to plan, niche, experience, and they're not gonna get it. There is nothing in the travel world that is done and dusted. Your journey will change multiple times over the course of your career. You're not going to know if you're gonna make money. When you're going to make money unless you stay with it. But there is no exact answer. There's no exact timeframe. You have to do it and learn it and not expect to have every answer at the time the decision is made. You can read all the books, listen to all the podcasts. You can prepare, make everything pretty, build your social media. Create your website. It's just a fucking warmup, you guys. Preparation isn't going to give you certainty. You will have to adapt on the fly. You may have to become a logistical genius, but you will gain knowledge. You will figure things out through patience, understanding, and when you begin managing crises and figuring it out, You're going to experience joy. Even amongst a crazy situation, you're going to experience joy. You will learn to stop expecting it to be easy and instead learn to pivot gracefully. And sometimes, sometimes those challenges will just make you psychotic. You'll cry under your desk. You'll wonder, can I really do this? Why am I fucking doing this? Is it really worth it? And it is. The one thing I know about being a parent and being in travel business is it's fucking worth it. Both are exceptionally fun. First of all, like kids are just fucking hilarious and funny and enjoyable. Even when they're being total dicks, even when I feel like it's a scam, I know it's going to be worth it because in the next second I'm going to probably be cracking up or I'm going to be Full of pride. And that's like business. There are going to be days when you want to kill a client or yell at your host, or that you just can't figure out this vendor situation. Like, why don't they get back to me? And then there's going to be days where you close a vacation and you know, this trip is going to be incredible. Some days you're going to wait on hold for 4 hours for an airline on a flight you didn't book. And the next you're gonna be cashing in a commission check that is at least $1,000. It is going to have ups and downs. If that is not a reflection of parenting, I really don't know what is. But ultimately that is a reflection of life. Some of you will message me and tell me about your cancer journeys, the loss of your parent, these experiences that we all deeply can connect to, and I think that you will be able to have an open mind about your travel business after you listen to this, because you may think that you aren't doing hard things every day and you are. And maybe you think, God, all I do is hard things. I did a reel this week that said, I want to remind you that whatever's happening in your business or not happening in your business is your fault. You are responsible for every decision you make in your business. The good, the bad, the ugly, the easy and the difficult. And most of the time you make those decisions without knowing the results. And there will be days when you will cry, when you will doubt. You'll have slow seasons that mess with your head. You'll want to find someone to hand you all the answers. And that's just not how any of this fucking works. Nobody is going to spoon-feed you a sustainable business. And even if they wanted to, Even if they wanted to give you every single answer, it's not like you're going to listen because maybe that doesn't resonate with you. Maybe that's time you don't have to invest, so it wouldn't stick. So what's the point of having all the answers? You can hire coaches, you can take courses, but it's the choices you make in your business that shape your business. You have to raise this baby business yourself and you have to do it In your own speed, in your own time, design the business you want to design. And it's still not going to be how you thought it was going to be the very first day you started this. To go back to parenting, here's a fun story. I thought I was going to have 2 boys. I have a boy and a girl, and I was pregnant with my Judybug, and I could have bet my life that she was a boy in there. And we did always find out. I'm not one of those, oh, I don't want to find out till the end people. I wanted to know in advance. I wanted to plan, right? I wanted to know what I was getting. And we had name picked out, Leo, Leo Timothy. And we went to the doctor to get my ultrasound and they told me it was a girl. And I looked dead-faced, you know, I'm pretty blunt. I looked dead-faced in that ultrasound specialist's office and said, that is not right. That is impossible. And she, you know, kind of paused and said, well, Marcie, you're having a girl. Congrats. And I'm like, no, I had a dream the other day that my 2 boys were rolling down a hill in my front yard in the snow. Oh my gosh. And she said, okay, that was just a dream. That was just a dream. You don't get to decide every single thing. You don't get to decide it. So then I was like, well, crap, now I have to come up with a name for this girl I didn't know I was having. And I was kind of afraid of having a girl, and yet here we are. And of course, Jude is one of my favorite people to ever grace this planet. And I could go on and on and on about how our kids are not a blank slate when they're born because of the Differences and how they respond to things, challenges, how patient they are, whether they have ADHD or any other kind of learning disability, whether they're a perfectionist and can't move forward without perfection. That's my Judy. She is a perfectionist. My son couldn't give a shit if he's getting a D. D is for done in his world. There's just so many things that I can personally go back in my story and go, that is just like when I was having kids. Holy shit. So I want you to think about your past, think about the things you do well or that you didn't do well when you first started doing them. Give yourself some grace on being in a learning curve. If you had all the answers, none of this would be fun. I mean, travel is supposed to be fun. Sometimes it's fucking hilarious. Sometimes you want to pull all your hair out, but you don't get the answers first. That is the fucking point. That's what makes it so incredibly awesome. And yes, you're going to be uncomfortable. Especially out there for those Type A planners, have to have all the things lined up perfectly before they can put their foot forward. But hear me loud and clear, travel advisors are sales and service people who get shit done. They do it without knowing the next exact step. Having control of every single situation in travel is not fucking real, but you can build your confidence backbone Over time, through the mistakes you make and through the highs of the highest. And you don't have to be in total control to be consistent at this business. And consistency also will look different for every single person. Someone told me once when I was pregnant, because I didn't want to have, you know, a C-section and I was, and I didn't want to induce. And so many of my friends were having C-sections and a few of them had to be induced. And I was like, no, I'm not doing any of that. And they would just laugh. They're like, okay, you don't get to decide, right? Like, if you're listening to this, you know exactly what I'm talking about because you're trying to plan every single thing of that birth. You pack your bag, you know which hospital, you have a doctor. Well, I— neither one of my kids were born into this world with the doctor that I'd been seeing for 9 months. So there's like a whole other thing. But one of the things that my dad said to me when I was freaking the fuck out, because my dad was the best man, he was the The best. He said, that baby is going to come whether or not you're ready. And that is just like choosing a business. The results are going to come whether you're ready or not. So you can either sit in the research and the planning, or you can just enjoy the journey. I know you want to feel ready to make moves, make big business decisions, find your niche, build your Facebook group, find your first client, find your 100th client. And yes, you might have to take a beat. You might have to read a book. You know, there's all kinds of things you can be doing, but Unless you're actually moving things forward, you're doing nothing. Nothing is going to change. The results of your business are going to come whether you're ready or not. You're going to have tired seasons and you're going to have award seasons. When you are struggling, there is no shame in taking time off. I wish someone had told me that. That is not failure. Taking a break Is a strategy. It's a reset because life is going to knock you down when you're caregiving or grieving or stretched too thin. Focus on what keeps those embers alive. Your business can run itself in the background of all the life noise. It doesn't have to be all in all the time every single day. There is enough business to go around. There is enough of a lot of things that to go around, but there is not always going to be enough of you to go around every single day. So it's It's okay if you need to pause and just breathe through it before you make a decision. Pause, but expect to not know exactly what's going to happen next. Every day in your business, you're harvesting seeds that will grow into something that you don't really get to decide the result of. And when you see someone thriving and bragging about sales and getting so excited Be excited with them. They are often living in the results of decisions they made 3 years ago. And the only way you get to find out what's gonna happen in 3 years and the decisions you're making now is if you keep showing up for yourself and your business and your clients and your clients to be. And even if you've been at this for years and still don't feel like you're there, take a hard look back. At how far you have come. The results are in front of you. Even if it's not exactly where you wanted to be, even if it wasn't the plan, you're not behind. You're just in the middle. And there is literally no shame in being in the middle of a very long journey. No one is ever perfectly ready. You will never have all the answers and you will never build a business without falling on your ass a few times, you guys. But you can decide to get back up and do it anyway. Try again. Do something new. Switch hosts if you need to. Raise your fees. Launch the group trip. Decide. You'll get the fucking answers later. You'll learn as you go. You'll learn as you grow. Because honestly, if you haven't figured it out yet, the answers only come after you've done the fucking work. My dad was right. You will not know if you did a bad job of raising kids until it's too late. You also won't know if you did a great job. So you might as well believe that you're doing a great job right now, because I know that you're trying and I want you to believe in yourself that efforts matter. Even when life is lifing, you're raising up your business into something strong. Believe that in your story, that uniqueness in just you that nobody else can have. Because if there's one thing I've learned as a mom, as a travel advisor, as a fashion stylist, as a Travel agent coach is that you definitely don't need certainty. You just need to have faith in the ability to figure it out. That's the ultimate secret. That's the magic. It's nothing that mind-blowing. That is literally the no bullshit, you guys. I really appreciate you listening today. This was a kind of a hard podcast for me because I genuinely struggled with lots of things throughout my business, and I don't always like to talk about them because some people like to use it against me. As not relevant, but all of our experiences that we bring into the moment where we are right now is what makes us so amazing moving forward. I am so proud of the work you are doing. I am so excited for you for what's to come. I'm so pumped you don't have all the answers. I hope that you start to have more fun in this business. I hope that when you put your feet on the ground each day, that you are excited to do this job. It is supposed to be fucking fun. One day you are going to get up and be like, oh my gosh, look around at my business. I am a fucking badass. And maybe that's today because you are. Because it takes courage to make those decisions every day without knowing what's next. Love you guys. I hope you have a great day. All right, y'all, that is the end of another episode of the No BS Travel Advisor podcast. Thank you so much for being here, and remember, I am not a lawyer. That is my disclaimer. I am a coach and mentor in the travel business with a ton of big opinions. So don't forget to leave that 5-star review, and if you need anything, I'm here for you. Bye!