Why Overworked Travel Advisors Struggle to Scale

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. Hello everyone. Welcome back to the No BS Travel Advisor Podcast. I'm Marcie Muensterman and I am so happy to be here. However, it has been an insane morning. I am filming this on Monday, the 26th of January, and the septic guy was here. He needed to be paid at the same time my dentist had just called me back to make an I have my mom and her dog here, and her dog has no boundaries and is not well trained, so he's running around like a crazy animal driving me insane. And it feels like everything is always happening at the same time, especially when my phone rings. So I had left a message with the dentist this morning, and they called me back at the exact same time that my septic guy had to be paid. He was pounding on my door. And I feel like this is such a representation of life in general. especially if you work from home. And I have my own office. I have a door to my own office. And yet the amount of interruptions that we suffer from per day is insanity. I've been renovating for the last month. We've never renovated inside this particular house. We've renovated other houses, and I knew I did not really want to renovate. My house has been in complete disarray since before Christmas. But it's also such a privilege to be able to have the ability to renovate this house. It's an older home and it definitely needed those updates. So I'm excited we did it, but whew, it has been a time and a half. On top of everything else, I have 2 teenagers. The only way they communicate is via text and it's always while they're at school. And I'm always thinking like, why aren't you paying attention? What are you doing in class? Why are you texting me? And then on the flip side of that, I'm so happy that they reach out to me during the day. So here's the deal. I know you've got a lot going on and yet you choose to be here with me. So I appreciate you so much. So if you're listening in car line, hi, I am right there with you. If you're folding your laundry, I don't do that because I do not care, but I see you. If you're hiding in your bathroom because it is the only quiet place in your house away from your toddlers, you are among your people, y'all. I want to talk to you today about something That really relates to what I just said. The amount of stuff, the amount of mental load you as a woman TA have on your mind, have going on every single day, it is so much. I commend you because I know that you have the ability to somehow manage an entire family, your partner's schedule, softball schedule. Um, you, you know, if you're anything like me, my 2 kids love to socialize. One of them One of them had a birthday party this weekend. The other one had an event at his school for his criminal justice academy. There's just so much going on all of the time. And, and many of you work full-time, like regular 9 to 5. Many of you Uber for extra money or babysit. There's a million things that you guys are doing to get financially free on top of being a travel industry entrepreneur. Holy shit. We are courageous, y'all. We are brave. We are badass. But sometimes we do not live in reality when it comes to our business. And when I'm talking to you in the DMs every single week, doesn't matter how long you've been an advisor. It doesn't matter how old you are. Doesn't matter what niche you're in or experience level. Same thing keeps coming up over and over and over again. You want everything and you want it right fucking now. Like you want everything. And this pattern is exhausting you. This desire to have it all right this second, it is draining you. It makes you feel completely like a failure if you aren't where you want to be right this second. You bring comparison in. Well, what about her? She looks so successful. What about them? They talk about all their sales. I, you know, they travel more than me. You want to grow this business and you want to grow it fast. And you believe everyone else is doing it better than you. We're going to get real into it today of this need to be number one in your own mind while you're doing all this other stuff. Some of you are grieving like me. Grief is one of the most traumatic things I have ever experienced in my life. And honestly, I'm just glad I have not Fully had to experience it until now at age 45. I feel very grateful for that because the level of grief of losing my dad has been so mind-boggling to me. And yes, I've lost before, but nothing like this. And sometimes it takes over a whole ass day. And for those of you who grieve, understand, you guys understand, you know, some of you are going through divorce. Some of you have children at home who are special needs with appointment after appointment after appointment. When I say that I have talked to so many of you about so many different situations of things that hold you back from moving your business forward, I get it. I really do. And I'm so proud of you. And yes, life is happening all the time. And I personally don't actually believe in work-life balance. I do believe in calendar control, boundaries, and creating time because I know you also Want to hire a virtual assistant. Maybe you have enough business that it's time for you to partner with an independent contractor. Some of you have amazing goals of like onboarding another $500,000 in new clients because you want financial and time freedom. You want to quit your full-time job. I talk to travel advisors every single day about their why. And so many of you are here because you want to spend more time with your children. You want to travel more, duh, and you don't want to take your laptop with you. I also have talked recently to some of my coaching clients about starting their own coaching or education business. And I so want that for you. But what I also know is you have zero plan. You don't look at your calendar obsessively. You have purchased courses from me and from others and never opened them. Don't know where they even are. Don't know how to log in. If you don't know how to log into your Kajabi account, for me, for my courses, please email sam@support@thetraveladvisormarcie.com because we want you to log in. We want you to finish your courses. I know many of you sign up for webinars and then you never go back and listen to the recording. I have been coaching since 2023 and many of you Have had aha moments in the middle of a call and then never implement anything. You get stuck in analysis paralysis regardless of how easy it is to go back to the recording or back to the notes I send. There's just no implementation. I talked to many of you who spend upwards of $2,500 to $3,000 to go to conferences. You come home and you do nothing with anything you learned. You just tuck away all of the paperwork and the business cards and never look at it again. And I say this with love. I really do. This shit is on you. You are not willing to actually run your business. You are in constant reaction mode. And when things don't happen automatically, you become disappointed. And it is so frustrating sometimes to read comments and posts about The fact that you feel like you should be further along. And then there's always this but, and the but is always, I haven't had time. Life has happened to me. Well, what I can tell you is life is not going to stop happening to you. And an entrepreneur spirit means you have to be tough. But when you have no boundaries and you have zero control over your time, and you keep making that one exception to answer this one email or this one private message right this fucking second, that is what is causing you to continually get behind. Stop answering the late night messages. Wait until you're in the office. Seriously, wait until you have time to focus in the allotted hours you have given yourself to do your job. You have got to stop refusing to slow down. You have to start evaluating your priorities. And your priorities are going to look so different than my priorities and the travel agent next to you's priorities. And that's why comparison is such a thing that deflates where we are in our business, because everyone else looks more successful when that's all you're looking for. At the same time, you are not willing To take time off, and here's what I mean. I don't mean don't work. I mean put an out of office on and focus on your priorities. I want you to learn how to create space and time every single week because if you don't, you'll never finish that course. You'll never implement your coaching. You'll never call that BDM and set up a lunch because everything else feels more important, and it piles up and up and up. You're so afraid of turning off your Calendly link. For a couple of weeks to get caught up that you just fall behind again. And this cycle goes on and on and on and on. And this time next year, you're gonna wake up and be like, I'm back where I fucking started because you refuse to figure out your workflows, to implement your systems, and to inform your clients and prospects of your new business model and structures. If you do not stop the presses, you guys, to do the things that you need to do to lay the foundation in your business, at what point do you actually believe this whole thing is going to get easier? It is not going to get easier. You want everything to happen in the nooks and crannies, but that is just not realistic. I want you to have more time with your aging parents and your small children. I would love for you to travel laptop-free to Italy for 2 weeks. I would be so fucking excited if you started a new educational opportunity for your fellow travel advisor. But if you are not willing to take the time to do the things that would allow those things to actually happen, then nothing is ever going to change for you. You want results without disruption. This is also not a travel agency owner or host issue. This is not a client. This is a you problem. But of course, if you're like trying to leave your host, but you refuse to figure it out, that's on you. You know, it is not your family's problem. It's not the kids' school's problem. It's not your church's problem. It's not your book club's problem. And why I bring all this up is we want to do all those things, right? Like, I love my book club, but if I don't take the time to read the book and actually block the time on my calendar to read every day, I never finish the book. And it sucks because then I get to book club and I'm like, oh, I only read till chapter 3. I loved it until then. And then I can't even have the conversation I want to have because I did not prioritize it. And whose fucking fault is that? It's mine. We in fact have book club this week and I'm only on chapter 4 for the book club I'm hosting for travel agents. So I'm blocking time. I'm looking at my calendar. I'm deciding when I can listen to it because that's my problem, you guys. That's my issue. When I got burnt out, That was my fucking fault. Okay. It took me a long time to take personal responsibility for my own burnout. But until I truly understood that I was the only one who could make changes in my life and business, I wanted to blame everyone else, but that is stupid. And the one thing I realized that works for me, and I know would work for you, is removing things to make room for what actually Matters. It's so fucking unsexy. It really is. To get your shit together is literally one of the most unsexy things you could be doing. It's really taking time off from doing all the things you think you should be doing so that you can actually do the things that need to be done so you can have the life and the business that you want to have. Because you have to organize your workflows and you have to get organized in your email inbox. And please, for the love of everything, stop complaining about how busy you are. It is so fucking boring. Like literally one of the most boring things. Every time I read, I'm too busy for this, I'm too busy for that, I don't have time for this, I don't have time for that. I'm like, okay, then what do you want to happen? We need to learn that when there is something very important to us, regardless if it's business or life, that we have to look at the calendar. First, like when somebody comes and asks me to be on a podcast or to help out with a team training, I want to do those things. I'm like, yes, yes, I want to do it. But if I do not look at my calendar, I fucked myself over. And of course I have learned this lesson the most hardest ways by double booking myself with my kids' dental appointment, which is what happened this week, which means I had to call and reschedule, which is almost impossible, by the way. Like they're booking 3 months out. I'm on a cancellation list now, which also means if she calls and says, by the way, we have this appointment, I'm going to have to take it. And then I'm going to have to figure out what, you know, moving around the rest of my day. It's never easy to take hard, long look at both our priorities and how to make those happen. And one of the ways I have learned to do this is to close down my new client calendar. For weeks at a time, weeks. Okay. The other way you have to do this is to put an out of office on almost like a permanent out of office until you are fully caught up, because realistically, we need to be accountable to ourselves. And one of the easiest ways to make that happen is to have something that hits our clients or hits our BDMs or hits our email. You know, those people who email us all the time, hits them right in the face that says we are out of office right now. And we are doing things in our business and life that are more important than your Email right now, and that is okay. Giving yourself permission—I'm giving you permission to do this because if you do not figure out how to lay that foundation and you refuse to put the out of office on or to turn off your Calendly, literally, this is going to keep happening. It's just dumb to think it's not. To think you can now get it under control somehow, doing it the same way you've always done it—it's because you're choosing not to act. You are living in scarcity mindset because you are afraid. That, that one time when somebody gets your out of office, that they're gonna go book somewhere else. And what I wanna tell you is, so the fuck what? So what if they do? That is what we have to be okay with. We have to be fine and confident that the choice we're making right now is for the betterment of our future. Our future selves will thank us because we're focusing on getting that course done, making sure we meet with our BDMs this week. We are taking our kid to the dentist and not double booked with a podcast. Okay. It's our issue to figure out. No one else is coming to save you from this. And I want you guys to understand that when you are intentional with how you spend your time and you are more specific about it, the easier it gets to set those boundaries. It's a practice. It's not a perfection because of course emergencies will pop up and you'll have those clients you just absolutely can't say no to. But if you want to Say onboard a brand new assistant, you have to shut everything else down while you do that. That is the only way to actually train somebody in your business. And those systems and workflows, they have to be set up because that's what makes sustainability. A new VA cannot just come in and read your mind and figure out your email and look at your, you know, logins and know what the fuck is going on. And if it's all inside your head and it's not written down anywhere, good fucking luck with them learning. And then you're gonna be mad that you You wasted time on this person when actually it was your fault they couldn't get trained. And I don't care if they're an expert in Travify or Travel Joy or Tern and you hired them. That doesn't mean they understand your system, especially if you don't have one. So here's the deal. Could you make less money when you turn things off? Absolutely. Could it mean you miss a fam invitation because you didn't check your email for 24 hours? 100 fucking percent. But listen. Guys, one of the reasons that I'm able to do it all, quote unquote, is because I took time off to onboard a VA. It is because I make sure that I hire people in my business that know how to do things I don't want to learn how to do. And that costs a lot of money, but it's worth it to me for the return on the investment later. I always have at least $10,000 in my business bank account, so I am able to do those things. And that is another thing I want you to strive towards is building up your business account so you can make those decisions to hire so that it is easier to do this job. But if you're going to do it all by yourself and you are going to be in a situation where you refuse to ask for help, then you have to look inward all the time. Because if you keep saying yes, when you really need to be saying no, there will never be The success you're looking for, even if you sell a ton of travel, even if you are a million-dollar seller, you guys, if you have zero time control, you are not successful. If you are working 24/7, that is not success. Okay? It's exhaustion. It's burnout. It's unimpressive. And I know you need the money. I completely understand. I know some of you survived COVID. I mean, as someone who made $6,000 in 2 years, I understand needing money. But I also at that same time understood that I had to make changes to have the business come back. And that is when I started charging fees, but it was a business decision I had time to make, right? Because we weren't working. So you have to create that for yourselves. One of my good friends, she goes on a CEO retreat. She's by herself. She books a hotel about 2 hours from her house. She books a great comfy room where she can order room service and she fucking gets Down to business. And I love this idea of just shutting things down for a couple of days and getting into your business, saying yes to yourself. Because if you don't start saying yes to the things that actually move the needle and provide you with that business, like energy, like the energy of somebody that knows what is happening, you will always feel stressed. You will always feel behind. You will always feel exhausted. It doesn't matter how long you do this. The other thing I want to point out is you can't fix everything at once. You can't fix everything in a little CEO weekend for 3 days. You have to start choosing the priorities in the order that makes the most sense for you. Not for me, not for the TA next to me, for you. What is the most important thing to you right now? And then take some time to actually fix it. Do it. Implement it, focus on it, and then finish it. Then you get to move on to the next thing, and you refocus. Businesses simply do not change overnight. Real growth comes from a plan that lasts longer than a fucking day. If you keep piecing your business together in between quotes and DMs, you will never see the change you want to see. And I just want so much more for you. But as long as you want everything right fucking now, and you Refuse, like literally refuse to take a beat, to take a pause, you're not going to ever get to the next level. I'm going to tell you guys a story. When I first decided to become a TA, I knew I was going to work 24/7. Like I knew it because the travel advisor who had done my destination wedding with me, that's how she worked. I will never forget the time I called her at 11:00 PM. I wasn't expecting to talk to her, but I just had to leave her a message. This was before texting. I mean, we emailed, but honestly, I called her for everything and she answered that fucking phone. And I remember being so in awe and impressed and just thought, oh my gosh, that's amazing. So when I chose to become a travel advisor, I just knew I was gonna have to answer the phone at 11:00 PM. That was the service I wanted to give somebody. To me, that meant I was successful. If someone was fucking calling me at 11:00 PM, I was important. Holy shit. What was I thinking? Because it really started me off in a way that it took years to reverse. I brainwashed myself, like, from the moment I chose this as a career, I brainwashed myself into believing that success meant 24/7, 24/7. What the fuck was I thinking? I did not have anybody at the time saying, that's insane. You don't have to answer your phone at 11. And that's what I want to be for you guys. I want to be the person who's lived it, who thought that that's what success was, that if I had people calling me that late, that I had somehow made it. And I did immediately out of the gate within a few months have people calling me at 11:00 PM and thought, oh my gosh, this is what I— this is what I asked for. This is how it's supposed to be done. But then life starts to happen. You know, I, I was young. I didn't have children when I first started this job. And it was like, even though I was working 2 jobs, cause I was also a barista. Getting up and going to work at 4:30 in the morning, it was like the energy level was much different, and the world wasn't quite as intense as it is now. And I didn't have teenagers, so I had no idea the level of motherhood strength I was gonna have to figure out as I got older. Managing all the things—the domestic life—is real for women, and the amount of things we worry about is crazy. Not to mention, every day in 2025 and 2026, we are. Infiltrated with social media and news and the world imploding, and it feels so fucking heavy. And sometimes it feels futile to try to build a business. Like, why would I even want to at this point? But no matter what, you guys, working 24/7 is the dumbest decision I have ever made in my life. And I want to be the person that says it to you. I thought working 24/7 would mean I would have it all. But all it actually meant 8 years later was that I was burnt out, broke, even selling almost $2 million a year, broke because I didn't manage my money very well. I didn't understand business banking accounts. I spent my money haphazardly on dumb shit. And I worked so much that my hourly wage was like $3 an hour because I was only at 70/30 commission split on top of everything else. And My agency would not consider moving me up to 80/20, even though I asked multiple times. And I stayed far too fucking long in that situation because I thought it was all I had. I could not imagine the heavy lifting of moving my client base or even looking for another travel agency. I didn't have a mentor to tell me, you have options, but you have to shut it down to get there. So I did. I shut it down. Nobody told me I had to shut it down, but I am a kind of all-or-nothing person. And you guys have heard this story before, but seriously, I was like, fuck this shit. And I had to like completely stop doing the job and hit the reset button. And I do not want that for you. I want you to hit the reset button on your calendar right now. I want you to look ahead at the next 6 months. I want you to think about What your goals are for 2026, both in business and life, not one or the other. What do you want to accomplish in your everyday life? Maybe it's as simple as affording a housekeeper so that like this, this job, this TA job can pay for that. That means you have to look for a housekeeper. You have to take time. You have to figure out how much it costs. You can't just assume. You have to research. You have to interview people. And then you have to make a plan to make the money to pay for it. It's not easy to do, but it is that simple. It is simple as this task requires this amount of time so that I can figure out the budget. And then I have a new goal for my travel business. Can be like that. Maybe you really, really want to onboard an independent contractor and you are so excited about it, but you don't know the first thing about doing that. Well, you have to have time to research. You have to sit down with it. You have to look for a lawyer. You have to figure out your terms and conditions. There's steps and all kinds of things involved. And I know it's overwhelming, but if you don't turn things off for a little while, how will you ever find time to do the thing you want to do? How are you going to find this independent contractor if you don't even know how to manage your time? How do you think you're going to train that person if you have zero control Over your hours, guys. Whatever the goal is, whatever your dream and desire is, you deserve it. You deserve it. I want you to have it. But if you are not being real with yourself that this shit has to change and comes from a place inside of you that is honest with yourself, if you do not take responsibility, your goals might as well be caught on fire. I know. How busy you are. I know how much you have going on. Somehow you also make time to post on Facebook, answer questions, be there for your fellow advisors, but you refuse to help yourself. You do not treat yourself like your own best friend. You are not obsessed with your business. I've already had that podcast conversation because if you were, you would do the things that you need to do to make your goals happen. You would want to know how I know that, because that is how I operate. I operate with a Marcie first attitude among most things. Obviously I have other obligations and other responsibilities, but when it comes to this business, when it comes to being there for you as one of my jobs, I show the fuck up. And when I need time to figure my next steps out, I take it. I sometimes will go days where I shut off Facebook. And I don't look at it for hours and hours at a time. And I will literally come back to Facebook and have message after message after message saying, oh, I want my thing approved. I need to, I need advice on this. Can you get back to me as soon as you can? And I have to make decisions on whether or not that fits my day. Because once I start a conversation in the DMs, you just never know how long it's going to go. And I break my own boundaries all the time. But when I am doing something super important that I know will matter in my future, I take that time for myself. I put an out of office on. I was out of office most of last week because I had to go pick up my mom in Indiana. I flew up there and needed to get back before the big snowmageddon that hit, and I was not online for almost 48 straight hours, which is a long time for me to be offline. But I'm so glad I took that time and focused on the road and hung out with my mom because we don't get that time back. And that's really what you have to think about. That is what you have to put into perspective for yourself. I want you I want you to have successful businesses. I want you to make all the money, but I also want you to really dig deep. And since we're all in different stages of life, that is going to look different for everyone else. And that's why I encourage you to stop comparing yourself to some other travel advisor's Instagram feed. It doesn't fucking matter what they're doing. It doesn't matter how successful they look. There was a post earlier this week in Maximize that basically said, I've been doing this for 3 years and I'm not where I want to be. How did you guys do it? And then in the comment section, there was somebody that said, you know, this is how I do my social media. This is how I do this. And she said, I don't have an interesting life. And I roll my eyes when I see other people posting about their life. Why, why would they do that? And my immediate response was, this is the exact problem. You have time for judgment. You have time for all this crap where you are actually scrolling instead of posting. And you're judging other people while doing it, which then therefore makes you believe that you have nothing to offer. What a shitty mindset. And I just thought, that's the issue. It doesn't matter all this advice we're giving you. If you truly believe that you do not have anything interesting to say, and you truly believe that how everyone else is doing it, and you just can't imagine yourself doing that because you roll your eyes, that is the fucking problem. You are the problem because you're not willing to admit that that's what works, first of all. Putting yourself out there, being authentic, being genuine, creating content that people interact with because they get to know you and then like you and then consider buying from you. That is literally how sales works. It will never change either. The way sales works has never been different since the first time someone sold something to somebody else. They had to like that person. A need had to be filled and it was being filled. The person selling it though had to show up. And back in the day, it was like door to fucking door with vacuum cleaners and the first dishwashers and whatever else was being sold. People had to face-to-face put themselves in a position to be rejected in person. How terrifying. We don't even have to do that now. We don't even have to see the judgment on the other side, and we can delete the comments of the judgments that do come through. So if you're judging people for how they're putting themselves out there and you're refusing to put yourself out there and you wonder why you're not where you need to be, that answer is right in front of your face. It's you. You have to turn the mirror on yourself. The majority of the successful agents I know, the majority that you would consider successful, people with high sales, people who have a large network that respond well to them, are extremely likable. But Their success may not be what it, what it looks like on the outside because they may not have good workflows in place. They may not have systems that actually make their lives easier. So even your most successful sales travel advisors with the highest numbers out there are often not as successful as they look. And that's because they refuse to make time for those foundational pieces. So even though you're comparing yourself, you actually have no fucking idea what's going on with that person ever. Ever, ever, ever. So it is a waste of time to A, be judgmental of those people in any way, shape, or form, or even be jealous of them because the time you spent figuring that out, trying to dissect their business, was time you could have invested in moving your business forward. And until you are willing to admit that the main challenge, roadblock, whatever you wanna call it, In your life and business is you, is you, is actually you. It's not anything else. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing is going to change. I know from personal experience on so many levels, both in relationships I have lost because I have lost many, and in the businesses I have built and quit. And there are times when I look out into the TA universe and I'm like, wow, there are so many of us and so many of us should not be here because of attitude, not because we're not deserving, not because we couldn't do it. But because of attitude. The shittier the attitude, the worse this is for you as well, because this shit is not for the faint of heart. And ultimately, if we can't look inward and truly, truly take responsibility for our own bullshit, we cannot have the business or life we want. It's impossible. That is something that is impossible, and that is not something I want for you. I want so much more than that for you. I want you to love yourself and love your business, because if you don't, no one else can. Why would anyone trust someone who doesn't actually believe in themselves? Who is going to give you thousands of dollars for the perfect honeymoon if you don't believe in your business? If you don't make time for your business that makes sense for yourself, how is anybody supposed to connect with you? The minute you When you decide to pause everything and really look at what is going on with you is going to be a moment where you are able to see clearly on what needs to be done next. Trust yourself, trust your own instincts on what that priority should be. I cannot possibly tell you what's next. No one else's next is going to be just like yours. Because all of our lives are significantly different than our counterparts. So what needs to happen next is on you. But if you don't actually want to take that time to figure it out because you're afraid of what it means, then this year is already shot to hell. The decisions have already been made. If you do not want to do the actions to get to the results, and you guys, confidence comes from taking action, not the other way around. You won't feel confident making tough decisions until they're made. And you won't know what happens next until you make the decision. I want you to really dig into your priority list. I want you to write down the top 3 things, top 3, nothing more, top 3, and it can be life or business. And I want you to message it to me, post it in Maximize. And be accountable to yourself of the top 3 things that you want to accomplish this year. I was speaking with a coaching client last week about her son's high school graduation. And she said, I've never missed anything. I've been there for everything. And I'm like, I bet you have. I understand that. I've been, I don't miss things either. But I said, have you actually been there? Were you completely invested in that moment? Were you present? Because she's currently onboarding several ICs and she has a multimillion dollar sales business and she just took on a brand new booking that means so much to her. And And, and her son is graduating high school in May and it's January. And I just thought, you know, how are you going to enjoy the next 5 months if you are so fucking busy in your business when really you should have probably just put a permanent out of office on until August? Because we had already talked about her sales and she had enough for the whole year and she had money coming in and some of her ICs are already off and running and doing great. So I'm like, what do you think is gonna happen in the next 5 months? Yeah. It's going to fucking fly by, you know? So what do you really want? I know you don't want to miss out. I know you want to be present in every moment your son gives to you because this is fucking it. Those 18 summers, that is not a joke for those of us who are parents. They go so fast, and for some reason they speed up like really fast once high school hits. You do not understand until you're in the midst of it. And all I could think about for her Was I think about how I only have 2 and a half more years with my son at home, and she only has 5 months now. And I was like, holy shit, how am I gonna feel when it's only 5 months? And in my mind, all I could think about was, I don't want to miss a fucking thing. I know I'm not going to want to miss anything. And that's when she said, I never miss anything. And I was like, I know you show up, but are you mentally able to be there? Because as somebody that is always going, going, going, my brain is always on fire. I know I miss things even when I'm sitting there. Maybe I'm glancing at my phone or I'm thinking about the next thing I have to get done. Or I already know I'm going to go home and work. That's what I used to do when my kids were little. I knew I had to pick them up at 6, but I knew by 8 o'clock I'd be back in my office. And I was always looking towards the work. I said, how can we make sure you don't do that over the next 5 months? I said, you cannot take any more clients until August. You are going to pass everything off. And I could see it in her face that that was not the answer she wanted to hear, but that was the right thing to do. And then I said, and then you're going to block certain hours for training the ICs. You're going to set up office hours for them, and if they don't show up during office hours, they have to wait until the next set of office hours. You are not going to be answering your phone after 5 PM. You're going to put a do not disturb on every time you have a family dinner. You're going to take all of May Completely off. You are going to have that out of office on for the entire month of May, and you're going to tell people why. You are only going to manage what is traveling. You are not going to keep piling it on so that you can say yes and be completely present for this momentous occasion that you so fucking deserve because you got your child here. Because moms don't enjoy anything, you guys. We do not get to enjoy anything. Unless we are intentionally trying to enjoy it, and we never give ourselves that opportunity because we think we have more time. We think we'll do better next time, and sometimes we don't get a next time. So now I'm crying, and I think I made her cry, and you might be crying because this is the reality, guys. We cannot have it all, all at the same time, and we cannot have it all right fucking now. We just can't. So I need you to figure out what it is you really want this year before the next six months. And really hone in on it. Hone in on that, because if you don't, you're not gonna get it. It's that simple. And it's not easy to narrow down the list. I get it. But I can also promise you that if you do take time to figure it out and put steps into motion, you will be so surprised how much more you will accomplish. Sometimes I wonder how I get so much done, and I know it's because I'm very intentional with my time. Now, and I have a lot of help and I am not afraid to ask for it anymore. So lean in on the things that will make your life smoother. I promise you, your future self will thank you. You have fucking got this, you guys. I hope you have a great day. Love you. Bye. 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 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! Bye!