You Built It!
By Mark Murphy
August 22, 2012 11:45 PM
If you own a travel agency, whether storefront or home-based, you built it. If you are an employee in an agency, you’ve helped build your business as well, along with a client list. Some may initially disagree with my inclusion of an employee in this analysis, but read on and you’ll understand where I’m coming from.
In a nutshell, it goes like this: Tell me one agency owner who will keep paying you a salary to sell travel if you aren’t bringing them any customers. Exactly zero. That’s why you indeed have built your business, each and every one of you, regardless of your title or role.
You can apply this thought process to virtually any position in any industry, as long as it requires you to sell. Every salesperson represents an essentially standalone business. That’s what makes selling such a hard, high-paying job or an easy, low-paying job -- the choice is up to you.
So what’s with the president talking about how people who built businesses didn’t really build them? As an entrepreneur, I can tell you I did build my business, including this website. I made the investment in technology, tools and people to create it. Every vendor and every person on my staff was paid in the process even when at times I wasn’t paying myself. That’s the life of an entrepreneur. That’s why I was appalled with the comment that somehow I owe my success to someone else, and in the case of the president, that would mean government.
Make sure you fully understand that your success begins and ends with you. There are players out there who can provide tools and other resources to enable you to succeed, but the ultimate success or failure rests with you.
Start thinking of yourself as a travel entrepreneur and stop thinking that anybody other than you is responsible for your success. Make sure your business can travel with you and is built for you and your clients, and not designed to enrich someone else.
A great way to do that is to join me next week when I’ll be hosting a Live Virtual Event entitled “Build Your Website, Build Your Brand.” It’s brought to you by our new travel agent website platform at www.AgentStudio.com.
Agent Studio is the website solution that’s changing everything for today’s travel entrepreneur. It gives you the flexibility to feature more than 500 destinations, dynamic news, videos, suppliers and travel promotion -- all dynamically delivered to your custom site. You choose what you want to have featured, where you want that content to show up, and how it will integrate into your existing social media efforts.
Agent Studio does all of this with very little effort on your part, leaving you free to focus on selling travel, which I’m assuming is why you got into this business in the first place. Registration and participation is free so sign up today and hear from successful agents who are already using AgentStudio to build their business. For indeed, they did build it!
Mark Murphy is president and CEO of travAlliancemedia, parent of TravelPulse.com, Agent@Home magazine, Vacation Agent magazine, Travel Agent Academy, Virtual Travel Events and Agent Studio.
8/23/12
I get where you're coming from but I don't think that's what the President said at all. How would you be such a great travel agent unless you had great hotels, resorts, airlines, tour guides and operators, car rental companies, and cruise lines to offer to your clients? How about the people who provide electricity, plumbing, gas, heating, or internet service to your business? I could go on but my point (and I believe the President's) is this: we are not stand-alone islands of get-it-done people. It's through our connections to others that we succeed. So yes, you've built your brand and your business, but you didn't do it by yourself no matter how you may deceive yourself into thinking so. I'm grateful to my company for allowing me access to the resources to give my clients a wonderful trip--but I always remember that my success is partially due to the success of other people: namely the hotels, airlines, transportation, etc that other people made.
8/23/12
Mark, you need to listen to that again. The president did not say you didn't build your business all by yourself, he said there were a lot of people who helped you get your business to where it is.
8/23/12
Seriously Ashley & Barbara? What you fail to understand in the President's statement is that he honestly believes no one builds their own business. He and others who subscribe to this philosophy fail to understand that while we enterpreneurs have been busy building our businesses, we have also paid taxes which built the roads, schools, bridges and financed our government spending. The assumption that business owners don't contribute to building the infrastructure is insulting. I suggest you both listen again to what he said and you can spin it any way you want, but the reality is business owners make it happen. Government does not earn anything nor does it create jobs. It exists solely because of tax revenue...from all of us. Now if the President was talking about government instead of business, I would agree with him.
8/23/12
Glad to have a discussion going...Bryce is correct. You can't mince the words. There are those that believe government creates business and jobs and those that believe individuals do...you can guess what the President thinks.