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September is basically January with better weather and pumpkin spice.
There. I said it.
There’s something about September that makes me want to buy a new planner, organize my entire life, clean out seventeen closets, create six new routines, and convince myself that THIS is the month I’ll finally become a person who meal preps every Sunday.
Will all of those things happen?
Absolutely not.
But I love the energy.
And I think travel advisors should take advantage of it.
September is the perfect time to hit reset on your travel business, look at what has actually happened so far this year, and decide what deserves your attention for the final four months.
You do not have to wait until January 1 to make a change.
In fact, September might be an even better time to do it.
Welcome to Success September, a four-part series where we’re going to RESET, SYSTEMIZE, SELL, and SCALE our travel businesses so we can finish the year strong and head into the new year with momentum.
And we’re starting with a good old-fashioned back-to-school reset.
Why September Is the Second January for Your Travel Business
As many of you know, I don’t only own a travel agency. I’m also a high school Spanish teacher.
That means my life changes pretty dramatically when the school year starts.
Summer Lindsay and school-year Lindsay are two VERY different people.
During the summer, I have much more flexibility. I can decide to record podcast episodes on a random Tuesday morning, work on a new project in the afternoon, or rearrange my schedule when something comes up.
Then school starts.
Suddenly, I’m back to alarms, bells, lesson plans, grading, meetings, and explaining Spanish grammar to teenagers.
Every year, I have to ask myself:
What does my life look like now?
What routines need to come back?
What worked before?
What didn’t?
What can I realistically accomplish with the time I have?
What needs to change?
But you don’t have to be a teacher—or even have kids in school—to experience this shift.
Fall changes people’s routines.
Summer vacations end. Kids go back to school. Calendars start filling up. Businesses start talking about Q4. The holidays are suddenly staring us in the face.
There’s a collective feeling of:
Okay. Summer’s over. Time to get back to business.
So why should January be the only time we get a fresh start?
Don’t Let Your January Goals Run Your September Business
I love goals.
I love plans.
I love a good planner.
But sometimes we give the goals we created in January WAY too much power.
Think about it.
When you made your goals at the beginning of the year, you were making decisions based on what you knew at that moment.
Now you have eight months of actual information.
You know more.
You know what sold.
You know what didn’t sell.
You know what clients asked you for.
You know where your inquiries came from.
You know which marketing strategies worked.
You know which things you spent hours doing that produced absolutely nothing.
You probably know more about the type of travel you enjoy selling and the type you never want to quote again as long as you live.
That’s valuable information!
Instead of asking:
“Am I on track with everything I said I would accomplish in January?”
I want you to ask:
“If I were starting my year TODAY, knowing everything I know now, what would I prioritize?”
That question can completely change how you approach the rest of the year.
Your Business Routine Needs to Fit Your Actual Life
This is a big one, especially for travel advisors who are building their businesses alongside full-time jobs, families, kids, volunteer commitments, or approximately 4,782 other responsibilities.
Your business routine is allowed to change.
Actually, it should change when your life changes.
One of the biggest mistakes I see entrepreneurs make is creating a routine during one season of life and then expecting themselves to maintain it forever.
Then circumstances change, the routine stops working, and instead of changing the routine, they decide they’re failing.
No.
You’re not failing.
The routine doesn’t fit your current season anymore.
Change it.
Maybe you had more time during the summer.
Maybe your kids were home all summer and you actually have MORE time now.
Maybe fall sports started and you’re about to spend the next three months sitting in a folding chair on a soccer field.
Maybe Q4 is crazy at your full-time job.
Maybe your travel business is entering its busiest season.
Whatever your reality is, build around THAT.
If you have ten hours a week for your travel business, you cannot run your business like someone who has forty.
You need a strategy for your ten hours.
Look at your week and intentionally decide:
When will you work on clients?
When will you follow up with leads?
When will you market your business?
When will you learn?
When will you do the actual CEO work that moves your business forward?
And please don’t tell me you’re going to “find time.”
Time isn’t hiding behind the couch.
You have to decide where it’s going.
Your Travel Clients Are Going Through a Fall Reset, Too
Here’s where the September reset becomes especially important for travel advisors.
Your routines aren’t the only ones changing. Your clients’ routines are changing, too.
Think about how different June feels from September.
Summer tends to be reactive.
Vacations. Weddings. Graduation parties. Kids at home. Weekend plans. Longer days. Random trips.
People are often focused on what’s happening right now.
Then September comes along.
Schedules return.
People start looking at calendars.
They start thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas.
They’re realizing spring break isn’t actually that far away.
They’re thinking about escaping the cold this winter.
They’re discussing next summer.
They’re dreaming about that big international trip they’ve been saying they’ll take “next year.”
And somewhere, someone is sitting at their desk after summer thinking:
I need a vacation.
Hello, travel advisor.
This is where you come in.
Your Travel Marketing Should Change With Your Clients
This is why I don’t think your travel marketing should look exactly the same twelve months a year.
Your clients aren’t thinking about the same things in September that they were thinking about in June.
So why are you talking to them exactly the same way?
If you’re still posting generic:
“Where do YOU want to travel next?”
content every month, we need to have a conversation.
People know vacations exist.
Your job isn’t simply to remind them that Europe is pretty.
Your job is to connect what they’re thinking about right now to the travel they should be planning next.
In September, that might mean talking about:
- Spring break vacations
- Winter getaways
- Holiday travel
- Summer vacations
- Disney trips
- Cruises
- European vacations
- Group travel
- Big bucket-list trips for the following year
But here’s the important part:
You don’t have to scream BOOK WITH ME! every twelve minutes.
Educate.
Inspire.
Answer questions.
Talk about timing.
Explain why certain trips need to be booked earlier than people think.
Share common mistakes.
Show people what’s possible.
Help them understand what they should be planning now, not just what looks pretty on Instagram right now.
That’s marketing.
Audit Your Travel Business Before You Make Your Q4 Plan
Before we decide where we’re going next, we need to look at where we’ve been.
And yes, I’m going to use the word audit.
Don’t leave.
I promise I’m not asking you to create a 47-tab spreadsheet.
Unless that’s your thing. Then have at it.
Instead, I want you to look back at January through August and ask yourself a few simple questions.
1. What Actually Made Me Money?
Not what you feel like you sold.
Look at the actual numbers.
What types of travel generated bookings and commissions?
Was it cruises? Disney? All-inclusive resorts? Europe? Groups? River cruises?
What is actually producing revenue in your business?
You may discover that the thing you’re spending the most time marketing isn’t even the thing making you money.
That’s important information.
2. Where Did My Travel Leads Come From?
Look at your inquiries and bookings.
How did those people find you?
Past-client referrals?
Facebook?
Instagram?
Your email list?
Networking?
Google?
Friends and family?
A random conversation at your kid’s baseball game?
If most of your business is coming from referrals but you’re spending 90% of your marketing time trying to make Instagram Reels, we might have found a problem.
Pay attention to what’s already working.
3. What Marketing Actually Connected?
Look beyond likes.
What caused someone to DM you?
Which emails received replies?
What posts generated questions?
What content made someone say:
“I’ve been thinking about doing that!”
Those responses are clues.
Your audience is constantly telling you what they care about.
Sometimes we just need to stop talking long enough to listen.
4. Where Did I Waste Time?
Oooooh, this one is fun.
What did you spend hours doing that produced very little?
That doesn’t mean every activity needs to immediately make money. Relationship building matters. Education matters. Brand awareness matters.
But sometimes we keep doing things simply because everyone else is doing them.
Or because we started doing them three years ago.
Or because someone on the internet told us that “successful business owners” have to do them.
Do you?
Do you actually?
You have permission to stop doing things that aren’t moving your business forward.
5. What Did I Learn About Myself as a Business Owner?
This one matters just as much as the numbers.
Maybe you discovered you LOVE selling group travel.
Maybe you discovered you absolutely do not.
Maybe you’ve realized you could talk about river cruising for four hours without notes.
Maybe you’ve discovered you don’t actually want to sell every type of travel.
Maybe you need stronger boundaries with clients.
Maybe you need better systems.
Maybe you need to spend less time chasing new leads and more time following up with the people already in your world.
Whatever you’ve learned, use it.
Experience only becomes valuable when we do something with the information it gives us.
You Are Allowed to Drop a Goal
I know this may make my fellow goal-setting, planner-loving entrepreneurs uncomfortable, but here we go:
You are allowed to drop a goal.
GASP.
Just because you wrote something down in January does not mean you are contractually obligated to drag it around until December 31.
Sometimes quitting something is strategic.
Maybe an offer isn’t selling.
Maybe a project no longer fits your business.
Maybe you’ve changed direction.
Maybe a platform is taking an enormous amount of time without producing results.
Maybe the goal belonged to an older version of your business.
Ask yourself:
Does this still matter?
If the answer is no, cross it off.
Not because you accomplished it.
Because you intentionally decided it no longer deserves your time and energy.
That’s still a successful business decision.
Choose Your Big Three Priorities for the Rest of the Year
Once you’ve cleared out what doesn’t matter, decide what DOES.
I want you to choose your Big Three priorities for September through December.
Three.
Not twelve.
Not everything currently living inside your Notes app.
Three.
Ask yourself:
If December 31 arrives and I’ve made meaningful progress in these three areas, what would make me feel good about the way I finished the year?
Maybe you want to:
Increase monthly travel inquiries.
Grow your group travel business.
Get consistent with email marketing.
Improve your client experience.
Reach a specific sales goal.
Recruit new travel advisors.
Reconnect with past clients.
Build your pipeline for next year.
Create better business systems.
Your Big Three will look different from someone else’s—and that’s exactly how it should be.
And here’s the part people often miss:
Your calendar needs to reflect your priorities.
If you tell me your number-one goal is filling a group trip, but you’re spending zero time every week marketing that group or following up with interested travelers, it’s not actually a priority.
It’s a wish.
Your priorities should show up in how you spend your time.
Try This Simple September Business Reset
Here’s your homework.
Schedule a September Reset Meeting with yourself.
Put it on your actual calendar and give yourself 30–60 minutes.
Grab your coffee, Diet Coke, pumpkin spice latte, cute notebook—whatever makes you feel like the CEO you are.
Then divide a page into three sections:
KEEP
What’s working?
What generated revenue?
What marketing is connecting?
What routines are serving you?
What do you want to continue?
STOP
What’s draining you?
What’s wasting your time?
What isn’t producing results?
What are you doing simply because you think you’re supposed to?
What goal no longer matters?
START
What needs to happen next?
What habit do you need to build?
Who do you need to follow up with?
What marketing needs to become more consistent?
What system needs to be created?
What should you be talking about with your audience?
Then, underneath those three sections, write your Big Three priorities for the rest of the year.
That’s it.
You don’t need to rebuild your entire travel business in one afternoon.
You need to get intentional.
Four Months Is a LONG Time in Business
Please don’t mentally check out on the year because September has arrived and you’re not exactly where you thought you’d be.
There is still plenty of time to create momentum.
You can reconnect with past clients.
You can generate new travel leads.
You can sell group space.
You can improve your systems.
You can become more consistent with your marketing.
You can make more sales.
You can build a pipeline that makes January look completely different.
But you cannot do everything at once.
That’s why we’re starting Success September with RESET.
Next, we’ll move into SYSTEMIZE, because once you know what you’re focusing on, you need a travel business that can actually support the growth you’re trying to create.
Then we’ll SELL by creating an intentional fall travel sales plan.
And finally, we’ll SCALE by bringing everything together into a profitable Q4 plan that sets you up for the new year.
RESET → SYSTEMIZE → SELL → SCALE.
Because the goal isn’t to enter Q4 simply saying:
“I’m so busy!”
The goal is to enter Q4 knowing what matters, where you’re going, and what you’re intentionally doing to get there.
You don’t need January 1 to start over.
Sometimes all you need is a fresh notebook, a new routine, and a little September energy.
Now go schedule that CEO meeting with yourself.
-Lindsay
Connect with Lindsay:
https://www.lindsaydollinger.com
https://www.instagram.com/lindsaydollinger
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