I keep counting the stages of one booked trip. The money only shows up in one of them.
By Orsbert Ayesigye
A booked trip still has unpaid hours sitting inside it. I think that is the part of the trade nobody prices cleanly.
Research before anyone has said yes. Building the proposal.
Every revision when the dates move, or a third person gets added, or the budget shifts and the whole day by day has to be reworked.
Then the booking, which is the only stage that looks like commerce from the outside.
Then the calls when something breaks on the ground.
Then the follow-up months later, asking a supplier whether the commission actually landed, and sometimes having to prove the client stayed.
The hours stack across all of that. The pay does not. Commission, when it arrives, arrives after travel.
The skilled work that made the trip possible happened weeks or months earlier, on faith.
I do not think advisors are bad at business for living inside that shape.
I think the trade organised itself around unpaid speculative work a long time ago, because that was the only way the rest of the model held.
What still sits wrong with me is how invisible the stack is once the trip is sold.
A client sees a finished plan and a total.
An advisor sees six or seven pieces of work, only one of which ever looked like a sale.
The maths stops working once you tally research, the proposal, every revision, the booking, the support on the ground, and the chase for commission afterwards.
That is one trip. So the question I actually care about: which stage of a booked trip eats the most of your week, the part before the booking, or the part after the client is already gone?
