Travel Masters Podcast
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Travel Masters Podcast
Commitment and Clarity for Entrepreneurial Success
What if your business could enhance your life instead of consuming it? Meet Tristan Wright, the Chief Business Sherpa from Evolve to Grow, who takes us through his remarkable story of building a successful business, losing it all, and then rising from the ashes to rebuild it. Tristan shares his wisdom on maintaining a healthy mindset and staying aligned with your personal and professional aspirations, ensuring your business serves you, your family, and your team effectively. This episode is packed with actionable insights on achieving a balanced and purposeful approach to running a business.
In this episode, we also explore the vital importance of commitment and clarity for business success. One of the key takeaways is the danger of constantly changing directions and the need to stay true to your chosen path. Tristan emphasizes the power of personal passion and setting realistic, actionable goals, breaking them down into manageable three-month plans. Learn how to identify high-value opportunities to accelerate growth and discover how incremental increases in sales can help you hit your revenue targets. This conversation provides practical strategies and inspiration to help you navigate your business journey more effectively.
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Welcome to the Travel Masters podcast. We're here to help travel advisors and travel agency owners get what they really want from their business. I'm Morris Sims and I'm going to be your host for our podcast. I'm an ex-chemical engineer turned life insurance agent. I got to tell you selling life insurance was a lot more fun for me than being an engineer. After a few years, they asked me to teach other people how to do what I was doing. And well, long story short, we wound up in New York City for 20 years. That was quite a change for a young Alabama boy. I retired after 20 years as the vice president and chief learning officer, where my team and I trained over 12,000 agents and their managers to be independent business owners and sales professionals. Now I'm not one to stop working, so I started my own business and I was blessed to find a sweet spot with travel professionals that I was able to help. Now I've got several travel agency consulting clients and I'm the co-founder of the Travel Masters Learning Community, where we provide opportunities for travel professionals to become more effective, efficient and to get what they want from their business.
Speaker 1:On this podcast, I'm going to be interviewing guests that I believe are going to have a message that can be of help to you. Our travel professional community and I'll do some solo episodes as well with some other stuff that I really think can help you in your business. So, with all that said, hey, let's get this party started with today's episode. What do you say? Have you ever met a Sherpa? Well, I'm going to introduce you to a chief business Sherpa today, with a company called Evolve to Grow. His name is Tristan Wright and we are really excited about having Tristan on the show today. Thank you, tristan, from all the way from Australia. Thanks for being here, buddy.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for having me. I'm really excited to have a conversation with you today.
Speaker 1:Oh, we're going to have a good time. I bet I can see this coming. Tell us a little bit about yourself. I mean, Chief Business Sherpa may not really tell it all for a lot of folks, so what do you do and how do you help? How do you help?
Speaker 2:businesses and what are you going to teach us today? You put me into a bucket, a category. I'm a business coach, but that's boring and everyone says they're a business coach. So the business Sherpa Park came from my backstory. I ran a business, I made lots and lots of money and then I blew the business up. I had myself 200 grand in debt with no way to pay it. I rebuilt that business and I sold that business. So I've been on the journey of building, scaling, blowing up and regrowing a business. So for me, the way I like to see it is when you're running a business.
Speaker 2:You're on a journey, you're climbing a mountain. You want to get to the peak of the mountain, so you can often climb that mountain by yourself. Sometimes you might fall off the side of the path or you'll go down the wrong path and it'll take you longer to get to the peak of your mountain. So, the way I see it is, I've been to the top of my mountain and now I'm here to help you get to the top of your mountain or the top of your goal. So a Sherpa is traditionally known as someone that will guide you to climb the mountain, get to the top, to get to your goal. So I'm doing that in business. I'm helping simplify your business and helping you scale your mountain and get to achieve your goals.
Speaker 1:That sounds like a worthwhile thing to do, for sure, Tristan. So tell us. What do you see in the clients and the people you talk to? What do you see as the biggest challenge folks are having nowadays?
Speaker 2:Often, believe it or not, it's mindset. So we get influenced so much by what's happening in the media and what other people tell us that we can do and what we should do and what we shouldn't do, and we allow that to control our own narrative and it holds us back from achieving our true potential.
Speaker 1:OPT other people's thoughts. It can really screw up the whole world, can't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just because someone else speaks louder doesn't mean their thoughts, their opinions, are correct or any better than yours. So we're, as business owners and people in general, we're following trends and directions that we shouldn't necessarily be following, and that holds us back in business. Yeah, be following and that holds us back in business.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So where do you go with somebody that walks in and says, okay, tristan, my business is here and it's rocking along, but I'm not satisfied when?
Speaker 2:do you start with somebody like that? My first thing is I say to them business is a tool. It's a tool for life. Are you treating business as your life or are you treating it as an enabler for you to enjoy your life? And often people are like huh, I've got caught up in the day-to-day of running a business that I've forgotten why I'm doing what I'm doing business, that I've forgotten why I'm doing what I'm doing. So why have we set up this business to? What's the purpose of this business and how is it going to benefit our customers? But also how is it going to benefit myself, my family and my staff. So it often needs to be a big realignment.
Speaker 1:So we're starting off with what do you really want out of your business? I guess then right.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you really want out of your business? What do you want your business to do for you? Because sometimes we just get stuck chasing the numbers. I need to get to six figures. I need to get to multi-six. Yeah, actually, I need to get to six figures. I need to get to multi six figures. I need to get to seven figures. I need to get to multi seven figures. But if we're just looking at that metric, that metric isn't going to deliver, deliver us fulfillment. We need to look at a whole heap more than that yeah, quite a bit, quite a bit for sure.
Speaker 1:And I think that you mentioned your purpose and your why in there. That, to me, is still the most important part of the whole thing. I mean, once we get clarity around what somebody wants, the next question really has to be a real deep answer to the question why? Because I don't know about you, but for me, the whole time I've been in business for the past 40 some odd years, if somebody asked me that question, the surface answer would be well dummy. I got bills to pay. I got a family to feed. That's why I'm in business.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah. And that's a simple answer, and that's what people default to. But if we're doing that as our primary why or primary objective, that's all we're going to achieve and we're going to always. Just most of the time, we'll just be a tiny bit short of that too, because there's always going to be more bills or there's always going to be something else that we want to do, so we're always going to be in the rat race and chasing that.
Speaker 1:So how do you get down to the real deep why of why you're running this business and doing what you're doing? How do you get them past that point? Don't you have to go deeper than that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, totally. For me, it's like what actually truly makes you happy, what makes you smile, what makes you light up. Then think back to when you're a kid, when you, when you didn't have the burdens, uh, that you do have you've got now what, what were you had? What made you smile and what, uh, making people's lives easy, or do you love the feeling that it gives you when, when you're setting people up to go on their holidays? Uh, there's more than just taking money from people. It is the imp. Is it the impact you have on people by doing what you're doing?
Speaker 1:and then once I get that, why, what, what do you do with them next? Okay, I know this is what I want out of my business. This is where I want to go, and this is why it's important to me I can now run through walls and jump over hurdles to get to my what. What else do you do with them then? I mean, that's a great starting place, but where do you take it from there?
Speaker 2:So once we've got our why, it's often so much easier to create a roadmap on how to get there. So if you don't have a why, you're just going round and round in circles and ticking off boxes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:If you've got a true north or a why or an ultimate objective, whatever you want to call it. Once you've got that, it is so much easier to create that roadmap and work out. Look at where you are now and what are the hurdles stopping you achieving that. So what are the hurdles stopping you achieving that? So what are the simplest thing? What are the? What are? What's the least amount of things that we need to do to be able to achieve that? Why? So, rather than all that white noise, everything, otp, opt, other people's thoughts, put all of that aside. What's the least? What are the least amount of things that we need to do to get to our why, to, or to get closer to that? So it's about generating that roadmap and then ticking off those most important things, as opposed to all of that white noise yeah, the most important thing, priorities are key, aren't they?
Speaker 1:I mean, I like what you're saying. I teach something very similar to my clients. They've got to know what they want and be very clear about that, and they're going to know why they want it, and it's got to be a deeper reason than just you know. I got to pay the bills because there's some pretty big hurdles to jump out there and running your own business, there's some pretty big walls to climb and brick walls to run through. Your own business there's some pretty big walls to climb and brick walls to run through. You can have a pretty strong why to fuel your activity so that you can go get whatever it is that you want. Would you agree?
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally. And the funny thing is, once you stop or you don't stop, but once you focus more on your why, rather than chasing money, people see your passion, people see your skills, see your ability that you're wanting to have an impact and wanting to make change, or wanting to help others or improve someone's business, whatever it is, they're more likely to pay you more money because you're less focused on cashing that check. You're more focused on the impact that you have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I used to tell people when I was teaching salespeople don't walk in there with dollar signs in your eyes, because people see that and if all you're going in there for is because you know your mortgage is late and you've got to make a sale to be able to have a mortgage payment, they're going to see that and chances are they're not going to buy anything Correct. Yeah, you better go in there with their objectives on your mind, not yours, and be able to go from there. So, yeah, I mean I think you've got to get really clear about what you want, you've got to understand your why and it's got to be I like the line I use. It's got to be wrapped in passion and fueled with emotion.
Speaker 2:I like that one so. I haven't heard that one, but yeah, I like it.
Speaker 1:Well, you can use it, it's okay. Yeah, I'll steal it from you. Yeah, I like it, but you can use it, it's okay. Yeah, I'll steal it from you. Wrapped in passion and fueled with emotion, because you got a lot of those brick walls to run through. And then you got to get that roadmap. Man, you're so correct. You got to get how, what do I want, why do I want it and how am I going to get it? That roadmap is just critical. I think that's the same thing as a strategy correct.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I. People get scared with the word strategy because they're like, oh, we've got to go and do a five-day strategy planning session and it's got to be perfect, and then we're just going to put it in the desk and never look at it again. No, I don't use the word strategy because that's um, yeah, yeah, yeah, people get overwhelmed by it. So, creating a roadmap, something that you can update every quarter, that's simple, that fits on one page. It makes life so much easier.
Speaker 1:Oh, it does, it does. That makes perfect sense. Yeah, I tell the story, pardon me. I tell the story. You want to go from Dallas, texas, to Washington DC because you had a friend who was in the Vietnam War and his name's on the Vietnam Memorial and you want to go see that and the family of that friend is still friends with you and they've asked that you do a rubbing, where you take a piece of paper and you rub with a pencil on that name to get an indication of it and you want to do that.
Speaker 1:Now I've got a what I want to go to Washington DC and I've got a pretty strong why. That's wrapped in passion and fuel with emotion, having to do this for the dead friend's family. Now the question is how and there are a lot of different strategies you can use to get from Dallas, texas, to Washington DC. You could walk, you could ride a bicycle, you could drive a car, you could ride on a commercial airplane or you could do the one thing that I want to do before I die in this world you could fly on a private jet. I'm still waiting on somebody, tristan, to put me on a private jet and let me at least fly around the city a couple of times. Anyhow, you got to choose one of those strategies to get you from A to Z, to get you from Dallas to Washington, and you can't choose them all. You can only choose one, maybe two, because if you have more than that, you won't be able to focus on your map.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you need to have one main focus and you've got to back up and test that for three there you go, there you go.
Speaker 1:But if I'm going to drive down Highway A to get there, I can't be thinking well, gee, I could have gone B or I could have gone C or what the hell. Why don't we just choose D and try and keep moving on all these different roads? You need to stick on a road and go there, right?
Speaker 2:Exactly, and so many people like they might choose to drive and we're like, okay, yeah, we're going to drive, but there's so many turns. Which turn do we take? Let's take we'll jump off the highway, take the first exit, go down the back road, then we'll get back on the highway. Then we'll take another exit, we'll turn around, go back a step, then we'll get on another highway and then we'll end up over in California before we and then we've got to turn around again and get on another highway. That's often how people run a business, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, I would agree with you completely. And when you do, it doesn't get you to anywhere near what you wanted to begin with.
Speaker 2:I forgot also sometimes they're heading towards Washington, but then they're like no, actually I don't want to head towards Washington, I want to head to Maine or somewhere else. So they change their minds just based off what other people are saying Exactly.
Speaker 1:Exactly. It's got to be what you want, what you are excited about. It can't be what your wife wants, what your husband wants, what your mother or father has told you you ought to do. It can't be what your best friend thinks you should do. It shouldn't be what the guy down the street is doing. It's got to be what you want and it's got to be why you want it, not what the world says you should do, and not what all these other people say you should do. It's got to be from the heart. It's got to be from you. It can't be from somebody else and have you be successful from you.
Speaker 2:It can't be from somebody else and have you be successful. So if it isn't from you, you're not going to be 100% committed and you're going to jump around.
Speaker 1:There you go. Yeah, yeah, that's it. That is it in a nutshell. When I got out of college, I was all heading for being a chemical engineer. I thought that was the best thing since sliced bread and I was going to be great. Five years later, I decided it's not a lot of fun and those engineers are great people. They're wonderful people, they do a great job, but they're no fun. I want to do something that's fun, so I decided to go sell life insurance and 32 years later, I retired.
Speaker 1:It's amazing what can happen when you begin to follow your own dreams and your own desires, compared to trying to do what everybody else told you you should do. My dad worked in a chemical plant, was the manager of a chemical plant. My mother told me my whole life I was going to be a chemical engineer. Well, come find out that really wasn't what was going to float in my boat. It was what made my mama happy when I got that degree and I started that job, but wasn't what was making me happy. So, anyway, I just think you're right on target there. It's very similar what we do with our clients, tristan. What do you do when you get into the detail, though, of trying to figure out what the action plan is going to be. Is there anything that you can share with our listeners here in the last few minutes that we have together that might be of use to add value to them and their business and help them as they're trying to follow that roadmap on their own?
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally. So let's say we've got our objective. We know where we want to be in five years' time. Roughly. We get to where we want to be. We then know where we want to be in one year's time. We've got a bit more accuracy on that than five years. Then we've got to think about three months' time. Where do we need to be in three months' time to get to where we want to be in one year's time? To get to where we want to be in five years' time?
Speaker 2:And it's okay in three months' time if things change, but we need to choose what is going to have the greatest impact now for us to get to where we want to be in the future. So we then have sole focus on only the next three months and we create tangible outcomes that we have to achieve in three months' time. Whether that is creating a sales strategy. Creating a sales strategy, whether that is making 10 sales, whether that is a marketing plan or whether that is getting greater knowledge on the way we structure selling our services or products. What are the things that are going to have the greatest impact, turn them into projects and focus purely on them. So if it's, we know we want to be turning over $100,000 a month in 12 months and we're at $20,000 a month right now. So we can't get to $100,000 overnight, but a stepping stone is $40,000 a month.
Speaker 2:Let's say, okay, what is going to get us to $40,000 a month? We need to get an extra $20,000 in sales. What strategies will help us get to that level? Which will be the first stepping stone to get to the next level? So we then identify, okay, $20,000 in sales that we need to get. We can either sell 20 widgets for $1,000, or we can sell five widgets for $4,000, or we can sell two widgets for $10,000. Often it's just as easy or just as hard to sell the $10,000 widget as it is to sell the $1,000 widget. So then we work out okay, how do we sell the $10,000 widget and what strategies do we need to deploy for that?
Speaker 1:That makes perfect sense, my friend. That's it. That's it in a nutshell. For sure, Tristan, it's been a great conversation. My friend, Thank you so much for joining us all the way from Australia. If folks want to get in touch with you and continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to find you?
Speaker 2:Easiest way to find me is search my name. Google it, tristan Wright, and type in Evolve to Grow and you'll find me on. You'll find my website, you'll find my. You'll find me on LinkedIn, all the social channels as well.
Speaker 1:So that's Tristan T-R-I-S-T-A-N-W-R-I-G-H-T. Right, yes, that's it, tristan Wright. Find him on Google, talk to him on social media and get out there. Reach out to Tristan, because he can probably help you as you begin to build and grow your business today. Again, Tristan, thank you so much for being with us today. Really appreciate you. My pleasure. Thank you for having me oh, you're more than welcome. And for everybody else out there, you know what I'm going to tell you Go meet somebody new. You can do it. Strike up a conversation, meet somebody new, share what you do in a very concise and short way we call that an elevator talk and begin a conversation about your business. You'd be surprised what might happen when you go out there and find somebody else to talk to today. Have a great week. My name is Morris Sims and I'll see you next time right here.