The Commission Code for Success
Does your gross revenue come from commissions, fees, and other types of 1099 MISC income? If you answered yes, then the Commission Code for Success is a podcast created specifically with you in mind. Each episode is designed to deliver a concept or idea that will help you increase your revenue and have more time to enjoy it.
If you are an employee on 100% commission or an independent contractor you are a business owner when it comes to how you go about doing your daily work. The mindset of a business owner puts you in exactly the right spot to maximize your revenue and maximize the impact you have with your clients and customers.
The Commission Code is the library of knowledge and the set of skills you need to grow your business and reach your desires. Please join us and our guests at The Commission Code Podcast! I look forward to seeing you there, I'm your host, Morris Sims.
The Commission Code for Success
Are You Leaving Money on the Table? Discovering Hidden Business Opportunities
Are you a travel advisor striving to elevate your business profits? In this engaging episode, we sit down with David Visco, a seasoned coach and entrepreneur, who shares invaluable insights specifically designed for travel professionals. Before diving into strategies, David draws a clear line between revenue and profit, helping listeners understand why focusing on profits is essential for long-term success. He emphasizes the need for a well-defined purpose and vision, encouraging agents to reflect on their true business goals.
The conversation seamlessly transitions into identifying hidden opportunities for profit enhancement, with guidance on reviewing expenses and service agreements that could be draining resources. Understanding financial statements also comes into play as David unpacks financial literacy, guiding advisors to track essential KPIs monthly. Listeners receive actionable tips on implementing systems that streamline operations, allowing them to dedicate more time to business growth strategies.
Wrapping up, Morris and David engage in a thought-provoking discussion about productive time management, emphasizing the importance of developing a business plan while being adaptable throughout the year. This episode is not just a lesson in finance; it's a journey towards crafting a thriving travel advisory business. Tune in to learn how small changes can yield massive results in your profits and overall business success. If you find value in today’s conversation, we encourage you to share this episode, subscribe for more, and leave a review to help others discover the insights shared within.
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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? David Visco is our guest today on the Travel Masters podcast and I'm really excited to have David here. David and I met at a networking meeting. Oh golly, good and very interesting for you and things that can help you and your business today. So, david, thanks for being here. David's an author, a coach and a serial entrepreneur and a travel advisor. David, thanks for being here, man, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, Morris. This is fantastic. I'm really looking forward to it.
Speaker 1:Oh, we're going to have fun If nothing else we're always going to have fun. Man.
Speaker 2:David, tell us a little bit about how you got into this or a little about who you are, help us relate to you. Yeah, I appreciate that, thank you. Well, I've grown up in Massachusetts for 50 plus years and about six years ago I moved over the border to New Hampshire, so I'm a New Englander. Let's see, my business background was in manufacturing for quite a long time and my wife and I, in 2006, started an e-commerce business in the manufacturing space very niche space, but we were the first in that space and it did really well and I became an expert in that industry and after a dozen years or so, we wound up being acquired, which was cool. So we went through that whole process of selling your baby that's a whole other discussion, my friend. But yeah, and so after that we decided, hey, now what are we going to do? So we actually bought a cruise planner franchise and we got involved in travel and so, as your, your guests, uh, your uh listeners know, that was a very interesting time. Two months later, covid hit. So great timing on our part.
Speaker 2:But you know, the world came back to life and we just started kicking butt um, having fun with our travel business, doing cruises, doing land, and a couple of years in, I just started realizing, going to all these networking meetings, as the travel agent, that all these other business owners not only travel agents, but small business owners really needed my help. From my business experience, I had owned a couple of other businesses as well as my e-commerce business, and so what I did was I had a conversation with my wife and I said how about you take the travel agency in our networking group and I focus on business coaching. So I started your Business Made Easy about two years ago and I focus on helping small service-based business owners build, scale and potentially exit their businesses, with a focus on growing their profits all along the way. So that's what I do. That's good.
Speaker 1:David, you know how it is, Even if I have a degree in business from a great university that teaches me all kinds of good knowledge. But, wow, until you get out there and you get your hands dirty, and you got to get out there and talk to real live people and actually run a business. It's nothing like doing a little experiment in college about gee, what would you do if you ran a business. It's a completely different world, isn't it?
Speaker 2:It really is and it's a great point. You know, I've met again, going to those networking groups, I met a lot of folks that took their trade or their skill and finally decided to go out on their own and with all the best of intentions, and they were great at their skill, but they didn't know how to read a financial statement, didn't even potentially know what one was, and they weren't sure how to market. So they'd be hitting the boost button on their Facebook page, thinking they were doing good by themselves and just burning through their budget in no time and believe me, no judgment here, I mean this with all the love of my heart they just I discovered they really needed. And believe me, no judgment here, I mean this with all the love of my heart I discovered they really needed some support and guidance so that they can reach their goals.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not a question of intelligence by any stretch. It's simply a question of experience and trying some things and knowing the ins and outs of something like marketing and sales. You're not born with that information, and the stuff they teach you in college is generally for major corporate entity kind of folks. And it's a whole different world when you're running your business and your business is for you yourself and you and that's all. So it's a different world altogether, because I found the same thing to be true that the folks I work with are very much in the same audience. Specifically, now we're in a niche with travel advisors and travel agency owners, because they need help and there's nobody out there to help them do what you do. So I'm really excited to have you on the show today to talk a little more about the profit process and the fact that well, I guess that is the bottom line, isn't it, david? We're all in business to make money and there should be no apology for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's for sure. There is absolutely no reason to apologize for trying to make money, and you bring up a great point. My focus unlike a lot of business coaches out there that I find my focus is on profits, not necessarily revenue. I mean, we've all heard of the multi-billion dollar or million dollar companies that have had a ton in sales and have gone under right Because they didn't pay attention to their profits.
Speaker 2:But even more so for the small business owner, and particularly you folks that are travel advisors, like me and my wife, you have got to know how to increase those profits, not only just to pay your bills or to hopefully make some money, because we all know in travel that is a tough nugget. It is not easy. It's a lot of work to make money as a travel agent and so, as such, you need to make sure that you're spending your days focused on profits and not just revenue. And it gets tough as an eight or 10 hour day goes by. Before you know it, the day's over you haven't made a penny. So you really need to focus on them over.
Speaker 1:You haven't made a penny, so you really need to focus on them. Without some kind of uh systems in place, yeah, at the end of the day, all of a sudden it's six o'clock and and um I where my office is upstairs and I get this phone call from my wife downstairs saying hey, dinner's on the table. Where the heck are you? You know? Oh, yeah, yeah, I retired, I'm not supposed to have to work this hard.
Speaker 2:What are you doing? Yeah? But like you said you're loving it right.
Speaker 1:I am Having a blast Anyhow you're right to think about profit, though, because it's something we don't really think about. So many times when you're starting a business, you can't even get past the fact that that commission check is not your paycheck, it's your gross revenue. And because I've still got to pay the bills, so, yeah, every penny of that gross revenue is going to go toward the mortgage and the light bill, maybe for a month or two. It's not easy to start getting to the point where you can think about profit.
Speaker 2:No, not at all. So you know, what I did was I put together a framework that's actually based off of the letters in the word profits. So when I sit down with a client, whether it be a travel advisor or a plumber or an electrician or any other service based business owner, first thing we do is we focus on purpose and vision, Right? So there's the P and the profit acronym. Really, figure out what the heck they want. So let's pretend I'm talking to a travel agent, one of your listeners. We would sit down and figure out what do you truly want in this? Because you're going to put in a heck of a lot of effort. So we need to make sure you know where you want to get to, how many hours you're going to work, what are your goals as far as your money? Are you going to stay in there three, four, five years, 10 years, 20? Are you going to try and sell it someday? That's a whole other discussion, but really, what are you doing it for? And then the R is revenue and profit. So, still, you need to focus on your sales, right? But are you getting the sales that you want? On your sales, right, but are you getting the sales that you want? Are you working with the clients that you want? There's that whole discussion there. And what are your revenue goals? What are you hoping to get to? So from there then we get to opportunities. That's the O.
Speaker 2:There are so many hidden profits and hidden opportunities within a business that a lot of business owners don't pay attention to. So what I mean by that is there are all sorts of areas in your business where you're just burning through cash. You're burning through your profits. There's all sorts of expenses that you're not even paying attention to. I'll give you a great example One client of mine.
Speaker 2:He'd been in business for half a dozen years, still hadn't paid himself, if you can imagine that. But one of the things he was paying for was he was paying a monthly fee to a social management company who was supposed to be doing his posts and his SEO and all that stuff. What I determined was they weren't doing any of it. Great Right, and the agreement that they had in place barely spelled out what the heck they were supposed to be providing him. But he just lost sight of it.
Speaker 2:So there was a hidden opportunity there to uncover $500 a month that could go straight to the bottom line. Wow opportunity there to uncover $500 a month that could go straight to the bottom line. There's other opportunities there for hidden profits when people give discounts away. For the love of God, please don't discount your work. You need to be not competing on price, but competing on value. So you need to make sure that when you are dealing with your clients or whatnot, that you are pumping up your value, not dealing on price. You've got to really set yourself above the rest there.
Speaker 2:There's just so many opportunities. In fact, I have a book on that called Hidden Profits that you can find right on my website, but it's just and it's a freebie. But yeah, so that's the O in opportunities. Then we get into F financials and data. It is so critically important that a travel agent, or any small business owner for that matter, understands their financials. They know how to read a profit and loss statement, also known as an income statement. You need to understand your numbers, as opposed to just saying here's my shoebox full of receipts. Mr Taxpayer or Tax Preparer, Please go do my taxes this year. Every single month with my clients, we go through their financials, we dig through them and what happened in most cases? I had to educate folks on how to read those statements, but now they could build them on their own if they had to. They know their numbers and it has made a huge difference in their business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things, Unless you know where you're trying to go and where you're trying to get to. It's back up to your first question about purpose. Same thing is true with profits If you don't know what you're trying to accomplish, it gets kind of hard to get there, don't you think?
Speaker 2:It really does. It really really does. So you have to understand those numbers and the data. So I tied the two of them together financials and data. By data.
Speaker 2:I'm talking about KPIs, key performance indicators right, those key performance indicators. They're so important to track and early on with my clients, we build the KPI dashboard and it's focused on maybe 10 at most data points that they have to track every single month and that is their measuring stick so that they know how they're doing. And it's a much deeper discussion on leading versus lagging indicators and what have you and you could just Google that and whatnot, but we put those together and every single month they throw them into an Excel spreadsheet and we know how they're doing. On those we're talking about, some data might be like your lifetime value of a customer, your cost of acquiring a customer, your average order value, or trip value, for that matter. There's certain ones that are just so crazy important and I don't know, have you used ChatGPT lately? You could go in AI and you could literally ask it.
Speaker 2:I'm a travel advisor. Could you please give me like 20 KPIs that I should be tracking month to month and you'd be surprised at what it'll show you. That'll get you on your way.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, Because that was going to be my next question, David, was what are the two or three top KPIs that you think a travel advisor needs to be watching and looking at? Because you can't look at 20 things, you got to narrow it down. Where would you if I was your travel agent client? Where would you suggest I go when it comes to KPIs?
Speaker 2:Sure, well, obviously you're always going to be tracking your sales, right, and you should be tracking gross profit for sure. After that, I would be tracking number of conversations you're having a week. So that means conversations with potential clients, because if you're not having those conversations, you're not growing your business. You can't just make it based off of the internet there's just way too much noise out there. So that absolutely would be. That'd be two of them Certainly gross profits every single week and however many conversations you're having every day.
Speaker 2:Um, and also your close rate. So, quote to close, how many quotes and proposals are you putting out there that are actually converting into a client? I think that's crazy important. A lot of people don't bother tracking that. Like, imagine that your quote to close rate is, I don't know, 20%, so you're talking to 10 people and you only get two customers out of that. Well, why the heck is that? You need to dive into that and figure that out. So you focus on your sales discussions, your proposals, everything that you do in that process and you know this Morris right, because you're a sales coach. So you think about the sales discussion they're having and whatnot, and the idea would be that if you know what that figure is, then you're able to improve it, so you could start to improve your close rate. I think that's so key because there's so much effort put involved in trying to close a travel client. You need to make sure that, as you're having all those discussions, you're improving your close rate.
Speaker 1:Oh, I think so. One of the biggest problems that I found with a lot of my clients was that they thought that all they were supposed to do is provide a quote and then sit back and wait. And the folks were going to get really excited and call them and gee, let's, let's see if we can throw out that word quote and just eliminate that. And instead, why don't you give them three recommendations? You're a professional salesperson, you are a professional traveler. You make three recommendations, all about the same price, but they all meet their requirements. But some of those things have stuff that they had no idea they could get. Because that's the deal with travel.
Speaker 1:Wouldn't you agree, david, that a lot of times your client has no idea what they could do on their vacation until you share it with them and educate them. So you give them three recommendations and then you simply say so, david, which one of those three do you think is best for you and your family?
Speaker 2:There you go, that's perfect.
Speaker 1:I love that it eliminates. It helps make that ratio work, but it eliminates the crickets.
Speaker 2:I hate crickets, Don't you? Yeah, I do too. I step on them all the time. Yeah, I do too. I step on them all the time. Yeah, great stuff.
Speaker 1:So that was the. F in profits. Where do we go from there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you get implementation. So that means that you need to implement processes and procedures and standards. Keep track of how you're doing things, measure how they're going, but put standards in place so that you're doing the same thing that you're doing things measure how they're going, but put standards in place so that you're doing, you know, the same thing that you do in day after day, like, for example, I literally talked to somebody the other day about this. He had a business, or has a business, and for every order that he got, he was manually writing a thank you email to these clients. And I said, well, okay, because he was asking me is there a way to automate the thank you email? And I'm like, yeah, of course, so we can work on that. But I said to him I said, well, you're at least copying and pasting the same response, right? He said, no, actually, I'm writing every one of them fresh.
Speaker 2:I was like, oh geez, so think of that time involved, right, and having to come up with the exact same message all the time. So that's what I'm trying to say is, think about what you're doing day after day and if you're doing the same thing time and time again, is there a way to standardize it? Is there a way to use technology right, ai, even simple copy and paste, or a lot of these CRMs these days have like snippets, like a dropdown where you can choose your subject matter and it'll fill it right in. So think about what it is that you can standardize and just duplicate, because if you can do that, you could also hire a very low cost VA, a virtual assistant like I have. That cost me $10 an hour with no minimums and they're fantastic Huge benefit right there.
Speaker 2:There's no point in me doing these low value uh exercises day after day when I could pay somebody cheap money to do it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah absolutely, you know. And then from there we got T for techniques for growth. There are so many different ways that you can grow your travel business. Uh, way beyond just making sure you're out on social media every day. So there's a good God. There's networking groups, right. They're all over the place. They're either virtual or in person. You could go to trade shows. You can reach out to companies in your area. There's just there's so many different ways to grow your business, but being focused on that.
Speaker 2:And again, the key is try different things, see what works, track it so you can measure its effectiveness. You cannot afford to burn through your week without knowing how you did and without moving that needle forward. So you've got to track your progress as you go. It's just, it's so crazy important because you don't have a lot of time in that space you got to make sure all the time you have you know, cause I know, from an administrative standpoint, with the travel, there's so much to do, entering reservation. I mean, there's just so, with your business growth time that you have, uh, you got to make sure you're making the most of it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I mean, I love to to tell folks marketing is essential and it's something you have to do. Just all of those things you just mentioned are all different marketing channels, marketing platforms that you could use, and you could spend your entire day, five days a week, six days a week, doing nothing but those marketing activities. The problem is you don't get paid for marketing. It's not your job. Your job is to run a business that provides travel services. So, consequently, you've got to work in that marketing stuff, but you want to make sure that whatever you're doing there is making a difference and chances are. Posting on social media every day probably isn't generating enough to keep you in business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and what I find is a lot of folks they're spinning their wheels in the social media space, spending a ton of time putting content out there, doing this and that, whatever, and some of it might help a bit, but boy it's certainly it's a very noisy marketplace these days. You need to get, if you're not 100% sure that that effort is returning clients to you and whatnot, get out of that. I mean, still do it, but find something else that'll work for you.
Speaker 1:Or just what you were saying a minute ago David, hire somebody else to do that $8 an hour work. Just what you were saying a minute ago David, hire somebody else to do that $8 an hour work. Hire somebody else to put those social posts up for you. Because let me tell you what it doesn't take a PhD to figure out how to add value to people that are watching what you're doing on social. It's not a place for all your advertisements. It's not a place to say, hey, I got this great discount.
Speaker 2:We don't want to do that anyway.
Speaker 1:It's not the world we want to work in. Don't do that. On social add value to the people that are reading it, because that's when they're going to engage with you and you can hire somebody to do that a lot nicer and a lot faster than you can while you talk to somebody about taking that group of 10 people to the Netherlands or something. There you go. It's a big-time thing. I'm so glad you mentioned that, because that's a key piece. What are we up to? We're up to S, I guess. Are we doing profits?
Speaker 2:Did I have an S? You know I did, but I don't actually have an S sitting there right now, so I guess I stopped at a profit, that's okay, that's so funny, that's okay.
Speaker 1:As long as we're getting profit, it will turn into profits.
Speaker 2:Indeed, yep, that's a riot. Yeah, I mean for me, you know, if I can, I've got a tip that I'd love to give everybody on personal productivity if we have time. I'd love to give everybody personal productivity if we have time. Oh yeah, like we just said, it's so incredibly important to be spending a certain amount of your time on business development right On the business, not in it, like you've heard people say a million times.
Speaker 1:Oh, Michael Gerber.
Speaker 2:There you go, and so many folks they just at the end of the week. They're like geez. I had no time to get to business development.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Here's the thing. The one tip that has been most successful for me, or strategy and for my clients, has been that before they start their day, before they open their email and I know that this is tough, so it takes some work but before you open your email, spend at least 45 minutes on business development in your business before you let the rest of the world take over your day with email, because that's exactly what happens. Oh yeah, if you imagine, let's say, that you might be lucky enough to be starting your business day at nine o'clock, well, if you can spend eight to nine on biz dev and not on opening your email, you will get stuff done Now. It should be one of your three top goals for the year, or what have you. I have a whole process for that that I bring people through so that they're spending that time wisely, but nothing will move the needle more than that first hour of each day focused on business development.
Speaker 1:And David, tell me what you mean by business development, because I think that's one of those things that everybody could define differently. So let's see if we can put some bookends on that one for everybody.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that, Thank you. So one thing that we do when we start out the year is we figure out what our number one goal is for the year. Maybe it's I want to receive $75,000 in commissions. Let's say, Well, okay, how am I going to get there? Well, we brainstorm. There's a whole ton of different things that you might do to get there, but we'll pick three, just three, main goals for the year and within those three, we'll have four or five strategies that we'll be putting in place Within those three we'll have four or five strategies that we'll be putting in place.
Speaker 2:So what I suggest you do is that business development hour that I'm talking about would be focused on that first of the three goals and you chip away at that bad boy and then you know you get through that one eventually. Then you move on to number two as the year goes on, and then you move on to number three as the year goes on. So it could be anything that's tied to that number one goal for the year goes on, and then you move on to number three as the year goes on. So it could be anything that's tied to that number one goal for the year. So those of you folks that have read the book the One Thing it's kind of on that process If you haven't read the book, that's a phenomenal book by Gary Keller and the whole idea is that you have some focus to your year, right.
Speaker 2:Whatever it is, that is your number one goal for the year. So that's what I'm talking about for that one hour. But you know some other biz dev things that you could be working on. If not one of those three, it could be working on your follow-up process, right? Or putting a referral process in place, an actual standardized do this, do this, do this for growing your referral business. You'd be just reaching out to your clients that you already have, seeing how they're doing, just checking in with them. There are just so many different things but I go back to my one thing I dare in those three goals for the year. That's what I focus on that first hour of the day.
Speaker 1:And that makes such good sense.
Speaker 1:Your focus is so vitally important, especially in today's world, when you're hit from all every different direction with new ideas and things, and you got somebody on your email or in your ear saying hey, I've got this great idea, david. If you just would do this in your business, you could make, you know, $20 million a year just by doing this one thing that I'm going to teach you. All you have to do is pay me $5,000. And you know it's great and wonderful, but you've already got a plan and two things, I think I've heard that have resonated with me finally after 68 years. The first one is it's okay to say no. In fact, you damn well better learn how to say no, because if you don't, you're never going to get to focus on what's really important in your life.
Speaker 2:Ain't that the truth? That's for sure.
Speaker 1:And it's just key. And the other one is focus the whole idea of getting out of that melee of stuff coming at you every which way and being able to focus on what you chose to make important in your business this year. You get to make that choice, David. Nobody else can make that for you unless you let them.
Speaker 1:You've got to choose what's really important to you and then you've got to focus on it. It's funny I found it on YouTube somewhere Bill Gates and Warren Buffett were being interviewed by somebody at HBO and during the course of this interview, the interviewer says okay, I've given you both a piece of paper and a pen. I'd like for you to write down the one thing that you think is most important to a business owner today. We'll give you just a minute, but if you guys would just write down what you think is most important they both wrote down one word, folded their paper and handed to the interviewer. He opened them up and he looked at him and he just burst out laughing and said did you guys talk about this or something? Because you both wrote down the same word. And both of these tremendous business people whether you like their politics or not, these tremendous business people both wrote down the word focus.
Speaker 1:Yep, because it is so easy to lose your business and lose your income by trying to trying to do everything instead of focusing on those things that you're special at, that you're most most important things that you can be doing. It can fall apart. I just talked way too much. This is supposed to be. You're talking, not me.
Speaker 2:David, it's all good man, that's perfect stuff you're bringing up there, absolutely 100%.
Speaker 1:It is so much, just that. It's so much making decisions and not allowing the world to make decisions for you.
Speaker 2:Yep, yeah One of the exercises I do is I have my clients do a time audit for the first two weeks. They're with me where they're tracking everything they're doing and it's amazing how they're spending their time and I show that to them and they don't even realize it.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's amazing, isn't it? Yep, it truly is. And I do it to myself and I'll sit back and say where did the day go? And I'll look back and I'll oh, you took an hour to go, do that? Ah, well, no wonder you didn't get it all done today and it all just begins to fall apart. That's also why you get to this point in the year and you're going oh my God, we happen to be recording this on December the 12th. And you get to that point right about now where somebody is saying oh my word, christmas is in 13 days and I haven't thought about what I'm going to get my wife or husband for Christmas. Where did the year go, david?
Speaker 2:It's crazy.
Speaker 1:Just had a discussion with somebody yesterday, but you do you get to that point and the same thing happens in business, where you get to that point and you're saying I've made a commitment to do this, that or the other by this date and now I'm not there. So you've got to be able to manage yourself. Can't manage time Time's, you know, 25 hours a day, seven days a week. That ain't going to change, but I've got to be able to manage myself. David, give us, as we wrap up here today, can you give us a few ideas about what you do with your clients to help them manage their day, so that they can manage themselves and be more productive?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Well. Number one I spoke about that earlier, about how they figure out how they're going to spend the first hour of the day making sure that that's very strategic and proactive in that regard. The other one is like they'll do that time audit and figure out what it is that they can be delegating to others either through a virtual assistant or to somebody else on their team. Or imagine this get rid of it altogether, just not do it.
Speaker 2:Just not do it, just say screw it and see what happens, and or tap into technology. You guys are going to see over the next few years, ai is just going to change it all and it's going to become easier and easier for those of us that aren't technically savvy to use it to help us be more efficient. But the key is really to make sure that we have a plan in place for the year. So all my clients go through that, where we build out a plan for the year so that they're focused for the year, and what I do is I hold them accountable to it, which is probably one of the you know, one of the greatest values that I provide is being able to be on the same page with them. They can reach out to me when they need to reach out to me, but I'm hitting them up on the plan and saying how are you doing?
Speaker 2:You know there are some clients I have where I literally, at two o'clock one guy one of my clients my phone reminds me on Fridays to reach out to him and just check in, and we had agreed that on two o'clock Fridays he was going to start just working on the financials of his business, and so I do that constantly and he replies right back to me and he's asked me to continue to hold them accountable. He never used to be able to read his P&L. Now he's a master of it. It's really pretty phenomenal.
Speaker 1:And the overall results for his company have been.
Speaker 2:Have been great. He started paying himself. Finally, his sales let's see this year his sales are up 45% over last year and for next year we're looking to double it. So it's really it's looking up, you know, and it's all from just focused on the right activities throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout the month, throughout the quarter, throughout the year. That got them there, you know, and it was all based on a focused plan, so it just made all the sense in the world.
Speaker 1:Oh it does. It is just incredible having that business plan. I personally, for myself and for my clients we talk about doing an annual planning meeting where we do create that business plan, that strategic action plan for the year, and then every quarter we take a look at it. But every month we get together and we look at where we are, where we said we wanted to be. What can we do to make a change or two along the way.
Speaker 1:But we work real hard. I work real hard with my clients not to let them throw the baby out with the bathwater. Sure, you said you were going to do it and you said you were going to do it this way. Yeah, but it didn't work. That month, yeah, but that's one month out of 12. Let's give it some time to develop before we throw it all out and start all over again. That's why we spent a half day day, two days a week, whatever planning the year. Let's not throw that plan out. We spent some time developing that with purpose, so let's not throw it away just because we had one bad month. Let's figure out where we're going. That's the quarterly view on things.
Speaker 1:Anyhow, the fact is, if you don't have a plan, you don't know where you're going or what you're going to do to get there. I plan my week and I've got a whole plan for every day in the week. Why, marsh, you don't know what's going to happen between Monday and Friday. No, but on Tuesday night. I know what I've accomplished so far. I know what I've got planned for Wednesday. All I have to do is tweak a few things, david.
Speaker 2:Sure, if you don't have any plan at all, you're just leaving it up to everybody else in the universe to take it for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's like trying to write an essay answer to an essay question on a blank piece of paper. That's the hardest thing in the world to do. Sure is, let's start with a plan, because a plan is just something that is there to be changed and tweaked is the word I like to use. It's just something to be adjusted based on what results actually are looking like. Sure thing.
Speaker 2:Yep Makes all the difference in the world.
Speaker 1:So sure thing, yep. No doubt All the difference in the world. So, david, this has been great with all the information you've shared with us. How do I find you? How do I get in touch with you if I want to learn more and maybe engage your services?
Speaker 2:I very much appreciate that, thank you. So my website is just yourbusinessmadeeasycom. Anybody can find me right there and reach out to me. My email is david at yourbusinessmadeeasycom. I tried to make that pretty easy. Mastermind for small business owners that meets Wednesday mornings, and if any of your members or listeners want to check that out and come as my free guest, I would love to have them. All they would have to do is just send me an email, davidatyourbusinessmadeeasycom, and put Morris in the subject line and I'll make sure to take care of them and hook them up. I think people learn a ton in that weekly hour that we have on small business growth, so I think they'd really enjoy that.
Speaker 1:So I want to share that with you. That sounds wonderful.
Speaker 2:David, thank you so much again.
Speaker 1:We'll get in touch with you and make some things happen here. We appreciate you, brother.
Speaker 2:Thank you, sir.
Speaker 1:David, thank you so much for being with us on the Travel Masters podcast. This has been a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2:Same here. I did too. I appreciate your time very much, Thank you.
Speaker 1:It's great to catch up with you and wishing you and Barbara the very best for the holidays and hope things continue to go very well for you. I hope to see you again. Let's do this again.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:That sounds great to me. All right, brother, We'll make it happen For everybody else out there. Hey, you get a lot of great information today from Mr Visco, and I'm telling you what. If you take one thing that you've learned today and implement it in your business, it's going to make a difference to your profit, to your bottom line. So get out there and work on business development. For that first hour, that's one that I took away and I'm going to start doing in my business. David, thanks again. We appreciate you very, very much. Again. For everybody else out there, y'all go out and make it a great day and a great week. I'll talk to you again next time. My name is Morris Sims. You