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
Pray Like It Depends on God, Work Like It Depends on You: The Situation Analysis Framework
The premiere episode of the Commission Code Podcast introduces a systematic approach to overcoming business challenges when everything seems to be falling apart, focusing on a three-phase situation analysis framework that combines objective fact-finding with strategic decision-making.
• "Facts Bolster Belief" - the foundational principle for navigating business downturns
• Phase One: Gather objective data about your business by conducting a thorough analysis from 50,000 feet
• Examine financial realities including net revenue, monthly expenses, and bottom-line performance
• Complete a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) with complete honesty
• Phase Two: Assemble a trusted mastermind group of 4-6 people willing to give honest feedback
• Phase Three: Make a decision based on facts and input, then create a strategic action plan
• Document your vision, why it matters to you, and how you'll achieve it
• Remember: "Pray as if everything depends on God, work as if everything depends on you"
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Welcome to the premiere episode of the Commission Code Podcast. I'm your host, morris Sims. You are our priority and we want to help you get what you want from your business. In this episode, we're going to discuss something that happens to all of us from time to time. It's that feeling that everything around you seems to be going downhill, I don't know. It's just like everything's falling apart, and it all seems like it's falling apart and it all seems like it's totally and completely outside of your control. At least that's what it felt like to me. I recently experienced that again in my life and I'm going to share with you the system that I finally found that helped me get back on top. Thanks very much for being here and joining us. We appreciate you. Now let's get on with the show.
Speaker 1:But I also remember what St Augustine and St Ignatius said Pray as if everything depends on God and work as if everything depends on you. Now, I personally take that to mean that I shouldn't get lost in a pity party and pray. I need to get out there and pray and then go to work. Well, after working on this problem for a few weeks, I found that there is a process that would get me out of that deep pit that I was in. There is light at the end of the tunnel and that light is not an oncoming train and it does include all of those things about my belief and my words and who I am and what I do. I found that this process can really help. The principle that I discovered with all of this I'm calling facts bolster belief. That's the principle.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Commission Code Podcast. Thanks for listening. We really do appreciate you being here. You know the Commission Code title is it's actually the Commission Code for your success. Our only objective is to help you maximize your business to get what you want. We focus on businesses where revenue comes from commissions or fees or most any kind of 1099 miscellaneous income. We just lump it all together, call it all commission. You're running a business and our content in this podcast is designed to help you run that business so that you can increase revenue and have more time to enjoy it. I hope you will always find something in this and every episode you listen to that can help you in your business to get what you want.
Speaker 1:So with all that in mind, let's get this thing started. You know it happens, it's happened to me, and it's probably happened to you too. My time wasn't too long ago and I'm still working to get my way back up on top. I'm not there yet, but I'm getting there. Things are going well, but all of a sudden, one little thing or a big thing or several things all seem to be going to hell in a handbasket. All the things that I planned, all our vision for the future of our business, everything seemed to be falling apart. For the future of our business, everything seemed to be falling apart. Consequently, when that happens, I don't know about you, but I start thinking about all the negatives and all the negative results that could happen because of that situation. And it seems like business and life in general is all on a downward spiral. And I guess at that point in time, I start thinking well, maybe it's time to throw in the towel and go get a real job at Lowe's or Walmart, but no, don't not yet.
Speaker 1:Stop. Pray as if everything depends on God and work as if everything depends on you. Well, I was doing the praying when it came to work. Well, I was sort of giving it a lick and a promise. I needed to get my butt in gear, but honestly, I just wasn't sure what to do. I really wasn't. I wasn't sure where to go and where to start. Well, here's the result I decided that I best step back and take a good look at my business.
Speaker 1:There are probably a number of things worth your time and effort to take a real good close look at my business. There are probably a number of things worth your time and effort to take a real good close look at your business and the situation that you find yourself in from like 50,000 feet above right. Passenger airplanes fly at 30 to 40,000 feet, so we need to get above that even and take a look at what's going on. And then, after you analyze that and take a look with a non-biased attitude, then, if the horse is dead, get off the horse, but first make sure the horse is really D-E-A-D dead. Okay, don't jump to any conclusions here.
Speaker 1:When things are not going the way you want them to go. Well again, I don't know about you, but I get a bad case of tunnel vision and all I can see are those bad things that might happen. And if I stay in that tunnel then, yeah, it does look like everything's going to blow up in my face. So I best not stay in that tunnel, and neither should you. We have to get out of there and we have to look at the big picture and do a complete situation analysis before we can make any big decisions. Because you know what? It ain't over till it's over and my guess is that it's probably not over it might just simply need a course correction or something. So when it is time to work as if everything depends on you, it's time also to become really clear on where you are and where you want to go.
Speaker 1:A situation analysis can help you do just exactly that. So what is a situation analysis, morris, and how the heck do you do one? Well, okay, let's get into it. Let's do a quick overview real fast.
Speaker 1:There are three phases of a complete situation analysis. Phase one is where you take all the data and all the information about your situation, your business, and you ask yourself a series of questions. Now you have to put on your outsider's hat and not your owner's hat. You can't think of this as your firstborn, your baby, your child that you've been working yourself silly to create. You got to look at it objectively. So the first phase is to analyze the situation from your point of view, with a non-biased attitude, and by non-biased I mean not thinking that it's all right and good because you built it, not thinking that it's all right and good because you built it. All right, I'm guilty of that, I built it, so obviously it must be great. Yeah, got to get rid of that first and look at this objectively. It's not always easy, but it is necessary. No-transcript. The hardest part of phase one is truly being open, honest and truthful with yourself about your business. Put all the excuses aside and put the emotions in a box and analyze the situation from an objective business point of view. Now we'll go over the questions you need to ask yourself in just a minute. But just as a quick overview, that's phase one.
Speaker 1:Phase two is when you really have to have some courage. I'm talking courage. You got to be brave and, frankly, you got to have some guts here. Folks, this time it's going to probably get personal. In phase two, you choose a team of people to go over the data and the information that you learned in phase one. You and your team have to be willing to disconnect all personal relationships with the business and make some critical, objective determinations about the business what is actually going on and should you continue to work to build it, or is the horse dead? Is it time to move on to something else?
Speaker 1:Phase three is when you look at the results that you've gathered from the first two phases. You've done an analysis, you've gotten input from your team. Now you have to spread all that information out and look at the big picture, look at all the recommendations your team made, look at your own thoughts and your own recommendations and then make some decisions. Yeah, make some decisions and create an action plan At the highest level. This is where you have to decide whether you're going to continue or shut it down. And if you choose to continue, you got to be ready to go out there and put 100% into the business and never look back. I used to say, you know, 150% or 200% or that there ain't no such, it's just all or nothing. So it's 100%. You got to be ready to put 100% into the business and not, you know, question yourself. Get out there and go for it if that's what you want to do.
Speaker 1:The key here is you have to make that decision based on the facts and not only based on our emotion your emotion, my emotion, because we got to do these things based on what we know to be true and fuel it with our emotion. So does emotion come into the decision? Well, I certainly hope so. We are human beings and we are an emotional people. The rational, fact-based part of me is always there, along with that emotional side. Personally, my emotional side can take over if I'm not careful. But we have to weigh all that information, including the emotion as well as the facts, and we've got to make a decision. We've got to be able to make a decision. Hey, pardon the interruption, just a real quick reminder.
Speaker 1:You know, sometimes it helps if you can work directly with a coach or a consultant, somebody that's going to help you with your business. Why? Well, I can think of a couple of three reasons. First of all, you get to direct the conversation to specifically work on those things that are concerns for you, things that you believe are probably holding you back in your business. You're in charge, so let's make sure we're solving your problems first. Secondly, you get to verbally lay out your concerns and help someone else understand what's on your mind, and you know sometimes when you do that, that can help as much as anything else, because you kind of get to see your concerns and feel them as you begin to share them and help somebody else understand the situation. And thirdly, you get specific professional and experienced help with the exact bottleneck or problem that you're having right now. So if you'd like to get some of that one-on-one help, please go to morrissimscom and click on the link at the top of the homepage that says work with me, and then you'll be able to click on the button to set up a discovery session. Now give it a 30 seconds or so for that link to come up on Calendly, but then you're going to be able to find a time that's convenient for you and then we can chat. Hey, thanks again for listening to the Commission Code Podcast.
Speaker 1:Let's get back to the show. Well, let's get going on phase one for the details. The process for a situation analysis is to start by gathering the facts. Sergeant Friday always said the facts, ma'am, just the facts. Okay, look it up Dragnet TV show. Google is our friend, so go check it out. Anyway, start with what you know and you have reason to believe that what you have is actual, truly factual information and not just what everybody hoped it would be. You have to uncover the facts, the evidence, not the hopes, dreams and desires. Those are all important, don't get me wrong. But right now we just need to find out what the facts are and not try and make any judgments about them, but just gather the facts. Not the almost stuff, the actual, real, factual stuff. So here we go.
Speaker 1:First, big picture, from you and your family's point of view. You've got to determine what the financial situation is right now for you. Right now we're just going to gather facts, not come up with solutions, not try and judge anything. Just look at the facts. Not come up with solutions. Not try and judge anything. Just look at the facts. What is the net revenue the business is generating that you can use to pay all your family bills? All right, we're talking about after expenses for the business, after everything else, what's left for you to pay the light bill? The answer is a number with a dollar sign. Number two how much do you need to cover all your expenses for the family and not increase your debt at this point?
Speaker 1:We used to call this the nut. That is the nut, the amount of money that you have to have to maintain the family. It's I don't know. It's the nut you have to crack to be able to keep going, all right? Finally, what's the nut you have to crack to be able to keep going All right? Finally, what's the net? Is it positive or negative? When you look at your total revenue and subtract your expenses and look at that, what's the bottom line? What's the number? Is it positive or negative? Are you in the red monthly? If so, how much more do you need to be able to cover your nut? So this is not the point where you make a go no-go decision. This is the point where you simply have to know what the real bottom line situation is. If you keep going, can your family survive financially? If you keep doing what you've always been doing? All right, again, we're just gathering facts, phase one.
Speaker 1:Now let's start to analyze the business from a business standpoint. What is your objective for the business? You know my first year in business. My objective was to invest some money in the business and I did not expect to make a profit. It was I don't know, I guess I think it was at least the third year before we actually had taxable income from the business. So while I wasn't making a profit, I was able to build the infrastructure of the business and that really was my objective for year one. Great. Now I know whether or not I've met my objective, because I set an objective to begin with.
Speaker 1:One of my bosses, somewhere along the line, taught me that you have to have something to compare a result to in order to make a judgment about it. Was it good or bad? My business, let's say I don't know. Let's say my business made $100,000 in gross revenue. That tells me very little gross revenue. That tells me very little. What if we made $100,000, but I had $150,000 in expenses? That tells me a lot and even guides me to look at certain things more closely, like my expense management systems. Take an example If my reasonable objective for this year was to have a profit of $100,000, a profit net of expenses, $100,000, I'm going to make $100,000. Well, if we had gross revenue of $300,000 and expenses of $190,000, we could say we had a pretty good year, right, based on our objective of a $100,000 profit objective, because we made $110,000 in profit. So set some objectives because without an objective to compare to or a result from last year, if we're going to compare. Well, this year we did better than last year.
Speaker 1:If you don't have something to compare to, the raw numbers are generally pretty much useless. You need something to compare it to A few other pieces of data to look at and compare to something in your business. Maybe it's an objective or a similar amount of time, but these are just some questions to ask yourself. How many sales did you make last year? Not how much money you brought in, but how many times did somebody say yes and buy your product or service? How many new clients or customers did you make a sale with?
Speaker 1:How many days a week were you really and truly head down working in your business? Well, I got up and checked my email that morning, but then I had a whole lot of other things to do, morris and I wasn't able to get back to. Okay then, that probably wasn't really a full day's work, was it? How do you feel about your organization for your business? Were you watching the key metrics to see where your company was going? Have you defined what those key metrics are? How many prospects did you reach out to and have a conversation with about business and maybe that's on a weekly basis, right, we call that prospecting activity. Do you have a plan for what you want your activity, your prospecting activity metrics, to be and how often you want to work in that part of your business.
Speaker 1:What outside forces had a real impact on your business? Oh, gee, morris, people just weren't buying. This year, that's probably a cop-out Whereas something like I don't know, the country was on lockdown because of a pandemic and our service just wasn't the most important thing on people's minds. In fact, we couldn't even open the front door of our store. Okay, that's a real force outside of my control.
Speaker 1:What are your strengths in your business and did they show through this year? Were you focused on your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What are you doing about them? What opportunities exist and how are you taking hold of that? What threats do you see on the horizon? For example, a proposed tax law increase to triple the tax on my product. That's a threat, right? So threats are outside forces, not inside, but outside forces threatening your business model.
Speaker 1:Now, what I just talked about there like the business schools like to call that a SWOT analysis strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Okay, swot. It's always worthwhile to stop and do a SWOT analysis. What are my strengths? Because that's where I want to focus. I want to improve my strengths. I want to get better and utilize my strengths more and more. What are my weaknesses? I don't want to focus all my time on trying to improve my weaknesses, because it's possible that maybe I'm not going to get improved. I am not very good at Spanish and if I spent all my time trying to learn Spanish I'd probably miss out on doing the things that I have really got a strength in, and foreign languages are not a strength for me. So I'm going to minimize my problem with my weaknesses but I'm going to maximize my strengths.
Speaker 1:Opportunities. What's out there? Well, you know, there was just recently. I've got a friend of the family. He runs a construction company and when there's a hurricane that comes through in the Gulf, he's got contracts with the cities down there to go in and clean up after a hurricane. Well, there was a bad hurricane. That's a terrible thing and it may have caused all kinds of damage and problems, but for his business that's an opportunity, make sense. So you have to look around and see what opportunities are out there for you to take advantage of, and threats are things outside your control that are going to come along. Okay, so a SWOT analysis is worth doing, but again, it's objective, it is fact, it is not your emotion or what you would like for it's objective. It is fact. It is not your emotion or what you would like for it to be. It is what is.
Speaker 1:Phase two can be more fun. You might even call it a mastermind group. Gather four, five, six people, whoever you want to bring in people you trust, people who believe in you and, frankly, these are people that you know are willing to treat you and tell you exactly like it is. They're going to tell you the truth, even if it hurts, and you ask everybody to give you a day, a half day, and you're going to take them to lunch and dinner or whatever the case may be, but you're going to get together and you're going to work together to look at what you found out in phase one, so you facilitate a discussion about the facts, the data.
Speaker 1:That's the hard part. You got to keep the emotions down again, because this is not about you. This is about the facts. Okay, everything that you gathered in phase one. Now add any information in there that's not seen in the facts. This is where the emotional part can come into play and has to be considered, because it is part of the real deal. Right, got to look at the facts Got to be objective. But then you also have to look at the fact that you know this is my business and I'm connected to it and I'm emotional about it. It's an important thing in my body, in my mind and in my life. So you got to consider some of those things in this mastermind group.
Speaker 1:So out of that, you present to the group what you believe are the three best options that you should consider as you move forward with your business. Get their input on which one they agree with or another option that they propose, but come out of there with some idea of what that group believes you need to do next. Not that you're going to do it. Okay, you don't have to do what they say. You're getting input, you're getting ideas, you're getting some guidance from other trusted and revered sources that can help you Okay, but it doesn't mean that you're going to choose to do what they recommend. You're just going to consider it because it's the right thing to do to really look at your business.
Speaker 1:Phase three Phase three is where you got to get with it. Phase three is where you decide what you really want to do with your business, based on your knowledge and your desires, based on the facts that you found out and your input from the mastermind group. Yes, my friend, in the end, it is always going to come down to you making a decision. The key is to make a decision based on the facts that you know to be true and the emotional factors that are also very true and very real. In the end, there's really only one person who's qualified, who has the authority and has the knowledge and skill to make a decision about the direction of your company, and that person is you. Okay, so now I've got a clear picture of where I am and I now know where I want to go. I've made a decision.
Speaker 1:Now what? Well, it's time to get to work. It's time to get to work. Pray is everything dependent on God, and work is, if everything depends on you.
Speaker 1:So what do you do? Well, first, document what you learned, write down a clear picture of what you want from your business. What does that look like when I get to where I want to be? This is what my business is going to look like, and write it out. Maybe it's a description of what you're going to do all day when you get there. Then answer the question why? Why do you want, whatever it is that you wrote down first. Why is this important? Why is this what you want? Why are you willing to go all in on this business? Now you can answer the question how. Once you've done those first two, you can answer the question how, how will I get what I want? The answer to that question is your strategy, creating your strategy and your strategic action plan. Oh, that's another whole big, huge topic and another huge learning course that we teach. That's going to be the topic of our next solo podcast. So, hey, stick around, stay with us and we'll publish that podcast. We're going to call it your Strategy and your Strategic Action Plan.
Speaker 1:Now let's take a look at what we learned today. What did we get to today? Number one first of all, gather the data, all the relevant facts about the operation of your company and the company results during a practical amount of time up till now. Then analyze the data and determine what you think that is why are the results where they are or what they are and decide what action you want to take. Look at it from an objective business standpoint. Gather input from other people. Bring your mastermind group together. Create a strategic action plan.
Speaker 1:Now, those are the things that you're going to do based on what you've learned in the first three phases of the situation analysis, create that strategic action plan and we're going to talk about that a lot in that podcast. We're going to do on strategy and then rebuild your mindset. Rebuild your mindset and your affirmations and be positive about where you're going. This can help you get out of that valley and get back up on top and have a real positive mindset and get excited about the business that you're creating. Well, that does it for this episode of the Commission Code Podcast. This is the place where we want to help you find the commission code to success in your business. Remember, go to MorrisSimscom for more information and in the meantime, hey, have a great week, get out there and meet somebody new and we'll see you again next time right here on the Commission Code. Best wishes. I'm Morris Sims, thank you.