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
You Don't Have a Business If No One Knows You Exist
The path to business growth isn't paved with perfect logos and eye-catching websites. It's built through meaningful conversations with potential clients who need your services. Marketing expert James Donovan delivers this wake-up call in our latest episode, challenging commission-based business owners to rethink their priorities.
"You don't have a business if people don't know what you're selling," Donovan states, cutting through the noise with clarity that resonates with anyone struggling to find clients. From insurance agents to consultants and trainers, visibility remains the critical factor separating thriving businesses from those barely surviving.
We explore practical strategies for increasing visibility across platforms that actually work. For B2B services, LinkedIn's Sales Navigator tool helps pinpoint decision-makers. Google Business profiles build credibility even for nationwide service providers, while Google ads connect businesses with people actively seeking solutions they're ready to pay for. Facebook, with its billion-plus users, remains essential despite what marketing contrarians might claim.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Donovan reveals how artificial intelligence is democratizing marketing for small businesses. From generating content ideas to functioning as virtual receptionists with perpetually positive attitudes, AI tools offer budget-friendly alternatives to outsourcing. Donovan provides guidance on crafting effective prompts and integrating AI outputs with your authentic voice.
Most valuable is Donovan's candid assessment of what new business owners should prioritize. "If you're just getting started and you're honestly not spending the majority of your day prospecting and trying to book sales calls, the rest of the stuff doesn't matter," he advises. This means embracing rejection rather than fearing it, seeing each "no" as valuable feedback and one step closer to success.
Ready to break through the digital noise and connect with clients who need your services? Listen now, then reach out to James at www.92media.com or text him at 646-553-1992 to continue the conversation about growing your commission-based business.
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If you're busy creating your logo, setting up a business page on Facebook, doing all of the busy work to make you feel like, hey, I'm a business owner, that's not getting you any closer. You just need to have conversations. Yeah, if you're just getting started out and you're honestly not spending majority of your day just prospecting and trying to book sales calls, the rest of the stuff doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: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. So if you're in any kind of commission-based sales or consulting or professional training or most anything else where your income depends on you going out, finding a client, somebody that's going to pay you for your services or product, you run that kind of business. We have stuff that's going to help you.
Speaker 2:I'm your host and my name is Morris Sims. I've been consulting, guiding and training commission-based business owners for well, a long time well over 40 years now. I've been consulting one-on-one. I do training in groups or individually. I've done speaking and keynote addresses and facilitate workshops and all other things as well as well. I ran a training department where our department wrote, designed and delivered training for owners of commission-based businesses. My clients today include insurance agents, travel agents, travel agencies, commercial product suppliers and just a bunch of others. I hope you will always find something in this and every episode you listen to that can help you and your business to get what you want. So, with all that in mind, let's get this thing started. James Donovan is our guest today. He's the founder and owner and chief cook and bottle washer for Nine Two Media and he works with all sorts of business owners, and I think he's probably going to be a great guy for us to talk to about being a business owner. James, did I get that pretty right?
Speaker 1:You did. You did wear wear a lot of hats over here at nine to media. I do have a great team but don't do a lot of cooking, usually a takeout kind of guy.
Speaker 2:Don't blame me a bit, brother. I think I'd do the same thing if I was in your position. Oh, that's for sure. That's for sure. Hey James, you work with business owners all the time, so what's your perspective? What do you think is probably the key thing that business owners need to be thinking about and working on, and doing something about taking positive action about in today's environment and all the different things that are going on around us right now?
Speaker 1:the number one thing that business owners should be thinking about is how do I get more eyeballs on what I sell? Oh yeah so many people are really good at what they do and nobody knows they exist.
Speaker 2:You know, I had a guy on the show that said you know, for years we've all been taught it's all about who you know. And he said that's not right. It's not about who you know, it's all about who knows you. And I thought that was probably one of the best lines I've heard in 300 and some odd episodes of podcasting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. You don't have a business if people don't know what you're selling or offering. People have to buy your stuff. In order for them to buy it, they have to know you exist.
Speaker 2:So how do we do that? Because that's the key question that I get asked by most all business owners at some point in time is how do I find more people to talk to about and enter into a real business conversation about what I do to serve them and to help them in their work or to help them get what they want. To help them get what they want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it all depends on the service you're offering to then choose the platform where your audience is going to be hanging out. So, for example, we work with a lot of accounting firms. We help them get more eyeballs on their monthly accounting fractional CFO advisory services. We run a lot of ads for them on Facebook. We run ads on Google and we do a lot of ads for them on Facebook. We run ads on Google and we do a lot of direct outreach on LinkedIn. We know B2B is an awesome spot to be or, sorry, we know for B2B, linkedin is an awesome spot to be.
Speaker 1:You can use sales navigator. Get in front of exactly who your ideal clients are. Facebook's great because there's over a billion users on the platform. So anyone who says their ideal client isn't on Facebook, they're probably lying through their teeth and they don't want to admit that maybe they don't know who their ideal audience is. And Google works really well for so we run a lot of local service ads for clients Works amazing for home service works really well for accounting firms. But google is awesome because people are going to google. It's all search based. They already know they have a problem and they're looking for a solution that they're ready to pay to have fixed. So you're getting really high quality teed up leads phoning you looking for a solution through Google. So I love that platform again, depending on what it is you're offering.
Speaker 2:That's interesting. So how does one go about making Google a good thing for their business? How do you go about? Where do you start?
Speaker 1:Well, again, it comes down to what service you're offering, who you're offering it to and where you're offering it. So anyone can create their Google my Business profile. It's free to have. It's where you're going to get your Google reviews. It's where you're going to earn all of that digital currency and build trust with people who don't know. You don't know.
Speaker 1:You Just put yourself in I mean, put yourself in a scenario, morris, where your sink breaks at home, assuming you don't know how to fix it. You're probably going to Google right away and you're typing plumber near me and you're going to look at the top companies that show up. You're going to see do they have reviews? Do they look real? And if they do, you're going to call them and say, hey, I need you to come over and fix my sink. So it's putting yourself in that position with your business so that when people need your services, you're the one who's showing up. Again, that might be on Google. Maybe you're doing something that's more nationwide and you're hanging out on LinkedIn, because that's where all of your owners, founders, presidents are that you're looking to speak with.
Speaker 2:That makes sense, especially for that local kind of a thing. But let's take my business, for example. I do business with business owners who are all over the United States. I've got clients in Washington State and in Georgia and Little Rock, Arkansas and just all over the place. Is that going to help me?
Speaker 1:people are still if. When people are looking up to work with you, they're still going to want to know if they can know, like and trust you. They're going to want to see reviews. They're going to want to know you exist, that your business looks real. Is it linking back to your website? Is the number on your Google my Business? If they call it, are you actually going to answer? Do you have updates on there that show a whole bunch of weeds haven't overgrown on this business? That actually exists? So yes, even if you're nationwide, it still works. My business is based out of Canada. All of our clients are in the US. I still make sure our clients leave us reviews on Google. They're not going to find us by doing a local search if we got someone in California looking for us because we're in eastern Canada. But it still adds that trust factor online when people are looking for a partner to work with.
Speaker 2:That makes perfect sense. That makes really good sense. So how do I start? What do I do? Hey, most of the world out there is not exceptionally tech savvy. So where do I find my Google business page?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's as easy as just going into Google typing you know, google, my business, and if you don't have one, you can walk through the steps to get it created. There are some hoops to jump through with Google. Like anything, you need to get verified. You need to prove to them you are a real business. They want to make sure whoever they're sending to you, they want to make sure that you are real, because it's their reputation.
Speaker 1:Google, to be honest, something that I've started using lately and have trained our team on trying to figure out how to do something online ChatGPT is a wicked resource because it will lay out the exact steps that you need to take in order to do that task, and you just keep asking it and prompting. This is where I'm getting hung up, or this is what I'm seeing. It's scouring everything on the internet and it's going to give you a step-by-step play and what to do that. I would recommend that over listening to me ramble of how to try to set up you know these steps, that or or hire a professional, which, yeah, it also always works. But if you're looking to do it yourself and you want to understand the process, just use chat gbt as your, your kind of your, your search engine, in order to give you the play-by-play that's a cool idea.
Speaker 2:I had never thought of that. I'm an old footy-dutty, I guess, but I've got to get into the AI stuff. I haven't jumped into that yet and I really need to do it, because that's a perfect example of where AI can be such a great help and there's no risk there. I mean, that's not a risky kind of a thing at all. So where else do you use AI, james? What do you think?
Speaker 1:There's so many ways. Now we're actually building out an AI voice agent for essentially being the front desk reception of our clients, either accounting firms, hvac firms, whatever it is. They're busy, they can't always answer the phone, or maybe they don't have someone in-house who's always there. Maybe that person's gone to lunch, maybe the person is having a really bad day, and they come across, you know, sounding like their dog unfortunately died last night. Well, that comes across to the client.
Speaker 1:If that's the first impression, ai, you can prompt all that in. So it's the person having the best day of their life every single day, and they're available to answer the phone 24-7, around the clock. So that's one way we use it for a lot of content creation, to generate new ideas, and then we sprinkle in our own piece to humanize it, if you will. There's awesome strategies for prospecting, coming up with different messaging sequences, sms or email asking ChatGBT, telling it that you are the best business development rep in the world and your job is to convert these leads with this new, amazing offer. And it needs to be, you know, an absolute no brainer. Now help me write that and it'll just spit it out for you. You add in your own touch, you add in what your offer looks like and boom, you have something that you probably would have never thought of yourself.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's amazing. I need. I'm publishing this show on Buzzsprout and they didn't even pay me for that. But I'm using Buzzsprout as my publisher and it has AI involved, so that AI is writing the description for the podcast, it's writing the blog that goes with the podcast, or at least it's starting it, and then I get to, as you say, get to edit that and it's doing all of these things. That gives me, if nothing else, a place to start. So it makes good sense to me that we ought to all be using AI much more than we are today.
Speaker 1:Buzz Pro is really cool for that. We use that as well for our podcast. We've actually kind of taken it a step further because their AI is okay. But if you take kind of what their AI spits out and then you throw it into ChatGPT or Cloud or whatever else you prefer to use, you can save what your tonality, your prompts, what you like that messaging to look like. So Buzzsprout can get it started for you with the transcript and then you kind of clean it through ChatGPT and you can probably get a little bit more SEO-driven descriptions.
Speaker 2:You get a little bit more of like Morris's style in that message instead of just what Buzzsprout is spitting out, because that's not really saving your preferences. Another whole step above what I was thinking, at least and if I'm thinking it, chances are there's somebody else out there thinking the same thing that you know. It's more trouble than it's worth and it's going to give me a robotic kind of a sound and a robotic kind of a style, and that's not what I want. So there seems like, from what you're telling me, there's a lot of possibilities here with AI.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it is the future and people are going to need to get on board with it to keep up with the pace that the world's going in. I think it's an and myself like really just try to brain dump everything that's in your head of what you're hoping you want the outcome to look like, and then let chat or let let AI do the heavy lifting. From there. It's. It's really great when you have writer's block or you're trying to figure something out. Let it do the heavy lifting for you, but you need to give it the prompt and the direction that you want it to go in.
Speaker 2:And I would see I can see where that would probably work really well. If you're a small business owner out there and you're trying to do your own marketing and your own email list newsletter whatever you want to call it nowadays and you want to get some stuff out there even your social posts and you want to try and get that done, sounds like ai is going to help you do that faster than if you're sitting around on a sunday afternoon trying to write 10 social posts for the next week and a half absolutely you can use it for for your customer research.
Speaker 1:I mean, everything you're putting into it. It's going to save and keep that in its memory and and start creating stuff that's more catered to you. So, even if you're wondering what are the pain points of my customer like what? What gets them motivated to take action? Ask, ask AI. I mean you should know this by working with your ideal clients of what makes them tick and what problems you're solving for them. What keeps them up at night. But, yeah, you can ask AI to based off of these pain points. This is my offer. This is how we help solve people. This is the problems we solve. Come up with content for the next 30 days for my business. Make it sound like me. Don't come across like it's AI. I always recommend combing through it after, but it's as great or as poor as the prompts that you give it.
Speaker 2:Wow, you see, and for somebody just starting a business who hasn't got the cash flow yet, to hire somebody to do, for example we're talking about marketing to do, for example, we're talking about marketing. So for their marketing, I can't afford, let's say, to hire somebody to do all that or to be in charge of that for my company. So, consequently, I could probably use ChatGPT or one of the other AI sources and do a good bit of that myself and half the time, and then, if I have to sit around and try and come up with with, uh, words that are going to fit and do well in the long haul, would you agree?
Speaker 1:absolutely, again, it's. It's as solid as the prompts that you're giving it.
Speaker 1:So if you have a general idea of what you know you want to get done, instead of outsourcing that right away. I would encourage people to play around with it, like for for me it's fun, I enjoy doing it and I I have some margin in time to be able to do that. If you're really pressed on time and you don't now, maybe it is better to look at outsourcing that to. A professional can come in and help. But yeah, I guess it just depends on each business and what you're trying to accomplish. But there's a lot of really cool ways to use it. I just think people need to at least start playing with it, because it's so present now and it's not going away, so people just need to get on board and know how to use it to be able to keep up with it.
Speaker 2:And it sounds like it really begins to deal with, or could deal with, just what we started talking about, which is increasing and improving your visibility in the world today for who you are and what you bring to the table.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you just need to be visible. If you're visible, people know you exist, and then it's just a matter of staying in front of them with all those different impressions time and time again wow, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:That is really pretty cool. James, thanks for your help with the ai stuff. Tell me more about marketing in today's world. Uh, I, I things that say, boy, you got to get on social and social is going to do it. And yet when I talk to brand new folks who are getting into a business, where they are the business, you know their first line. Well, I'm going to get all my clients from social media because I'm on Facebook and I'm going to get. Social media is going to just take over the world. It's going to be wonderful and you and I both know that you're not necessarily going to get a whole stream of prospects off of your facebook and linkedin posts and instagram posts. So what, what kind of marketing plan do you recommend for somebody who's starting out in a business today and needs to become visible? Where do you begin?
Speaker 1:I mean organically if you can paid ads right away. Paid ads is great because you're pouring gas on a fire on a targeted audience. Obviously, there's a lot of ways to not run ads successfully and spend a lot of money. So asking for help, paying for help, goes a long way.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But if you're just getting started out, you don't have the budget, organic outreach you can't rely on. Oh, I'm just going to message the existing friends and family I have on Facebook Like, great, they're going to share your posts and make you feel good, but they're not. They're not buying anything, they're not putting food on the table. So get in there, start searching for owners, founders, presidents, whoever your ideal audience is, Add those people every single day. Whatever you're on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Message those people, Pick up the phone and call them. Too many people are scared to call because they think they're terrified of rejection. So they wait and think well, if I don't reach out, then I can't get rejected. Well, if you get rejected, you're a lot closer to your next. Yes, Isn't that?
Speaker 2:the truth. No, it's absolutely true, absolutely true. You know, people say, oh, it's not a numbers game. Well, yeah, it is If I talk to enough of the right kind of people, and granted, that's a key point in the whole thing. But if I talk to enough folks who meet pretty much most of my criteria for my ideal clientele, my ideal prospect, the more I talk to, the more chances I'm going to have that somebody's going to say gee, let's carry this conversation further Seems to me yeah, absolutely, and you're getting a lot of valuable information on.
Speaker 1:Is your offer any good? Are you speaking to the right people? What are their pains? What problem am I actually trying to solve? What business am I really in? But you don't know that if you're not speaking to your ideal client, if you're busy creating your logo, setting up a business page on Facebook, doing all of the busy work to make you feel like, hey, I'm a business owner, that's not getting you any closer. You just need to have conversations. If you're just getting started out and you're honestly not spending majority of your day just prospecting and trying to book sales calls, the rest of the stuff doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:Isn't that the truth? I mean, if you're not eyeball to eyeball and toe to toe with somebody that that could really be a a client for you, then yeah, how much real work are you getting done?
Speaker 1:you know, yeah, because you're, you're, you're trying to make this perfect offer, but you don't have any clients. So the best research and feedback you're going to get is from a client who's paid you money and now can tell you how good or bad it is yeah but if you're, if you're waiting around for everything to be perfect but you don't have any market feedback on it, that to me just is a wasted effort.
Speaker 1:That's kind of just being scared again of the the inevitable rejection you are going to face. So who can take the most rejection?
Speaker 2:It's funny, beck, I'm an old fuddy-duddy, I'm 68. When I started in the sales game in the early 80s we didn't have any of this stuff. It was all you get on the telephone and you pound some numbers you know, and luckily we were calling on folks or I was at least calling on people that I knew or had some connection to or some connection with. But the stories of the folks that were scared. But their, their manager said here, call these 10 people today. And they did, and they started getting some appointments and everything started working out great. The manager kept giving them lists and one day the manager didn't come to work, he was off, he's on vacation. And the guy goes oh my God, who am I going to call? The manager's not giving me a list. So he calls the manager. He finally gets him. He says look, I started with the W's.
Speaker 2:If you'll go into the phone book and pick out, start with the B's this time and pick out 10 names and make those calls, you'll be surprised what will happen. All the guy had done was just give him 10 names straight out of the white pages of a phone book. Oh, wait a minute. People don't know what a phone book is anymore. But that worked and it really boiled down to just getting on the phone and talking to people. It works, it works. It just is part of the deal, because it's all a timing thing, james. It's going to be who is really in that position where they're ready to talk about solving a problem today and that's up in the wind somewhere and you just never know. But if you at least make a contact and you begin to build a business relationship, when that need does arise, if they know who you are, they can call you.
Speaker 1:And with how much noise there is now with ads, and everywhere you look there's ads. You're scrolling through your phone, there's ads on TV, on Spotify, Listening to the podcast there's ads before, there's ads after. So even going back to cold calling, knocking doors, sending personalized notes, all of the things that may seem a little bit old school, that's the stuff that's going to break through the noise you mean the old school stuff, like me, is actually worthwhile.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's nice to hear, James. Thank you Absolutely, hey brother. You have brought some really great stuff to the table today for us. I really do appreciate you. Tell us how do we get a hold of you at 9-2 Media? So?
Speaker 1:best way? I'll give you three ways. One feel free to just text me 646-553-1992. Happy to chat if anyone's looking to to grow their business. A couple different strategies to get more visible. Second way you can visit our website and schedule a call www.92mediacom n-i-n-e-t-w-o mediacom.
Speaker 2:Or connect with me on linkedin very good, all right, you guys get out there and get, uh, get in touch with with James, because this young man has some great stuff that can help you and me get in touch with some great people in our business. So, james, thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: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.