Success and Survival in the Entrepreneurial Landscape

Uncover the secret sauce behind entrepreneurial success with me, Morris Sims, and the ever-dynamic Brian Will, as we traverse the thrilling yet precarious tightrope of business triumphs and pitfalls. Our conversation isn't just a peek into Brian's 35-year adrenaline rush of building businesses across various industries, but a masterclass in agility and passion for new ventures. From my own pivot from a chemical engineer to a consultant for travel professionals, we share personal transformations that underscore the essence of adaptability in the ever-evolving business landscape.

We dissect the make-or-break decisions that every restaurateur faces, debunking the myth that it's all about the food. Instead, we serve up a menu of strategies that highlight the importance of carving out a unique space in the market and understanding the role you play in your business. Brian's insights punctuate our discussion with a reminder that building relationships and networking are just as crucial to your business's health as a balanced ledger.

Brian Will leaves us with a powerful parting thought: the profound impact of reaching out, forging new connections, and how these can ripple through not just our businesses, but our personal lives as well. Join us for this enriching dialogue, and arm yourself with the insights to energize and enhance your entrepreneurial endeavors.

Transcript

Brian Will: 0:00

A hundred percent. Businesses fail for the same reasons. I did an article for Forbes called the five success traits and the five failure traits are the same thing, right? People fail for the same reasons that they succeed. They just get on one side or another of that failure or success trait Because you are so dependent on the same different customers coming in over and over and over and over. It's not like they buy a hamburger. Then they buy a hamburger every week, right? It's not like they're buying a $2,000 hamburger. If you're selling a TV, I'm selling little 15, 20, $25 tickets and my business is reliant on so many people coming back and if you fail, you can fail very quickly. If people get on the wrong side of social media, it gets started getting bad reviews. If your staff does something stupid just makes it extremely hard, uh, to maintain that type of business. You throw in the fact that most business owners don't know how to actually run a business and you've got a double whammy.

Morris Sims: 0:59

Oh, it's incredible. 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.

Morris Sims: 2:20

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?

Morris Sims: 2:46

A lot of us might consider ourselves entrepreneurs, and if we are, that's great and wonderful. It is a fantastic life to lead and where to go. But how many of us are serial entrepreneurs? We've done it more than once. I mean, that's got to be. The ultimate entrepreneurship is when you can say I'm a serial entrepreneur and our guest today is Brian Will, and Brian is a serial entrepreneur, been doing it for 35 years. What a wonderful thing to have been able to do and to say. And now he has an executive coaching practice and works with entrepreneurs all throughout the country. So, brian, thank you so much for being on the Travel Masters podcast today, coaching practice and works with entrepreneurs all throughout the country. So, brian, thank you so much for being on the Travel Masters podcast today.

Brian Will: 3:30

Morris, thanks for having me. It's going to be fun today. I was looking forward to this when I saw it on my calendar.

Morris Sims: 3:34

Well, I'm looking forward to it too. I think it's going to be fun to do. For sure, tell us a little bit about yourself. What's your latest serial or your latest entrepreneurship in your, in your serial?

Brian Will: 3:49

In my serial yeah, I'm, you know that word serial is weird, but I've actually done 10 startups, had two venture capital exits, private equity exit. I've had a couple failures. Today I own also own a chain of restaurants, a real estate company and then my my executive coaching business. So I have done a chain of restaurants, a real estate company and then my executive coaching business. So I have done a lot of different businesses across multiple industries and I blame that on my ADHD. That's my excuse.

Brian Will: 4:15

That's a good excuse, I can't do the same thing for very long and I'm like I got to do something else, so I go.

Morris Sims: 4:22

You know I've got to ask and I'll admit it. In the pre-show we talked about the fact that you own a chain of restaurants. Can you tell us what that restaurant chain is?

Brian Will: 4:31

Yeah, it's called Central City Tavern. It's here in Georgia, the northern part of Georgia. I've had as many as 15 different restaurants, but we started building our own personal brand about three years ago, so we've got four locations out there now. I sold off all the rest of them and we're just focusing on this one. So you never know what I'm going to do with this. It's either franchised, it's built out and privately owned, or sold. I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with it yet.

Morris Sims: 4:56

You know, I would never have thought that would occur, and I just interviewed a gentleman who owns Hoppin Brands and he's got a really neat idea that you walk in, you get a wristband and you go pour your own beer and every time you put your bracelet up there it charges your credit card. There's just all sorts of different things you can do in a restaurant. That is a lot more than just flipping hamburgers and getting people to sit down and order something, isn't it?

Brian Will: 5:25

Just so many ways to skin that cat, so to speak. I might've just aged myself with that, saying but yeah, there's just a lot of different ways to do it.

Morris Sims: 5:35

It's just amazing, Absolutely incredible, and it's also one of those industries where a lot of them start up but not a lot of them are around after a year or so right.

Brian Will: 5:45

Yeah, we have twice as high of a failure rate as normal businesses. They say 80% of businesses fail within five years. I think it's 60% of restaurants fail within the first two years. It's an astounding failure rate. It's not a secret, though. I got to tell you in all the coaching I do and everything I've done it's not a secret why any business fails really and specifically in the restaurant field. That's a whole story. But people make the same mistakes over and over is kind of the answer to the question.

Morris Sims: 6:14

And would you find that to be true in most any kind of business, not necessarily food service, but anything 100%.

Brian Will: 6:20

Businesses fail for the same reasons. I did an article for Forbes called the five reasons of the five success crates and the five failure crates. For the same reasons. I did an article for Forbes called the five success traits and the five failure traits are the same thing. People fail for the same reasons that they succeed. They just get on one side or another of that.

Brian Will: 6:39

Failure or success trait are so dependent on the same different customers coming in over and over and over and over. It's not like they buy a hamburger. Then they buy a hamburger every week, right, it's not like they're buying a $2,000 hamburger. If you're selling a TV, I'm selling little 15, 20, $25 tickets and my business is reliant on so many people coming back and if you fail, you can fail very quickly. If people get on the wrong side of social media, they start getting bad reviews. If your staff does something stupid, it just makes it extremely hard to maintain that type of business. You throw in the fact that most business owners don't know how to actually run a business and you've got a double whammy.

Morris Sims: 7:18

Oh, it's incredible. Well, let's explore that a little bit, if we can, Brian. I mean, I'm not going to ask you to read your Forbes article to us, but can you tell us what are a couple of those things that businesses either success, or either succeed or fail on?

Brian Will: 7:44

I can. The first one is why are you starting this business? This is the first one because too many people start a business and they are not committed to the time it will take for them to fail, learn, fail, learn, fail, learn. Before that business will come to become successful, and if you're why you're doing this isn't strong enough, you will quit at the first or second sign of problem. So why are you doing? This is number one. Number two why should anybody buy your product and why should they buy it from you? And that's the key. Why should they buy it from you? Right? Because if you're selling something they can get any place else, then you are a commodity, and commodities are price driven and commodity type businesses tend to chase the lowest dollar value. And if you're selling a commodity and you keep lowering your price to get a customer and lowering your price to get it, you're basically going to lower your price right out of business. You need to find out whatever's unique to you that will get people to come buy your product from you and not from your competitor, right? So you can't be a commodity. Number three and this is a big one, by the way who are you in your business and who are you not? Too many businesses are started by what I call technicians. Right, I'm good at plumbing, so I start a plumbing business. I'm good at being an electrician, so I start an electrician business. I'm good at an architect even drawing so I own an architect business. Who are you in the business and who are you not? Too many people who start businesses, who are specialties or technicians aren't good at the actual running of the business. I always use this example of Joe, right? So Joe's a plumber, works for a plumbing company for 10 years. He's a good plumber, so he starts his own business Joe's plumbing. If Joe's plumbing fails, it will not be because Joe is not a good plumber. It will be because Joe doesn't know how to run a business and that's why Joe will fail.

Brian Will: 9:29

Right, if you're not the business person, you need to bring in somebody who is. Or bring in a good coach, consultant to help you become the business person. You need to be checking your ego, right. If you're going to build a business, the first thing you understand is, if you've never done it successfully, you don't know how. If you have a business and it's not growing or profitable the way you would like it to be, it's probably because you don't know how to grow it or you don't know how to make it profitable. You need to check your ego, realize that you don't know what you're doing and once again I'm being redundant Bring in that coach or mentor that's done it before and can help you overcome the weaknesses you've got in your business so that you can move it forward.

Brian Will: 10:11

And the last this is a big one you need to know your numbers. I can tell you. I've looked at a hundred different small businesses and 90 of them did not have any financials to back up what they were doing. They didn't know what their core metrics were. They didn't know what their profit and loss statements were looking like. They didn't know how to analyze the numbers. They just didn't know what they were doing. And any business owner who's not at least good at or have somebody who's good at doing financial analysis on a profit and loss statement is doomed to fail. That's just the way it is. So those are. Your big five is doomed to fail.

Morris Sims: 10:45

That's just the way it is. So those are your big five. That's fantastic. Brian, thank you, that was a great overview. I'm going to cut that out of this show and use just that over and over again in my coaching. Brother, I'm going to be talking about you to a lot of folks I could think of. Take it away, and I tell you what it's amazing how many folks, including myself, take it away. And I tell you what it's amazing how many folks, including myself, have the title Chief Everything Officer. Yeah, and if you're the Chief Everything Officer, chances are you're doing things you shouldn't be doing. Is that a good way to put it?

Brian Will: 11:17

So I call this the challenge with delegation If you're ever going to scale your business, then one of the things you need to learn how to do is delegate, because what you see a lot of times is an entrepreneur go into business and even if they're successful, they're working 40 hours a week. They're successful, the business grows, they go to 50 hours a week. They're successful 60 hours, 70 hours, 8. Now you've got this entrepreneur working 70, 80 hours a week, 6, 7 days a week, and their business is doing good. But have you ever met an entrepreneur who's burned out? Oh, week, and their business is doing good. But have you ever met an entrepreneur who's burned out? Oh yeah, and they're burned out because they're working too much. And they're working too much because they fail to understand how delegation works in scaling a company. And if that delegation, the reason they don't delegate is because they are afraid. They are afraid to bring somebody else in because they're afraid that person won't be good enough, won't be fast enough, they're afraid they'll screw something up, they'll lose a customer, they are afraid of the delegation piece and because of that fear they end up burning themselves out and running their own business. If they will just understand that bringing somebody in. The best you can expect, the very, very best you can expect is somebody who is 80% as good as you. But if you can find somebody 80% as good as you, at whatever task it is they get assigned to. You have a winner, because if you find 10 people that are 80% as good as you to help you grow your company, you are now 800% of what you used to be.

Brian Will: 12:40

And now we talk about delegating admin, delegating marketing, delegating sales and delegating executive. Delegating marketing, delegating sales and delegating executive the four levels of delegation. Right, I mean, I was doing a TV show a couple of weeks ago and I was. It was a competition, a bootcamp competition for entrepreneurs. And I'm talking to this entrepreneur and I said how many hours a week you work? And he said 60, 60, 65. I said how many of those hours are you spending doing administrative types, tasks that are burning you out? He said 40. Oh, my.

Brian Will: 13:11

I said you're spending 40 hours a week doing administrative marketing. He goes yeah. I said how much would it cost you to hire somebody to do that? He's like 50 grand. I said so you're telling me you can buy your life back for $50,000. I said do you have $50,000? He said, yeah, we, I could do that. I said you can buy your life back and drop from 60, 65 to 10, 15 and get the same output. People don't look. They get that fear. This person might not be good enough, they might not do the job right. Well, you got to do it anyway. If you're going to scale, your choices are either burn out for the rest of your life or begin to actually scale a company and build something. So delegation is super key to scaling the company.

Morris Sims: 13:55

Oh, it really is as you say. It's buying your life back. But not only that. Let's think about what that does for the business. If I've just bought back that much time, yeah, okay, we'll split in half. I use half of that to buy my life back and use the other half to think about how to grow this business and actually spend some time being a leader and not the guy doing the administrative stuff. Right, Right.

Brian Will: 14:21

What are you good at? I'm good at building the business. What are you doing? I'm doing admin work. Okay.

Morris Sims: 14:27

There's a disconnect here, Brian. Can you see this? If?

Brian Will: 14:29

you're doing $20 an hour work, then you are a $20 an hour employee. Okay.

Morris Sims: 14:35

It's easy to talk about, isn't it?

Brian Will: 14:37

And yet it's so hard to do it is. It's a fear People live in fear. They're afraid to delegate because they're afraid the person won't be as good as they are, and that's just. They won't be. So get over it.

Morris Sims: 14:50

In your coaching. How do you get somebody past that fear?

Brian Will: 14:53

it's difficult. You know, one of the things we talk about and if you've coached and I believe you have one of the biggest challenges with being a coach is people that are in business tend to be looking at things in this. They're 30 degree blinders, right. They're focused on what's straight ahead of him.

Brian Will: 15:08

You, as a coach, can come in with this 360 degree, top to bottom view of everything that's happening in their business and you can say listen, morris, I've been there and done that. I can visually see what you're doing and why it's hindering you. I can tell you exactly what you need to do to take it to the next level and they go. But I don't want to do that and that's the frustrating part for us. It's literally seeing it and they can't see it because they're blinded by that laser focus of what they're trying to accomplish. So one of the things I tell people before we get started is are you willing to check your ego? Because there are times I'm probably going to tell you something that you might not like or might not agree with, but I'm telling you, if you need to check your ego and listen to me and it will work.

Morris Sims: 15:55

It's just amazing. And the other one on your list that I just absolutely resonate with is the why question. I talk to folks about the clarity principle, and the clarity principle is you've got to be really, really clear about what you want, why you want it and how you're going to get it. And that why we talk about that a lot, because it's got to be wrapped in passion and it's got to be fueled with emotion or it's not real. And they go come on, morris, why am I doing this? I want to have a successful business. Well, that's not deep enough, ok. And why am I doing it? I've got to pay the bills. Man, leave me alone. I've got to pay bill. Well, that's not deep enough either. You've got to be a little more into yourself and a little below that surface level to get there, don't?

Brian Will: 16:42

you think I have a favorite story. My friend is a business broker and he sold this ice cream shop. It's a little off topic. He sold the ice cream shop to this person. This person came in to buy the ice cream shop.

Brian Will: 16:51

Their first day of owning it was on a Saturday. They come in, they're there on a Saturday, the broker's there, they're there on a Saturday, the broker's there, they're there, the previous owner's there. They hand the keys to the guy and like it's a bad storm day, and about an hour later a tornado came through literally and broke the front windows out of the restaurant, out of the ice cream shop, and after about four hours the new owner handed the keys back to the owner and said I don't want to do this. I said did he get his money back? He goes no, no, of course not. That guy thought it was going to be a cakewalk. I just buy an ice cream shop and I'm just going to make money and not to do anything. He didn't realize that in every single business there will be bad days and he wasn't willing to go through the first one.

Morris Sims: 17:32

So if you're going to, if you, if you don't think, all you have, how do I put this? If't think all you have to do is scoop the ice cream, you're so very, very wrong.

Brian Will: 17:43

Very, very, very wrong.

Morris Sims: 17:45

Yes, oh, that's a good one, Brian. I'm going to use that. If all you think you've got to do is scoop the ice cream, you're going to be in trouble.

Brian Will: 17:53

Yeah.

Morris Sims: 17:54

Oh, that's a great story.

Brian Will: 17:55

I've heard stories like this from people. It's just you have no clue.

Morris Sims: 18:00

It's just amazing to me, because what's amazing to me more than anything else is that it is easy, when you walk in as an outsider from out of town carrying a briefcase, that makes you a consultant. If you walk in and you're looking at things, you do have that 360 top to bottom kind of view and the folks you're working with are into their day-to-day operation, as rightly so, and we've got to help them get past that and see some things that are outside that, as you say, 30-degree blinder area.

Brian Will: 18:36

I'll give you a great story, morris. I'm working with a company out on the West Coast. I go in there and they are a home services remodeling company and in the last 12 months they had done 2,000 in-home consultations and they had sold 600 projects. And so my first week there I was like hey, what happened to the other 1,400? Right, I said well, what happened to the other 1400? Right, I said well, we didn't sell them. I said so, that's 1400 people that you paid for the advertising. You sent somebody to their home, they did a physical presentation and they didn't buy. That's correct. I said have you ever reached back out to them? And they said no, I'm like all right, right, give me the last 200.

Brian Will: 19:22

We took it over to their in their inside sales marketing team and within two weeks, we sold five hundred thousand dollars worth of projects oh, I bet easily, easily never followed up. It's not that they were doing anything wrong. They were just so focused on pushing forward they didn't realize the millions of dollars sitting on the table behind them, just laying there waiting to be picked up, and that's incredible in sales organizations.

Morris Sims: 19:46

Oh, everywhere, everywhere. And the other piece of that is the is the idea that once they buy, they're they're not off the table forever. In fact, once they buy, the chances are they're going to buy from you again.

Brian Will: 19:58

Yeah.

Morris Sims: 20:03

Much. The chances are much greater. Are they're going to buy from you again? Yeah, the chances are much greater.

Brian Will: 20:05

They're going to buy from you again than the new guy off the street that doesn't know who the hell you are. I literally said okay, so let's give them a 10% bigger discount than the first time. We can't really afford that. I said what's your percentage of marketing cost in a new job? They're like 20%. I said well, you've already paid the 20% for them and they're gone. That 20% is what you figure into the jobs you've already closed. So if we assume that they are now a new client because a 20% doesn't apply to them, then their marketing cost is zero, which means I can give them another 10% discount, still make 10% more profit and generate revenue for the company. And they were like holy crap, that's a great idea.

Brian Will: 20:42

And this is in the last four months and we've generated over a million dollars in new revenue off of the what we call it the remarketing program, just because they didn't follow up before.

Morris Sims: 20:51

just crazy stuff and the the, the world I work in, and the the service industry kind of a world, I guess you could call it. Once I do business with you, the chances are extremely good that you're going to do business with me again if I stay in touch with you and build a relationship, because it's a relationship business, isn't it?

Brian Will: 21:12

A thousand percent. I'm about to head out of town over to the Caribbean and my friends are like, hey, you need to talk to Susan. I said, who's Susan? Well, she's our travel agent. She handles everything. She hooks us up, she sets it up. People are there waiting on us, the bags are done and she only charges us X number of dollars to do this. And I'm like, geez, give me her number, I'll do that. I don't want to do all this work, that's right. So, yeah, it's. Not only will they buy again, they will refer people to you and you'll make even more money.

Morris Sims: 21:37

What a great point, what an absolutely great point. And you're precisely 100% correct about the travel advisor's role. I love the line one of my clients uses. She says I help people have the very best vacation they've ever had. All they have to do is show up and have fun and I'll handle all the details. Yeah.

Brian Will: 21:57

Yeah, it's awesome.

Morris Sims: 21:59

Who wouldn't do that when it's going to cost them a few hundred dollars, or maybe even nothing, because the vendor is going to pay a commission?

Brian Will: 22:06

Yeah, I think it was 500 bucks, but a car was waiting for me when I got to the airport. A car took me where I was going to go, my reservations were set up, my dinner reservations were done. I mean, everything was done, and my time is worth more than that. You know, if you figure out what you do for a living, oh, isn't that the truth.

Morris Sims: 22:22

And frankly, it's back to that chief of everything role. That's stuff I don't want to do.

Brian Will: 22:28

Right.

Morris Sims: 22:29

You know I mean when it comes right down to it. I don't want to set all that up because it takes hours. I just soon have somebody else do it.

Brian Will: 22:38

Yeah, 100%.

Morris Sims: 22:39

You know. So yeah, I can see that 100 times over. And the thing that it's back to that whole commodity versus specialty kind of a discussion. These folks are providing a specialty service and I love that idea of a business is providing that specialty service because there's so many buttons you can push and so many levers you can pull in that kind of a business, compared to the commodity world where you're selling gasoline and everybody's just looking at that number on the big sign out there.

Brian Will: 23:12

Yep, they can go anywhere and buy gas. Why are they coming to you? Right? That's why these gas stations have specials on hot dogs and specials on Slurpees. They're trying to get people in in a commodity-type environment, exactly, or they're trying to drive that price to the bottom and eventually somebody goes out of business. That's just the way it works.

Morris Sims: 23:29

Or the gasoline's a lost leader kind of a thing where, okay, come on in, but while you're here, get a cup of coffee and I make 500% on a cup of coffee. So you know why not? Why not Do something, that's for sure. That is for sure. Brian, what do you think is of all those things that we talked about there, those five things? Where do you start with a new client? What do you look for first when you start working with somebody?

Brian Will: 23:57

So my training goes down two different tracks. So if you're talking about me specifically, my first track is finance. So when I said you need to know your numbers, you don't get to work with me unless you can provide me 12 to 24 months worth of P&Ls, broken down by month, on one spreadsheet, month over month. The first thing I do with business is we get those numbers and we identify the core metrics. Core metrics are what drive profit and revenue. We identify those metrics and then we track them over that period of time. We do what's called pattern recognition to those metrics so that we can see the patterns, patterns, of every one of those metrics versus your profit line right. And once we crack those patterns, I can tell you where you were two years ago. I can tell you where you are today. I can tell you how you got here. But based on those patterns, morris, I can also tell you where you're going to be in 12 months. If you change nothing right, nothing changes. Those patterns will track just the way they are right, just like if I told you let's travel into the future. Here's my favorite thing you want to travel into the future with me, morris? I'm going to show you how to be a time traveler. You ready, you're going to predict what's going to happen tomorrow and the next day, and here's how we're going to do it. If I told you over the last eight days that we were tracking numbers, and those numbers were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Can we're? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Can you tell me what the number is going to be tomorrow? Yeah, what's it going to be in two days? 10. See, we just traveled two days in the future and predicted what's going to happen. The same concept works with the profit and loss statement. I can track your core metrics and tell you what's going to happen in your future, based on the pattern of those metrics in the past. And then we come to you and we say, okay, based on that, here's where you're going to be Now. Is that what you want or do you want something different? And if they say no, I want to grow my business to X, I say, okay, well, let's build X. Show me what that looks like from a profit and loss statement. And then, based on your patterns, here's the steps we have to take from here until then to get you from where you are to where you want to go. It's science, it's math and it never fails. Now, once we've built that, we go back to my second track, which is sales, and the sales track says what's your lead cost, what's your close ratio, what's your profit and loss by salesperson. By the way, that's one of the most powerful tools you can have in your sales bag.

Brian Will: 26:16

Most companies look at revenue and profits from the top down. I look at it from the bottom up because if every salesperson is profitable, then the company's profitable. Too many sales organizations have, using a number, 10 salespeople. Two are profitable, four are average, two are break-even and two are losing money. But they only look at the gross revenue line and they say, oh, we're doing good, all this gross revenue. And I say, no, you've got two people that are chewing up resources, time, effort, money, marketing dollars and losing money. You're better off dropping those two, moving those marketing dollars to the people producing. You'll make more money at a higher profit margin with less people than what you're doing today. I've done this in literally every single organization I've ever gone into and it works every single time. So we look at your sales organization, we build tracking, metrics and dashboards and goal setting and all these things we do to help your organization reach that goal that you're trying to get to. So that's my long explanation of my two tracks.

Morris Sims: 27:14

So we're back to being really clear about what you want.

Brian Will: 27:17

What do you want and how are we going to get there? Right, first we track the metrics, I build you the data and then we figure out how the sales organization is going to get you there. Whether that's top of the funnel is marketing, bottom of the funnel is sales, unless you have an implementation. An implementation is the bottle, the bottle.

Morris Sims: 27:35

Yeah, that just, Ryan. You make it sound so easy.

Brian Will: 27:41

Oh my gosh, I have this organization, morris, you'll love this. 40 people doing 12 million in revenue right, you got the marketing, you got sales, you got implementation, you got accounting and finance and warranty and all these people. And yet all of that marketing funnels down to these two young ladies who sit on the phone and take the calls and set these people. And yet all of that marketing funnels down to these two young ladies who sit on the phone and take the calls and set the appointments, and they're the lowest paid people in the organization. And I said do you realize? You've got all these people clamoring that they want more money? And your entire organization funnels down to these two ladies.

Brian Will: 28:13

One who doesn't even have a car rides the bus to work and without those two, everybody else in this company loses their job. Wow, everything is dependent on those. And then the seven salespeople Right, because sales is the only thing that matters. At the end of the day, I can fire every executive in a company. If I still get a sales force, I still get a company. Oh, yeah.

Brian Will: 28:32

I fired it. If I set fire just the salespeople and leave all the executives in place, I got no company.

Morris Sims: 28:39

I worked for a financial services operation for 32 years. One point in time over that period, you know, in over 32 years, the pendulum swings right. Over that period of time we had one guy in our service organization who said we ought to just get rid of the entire sales organization because all we have to do is sit around and invest this you know at the time, millions and millions of dollars in our, our investment accounts. All we have to do is is service the existing financial services products that are out there and invest this money, and we don't ever have to make another sale. Luckily, nobody listened to him or I wouldn't have had a job.

Morris Sims: 29:21

But uh, you know, I mean this guy was that I don't know what focused on investments. But it was like dude, you know, you don't grow, you're not going to stay stagnant, you're going to go backwards. How are we going to grow if all we're doing? And what happens if things outside of our control, like the economy and all the rest of that stuff, that kind of goes into investment? Because you know, I couldn't help but think about it when you were talking about using the numbers to predict the future. That works perfectly with a business, not with a security. You know past performance is no indication of future, you know.

Morris Sims: 30:00

Exactly right, yeah.

Brian Will: 30:02

Look at my Tesla stock. Thank you very much. That is no indication of none zero.

Morris Sims: 30:10

Absolutely. But it's incredible, some folks just don't understand that it's all about selling whatever product it is that you sell, whether it's your time or your service, or your widget or your electric vehicle. Whatever it is you're selling, you got to keep selling that stuff.

Brian Will: 30:31

Somebody's got to sell it. No sales, no business.

Morris Sims: 30:34

Yeah, otherwise you're not going to be in business anywhere along the line. So it really does boil down to that. And, geez, you need to really think about how those salespeople operate and what they say, because words and language matter in that world thousand percent words and language.

Brian Will: 30:51

Words and language matter I like, so they don't get in there and dig deep enough into that to really, you know, make their sales organization as effective and efficient as it could be I had one gentleman tell me that that well, my sales people, morris, they're Morris, they do it the way they do it and they're not going to change.

Morris Sims: 31:09

They don't want to change, they don't like. They're going to say the things they say and do it the way they do it and not try and stay out of their way. Well, fine, then you know you're paying them a lot more than you should be and I don't know what you're paying them.

Brian Will: 31:23

Yeah, my example is if I've got two salespeople and I've got 20 leads and each lead cost $10, right, forget the math. But so I got 20 leads, $10 each, that's $200. I'm going to give $100 worth of leads to one guy and $100 worth of leads to the other guy and if one guy closes at 40%, the other guy closes at 20%. Should I keep giving leads to the guy closing at 20%? Or should I maybe give those leads to the guy selling at 40%? Like you can sit here and say, oh, they're going to do what they're going to do, but if you're not really analyzing it, you're just throwing money. 25% of your organization is being lost in the weeds Totally Because your 20% guy doesn't know how to close.

Morris Sims: 32:07

Yeah, and back to your point, brian, if you're not watching those numbers to see where they are and what they're doing? And activity is a indicator of the future, those leading indicators are important in sales. They're critical.

Brian Will: 32:25

If you're ever going in sales. They're critical. If you're ever going to scale. They're critical. If you ever need to drive up profit, they're critical. You need to drive up revenue. They're critical. If your OpEx, your operational expenses, are too high, it's probably sitting down in your sales organization somewhere. Sales makes the world go round. Whether you're selling a product or selling yourself to your future wife, you're still selling something.

Morris Sims: 32:47

The best sale, the best sales I sale I ever made in my entire life was in 1978. To the future Mrs Sims, at that point that was, that was my first wife of course. And then the good news is she's still my wife, but that was my first wife.

Brian Will: 33:06

That's funny, yeah so. Anyway, I my wife, but that was my first wife.

Morris Sims: 33:08

that's funny, yeah so anyway, I have a friend that actually introduces his wife that way and this is my first wife and you know I get. I get every time he does that my wife looks at me with kind of this, the eyes that could kill.

Brian Will: 33:18

If you ever do that I am going to, yeah, one of those kind of things, but anyway, and then when you get, when you get really mad at her, you you say you know, you remind me a lot of my ex-wife. And she goes what ex-wife?

Morris Sims: 33:34

I don't have the strength to do that, cause she might say, yep, absolutely. Oh, brian, this has been so much fun. I mean, I could talk about sales for another hour and a half and it would not bother me in the least. But, man, you gave us so much great added value today. Thank you so very, very much. If any of our audience would like to contact you, how might we go about doing that?

Brian Will: 33:58

Yeah, brianwillmediacom is my website. My books, my podcasts, my newsletters, my training programs. Brianwillmediacom, that's me brianwill W-I-L-L.

Morris Sims: 34:09

Mediacom man. That's absolutely fantastic, brian, thank you so much for being on the Travel Masters podcast today. Really appreciate you, buddy.

Brian Will: 34:19

Morris, thanks for having me, it was fun.

Morris Sims: 34:21

Absolutely Everybody else out there. Just remember hey yeah, Brian said it sales, it's all about sales. So who are you going to go out and meet this week that you don't know today? Because there's somebody out there that you need to meet and begin to build a relationship with, because they're going to make a huge impact and a huge difference in you and your business, for your family, but you have to do the work to go out there and meet them in the first place. So go meet somebody new and have a great time. Enjoy. I'll see you again next time right here on the Travel Masters podcast. Take care.