Have you ever wondered what truly drives success in the travel business? Get ready to uncover the secrets behind building a profitable travel agency with Morris Sims! This episode promises to arm you with the Clarity Principle, guiding you to pinpoint exactly what you want from your business, understand why it matters to you, and map out the steps to achieve it. Learn how a passion-driven 'why' can fuel your motivation, and grasp the importance of a detailed strategy to turn that ambition into reality.
But that's not all—we'll dive into the nuts and bolts of effective business practices. From crafting an elevator pitch that leaves a lasting impression to establishing SOPs that ensure consistency and efficiency, we cover it all. Discover why monitoring key metrics like gross revenue and commissions is crucial and how to master time management with annual, monthly, and weekly planning. Plus, get a sneak peek into five key business principles and how our Travel Masters program can elevate your business further. Join our community with a 14-day free trial and start transforming your travel business today!
Have you ever wondered what truly drives success in the travel business? Get ready to uncover the secrets behind building a profitable travel agency with Morris Sims! This episode promises to arm you with the Clarity Principle, guiding you to pinpoint exactly what you want from your business, understand why it matters to you, and map out the steps to achieve it. Learn how a passion-driven 'why' can fuel your motivation, and grasp the importance of a detailed strategy to turn that ambition into reality.
But that's not all—we'll dive into the nuts and bolts of effective business practices. From crafting an elevator pitch that leaves a lasting impression to establishing SOPs that ensure consistency and efficiency, we cover it all. Discover why monitoring key metrics like gross revenue and commissions is crucial and how to master time management with annual, monthly, and weekly planning. Plus, get a sneak peek into five key business principles and how our Travel Masters program can elevate your business further. Join our community with a 14-day free trial and start transforming your travel business today!
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. 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? Welcome to the Travel Masters podcast. I'm your host, morris Sims. We are sponsored by the Travel Masters Learning Community, which is a membership platform that provides you with resources that you can use to help you run a profitable business. Our mission is simple we're here to help you get what you want from your travel business. So go to morrissimscom that's M-O-R-R-I-S-S-I-M-Scom and click on Travel Masters up in the top menu and you'll be able to get more information there, and you can even start your 14-day free trial Today. This is what we're going to do right now.
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I'm going to share with you five business concerns that I believe every profitable business needs to consider and take action on. These five principles or concepts, or I don't care whatever you want to call them. We teach them all in Travel Masters in great detail, but I want to share with you today some of the basics of those five things, because they're just so important to your success. The first principle I call the clarity principle, and I've talked so much about it over the last several years that I feel like I'm really preaching to the choir here. However, I bet that there may be some of you that might not have heard me preach this particular sermon, so I thought I'd briefly go through the clarity principle for you, because it's just important. This in and of itself is at least a 90-minute workshop, when it's done live with a group of people. There's an audio in the business principle space in Travel Masters. If you want to go and listen to it in a little more detail, then we'll go through it here. Okay, enough said, here we go.
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Number one the clarity principle. Simply stated, you must know what you want from your business, why you want it and how you intend to get it. Well, that sounds simple enough, right? But here's the kicker You've got to have a clear, detailed answer for each one of those three questions what, why and how. A lot of people that I work with in the live workshop will tell me Morris, this isn't so hard. I want a successful business so I can support my family, and I'm going to do it by providing travel services to my clients. Well then, all of that is absolutely and totally true, and most every one of us would agree that we want that.
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The clarity principle says that it's not enough. You got to dig deeper and get to the real details of each of those four answers. Let's look at it briefly. You ready, what do you want? I need you to paint a picture of what you want. What in your mind, what is it in there that you really want, and write down what it looks like. When you get what you want, what's your day going to look like In detail? All right, get into the detail. What am I going to do all day long? What are you going to be doing, or what are you going to be able to do when you get to what you really want during your day? Get specific and see yourself living that day and what your business will have to be for you to be able to live that day that you want to live.
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Number two is why do you want it? Well, all right, morris, I got to pay the bills. Well, yeah, of course you do, and that's absolutely true for all of us, right, but you can make money to pay bills anywhere. Why run a travel business? Why this particular travel business? Why not do something a whole lot easier? Dig deeply into your heart and your mind. Your why needs to be wrapped in passion and fueled with emotion. This is what's going to get you out of bed every morning. This is what's going to keep you moving when things are not easy. This is what's going to allow you to jump over hurdles and run through walls. Okay, your why is probably the most important question that you have to answer. And, thirdly, how are you going to do it? The answer to this question is your strategy. This is your business strategy.
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The key here is to find one strategy, one that you're going to pour your time and your resources into. All right, you may have two, but they should be complementary and tie into each other. Somehow. To be successful in this business or any other business for that matter you have to have a detailed strategy that's going to inform your strategic action plan, so that you know what you have to do every day. All right, this one is really important.
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Now, I'm not saying that if my strategy is to focus on grandparents taking their kids to Walt Disney World, that doesn't mean that if I find an option to help somebody plan a trip to Alaska that I'm going to say, gee, no, I don't do that. No, you're going to help them plan that trip to Alaska, but you're going to focus your marketing. No, I don't do that. No, you're going to help them plan that trip to Alaska, but you're going to focus your marketing and your time and your effort and your resources on your strategy. All right, that's the clarity principle, and it really is the foundation of business and that's why it comes first in our conversation today. Believe me, if you miss getting those things done, it's going to come back to bite you somewhere along the line. So clarity principle is number one, for a reason. Number two is marketing. I like to call this one the visibility principle.
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Marketing is attracting people to your business so that you can engage them in the process of travel planning. Process of travel planning. There are five platforms you can use Social media, personal observation, events, email, email marketing and direct mail and we don't have time to do a deep dive on each one of those, so let me just share a couple of ideas for you to consider that can help you with marketing and improving your visibility. Marketing requires a plan. So think about these, think about what you're going to do and create your system, create your plan for how you're going to handle marketing for your business. It's not your only job, it's not your main job, but it is an important job that you have to do All right. Marketing is to business like breathing air is to you and me. You have to do it, you have to do it in an organized manner or it can become a huge distraction and it can keep you from doing your full time job, which is planning travel Right. So let's get into these, these platforms, all right.
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First one, social media. Social media isn't the end-all and be-all for marketing. It's only one of five platforms you don't necessarily need to use to get your message out. And when you do use social media, you're only going to touch a small percentage of your followers. It's not like putting a big billboard on I-95. It really isn't, but it is a good thing. There's nothing wrong with it. It's good stuff. Just pick two social media platforms that you really want to work with and put your time into, and then schedule time to work on them. I'm going to work on social media from 9 until 11 on Monday, wednesday and Friday. Whatever works best for you. Choose a couple and schedule your time to work on it. You can't put all your eggs in that social media basket, but you certainly want to put some of your eggs in that basket. It's important today, in today's world.
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Email marketing is another platform, and it begins with having an email list An email list that you can send newsletters or blogs or just emails to. This is considered to be one of the most important marketing platforms available in today's world. Now use a proven email marketing provider like MailChimp or ConvertKit or one of the bazillion other email marketing systems out there. Most of them have a level of free that you can do to so many people on your list. So if you don't have a large list, you probably can use one of those systems and do it for free, but check them out. You don't have to do something every week. It can be a monthly email or a monthly newsletter, or every other week or whatever you want it to be. Just build that email list and then use it. It is a wonderful way to keep your name and visibility in front of people.
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Events are another great way to do this. There are all kinds of events you might choose, like wedding shows or community events or church events and I don't know a whole bunch of other stuff. Google events in your town and you may find a whole list that you want to be involved in each year. Choose a few that are going to be important to you, that you can relate to. The key is to draw people to you for a conversation, and your objective is to gather contact information so that you can have a more detailed conversation at a later date, because you're not going to have that detailed conversation while the event's going on. Draw people in with a raffle or some other idea that's going to allow you to gather their email and phone numbers so you can call them when you choose somebody to win the raffle right. Direct mail is still a way to be visible to possible travelers. All our vendors have stuff you can use. They've got postcards and other sundry things, so use your own list of addresses. Rarely do purchased lists blow the windows off the place, so use your own list of addresses to send this to and send material from the vendor, so it doesn't cost you money, nor does it cost you time to design it and build it. Just put your name and contact information on there and send it out to folks.
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Personal observation is the last one on this list, and it may be the top one or two most effective ways to meet people that you're going to work with in the future. Do you talk to people about your business when you're going about your normal everyday life? If not, why not? That's a great way to get people to see that you're there and to be visible. You need as many people to know as you possibly can, right? You need as many people to know that you exist as you possibly can.
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Here's the deal. This is not a well. Here's my business card. Call me when you're ready to plan a trip. No, don't do that. This is meeting new friends and building a relationship. It requires a conversation that begins with what we might call an elevator talk. This is the answer to that question, gee Morris. So what do you do when somebody asks you that question? When you're just having that initial conversation, everybody's asking each other questions, right, and somewhere along the line, somebody's going to say gee, so what do you do? Here's an idea for you. I help people plan the best vacations they've ever had, and all they have to do is show up and have fun. I handle all the details and I got to tell you I truly love my business.
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Number three is your process for running the business. That's what we're talking about. Number three is your process for running the business. We call that your SOPs, or standard operating procedures. This is a collection of systems that you use to run your business to run the show, if you will Then, as with any good business, you have to plan your days and your time to be efficient and generate sales and a profit, right? The question is always how do you go about doing that and how can you make it better? So when I say a system, what I'm talking about here is a documented set of procedures, things that you do the same way every time to get the same positive result.
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You could have a system for how you organize, plan and conduct a family Thanksgiving event, or a system for how to write and record a podcast I have one of those. Or you could have a system for what you do say and ask during an initial conversation with a prospective traveler. That's an important one, isn't it? A system may be a procedure or a list of steps, but it could also just be a checklist. A checklist is a great procedure and a great system If you look at, whatever your popular destinations are, you could have a checklist for what you need to do to plan a trip for each of those destinations. This is a system that helps you make sure that you don't miss a step, you don't leave a traveler hanging somewhere or forget to discuss some important information. Like I don't know travel insurance. I highly recommend checklists like this. Checklists can help you make sure that you cross all the T's and dot all the I's.
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Number four is knowing your critical dashboard indicators, the metrics for your business, the important metrics for your business. What are the three or five or seven or eight things that you believe you need to monitor and measure? Those are the key metrics that I talked about. Those are the ones that you watch very closely so that you can keep your business afloat. The key here is that you can't watch everything that you could measure about your business all the time, because there are a zillion things you could measure. You have to choose the three or four or five things that are very important to you. Those are the few things that you got to watch regularly, the things that you should focus on For me gross revenue, business expenses, commissions paid, average commission per trip and the number of trips that we make and you can replace sales for trips. If you're not in the travel business, those would be my top five. For example, now it's probably not productive to try and watch all those five things every day and all in the morning and in the evening, but certainly once a month it's worth having a history lesson, if you will, to see where those metrics are for the prior month and where they are year to date.
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We call this a monthly planning meeting, and it is something that we teach in Travel Masters for sure, and it comes with its own agenda and a whole set of systems and processes for you to use. Number five is your organization and your use of time. This is something where you can find some extra time for your life. I believe planning is essential and I believe it's best to have a planning system where you plan for the next year or quarter or six months, whatever period of time you choose. I call it an annual plan, where you review the clarity principle and you set some objectives for your metrics. Monthly plan we talked about a little bit.
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The key to the effectiveness and efficiency of your business is having a weekly plan. All of this is based on that annual plan. Annual plan tells you what to do in the monthly plan. The monthly plan tells you what you need to do in the weekly plan. It all flows together. So what are all the things that you have to do this week to meet the objectives and complete the things that you talked about in monthly plan, and what are the things you need to do to meet your annual plan? It all builds okay. So what do you have to do this week? What are the things you have to do? All of them.
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Now take a look at that list and remove the stuff that's just not necessary. There's stuff on there that you could either delegate or ask someone else to do or just ignore because it's somebody else's priority and not yours. So take out the stuff that's not necessary and then, with the rest of it, plan for the day of the week that you intend to do it. Something like this Maybe on Thursday I have a call with the Smiths about their trip to Alaska. Also on Thursday I'm going to complete my three recommendations for the Joneses trip to Cancun, and then you do that for every item on the list, including Little League games and dentist appointments and even haircuts. Get it all on your daily list for the week.
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Once you do that, you know exactly what you want to accomplish each day and, at the end of the day, you don't have to plan tomorrow with a blank piece of paper. Tomorrow's already planned. All you've got to do is go in and tweak your plan for tomorrow and make it what it needs to be, based on what you've been able to accomplish today. All you've got to do is go in and tweak your plan for tomorrow and make it what it needs to be, based on what you've been able to accomplish today. All right, that took a lot longer than I expected, but I hope those principles will be of help for you and your business Five business principles that can have a positive impact on your life and your business.
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There's a lot more for each one of those and I'm sorry we don't have time to get into that in this podcast, but I wanted to make you aware of those five business principles. We do teach them in detail in Travel Masters and the learning community. So hey, come join us. Go to MorrisSimscom and choose Travel Masters from the top menu and click on one of the buttons in there, and you can get a 14-day free trial today. Best wishes for you and your family and your business. Why don't we talk again in a couple of weeks? I'll talk to you then. My name is Morris Sims. Have a great week, I'm.