I would love to take credit for the following, but I had lunch today with Harmon Born and this made an impression on me, and I wanted to share it with you.

In every organization, every church and every business, there are five kinds of people. They are referred to as the VPs.

VRPs – very resourceful people. These are the people that are older and have a wealth of knowledge that will share it with you only if asked. They are generally supportive of changes and are a good ally to have within any organization.

VIPs – very important people – These are the ones that once they are convinced of the cause will help you champion the changes. They will get behind and help you. You need these people very close to you.

VTPs – very trainable people – These are the new folks that are impressionable and willing to learn a new way of business. They tend to be loyal people.

VHPs – very happy people – these are the people that are happy as long as things are going the way they want them to go. They are not loyal and will leave when the next best thing comes around. They are concerned with only what they can get out of it.

VDPs – very drainable people – we all know this type. Regardless of what you say or what you do, they will not be happy and they will be talking behind your back. These are the people that are in every organization, but also the very people you need to distance yourself from.

These are good things to remember whatever the business, organization or church you are involved in. It’s been my experience that you will be dealing with these types of people wherever you go, so it’s best to learn how to navigate the waters. KT

Whatever your line of work is, there is a math equation that is definable to your success in that job. If you are salesman/saleswomen, there is a formula for how many sales you make and close and how many calls it took to get the sale completed.

Let me tell you about our business and its formulas. Over the years, I have worked with some of the brightest, smartest, and most educated brokers that could not sell their way out of a wet paper bag. I have hired attorneys, appraisers, and people that have a deep understanding of hospitality that could not and did not make it in this business.

See, it’s fine to impress and talk a big game, but it’s entirely another thing to actually do it. There is a hunting term (I apologize in advance) that depicts most every line of work especially sales. The term is “when the tailgate drops, the bull__ stops.” That’s pretty simple, right? And everyone knows what it means. It means that it’s fine on the way to the field to talk a big game about how smart you are, how good a shot you are, etc. It’s another thing entirely to stop talking and start doing.

I tell our brokers to figure out how much money you want to make and do the following. Let’s just say that a hotel broker will meet his financial goal by selling and closing 4 hotel deals a year. This means you will need to have 8 hotels listed on the market to be able to close 4, and you will have to make 24 presentations to get hired the 8 times. To get the 24 presentations and get hired 8 times and close 4 hotels, you will need to go see 50 clients face-to-face. In order to get to the point where you meet with 50 clients to do 24 presentations and get 8 listings and close 4 deals, you will need to make 4x the number of meetings you want in phone calls. So, if you want to meet with 50 clients, you will need to make 200 phone calls. Are you getting all this? Ok, so if I want to make 200 calls a year so I can close 4 deals a year, I have to make 3.8 cold calls a week which equals 200 calls a year. If you want to double your success, you have to make 8 calls a week. Pretty simple, right?

See, this is where we separate the talkers from the doers because the talker will not make 4 calls a week because behind all the posturing and fluff, they are afraid, insecure, and fearful of failure. They are so afraid of failure that they don’t make the calls; this actually confirms their failure by their inaction.

I believe in business and in life you have to know the “why.” If you don’t know why you are doing something, you need to stop and go find something else that motivates you.

When I started selling hotels, I clearly knew the “why.” It was looking at me each night through the eyes of my two little girls and wife that believed in me to take care of them. There was no logical or education-backed reason I should have been able to sell hotels, but my “why” was stronger than my competition and bigger than my fear. I knew I didn’t have anything to fall back on. It was either succeed at selling hotels or go broke. My daughters will never know what those little hugs and kisses and “I love you daddy” did for me. It is the ultimate game on. KT

American Airlines had a commercial 10-12 years ago that was one of the best pro-business commercials of all time. The commercial showed the CEO having a meeting with every senior sales rep at the same time in the board room. He starts the meeting by handing out airline reservations to every sales rep to fly, of course, to meet face-to-face with every major account. He says to the group “We have let ourselves rely too much on email and phone calls, and we have lost touch with our business and our clients. Today is a new day at American Airlines. We are physically going to go see our clients and get them back.”  Someone in the room asked the CEO where he was going (thinking he was not going to actually follow his own instructions) and the CEO held up an airline reservation and said he was going to see their biggest client who just fired them and get the client back.”

The message: face-to-face is where the magic of business happens.

I could write about my own experiences on this exact subject, but the description of the commercial above really says it all. KT

I sell hotels for a living, and I left the public company I was working for in May of 2007 to come home and start over. Starting over is not for the faint of heart. It looks good, smells good, and feels good, but know a few things before you do it. It will cost several times what you think it will cost, it will take several times longer than you think it will take, and it will be several times harder than you think it will be.

We started Hotel AG in 2007 after I left the public company. We had our plan and it was a good one. What we didn’t plan on was the financial meltdown in late 2008 and 2009. Ha. We got Hotel AG going, closed our first portfolio of hotels, had a double handful of listings, and it was looking like it would work. Then, September 2008 happened. Lehman Brothers, Wachovia, and Bear Stearns all went away, and the Dow dropped by a huge number. Homes began to be foreclosed, jobs were lost, etc. Bankruptcy was everywhere.

Well, here we were as new company just getting started and the recession happened. From September 2008 through all of 2009, I think we closed 6 hotel transactions and lost 400k in operating loss in the process. We were able to keep our staff, and I personally funded the company’s losses until we recovered.

Let me tell you, when I was writing checks every month to keep the company afloat, it was challenging every bit of faith, trust, and boldness I had within me. That said, I had a lot of families depending on us to make it financially, and I really didn’t feel as though I had a choice but to work hard enough to make sure the decision I made was the right one. Let me say that again. I had to work hard enough to make sure the decision I made was the right one. Sometimes we have to work to make sure the decision we already made is the right one. If you walk away from adversity every time it shows up, you will never stick with anything long enough to succeed. This goes for marriages, debt, family, work, church, friends and just about everything in life. You need to decide at the beginning what you are fighting for, and then go fight for it.

So, when adversity shows up, go get by yourself and decide if it’s worth fighting for. If it is, then do whatever it takes.  KT