This 15 Minute Exercise Can Make You a Smarter and More Informed Business Owner

There is a scene in Jerry Maguire where Cuba Gooding Jr. makes Tom Cruise shout, “Show me the money!” into a phone at full volume in the middle of a crowded office. It is ridiculous. It is also the most honest moment in the movie. Because underneath the theatrics, his character, Rod Tidwell, is asking the only question that matters: where is the money actually coming from? 

I want you, the business owner, to ask yourself that same question this week.  

The Question Most Advisors Skip 

Here is something I have noticed after 20 years of working with thousands of entrepreneurs across multiple industries: Most know their total revenue. Many know their best month. Some can tell you their average booking (or transaction) value. Almost none can tell you where their profit actually comes from by product category. 

I am not talking about a rough sense. “Oh, I sell a lot of cruises.” I am talking about the actual numbers. The percentages. The breakdown that tells you whether your business model is intentional or accidental. 

Think you know your business? Great! Travel advisors: quick, say the percentage of your revenue that comes from each travel category, including fee income as a category. Test yourself; see how close you come. 

This is a quick 15-minute exercise, but it might be the most important 15 minutes you spend on your business this quarter. 

The 15-Minute Profit Audit

Here is exactly what to do:

• Pull your commission statements from the last 12 months. If you use a spreadsheet to track bookings, even better. If you have everything in your CRM, great. Whatever your system is, pull the data.

• Now sort your commission dollars into product categories (or whatever segmentation works best for you in your field). Keep it simple. Here are the buckets most travel advisors will need: 

• Cruise

• Tour/Package (bonus gold star for you if you can separate “escorted tour” from “vacation packages” if you happen to sell both)

• Air

• Hotel (standalone)

• Insurance

• Planning/Service Fees

• Other 

  • For each category, write down two numbers: total commission dollars and percentage of your total revenue. 

That is it. That is the whole exercise. 

What You Will Probably Find 

First, one category is probably carrying your business, but you may not realize how heavily. I have seen advisors who think they are “diversified” discover that 72 percent of their income comes from all-inclusive resorts. That is not a judgment. All-inclusives are a great product. But if you do not know that number, you cannot make strategic decisions about it. 

Second, your planning fees are probably lower than you think—or maybe nonexistent. If you the advisor are spending six hours building a custom European itinerary and collecting zero in planning fees, that line on your audit is going to sting. Good, because that sting is information that you can act on. 

Third, there is almost always a category where advisors are doing significant work for surprisingly little commission. Maybe it is hotel-only bookings. The audit illustrates where your time and your revenue are mismatched. 

Fourth, and this one is a profit killer. You may notice that your third-party travel insurance number is quite low. Uh oh, spaghetti-ohs.   

There is no “perfect” mix as a universal standard. If there’s enough interest, I’ll dive into how you can set targets for these and some good rules of thumb in a future message. Leave a note in the comments if that’s something you’d like to see.  

Why This Matters: You Cannot Optimize What You Cannot See 

No CEO (that’s you) looks at one number (total revenue) and calls it a day. You want to know which product lines are performing, which ones are dragging, and where the growth is coming from. 

You are a business owner. Your commission statement is your P&L. And this audit is the simplest version of the question every CEO has to answer: where does the money come from? 

Once you have the numbers in front of you, the strategic questions start to surface on their own: 

• Is your biggest revenue category also where you are investing the most time in training and supplier relationships? Or are you coasting on autopilot in the one area that matters most? 

• Is there a category where a small increase in volume would have an outsized impact on your income? If cruise is 60 percent of your business and you grew it by 10 percent, that matters a lot more than doubling a category that represents 4 percent. 

• Are you spending hours on a product type that generates almost nothing and isn’t critical to your client? That is not a moral failing. It is a resource allocation problem. And now you can see it. 

Make It a Quarterly Habit 

The advisors who treat their business like a business (and not just a booking desk) are the ones who build something sustainable. This audit takes 15 minutes. Do it once a quarter. Keep the numbers in a simple spreadsheet so you can see the trend over time. 

You are looking for shifts. If your planning fee percentage is growing quarter over quarter, that tells you something important about how you are positioning your value. If one product category is shrinking, you want to know that before it becomes a problem, not after. 

The goal is not to have a perfect pie chart. The goal is to stop guessing and start knowing. Because once you know where the money comes from, you can make real decisions about where you want it to come from next. 

Block 15 minutes. Pull the statements. Do the math. Write down six or seven numbers on a piece of paper. That is it. No software required. No fancy dashboard. Just your commission data and basic arithmetic. 

I promise you this: at least one of those numbers will surprise you. And that surprise is worth more than any webinar, conference session, or motivational quote about growing your business. Because it is your actual business, staring back at you in black and white. 

Go be Rod Tidwell, but you don’t need anyone to shout at you.

Best Success, 

Jason