Business Coach : Grow With Greeno
-We have got a guy who works here, and he’s working really hard, and I told him the other day, Hey, the only thing that’s easy– he’s in college, and there’s, to get things done here, you’ve got to be resourceful. You just have to be. A business coach can help you learn how to be.
ARTHUR GREENO: Yeah.
-And he was having a hard time getting a few things done. And I was like, hey man, the only thing easy for you is college tests. College tests, I mean, you study for them. They’re pretty predictable questions. But in business, I mean, things don’t work. Suppliers don’t deliver. Weather’s not always good. People get sick. People get tired. People show up late to work. Customer quick coming. New customer start coming. And there’s so many variables. And I really do think– you said, it’s adapt–
-Improvise, adapt, overcome.
-Overcome. Love it. Now, the late great success author, Napoleon Hill, he said that success is a choice. Napoleon Hill said that success is a choice. We’re talking about the guy who studied the world’s wealthiest man, Andrew Carnegie. Probably the top self help author of all time. He says success is a choice. A lot of people I know say, not it’s not. It’s not a choice. You can’t choose. Is it a choice? A business coach can help you improvise. A business coach can help oyu adapt. A business coach can help you overcome.
-It is absolutely a choice.
-How has it been a choice for you?
-Everything about success is a choice. When you are– you get the choice on if you’re going to get up early to get the job done. You get the choice on if you’re going to stay up all night long to get it done. You have the choice on if things aren’t prepared for your meeting in the morning, are you going to go see that movie? Or are you going to sit down and watch that reality show? There’s a phrase out there that I love, is that the average millionaire does not know who got voted off the island.
CLAY CLARK: Yeah.
-And I love that. But that’s the true.
-Now, here’s one thing I think that’s tough. Because you say, success is a choice. I have found the failure is a prerequisite to success.
-And I agree with that as well.
-Because with Thrive here, we have a spreadsheet we made of all the different venture capitalists. I think we’ve made over 400 attempts talk to people. And then, my favorite guy, the guy that I’ve been like, dear Lord– I really have prayed this– please allow David Robinson to join our team. Because he’s so awesome. High integrity. Great guy on and off the court. And he’s the guy who joins our team. You know, I’ve been talking to different venture capital firms, and the one guy I’d like to have on our team, John Copeland, is on our team. And, to me, it’s just been neat to see that. But hundreds of rejections.
ARTHUR GREENO: Absolutely.
-And I know when you were at Chick-fil-A, scene was you were at a mall. The mall was called Eastwood Mall.
-Yep.
-To set up the scene, it’s basically a vacant mall.
-Pretty much.
-And you are in the food court of a vacant mall where they’re installing a library because the traffic is so slow.
-Yep.
-And you had to promote your food items. How did you do it? How did you get the food out to the people? When there were like seven people at the mall.
-Yeah, well, so here’s what I did. In that particular food court situation, that food court was downstairs. We called it the dungeon. It was really bad.
CLAY CLARK: The dungeon of death.
-Yeah. And so, there was us and a movie theater and a lot of birds. The birds would fly in the mall, and they’d steal the pizza from the pizza guy. It was awesome. That’s a whole different story.
-That really happened?
-Yeah. I would look over at the pizza place, and the crows would be grabbing an entire pizza and just try to fly off with it. He’d come chasing it with a knife. It was a scene out of a movie. I tell you, it was awesome. But I remember looking up at the people going, I need them down here.
-The people up top of the mall, the second level.
-They would be shopping upstairs, and they wouldn’t come down. So, I said, well, if I can’t get them down here, I need to go up there to them.
-To them.
-So, what I started doing– well, then I had some other logistical issues like, the mall would not let us just go wander around and hand out food. So, then I went to some of the stores there, and I got to be good friends with them, and I said, hey, can I give out food on your lease line?
And so I would take the food up there, and I would give away food on their lease line to those customers walking by. And they’d have a sample of Chick-fil-A. And they’d say, you know what, I want Chick-fil-A. Well, we’re downstairs. And so I was able to increase my traffic count from 7 a day to 10 a day. It wasn’t really that bad, but we are able to increase our traffic count.
-What was the traffic total before you started doing that? What did you get to? Do you remember roughly? Just so I can get an idea.
-It was– there were days when we only had like 125 customers.
-Wow.
-But by the time I left that store after a couple years, I think on the lower end we were running 200, 250 customers.
-So you did some things. You chose to be successful. You just didn’t wait down there in the food court on the empty level, with the birds that are trying to steal the pizza.
ARTHUR GREENO: That’s right.
-Just goes to show you, you can’t just watch a bird steal a pizza on the second level of a empty mall.
-That’s right.
-You have to get it out there and sell your products and give samples on the lease line of other people.
-You got to put that on a coffee mug.
-It’s so concise and clean.