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Business Coach | Healthy Mentorship

 Clay: Now Thrivers, As a business coach I am telling you when we come back we’re gonna walk you through the specifics of what a healthy mentorship relationship looks like. Stay tuned. Thrivetimeshow.com.

Business Coach 232

All right Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. It’s business coach school without the BS. And yes, my name is Clay Clark, I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year and business coach, sent here to help you persevere. I think a lot of people out there want to have success, but we don’t know what to do. And the first step to becoming a successful entrepreneur, the first step, is you have to be curious about how somebody got to where you want to get to. And that’s why I love the text message move now. You can text 918-851-6920. 851-6920. And our following question comes from a Thriver who wants to know, “What does a healthy business coaching relationship look like?”

So Steve, because I’m obviously selling things, we have a business coaching school, I’m gonna tee it up to you my friend. We obviously have the pleasure of working with your business. And all I can say from my perspective is that you know mortgages. You know lending, you know all the things related to your skill. But I think the benefit that I see that our business coaching program provides for you is we do everything else. The graphic design, the photography, the video, the search engine optimization … All those other things that go around the thing that you’re an expert at. Can you kind of explain your business coaching experience with myself or the team?

Steve: I’m a huge fan obviously, you probably know that ’cause I’ve told you a lot. But for me, it’s … As a business owner and as somebody who’s running a business, and ultimately Clay, I get paid when I close mortgage loans. I don’t get a big fat salary from the company to run the company. I get paid when I close loans.

Clay: Yeah.

Steve: But I also have other responsibilities. Like I was saying, this morning I was fixing a computer that needed to be fixed. I’m the resident IT guy. But I also gotta go produce loans. So to have somebody that’s competent, that has character, that can take care of the stuff that I know need to get done in my business, and has the skillset to do the stuff that I can’t afford to do, or I’d have to have a higher position to do every one of them, and then I’d have to manage it. And we kinda had that talk last Friday in our meeting. It’s like, “Hey look. I want to take this, and give it back to you. Because I don’t want to manage that anymore”.

Clay: I’ll give an example. A graphic designer, just a member of my team … We pay the person forty-three hundred dollars a month plus all the things that go with that. The lease, the insurance, the taxes … six thousand, we’ll call it. I see a lot of business owners who go, “I’m gonna hire my own graphic designer”. Well you do that, but now you’ve got six thousand dollars a month that you’re gonna deal with. And the emotions of managing that person, and those kinds of things. And so Dr. Z and I have tried to make it very very affordable. Because we both know what it’s like to need a business coach and business mentor.

And I’ve told the Thrivers, he’s been there for me in my life at times where I’m going … I’ve had to earn that respect, I’ve had to work hard, I’m always sort of … I’m shocked a lot of times when he’s on the radio show. I’m like, “Is he actually here? He’s here? Why is he here?” But Dr. Z cares about people. And there’s many times where he’s helped me and I didn’t know the answer. I know the answers now, and I’ve actually had a chance to sit down with him and to write his thirteen-point business coach systems into a book that we now call the “Boom Book” that we teach at our workshop to business owners who want to make their business boom.

But to me, a business coach or business mentor relationship is when someone tells you what you need to know, whether you want to hear it or not, and it’s correct. Someone who teaches you what you need to know, whether you want to hear it or not, and they’re correct. Justin, I want to ask you, man. You’ve had some mentors in your life and different people. From your perspective, what is a business mentorship relationship look like, for someone out there who’s looking for a healthy business mentor. I mean, what should a healthy business mentorship relationship look like?

Justin: Some mentors are ones you can actually meet face to face, maybe for an hour each week. And ultimately you guys discuss common goals that can help lead you and guide you. They challenge you, they give you that feedback. Some are pastors, sermons. Willie George, for example, at Church on the Move. I learned tremendous things from him, and I’ve only met him just passing by a couple times. Haven’t sat down one-on-one. But you can still learn from those people. But ultimately I had to realize, always have a pen and pad of paper, my notebook, or taking notes. And ultimately, is this someone that is where I want to go in that area of life?

Clay: Now I will just encourage you right now if you’re listening. The business coach or mentor has to have achieved what you want to achieve. So I want to make sure we’re getting this. Dr. Z, he drives a Porsche and he’s in that Land Rover and he has a nice house and these things. But he’s achieved what I would consider to be success. Okay? His businesses are doing well. If you go to Dr. Robert Zoellner and associates, he’s doing fine. His auto-auction’s dominating. He’s growing, he’s expanding. My business is Epic Photography. I’m obviously an investor with Justin, Elephant in the Room, and then Thrive and Make Your Life Epic. These things take off. And if you look at that person and you say, “That system produces the fruit that I want in my life”, you only have two choices.

And Steve, I want to get your take on this. You have choice number on which is, “Oh, it’s luck. Oh, they must be lucky”. And then number two is, “Okay, maybe they know something that I don’t know”. And I think that 95% of people say, “Gosh, they probably are just lucky”. They don’t think about, “Man, this person maybe knows something I don’t know”. Can you talk to me or can you maybe talk to your younger self before you realized the value of mentorship and why it’s so important to ask those tough questions? “What does this person know that I don’t know?”

Steve: Yeah, Dr. Green took me through … And this has been great for me. There’s four levels. There’s unconscious incompetence, like “I don’t know what I don’t know. And that’s because I just don’t know”. And then there’s conscious incompetence. “Well I know I don’t know some stuff”. And unfortunately a lot of business people hang out in the unconscious incompetence. They don’t know what they don’t know and they’re perfectly happy down there, sucking, not knowing what they don’t know. And so you have to have a mentor that’s gonna push you, that’s gonna tell you … We used to call it that “You’ve got spinach in your tooth”. You know? You got that friend that if you’re eating salad and you get done with dinner and he’s like, “Bro. You got a little something”. And then you got those people that’ll just sit there and stare at you for like six hours. And they won’t tell you you got spinach in your tooth.

Justin: Or beard.

Steve: Right, or in your beard. So you gotta have somebody that’s willing to tell you the things, ’cause you want to move from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence. And that’s like, “Hey. I know some of what I’m doing but I still have to think about it”.

Clay: I’m gonna give the Thrivers an example. Steve, if you Google “Tulsa mortgages” right now, or Justin if you Google “Tulsa men’s haircuts”, both of you guys enjoy top placement in Google. Justin knows more about men’s grooming than I’ll ever know as a business coach. I mean, he knows more about the style. If you wanted to talk about men’s grooming and style and accessories … I don’t know. I’d defer to him. So he would be like a style mentor. I’m being serious. If I ever said, “Hey. I want to get serious about style”, that’s the guy. He’s had many people reach out to him. You know what the biggest distraction with the business is? He’s had people reach out to him to want to be a style consultant. He knows his thing. And you, Steve, know mortgages.

But the thing is, I think a healthy business coaching relationship is you have to understand it’s a win-win. It’s a win-win. So it’s a thing of like Elephant in the Room wouldn’t be top in Google if our Thrive15 business coach or coaching program wasn’t powering that. But we would have nobody to optimize without his vision. If he didn’t have the vision, there’d be no customers. So it’s a win-win. And so I would just encourage you right now to think about where you’re at in life. And if you feel stuck, what I challenge you to do today is 1. Maybe explore a new haircut. Maybe go to Elephant in the Room and try the … Justin, is it a dollar right now for the first haircut?

Justin: Oh yeah. It’s one dollar for your first haircut at the downtown location in Broken Arrow.

Clay: But in all sincerity, yes definitely get the haircut. Get the new look, get the new style. But I encourage you to come out to one of our in-person workshops. We had Thrivers this past one from Nashville, we had ’em from California, from Texas, from Boston … I love when the Bostonian’s come ’cause there’s a certain … They’re intense over there. But a Bostonian in Oklahoma … Speaking the Bostonian is like so fast, so intense. The Oklahoman’s so calm, so understanding. Watching that connection point’s pretty incredible. But I encourage you to go to thrivetimeshow.com and click on “conferences” and book your ticket for April 21st and 22nd. Because of the generous donations and contributions of many of venture capitalists out there, it’s now affordable for everybody. There’s zero reason to not attend. It’s two days, it’s fifteen hours, and we start at 7am, we go til 3pm everyday. If you’re from out of town, you’re listening to our podcast, we’re located by Oklahoma’s largest new casino.

Steven, have you seen the new casino? Have you been to visit the new casino there by the Riverwalk there?

Steve: Kind of a big deal.

Clay: Justin, have you visited? Have you seen it? Have you been there yet?

Justin: Not yet, but next month we’re going.

Clay: It’s beautiful though. It’s a sharp looking facility. We’re also located by a three-story golf facility here off the Jinx riverwalk. There’s great places to eat, great things to do. And when you sit at the conference you’re not crammed in to a hotel room. You can sprawl out, we have large desks, we have a nice coffee bar. But more importantly we answer each and every business question that you could possibly have. So you owe it to yourself, you owe it to your family, you owe it to your wallet to achieve financial freedom.

Justin, how good does it feel, now on the other end, seeing Elephant in the Room thriving? How good does it feel?

Justin: The other side … It’s scary as all it. So it’s terrifying. But there’s amazing reward with that. So that’s one thing as far as being an entrepreneur each and every day is it falls on your shoulders. You’re the one. There’s no one behind you you turn to. You’ve got to work those hours. But there’s benefits that you all can reap.

Clay: Now Steve, there’s a lot of problems we all have but its nice when money isn’t one. How does it feel to drive in that Lamborghini my friend? How’s it feel?

Steve: It’s awesome.

Clay: Awesome. This just in. As always Thrivers, 3, 2, 1 … Business coach Boom!

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