Transcript prepared for the business coach program at thrive15.com
Clay Clark is the head and founder of the business coach program at thrive15.com
People wonder “Well, how does somebody have a mental breakdown?” It’s because you’re always running behind and you’re ambitious. I mean, if you’re ambitious, and you are always running behind, you are eventually going to have an explosion, that’s why you’ve got to schedule that time for meta time. Again, meta from the Greek word meaning “above.” You’ve got to schedule time to work above your current drama, your current reactive fires. You absolutely must do this, and I’ll show you how to do it coming up next.
All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation, it’s the Thrive Time Show on your radio. My name is Clay Clark, the former SBA entrepreneur of the year, in your ear. Now, typically, I’m joined by Dr. Robert Zoellner, but he’s out today expanding his vast entrepreneurial empire, and so I am here with you, you are here with me, he is I, I is him, the man with the flat-brim hat. My name is Clay Clark, and I’m talking today about the answers to the questions that you have.
Many of you e-mail us all the time to [email protected], and when you e-mail us, I don’t think you expect us to answer, but we always answer all of your business questions. That actually is the, I would say, kind of like the spine of this radio show. We are basically responding to and answering the questions that you have. I know, for me, when I was stuck and my business wasn’t growing, I felt like I had no idea what to do, like I didn’t have a mentor. It’s kind of like you have a radio show mentorship program. We’re here to help you learn what you need to know to make your business grow.
We have a Thriver in Michigan who e-mailed us a question. Basically, wanting to know what is the entrepreneurial mindset. You know, what mindset does someone need to have if they want to become a successful entrepreneur. I love the question, and we answered it early on in the show, and now what we’re doing is we’re talking about the 11 dysfunctional mindsets that exist out there, where basically, you want to become successful, but you’re doing certain things that are retarding your growth. They’re preventing you from becoming the entrepreneur that you want to be, that you feel like you deserve to be, and that we want to help you be.
The dysfunctional mindset number nine is that everything is a burning fire guy. You’re the everything is a burning fire guy. Basically, what you’re doing is everything is a huge issue, it must be done now. Oh my gosh, it has to be done. That’s because we’re not taking out the time on a daily basis to plan and design the life we want. We’re basically just reacting to the life that we have. How do you know if that’s you? Maybe you always feel like you’re running behind, you never feel like you can get on top of things. I’ve seen this happen, countless times. I’ve seen an entrepreneur who starts out with a big vision for their life, a big goal, they begin to want to proactively plan out their life, maybe they went to a motivational conference and they were sitting in a room for five hours or six hours, so they had the downtime needed to sketch out where they want to be.
The problem is on a daily basis, they’re not having that one-on-one, in-person workshop with themselves. Lee Cockerell, one of the Thrive15.com mentors, and a man who used to be the executive vice president of Walt Disney World Resorts, he has some encouragement for you. He’s actually one of our Thrive15.com mentors, and imagine what it would be like to manage 40,000 people. Could you imagine? I mean, some of us are struggling to manage 10 people. Currently, with our businesses, we have about 115 people with the Elephant in the Room and the Thrive team, but as far as the totality of the businesses that Dr. Z and I have, it’s hundreds and hundreds of people.
Could you imagine what it would be like to manage 40,000 people? How would you ever get caught up? I mean, if you feel overwhelmed when you have five employees, how would you ever feel caught up when you have 40,000 employees? Well, this is what Lee says. Lee says “One way to get your priorities accomplished is to schedule them into your calendar. I would encourage you to schedule time into your calendar that is realistic.” For me, I’m just being real, if I go to bed at 9:00 AM, I set my alarm at 3:00 AM, which gives me six hours to sleep. Some of you who are listening right now, you need eight hours to sleep. Some of you need seven.
I’m certainly not a dietician or a health expert, or a sleep expert, although Dr. Z does own a sleep diagnostic center, so I’m sure we can get that information for you, but you’ve got to figure out how many hours of sleep do you need, and then you’ve just got to plan out when will that time be on a daily basis, that you’re going to map out and design the life you want? It’s going to take you a couple hours, at a minimum, an hour a day.
You’ve got to ask yourself, when is that time? When is that time? Where you’re going to sit down, alone with your thoughts, and you’re going to sketch out the six Fs. You’re going to write out faith, family, finance, fitness, friendships and fun. Again, to repeat, one more time, I’ll go kind of slow so you can write them down. You’re going to write out “faith, family, friendships, finance, fitness and fun.” You want to sketch out those areas and ask yourself where do you want to be in those areas versus where are you currently. Then you want to break it down to the smallest action items possible, and you want to begin to design you day.
If you ever want to come to the Thrive15.com in-person workshops, you could watch me, you could learn from me, I’ll teach you how to do it. I’ll just tell you, once you move beyond the hocus pocus, like “Oh my gosh, I’m so excited to be successful. I want to be successful. I deserve to be successful. I am going to be successful.” Once you move beyond the “hey, I’m motivated” move where it’s that kind of hocus pocus magic that abracadabra, hocus pocus, once you begin to get your daily priorities in focus, in becomes so much easier to achieve success, and we will teach you how to do that at our next in-person Thrive Time Workshops.
Our next one, if you’re wanting to know when that is, if you go to ThriveTimeShow.com, that’s ThriveTimeShow.com, you could learn the information for the next [inaudible 01:11:47], but our next one is going to be March 24 and 25 at our beautiful Thrive15.com world headquarters. Basically, if you are a member of the Thrive15.com community, meaning that you are a subscriber to the Thrive 15 Online Business School, that workshop is accessible for you for free.
Basically, you pay $19 a month, your first month at Thrive15.com is one dollar. Then, beyond that, it’s $19 a month. “What, I thought TU was Tulsa’s best business school and it’s $56,000 a year.” Well, we believe our business school is better, and it’s $19 a month, but the first month is only one dollar, so you can try it out. If you’re a member of the Thrive15.com growing community of thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs all around the world, then you can come out to our in-person workshops for free. Check it out. The main thing is that we only have limited availability. We want it to be actionable and interactive, and so to do that, we limit the number of people that can attend.
Dysfunctional mindset number 10. This is the constantly calling, texting and e-mailing with urgent action items guy. This is where you’re new to business success, and because eight out of 10 businesses around you fail, according to Forbes, you’ve never personally witnessed the knitty gritty details of somebody actually starting and growing a successful business. With this, you basically end up, you feel like everything is urgent you begin to constantly text. When you text somebody and they don’t respond, you e-mail them and they respond, you call them and they respond, and so you’re constantly texting, e-mailing, social media updating and you just end up running around like you’re herding a bunch of cats, and there’s burning fires all around you.
I’m going to read you a notable quotable from Gino Wickman, the founder of the Traction Business Business coach Program that hopefully will be helpful for you. He says “Successful businesses operate with a crystal clear vision that is shared by everyone. They have the right people in the right seats, they have a pulse on their operations, by watching and managing a handful of numbers on a weekly basis. On a weekly basis, what you want to do on a weekly basis is determine your goals for the week, and then assign them to the members of your team.
Assign who needs to do it, when they need to get it done and what they need to get done, and then get out of their way and let them get it done this week. Trust me, I went from the dorm room, to the board room, I get it.
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Learn how to move beyond being stuck. Stay tuned.
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Yes, yes, yes. Welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. My name is Clay Clark, the former SBA entrepreneur of the year, sent here to queue up old school music sound tracks from the eighties. Remember that movie? Back to the Future? That was an incredible movie. Well done, producers, well-done Michael J. Fox, well done Back to the Future. Christopher Lloyd, well done. That show was awesome. We’re talking today about the success mindset that every entrepreneur must have if they’re going to achieve success. We’re also talking about the 11 dysfunctional mindsets that many entrepreneurs are fighting through on a daily basis. If you’re just tuning in here, what we were talking about last was the dysfunctional mindset number 10, which is the constantly calling, texting and e-mailing with urgent action items guy.
You see, Gino Wickman is an unbelievable business coach. His program is pretty expensive, but it’s called Traction, and he wrote a book called Traction, and he says this, he says “Successful businesses operate with a crystal clear vision that is shared by everyone, they have the right people in the right seats, they have a pulse on their operations by watching and managing a handful of numbers on a weekly basis. They identify and solve issues promptly in an open and honest environment. They document their processes and ensure that they are followed by everyone. They establish priorities for each employee and ensure that a high level of trust, communication and accountability exist on each team.”
Well, Gino, that is helpful, however, I will say, that I know many people listening right now, you just feel overwhelmed with this constant barrage of text messages and e-mails and voicemails, and when do you find time? The main thing, Business coach clients, is you must schedule time. You must get control of your schedule and you must block out time for what matters most, if you’re going to be successful. I know, for me, like right now, I’m recording a radio show with you live. That means when I’m recording the radio show, I’m not somewhere else, you know? I’m not taking a text message. I’ve never done a radio show where I’m like “Oh, excuse me, Business coach clients, let me get that call.” I’ve never done a radio show where I’m like “Hey, Business coach clients, hey, real quick, I’ve got to respond to that Facebook message, my bad.”
Many entrepreneurs, I see this all the time, I get hired by big corporations to come in there and help fix a lot of the time management issues they’re running into, a lot of the effectiveness issues they’re having, basically, the lack of productivity. I went in to one group recently, this is probably about four months ago. I go in there, and half the team is on their laptop during the meeting, responding to e-mails, text messages, and things that have no relation to the actual meeting that they’re in. It’s like they’re physically present, but they’re not mentally present. If that’s you, I’m just telling you, that you’ve got to be mentally present and physically present. Turn the laptop off, turn the cell phone off, and be mentally present, where you are all the time.
If you are doing e-mails, be present there, but don’t be responding to phone calls while checking your e-mails, you’ve got to block out time for what matters most. Now, the next dysfunctional mindset, dysfunctional mindset number 11, that I see a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with, this is the “I’m mad at the messenger” guy. The former communist leaders of the Soviet Union thought that the systemic redistribution of wealth through a government mandated system was a great idea. They really did believe this was a great idea. They really didn’t like it when they surveyed their people, and they found that most of their population was either unmotivated, literally starving, I mean, it’s “Hey Carl, how are you? Carl, what do you think about communism?” “Uh, I’m starving.” “Oh, well that’s not a good feedback, there, Carl, we’ll move on to someone else.”
The thing is if you’re out there interviewing your … If you’re auditing your company, and you don’t like the way the numbers look, you can’t get mad at the person who presents you with the facts. I see so many entrepreneurs that are irritated with the person who presents them with the truth. You know, the guys who created the communism in the Soviet Union, I’m sure Stalin thought it was a great idea to “Hey, check it out, guys, many of us in this room are doing very well, some of us are struggling, and so what I want to do is I just want to come up with a way that we could redistribute the money that we all make so that way, overall, we all make about the same, we can work less, we can save more, we can spend more time with our families, it just seems like a good idea.”
I mean, communism, I mean socialism, seems like a good idea, except for when you try to execute it, you try to implement it and you realize that when people aren’t motivated for their own benefit to achieve results, they don’t, and then you run out of food, you don’t have enough food to feed your people, no technology is invented, there is no improvement, that’s what capitalism is all about. As you and I are out there trying to improve our own financial situation and our own level of time freedom and financial freedom, as we go out there and compete with each other … As an example with the Elephant in the Room, our men’s grooming lounge, as we’ve gone out there and tried to beat the competition, the haircut experience has gotten better and better for Business coach clients like you.
You go into any of our three locations and you’ll notice, as we’ve gone into the marketplace and tried to compete with Sports Clips and Great Clips and other great companies, we have had to improve our game, we’ve had to step our game up quite a bit. I think that’s why a lot of people love watching pro sports is that in order for one guy to receive that multi-million dollar contract that he wants to receive, or for that one lady to receive that big contract that she wants, she has to compete and perform at a higher level than the person she’s going against. Long story short, the concept of this is that socialism and communism didn’t work, but anybody who gave them negative feedback, they ended up killing these people because they attacked the messenger.
Anybody who they surveyed who didn’t vote 100% in favor of communism, they eliminated these people. If you think about our planet and the history of man, we’re not doing so well, when it comes to not being mad at the messenger. Think about this, Jesus came to the earth and pointed out what he believed to be truth, and what I believed to be truth. They’re like “Well, Jesus is telling us to be nice to our neighbor and love our neighbor as ourselves.” He’s trying to tell us these things, “Well we should probably kill him.”
I mean, think about Martin Luther King, not a business coach. Martin Luther King, Jr., he dared to say “I have a dream for my four little children that one day they will live in a nation where they will not have to be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” They assassinated him. The thing about the pattern that we see, none of us want to be the guy who killed Martin Luther King, Jr., none of us want to be the guy who ordered Jesus to die, but it’s a natural thing. It’s the way most people do it to attack the messenger. With this mindset, when you hear uncomfortable truths about your business, you realize that this is the perfect time to attack the character, or the resume, or the emotions of the person presenting you with the simplicity and diligence required to actually systemically improve your business.
Lee Cockerell has this notable quotable, which I thought was kind of a fun little bonus gift from the man who used to manage Walt Disney World. For anybody out there who happens to be the messenger, if you’re an accountant, you’re an attorney, and it’s sort of your lot in life to give people the uncomfortable truth that they don’t want to know, this is what Lee Cockerell gives you as a tip, he says “If you’re going to tell the truth, you had better be funny, or it won’t go over well.” Again, if you are an aspiring messenger, or you are a messenger, if you have to tell someone the truth, you probably had better bring some gallows humor, or at least a little bit of humor to the situation.
Here’s another business coach notable quotable, though. For the person who is receiving the information. I mean, if you’re the entrepreneur, you’re receiving this information and it frustrates you because you don’t want to hear the uncomfortable truth that if you maintain your current course, you’re never going to get ahead, then here is a notable quotable for you coming at you hot from Tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss is the bestselling author of the Four Hour Work Week. I’m sure you’ve seen his book at Barnes & Noble. He’s a venture capitalist, he’s one of the top podcasters on the planet. He says this, he says “Throughout the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never be all green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either.
A business coach can help in so many ways. Conditions are never perfect. Someday is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it, eventually, just do it, and correct course along the way. Business coach clients, if you’re listening right now, I don’t care if you’re struggling with a dysfunctional mindset, one of these 11, or you have a big dream or big burden inside you, you almost feel like it’s a burden at this point. I’m going to say obligation. You feel like God’s given you a gift to achieve success. I know that you have what it takes to become successful. Get out to one of our Thrive Time in-person workshops. Go to ThriveTimeShow.com. It’s ThriveTimeShow.com to learn more, or listen to this radio show on a daily basis. Either way, take action.
Maybe you’re 20 something, maybe you’re 30 something, either way, this is your year to thrive. We’ll see you tomorrow. the business coach head quarters ThriveTimeShow.com.
For more information about the Thrive15 business coach program or to set an appointment with a business coach please call or fill out the form