Clay: All right Thrive Nation, welcome back into your daily business coach conversation where we teach you how to increase your compensation so I am glad you are back with our business coach show. What we are going to do on today’s show is we are going to unpack, it’s like we just moved. It’s kind of like when you move to a new house, Sam our executive producer is going to be on the show with me today. Sam, how are you doing my friend?
Sam: I am doing spectacular actually.
Clay: Sam, when you and Carina first got married. Do you remember when you guys moved in? Did you guys move into an apartment, did you move into a house, a business coach mansion? What was your move?
Sam: We moved into a loft. I had to carry everything up a spiral staircase. Imagine carrying a queen bed and the frame, and everything up a spiral cage staircase.
Clay: Was it a little bit stressful as you were walking up the spiral staircase?
Sam: It was interesting. We lived there for two years and it was a struggle.
Clay: You remember unpacking?
Sam: I do remember unpacking.
Clay: Was it slightly stressful?
Sam: I moved in a month before she did. I kind of got to throw everything around. It was messy for probably about a month.
Clay: If you are not going to cooperate with these questions, that’s fine. What we are going to do here is I’m going to unpack these questions today like I’m just moving into a brand new house, because many thrivers have discovered that you can text your questions in now Sam. People did not know you could text in your questions before. Now they discovered and the questions are just flying in my friend and fellow business coach.
Sam: That’s great. I sent a text in and I got a response right away.
Clay: Because we know your number. Here is the deal, the number is 9188516920, 9188516920. Be a hero for your business and text 9188516920. Any business questions that you have. Today we are going to unpack the questions, it’s slightly stressful because so many of them are flying in here, but we commit to answering all the questions, and away we go. We have a thriver in Miami. This is a thriver in Miami Florida who writes, “After implementing merit based pay, how do I deal with pushback from core employees that I cannot lose yet? I’m going to put the group interview system in place but do not have replacement for the person yet. Should I wait to change their pay, until the group interview is in orbit?”
Basically Sam, it sounds like the question is, I’m implementing a merit based pay system and I’m going to have to replace some people and I don’t really know, should I implement it now or later? Sam, I’m going to ask you a couple of intense questions. Are you ready my friend?
Sam: I am ready as I ever will be.
Clay: When possible, do you typically pump your gas at QuikTrip and Kum & Go? Where do you typically try to … If you have to take to the restroom, you’ve got to go to a convenience store, are you going to Kum & Go, QuikTrip or Shell? Typically from your experience?
Sam: There is a gas station that has no name, that’s the one I go to. Usually I pull up to the pump and they call out through the speaker and say, “No, use the other one.”
Clay: Are you being serious?
Sam: I tried that once, I’m never going back.
Clay: You actually go consistently to QuikTrip? Is that right?
Sam: Yes, to QuikTrip.
Clay: Sam is just not cooperating as I heavily paid him on these questions. Why does your wife feel comfortable going to the restroom at a QuikTrip? Why do you prefer it, why does Tulsa prefer QuikTrip over the other guys?
Sam: Not only do they guarantee their gasoline but they guarantee clean bathrooms. She knows that if she has to go to the bathroom, she can go to QuikTrip.
Clay: It’s a clean service right? I don’t think the other guys wake up every day, the other geniuses who have their convenient stores. I don’t think they wake up and go, “Here is the deal. Today what we are going to do is we are going to do whatever we can to make sure that our bathrooms are dirty. I’m talking about filthy. I’m talking about let’s make sure that our bathrooms are so nasty and so vile, so disgusting that people will talk about them in a joking way.” I don’t think they say, “You know what we are going to do? We are going to make our bathrooms the joke of Tulsa, so no one is going to go into them.” They just by default, most of QuikTrip’s competition has just had nasty facility. Have you noticed that? Just nasty stuff.
Sam: Definitely, I used to do some lawn care, and when you have to go, you have to go, you can’t really go into your customer’s lawn. You have to go to the nearest gas station. In China, they have squatty potties, and so you literally have to do that in these bathrooms.
Clay: The Chinese knowledge you don’t get in college is coming in hot. Here is the deal, the question is, how does QuikTrip get their employees to do the job? Another example would be UPS, they deliver … What can Brown do for you? These guys, UPS, how do they do it, how do Southwest Airlines? There is a book called The Service Profit Chain that every entrepreneur should own. It’s written by Harvard which is known for their business coach program. Harvard, it seems like it’s a lot of words, and it’s a big school. It’s written by the Harvard Business School, and it’s called the service profit chain. One of the attributed authors is Heskett, H-E-S-K-E-T-T.
In that book they lay it out but basically, if you do not have a merit based pay system, AKA, both positive and negative consequences, or it could be called a carrot and a stick, then your employees, your teammates will not do their jobs. They just won’t. Sam, you’ve worked with, in our businesses for a while. You’ve seen the highs, the lows, the middle. What is it, from your perspective, when you kind of look at people that don’t get their job done. What is going on in their mind of the person who is just mailing it in and not trying to do … What causes somebody to not want to do a good job? Why does someone become complacent, what happens?
Sam: I think that if they get complacent they kind of have this old mentality where they are like, this is how much I need to make during this week. That’s all I’m going to do to get there. They don’t happen to open their mind up to realize that if I do more, I can make more and I can succeed.
Clay: Napoleon Hill said, I’m paraphrasing, this is from Napoleon hill. Many of your listeners you listen every day, you should know this by now. My son’s name is Aubrey Napoleon Hill Clark. I named my son after the author. I thought so much of this author. He is the bestselling success author of all time. The best selling self help author of all time. I wanted to name my son after this man. Just to give you kind of an idea of the lineage of greatness. Think about this, Andrew Canergie, his personal apprentice, the guy that he taught was Napoleon Hill. Napoleon hill mentored Oral Roberts.
It’s an exciting kind of lineage there. Quasi business coach Napoleon Hill, he says, if you over-deliver, then eventually you’ll be overpaid. Basically, if you do more than you are supposed to do, eventually you’ll be overpaid. Sam, you’ve seen it, you’ve watched it. You’ve seen it’s the Elephant In the Room, you might have seen it with Epic Photography, you might have seen it with Make Your life Epic, or Thrive, or the different businesses that I’m involved in. From your perspective, just as … You produce this show, you go about your business, you get your job done. In my opinion, you are a solid A player. You’ve seen it, why do some people only do their job to avoid pain? What’s going on? Why do some people need pain to get their job done?
Sam: It simply comes down to being comfortable. They are literally comfortable where they are, and they are afraid of stepping out of that comfort zone and to risk losing that comfort and possibly making more.
Clay: To answer this business coach thriver’s question, I’m going to make sure you are hearing what I’m saying here. One, is immediately institute your merit based pay program and a business coach can help you do that. Immediately institute the consequences of doing both the good thing and the bad thing. Go ahead and institute the bonuses and the fines or the bonuses and the pay deductions, the bonuses and the suspensions. Whatever you need to do, go and implement your consequences of doing both the good and the bad thing.