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Business Coach : A Trusted Name

Business Coach : A Trusted Name
-I’m going to give you a scenario, and then this will be my last question for you here, about this concept that we can choose to have success.

If I, right now, am working at a fast food restaurant– and there’s nothing against it, I’m just trying to give a scenario– if I’m working at a fast food restaurant right now, and I perceive it to be a dead end job– because it’s not a corporate chain, it’s just a small, individual fast food restaurant, locally owned– and I don’t see any room for advancement, and I’ve got $50 to my name, how can I choose to be successful? Ask a business coach!

-Easy

JOSH: What are some things I can do?

-Easy, easy, easy.

-Here we go.

-OK. First of all, value yourself where you are. Not the circumstances that surround you, but value yourself where you are. This is great advice from a business coach I know.

JOSH: Value yourself where you are.

CLIFF: If you are a server, or a dishwasher, or whatever, you can be the king of that company. Because whatever your assignment is, that becomes your operating procedures, you own that, you can become the king or queen of that.

-OK, Whatever you’re doing.

CLIFF: Whatever you are doing.

-If I’m flipping– if I’m doing fries.

-And I guarantee you, your consistency, and your ability to really stand on top of that, will be recognized by others, and even your business coach. I know some of the neediest people I’ve hired, when working for me, were people that were wait servers in restaurants.

-So the idea is your owning it, then the boss will start to notice, hey, these floors are always clean.

CLIFF: Not only will the boss notice, but think about a restaurant. Guess who comes into a restaurant.

-Customers.

-Customers And many of those customers are business owners. Many of those customers are looking for people to hire. I mean when you have a chance to be your best, you have no idea who you are impressing.

-I’m going to just be devil’s advocate for a second. I work in businesses all the time where I see this. I’m hired as a business consultant to fly in– they hire the wizard who comes from out of town to come in and help him. And I come in and I see a young man in a meeting, texting, during the meeting. Being late, not working hard, not being engaged, he’s not valuing where he is. A business coach can help kick these habits. But I’ll pull him aside and say, hey man, what’s going on? He’s like, well, I don’t really try because, you know, this company’s not going anywhere. He’s not really hurt the company as much as he’s hurting himself.

-Right.

-OK, so step one is value where I’m at.

-Value where you are.

-Is there anything else I should do? Value where I’m at and then good things happen? Or is there something else I should do?

-Now, first of all you value where you are, then you put feet to that value in process. You work hard.

JOSH: You work hard.

-You work hard. And the next part of that is, develop a persona, a personality around you, that says, I am here. See me. Don’t become this entity that people see through you. You let your personality say, see me. I am here.

-I’m going to tell you a capstone story that, I think that encapsulates this. We have a young man who I actually sold DJ Connection to. And I tell this story all the time to the staff, they’re probably tired of hearing it. But he had a child before he was married, he’s in a financially tough situation, and he wants to apply for a job for us. We’re not hiring.

He gets an introduction from somebody, I tell him we’re not hiring. Somehow he grows back like bamboo. He shows up at the office. I’m like, who brought this guy in? And then he says, Josh, I think we should bring in this guy because he’s a good guy.

Well when he talks, he’s from Locust Grove, and I know that kind of rural Oklahoma, and he kind of talks like that, we was– that country bumpkin kind of that, we was doing this, and you was doing that, and he really has a hard time speaking articulately. And he’s never done sales before. He wants to do telesales, and he doesn’t– speaking on the phone in a non-country thing is not his strong suit, and he has no experience.

But he just keeps showing up. He shows up early. I get to the office– I like to be there, first one there– he shows up– homie is showing up before I get there, with a coffee. Hey just wanted to– so he figured the best way to get one-on-one time with me was to beat me to the office.

Now I had a home office. I lived in my home office. So it was a situation where it’s this pastor right here–

NARRATOR: Warning. These webclips, speech, or stunts performed either by professionals or under the supervision of professionals.

-I want to show this real– this is the house. So this is our house.

CLIFF: OK.

JOSH: And this right here, is the office. He literally is– this is our little land bridge. So I have to get up like 10 minutes before I come to work. I walk down this little bridge, he’s already parked his vehicle, and he’s waiting on me. And I’m like, how did you get in? And he says, oh, I got a key from such and such.

So he goes there early every single day, and then– I don’t think I’m even paying him. Honestly Cliff, I don’t think I was even paying him. I think he was showing up. And then one day, one of the guys is like, hey, when are you going to start paying him? And I’m like, I didn’t hire him. I don’t want to pay him for– They’re like, why don’t you give him a shot?

So this insanity continues. He’s bringing me coffees everyday. And then one day it happened– and he got the best of me. When it happened, I remember I was looking for somebody to do some marketing. And I said, I need someone to do all the mailers for the schools. I need someone to lick a stamp, put something on the stamp, and I’ll pay someone– I need to mail like 500– we mailed letters out to every school in Oklahoma trying to convince them that we should be– that we were the best entertainment source for them, for their school proms and dances.

I needed a stamp licker. And I’m like, who amongst us can lick stamps? And everyone’s like, I don’t want to do it. I’m like, you’re going to have to handwrite the address for every one of these, because people open it– they’re more likely to open if it’s handwritten.

-Right.

-I need a handwritten guy– I need a guy to write, Dear Miss Smith to 400 schools, and I need a guy who can lick a stamp. I’ll do it. What, you’ll do it? All right Jason. You are now in charge of the stamp licking and letter writing.

So he’s in charge– no one else will do it. Well then I said, I need a guy to do and– I’ll do it. No one else would do it. I’ll do it. Well then I said, I need a guy to be in charge of our sales team, year later. Let’s have Jason do it.

Then I had a software problem. I couldn’t grow the company because I didn’t know how to build software. Jason says, I’ll write it. Like, you write software? Oh yeah. He’s never written a software program in his life. He is a hack, in college, doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he volunteers. He says for 3% of your gross sales above $20,000 a week, I will write your software for you.

So I signed, just like you said, I’ll sell your StairMaster to the federal government. He says, I’ll make your software. Well then, that crazy guy, when I go to sell my business, when we’re doing a– we’re a multimillion dollar business, I go to sell it. I’ll buy it. How are you going to buy it? I’ve got money saved. Find out he gets some money from his aunt, next thing you know he’s in business. The point is, he created his own opportunities.

-Right.

-By showing up early, by being diligent, by bringing coffee, and it was hilarious. And I just remember when I put Jason in charge of sales, one young man said, how come he gets to be there? He such a suck up. All he does is bring coffee and shows up early. How come he gets to be the manager? And was like, because he sucks up, he brings coffee, you know, he shows up early. But really its because he followed leadership like a business coach.

So anyway, I just think that’s a neat thing, where it doesn’t matter where you grew up, or where I grew up, or where anybody grows up. Whether you have money, you don’t have money, whether you’re a banker, whether you’re in the military, whether you’re picking cotton, whether you’re on a bus up to St. Louis, whether you’re in Tulsa, whether you’re wherever in the world you are, success is a choice. Any business coach will tell you that!

-Yeah.

-I appreciate you coming in and letting me just mentally marinate and converse with you and pick your brain. I know it’s got to be painful from your perspective, but I appreciate you so much as a business man and business coach.

-Hey, it’s been good. It’s been good. It’s been good.

-Thank you sir.

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