Attributes of an A-Player | The Felicia Brown Show – A Knowledge Bomb

Show Notes

“Steve Jobs has a saying that A players hire A players; B players hire C players; and C players hire D players. It doesn’t take long to get to Z players. This trickle-down effect causes bozo explosions in companies.” – Guy Kawasaki (Venture capitalist and one of key Apple employees originally responsible for marketing their Macintosh computer line in 1984)

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.” – Tim Ferriss – American author, entrepreneur, and public speaker. He has written a number of self-help books on the “4-hour” theme, some of which have appeared on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestseller lists, starting with The 4-Hour Workweek.

Principle 1 – Look for people that are comfortable with having uncomfortable conversations.

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” – Steve Jobs – American entrepreneur and business magnate. He was the chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), and a co-founder of Apple Inc., chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar.

Principle 2 – “A” players look at every single task as part of their resume.

  1. Whatever you accept is what you can expect.

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Steve Jobs has a saying that A players hire A players; B players hire C players; and C players hire D players. It doesn’t take long to get to Z players. This trickle-down effect causes bozo explosions in companies.” – Guy Kawasaki – American marketing specialist, author, and Silicon Valley venture capitalist. He was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing their Macintosh computer line in 1984

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “We believe that it’s really important to come up with core values that you can commit to. And by commit, we mean that you’re willing to hire and fire based on them. If you’re willing to do that, then you’re well on your way to building a company culture that is in line with the brand you want to build.” – Tony Hsieh – American internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is the CEO of the online shoe and clothing company Zappos. Prior to joining Zappos, Hsieh co-founded the internet advertising network LinkExchange, which he sold to Microsoft in 1998 for $265 million.

Principle 3 –  Hire people that already live your values.

  1. Ample Example – Thrivetime Show Family Values
    1. https://www.dropbox.com/s/agke2ua6roo33dn/Family%20Values%20-%20Version%202%20-%20Thrive15.jpg?dl=0  

NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “One lesson I learned (at PayPal) is to fire people faster. That sounds awful, but I think if somebody is not working out, it’s best to part ways sooner rather than later. It’s a mistake to try too hard to make something work that really couldn’t work.” – Elon Musk – Business magnate and investor who holds South African, Canadian, and U.S. citizenship and is the founder, CEO, and lead designer of SpaceX; co-founder, CEO, and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; co-founder and CEO of Neuralink; and co-founder of PayPal.

Principle 4 – They need pass the “Would I hire them again test?”.

  1. Felicia is paranoid when it comes to getting her work done correctly and on time.
    1. NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” – Andy Grove – Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, author and a pioneer in the semiconductor industry. He escaped from Communist-controlled Hungary at the age of 20 and moved to the United States where he finished his
    2. Link to the Vatican – https://www.google.com/maps/place/00120+Vatican+City/@41.9021951,12.4505528,708m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x1325890a57d42d3d:0x94f9ab23a7eb0!8m2!3d41.902916!4d12.453389
  2. Felicia is consistent in her work life. She doesn’t randomly miss video or photo shoots. She is consistently early to where she needs to be and is proactive about planning. She never shows up without the correct equipment.
    1. NOTABLE QUOTABLE – “Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth.” – Proverbs 10:4
    2. Diligence means the consistent application of effort over time.
  3. Felicia exhibits Jack Welch’s 4 E’s of leadership every day:
    1. Energy
    2. Energize
    3. Execution
    4. Edge
  4. Felicia is confident in her skills – She never shies away from a particular type of photo or video shoot.  
    1. It is not about resources. It is about resourcefulness.  
    2. AMPLE EXAMPLE – Thrivetime Show Mic’s  – https://www.amazon.com/Electro-Voice-RE320-Variable-D-Instrument-Microphone/dp/B00KCN83VI
  5. Felicia is diligent – When she has work to do she can buckle down and focus on the tasks at hand to make sure she hits the deadline.
    1. Link to the Bloomberg Tower – http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/bloomberg-tower/917

 

Business Coach | Ask Clay & Z Anything

Audio Transcription

Grabbed the duck tape and mentally prepare yourself for yet another mind expanding knowledge bomb from America’s number one business coach, Clay Clark.

All right, thrive nation. Welcome back to the thrive time show on your radio. And this is a knowledge bomb addition where we’re talking about the attributes of an a player, the Felicia Brown show. Now, I don’t want this chip. This could get weird anytime that a married man. I’m, I’m a married man. And you’re a married man. True. We timed that. A married man takes any amount of time at all, uh, beyond 30 seconds to compliment another, a human who is a female, it could get weird. You know what I mean? If we’re gonna, if we’re gonna do a show and the entire show is focused on complimenting somebody of the opposite sex who’s not our wife, we could definitely get in trouble just for even having the, the coneys needed to, or lack of [inaudible] needed to produce a show where we are complimenting another man’s wife.

Keep it professional. So this just did this entire show could, uh, cause eric and I both slept on the couch for several years in a row, so we’re going to do is we’re gonna read some notable quotable would the dddd teaching moment of today’s show is we’re talking about the attributes of an, a player. We’re talking about the attributes of an, a player and specifically in our office, I feel like one of the people in our office who most personifies these attributes is somebody by the name of Felicia Brown and at the thrive time show we have an employee of the month and we’d like to honor that employee of the month by, uh, giving them gift cards and given them some books, celebrating them publicly, special parking, these kinds of special parking spot. But also we like to take time to actually hop on the podcast and to brag on this person, Felicia Brown publicly.

But whenever it’s a female, we must tread lightly, my friend. Like I said, keep it fresh. Keep it. So check. We’re going to start off by reading the notable quotables about what makes an a player here, my friend. Okay. So we’ll go ahead and start with a notable quotable. Number one, a person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have one timothy Ferriss, Tim Ferriss, he’s the best selling author. He’s an entrepreneur. His book is called the four hour work week. If you’ve yet to read that book, it’s done very, very well. He’s also an early stage investor in companies that you know about facebook, Uber. I’m Tim Ferriss book one of the top podcasters on the planet. And again, he says, a person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.

And I really do believe that Felicia brown is willing to have uncomfortable conversations. Um, a lot of times throughout the years that she’s worked with us now going on, I believe four years, anatomy because she used to work for one of the companies that I had back in the day. She used to work with us at epic photography. And then when I sold the company, she was not, uh, she did not want to go the direction of the new ownership. And so she did what she was supposed to do, which is basically worked there for six months. I made an agreement with the people I sold the company to that I would not try to hire any of their people for six months. And then after that, anybody who wanted to come back and work with me or for me again, I could do that. And so Felicia brown went with the new ownership and then she waited at her time and yet six months later she reached back out. And I think that had to be an uncomfortable. Absolutely tell the new ownership, hey, I’m not really a fan of where you’re going and I want to go back and work for Clay Clark again.

Yeah, absolutely. And another thing that I noticed noticed that felice is really good at is when you’re shooting video or photo with a client, a lot of times the business owners that we work with, they’re not professional models, they’re not paid actors. They don’t know how to be on the camera necessarily in Felicia’s really good at having those kinds of uncomfortable conversations and coaching these people up and making sure they look really good on the photos and videos,

so if you’re out there looking for an a player, one of the things you want to look for is you want to look for a person that is comfortable with having uncomfortable conversations. I want to put that on the show notes as principle number one. You want to look for people that are comfortable with having uncomfortable conversations. They’re going to say what needs to be said, even though they probably don’t want to say it. It can be difficult to say it, but again, you want to look for somebody who is comfortable with having uncomfortable conversations. A chaplain’s move onto a notable quotable. Number two from a one Mr Steven jobs.

Mr Steven jobs has to say, some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected

and I think Felicia is used to an environment where excellence is expected and she actually likes that. I think she enjoys working with us as a result of the excellence that we demand. She does unbelievable headshots, unbelievable videography. Just phenomenal, phenomenal quality. She really does care. A lot of times when she sends us over the completed work, it’s after hours because I know she’s working on it at home or she’ll come into the office late because she wants to produce. Excellent, and I think that’s an attribute you’re going to find with all a players, is they look at every single task as part of their resume, did look at every single task as part of their forever resume. As an example, each and every time we produced this radio show I or this podcast, I personally edit every show. Now I could delegate that to somebody else, but the reason why I personally produce every single podcast is because I want to make sure that anything out there with my name on it is excellent.

Your baby it is and there. There’s also a time and place where you have to delegate to certain people and that’s what you have to do, but you want to make sure that anybody out there who’s representing your name, uh, is doing it with excellence and I’ve had photographers, many photographers, hundreds, literally hundreds of photographers and videographers working with us or for us over the years who have just sent me really terrible video projects and photography projects and they don’t even care. Didn’t even those sit over, I would say 95 percent of the videographers and photographers that I’ve hired over the years. They will send you over photos and they’ll say, here they are the finished edits and you can look at the file and you can see they never actually edited the photos and they don’t even. They don’t even care. Like I just take them.

So good. No, you’ve seen this bad because when you started working with us, I was just a completing the transaction to sell epic photography. And there are many people that just don’t give a crap. They’re going to. Most people only perform to your minimum standards. Absolutely. So whatever you demand at a minimum level, most whatever you except is what you can expect whenever you accept is what you can expect. And most people simply deliver the minimum expectation. If you own a company, a nonprofit of some kind, and you demand that your team gathers to objective reviews per week from your client’s objective, google reviews or facebook reviews, that’s typically all you’re going to get. Whatever you accept is what you can expect. And felicia always over delivers. She always goes to the next level. She always does more than we asked, which is why I look to promote her. Oh, you pay her more to give her raises when possible. She is a great American chap. Let’s move onto the next notable quotable.

Steve Jobs has a saying that a players hire a players. B players hire c players and c players, higher d players. It doesn’t take long to get to z players. This trickle down effect causes Bozo explosions in companies. Guy Kawasaki,

let me kind of tee that up again. Guy Kawasaki, um, he’s going to be on our show here. So yes, we’re super excited to interview. Guy Kawasaki, no, not Robert Kiyosaki stopped doing that. Don’t do it. Guy Kawasaki and Robert Kawasaki are different Bird Guy Kawasaki and Robert Kiyosaki are different people there. They’re not the same person. So yes, their names rhyme, but that’s not the field that this does not, not the deal. So Guy Kawasaki is the marketing specialist, these silicone valley venture capitalist. He’s one of the. The people responsible for marketing, the macintosh. He was. He worked closely with Steve Jobs. Steve Wozniak. He worked for apple once. When Steve left the company, he moved on and then when Steve came back, he came back one of the few people to work with Steve Jobs over a long period of time. A Guy Kawasaki read, read the notable quotable one more time.

He says, Steve Jobs has a saying that a players hire a players, b players hire c players and c players hired d players. It doesn’t take long to get to z players. This trickle down effect causes Bozo explosions in companies.

So what happens a lot of times is that companies will hire a, B and c players and those people start referring their friends and they started accepting the minimum standards. I mean, Felicia brown is so good that it was probably a while back. I mean, this has happened multiple times throughout her career working with me. But she’ll say to me, hey, you know, when we, when she worked at epic photography, she’ll say, hey, just so you know, at this wedding I went to this week, I was the lead photographer and my assistant photographer, because the bride and groom hired two photographers. Uh, we were told to be there, let’s say at 5:00 to get there, to take photos for the ceremony. And uh, I got there at 4:30 and that person got there at five, 10, right? Ten minutes after what we told the customer, the customer did not know.

They never complained because they weren’t there yet either. The bride never knew the groom never knew. The mother of the bride never knew. But I did. And I wanted you to know that the person who was the second photographer showed up late and she’ll tell me those kinds of things consistently and because she is an a player, she does not want to work around B and c players and she, but she’s again, comfortable with having an uncomfortable conversation. She is an a player and because she is an a player, she points out whenever a c player is present yet.

And she also, uh, whenever I first started working with clay, she taught me some photo and video, uh, when I was learning those skills and you could tell just from the way that she does her job and her craft and then teaches people and trains people that she is an a player. And so that’s awesome that you don’t have to worry about her training people in ways that aren’t best practice. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. If you’re out there right now, you’re saying, what am I looking for from an a player? Principle one, you want to look for somebody who’s comfortable with having uncomfortable conversations. Principle two, you want to look for a person who looks at every single task that they do as a part of their resume chapels. Move onto the next notable quotable.

Okay, we’ve got Tony Shay with Zappos. He says,

by the way, Tony Shay hasn’t completely rejected me yet. Oh, I. I’ve asked him to be on the. The thrive time show reached out to his team multiple times. Most Times I get an immediate rejection. I’ve now moved up to the next level and next level, so very strong possibility. We may have Tony Shay, the former CEO of the dbt current CEO of Zappos. Zappos was a famously sold to Amazon, but then Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, thought that Zappos does such a great job. He wanted to let him do it to continue operating as they are. So Tony Shay is the CEO of Zappos, the famous online shoe company. He says, what

we believe it’s really important to come up with core values that you can commit to, and by committed we mean that you’re willing to hire and fire based on them. If you’re willing to do that, then you’re well on your way to building a company culture that is in line with the brand you want to build

and for sake of time I don’t have time on today’s show to to go into each and every a portion of the values we have at the thrive time show and about chuck. We will put a link to it on the show notes and so the listeners out there can can find it, but at the thrive time show, we have our principles listed out on a diagram and the shape of a mountain and one of the core principles that I have is you need to over deliver. You need to exceed the expectations of each and every person that you encounter. Another principle is you must appreciate humor. You must get humor. You must appreciate things that are funny and Felicia is not going to sit there and give you jokes, but she appreciates the atmosphere. She gets the atmosphere. She’s not sarcastic about the work environment.

She’s all in. She’s committed and there’s so many of the. The thrive time show values that she personifies on a daily basis that I think if you look at the values we have at the thrive time show, you would absolutely see that she is a great fit for our culture. So again, principle number three, if you’re. If you’re. If you’re scoring at home, if you’re taking notes here, principle number three is you want to hire people who already live your values. You want to hire people that already live your values. It’s very hard to hire people that don’t live your values and then try to train them to all of a sudden changed their entire life to become what they’re not. It’s easier to hire people that already live those values and to help them improve upon them or to become the best version of themselves possible, but it is so hard to hire people that don’t share your values or who are operating with an into a almost an antagonistic worldview and value system. So as an example, if you hire somebody who’s chronically late, then you as a company have a culture of being on time, or at least that’s what you want to have as as a culture where people show up on time. It’s really hard chef to teach people how to be on time if they are perpetually late already, right?

It’s almost impossible. And so that’s why you don’t want to hire those people in the first place, but you want to do

hire somebody who already personifies the principles that you live by, somebody who already has the values and we already who already operates by the values that you as a company have. Hire for character, train for skill, hire for character, train for skill. You are correct. Now we’re moving onto our next notable quotable. Come in hot from UCC. Yup.

I’ll be coming in from one I’ve never heard of this guy. His name is a Elon Musk. Now Elon Musk, Elon musk, Elon musk. He

is a guy right now who is a kind of a, uh, embattled. Um, he’s the guy who is in the news for a lot of the wrong reasons right now. Um, he was on the Joe Rogan show where he was smoking pot on the Joe Rogan show. It’s true. Um, he also was on a CBS news here, um, two days before we recorded today’s show, kind of taking a swipe at the Securities and Exchange Commission. He also was forced to recently resigned as the CEO of a, of Tesla had moved down here. I guess he’s still the CEO, but it can’t be the chairman because they say he violated sec rules. Uh, um, he’s also a guy who’s been divorced multiple times. And so you could immediately say, no matter what, Elon Musk says, I don’t believe it. I don’t like it. I don’t, I’m not a big fan of his. You couldn’t say that.

What I want you to do is look at it because who’s perfect? I know that I’m not, I know that I’m not perfect, but what I can say is Elan Musk, you can’t take it away from him. He’s the guy who has a net worth of 19 point 8 billion as listed by Forbes as of August of 2018. I want to put that on the show notes. As of August of 2018, Elan Musk has a net worth of 19 point $8,000,000,000. He’s also the co founder of paypal and you can’t take that away from him. He’s also the main product architect and the co founder of a tesla. Yes, he did take over the company from the founder, but a lot of people said that the company was floundering around. So it was Kinda like he refounded the company. Okay. So maybe he’s just a guy who took over tesla and you don’t like the branding of saying he’s the cofounder.

That’s fine. He’s also the lead designer behind space x. um, he’s, I mean, so a space x, you said. Okay. I go, okay. I know that company. Tesla. I know that company. Paypal. I know that company. What about solar city now? The world’s largest solar panel company. So Elon Musk, whether you like him or not, the guy has gone through a lot. He’s done a lot and so his next notable quotable, I don’t want it to be discounted simply because he’s going through a challenge or he might’ve made a poor decision or decision. Maybe it’ll come out later that he made a good decision and people just disagree with how he went about doing it, but please read the notable quotable from Elan Musk. He says, one lesson I learned at paypal is to fire people faster. That sounds awful, but I think if somebody is not working out, it’s best to part ways sooner rather than later.

It’s a mistake to try too hard to make something work that really couldn’t work. Elon Musk, think about that for a second. So felicia brown is somebody that I want to hire faster. Let me let, let me, let me explain. This principle is a principle number four, principal, before she passes the, would you hire her again? Test. Oh, she passes the. Would you hire her again? Test. That’s powerful. Somebody out there just experienced a knowledge bomb because what happened is you went out there and hired somebody. Oh yes, you did. In this just in. You would not hire them again and so what you’ve done is you begin to justify keeping them employed because of the deeds they’ve done in the past. So in the past they had a six month window where they were awesome when you first hired the, remember that it was new people.

Our people are addicted to New People, have new jobs, new girlfriend’s new cars. You hired this person and they were so good that first week, week two, they were so good. That sparkling, super clean resume the first three weeks to four weeks, but then about week five they started talking back to you being sarcastic to you. I’m not respecting you get a little comfortable showing up Kinda late being casual with the way they were disrespecting your organizational chart, but she does passed a gi. Does pass the. Would you hire them again? Test. I mean Felicia, somebody. We would hire her again because she is so good. And so chuck, what I had you do as we were preparing today’s show notes was to make a list because you work with her every day. Yeah. To make a list of what we like most about Felicia and why she is such a good member of the thrive time show. And so now without any further ado, Mr Eric, chop shall read why we think Felicia is such a great member of the team. Well, first of all, I snuck it in. Try it again. Let me try again. Why we think Felicia Brown is such a great member of the team.

For one thing, Felicia is paranoid when it comes to getting her work done correctly and on time. True. And so, uh, the founder of Intel, Andy Grove, he says, success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure, only the paranoid survive. And it’s great to have a team member. As a business coach, our goal, our sole goal is to make sure that our clients can get to their goals. We want them to create time and financial freedom.

I want to, I want to bring this up real quick because the notable quotable you chose is powerful. If you know the story of Andy Grove. Andy Grove A, grew up in Hungary. Uh, he’s so, he’s, you know, a guy who grew up under communism over over a communist. He grew up raised. Imagine what it’d be like to be raised in a communist country. Yeah. People ask him, well, how did you, how did you escape? I mean, first off, how do you escape? A lot of people can’t get out of North Korea. You just stuck, right? I mean, seriously comment. This is, this is one deep thought for you. Communist countries build walls to keep people in capitalists build walls to keep people out.

You could say the same about their armies, I believe as well.

I want to throw out an idea for somebody out there who’s really offended about a wall idea. I want you to, I want you to. I’m going to talk with a nice Joel osteen tone here. I want you to think about this for a second. Do you lock your doors at night? Do you? Do you live in an inner city area? If you live in New York City right now, if you live in San Diego, if you live in La, I asked you the question and don’t. Don’t, don’t jump to the next. Just go. Let’s go through this process. We’re going through logic here. Do you lock your doors at night? I asked you the question because why do you lock your doors at night? Why would. Why would you do? I’m asking you why. Why would you lock your doors at night to keep an intruder out?

Okay, fine. Right? Okay. Next question. Do you lock the doors? Not. Yes you do. Okay. Do you lock your car at night? Yes. Well why? Because I don’t want to have it stolen. Okay, great. So you lock your car doors. Next question. Do you have a door? Well, obviously, because I just said I locked it. Do you have it or why don’t you have a house without a door? Ah. To keep out. Exactly. Capitalists. Capitalists build walls to keep people out. Communists build walls to keep people in thinking about that. Should you, should you? Is it a, is it wrong to even build a wall that’s just a maybe an extra little bonus teaching moment for you out there? Just a little bonus. Maybe you disagree. That’s okay, but just a thought. Again, this is a guy, Andy Grove, who escaped a communist country where they build walls to keep you in.

He escaped. He also started intel, Intel, you know, they the the, the chip company. Now imagine you had an assembly line that’s making thousands upon thousands of microchips. You’re making thousands upon thousands, thousands of microchips, millions of microchips. Now, what if the template was wrong? Chip, you’ve just made a really lot of wrong shifts. So when asked how he became so successful, he said, success breeds complacency and complacency. Complacency breeds failure. He says, only the paranoid survive, and Felicia is paranoid about doing a good job. She always wants to make sure that her last video shoot is her best video shoot. She goes, wants to make sure that her last video shoot is her best video shoot. Shoot a check. Move onto our next attribute about Felicia that you wrote down about why she is such a great member of the team. So this one, it kind of ties into what we were just talking about and Felicia is super consistent in her work and, and I think that comes from the paranoia that she knows he’s got to.

He wants to get these rights, she wants to get better. So she’s never randomly missing video shoots or photo shoots. Um, she, she always shows up with the right equipment. Let me tell you this, if you want, you want to know, you want to know if somebody is an a player, they’re consistent. If you’re out there and you run a church, you run an organization, you run a business, run a nonprofit, and you’ve got somebody that can’t consistently show up for training. They can’t consistently show up for the team meeting that somebody who’s passively aggressively attacking the foundation of your company. The successful organization is built upon consistency. God blesses the hands of the diligence and if you want to look up proverbs ten four, chuck put this on the show notes. Proverbs 10, four reads, Lazy Hands Make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth, lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth and you might say, well, what does diligence means?

What does the word diligence means? Diligence means the consistent application of effort. We’ll put that on the shownotes. Diligence means the consistent application of effort, consistency, consistency, unnerves. Most people, it’s unbelievable, and I’ll let chuck talk about this in just a second, but running a videography and photography company, and when I ran epic photos, we won awards every year except for one for winning the best photography for the not.com, [inaudible] dot com, sort of like the better business bureau of weddings, weddings, and these guys every year gave us awards as being the best photographer. We won the awards for being the best photographer every year except for one. And why did we win? Because we consistently delivered. We always brought the best each and every day. Well, how did we do it? I had a thing called merit based pay. Now the merit based pay was where if you were late, I paid you less and if you were on time, I paid you more. I don’t know if they still do that, but I can tell you this. That’s how we built the company. Eric, how many times did you go out to a video shoot where the other person was late?

Uh, it would happen randomly, but whenever I was on and learning everything, the team was pretty solid. So we were there. They were on the merit based pay system about the people that were. And I’m not asking you to, but think about the people that didn’t show up on time. Were they always the ones who screwed us in the fire? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. None of them are with the team anymore, if that says anything, but yeah, Felicia brown is still the rock holding steady. So no character attribute. Number three, have felicia. What makes her so great chip? Well, I use it. I like to talk about this. A lot of clients, when they’re looking at hiring or evaluating their team, and we talk about Jack Welch, the famous CEO of Ge who grew the company by 4,000 percent. He’s got his forte, ease of leadership, and, and Felicia exhibits these everyday. Okay, so number one is energy. She brings energy. Good Energy said no, we’re an energy, not low energy, positive energy. She brings it everyday. People that come to your office and Yon, get Outta here.

Listen, listen to this out there. People who come to your meetings and yon will eventually spawn a loser culture. People that come to your office and yon will eventually spawn a loser culture when the boss is talking and you’ve got people that are having side comments. People that are not engaged, sleeping, who there are sleeping. I’m just telling you, when people are yawning in your meetings, eventually it will absolutely lead to the destruction of your company. Um, and I say spawn to think about like a frog or a fish. They’re going to release these eggs that eventually produced thousands of fish or frogs or whatever. And I’m just telling you, yawning in an office is just sign that you are, are, you are spawning a, a terrible culture that’s about ready to begin.

No. Yani in an office is way better than yawning. I don’t know if you’re familiar with his music. Yani. Motivational, epic, a classical composer. Oh yeah. Nice. Nice tie in a move onto our next attribute. And Felicia Brown, so energized. Right? So she brings her energy. But I noticed that, you know, when we found people shadowing or back with epic photography, if somebody was at a wedding and they were bringing low energy, she would energize them. She wouldn’t only bring her energy, she would bring them up as well. And that’s a super important attribute. Two more real quick ones. Execution. Obviously she does her job and she does. It usually means you just get it done, get your job done. Okay. Done. And Edge is what clay was talking about earlier, is the ability to make those tough calls, to have those tough conversations, to realize that as, as we are on one team, we’re on the same bus and if you’re going to screw up that bus ride, we’re going to throw you off the bus and run you over the edge.

This is, this was powerful. This was powerful. She also has a personal edge. Um, she’s somebody who is aware of what she’s good at and what she needs to get better at, which leads us into the next attribute of Felicia Brown that we appreciate so much here at the thrive time show family.

Felicia is very confident in her skills. We can throw some crazy ideas at her for her clients for photo shoots, video shoots, drone shoots, whatever that is. And she never shies away, never complained. He just will show up earlier to figure out whatever skills she needs to develop to get it done. And so she is just super confident and super good at what she does.

As an example though, of what we’re talking about here, just one more example for you, Felicia. A lot of times we’ll have a shoot coming up and she’s not comfortable yet in that particular skill. She doesn’t maybe know how to do that kind of lighting yet or that kind of Lens, that kind of setting, so what she’ll do is she will maniacally research how to get better. I’m sure watching videos on youtube, maybe having a Lynda.com account maybe, but she is aware of her skills. This is so powerful. There’s people out there there that say, I don’t know how to do photoshop. Well, freaking subscribing. Teach yourself. Youtube has it all unbelievable. I don’t know how to use quickbooks well frick and be resourceful, unbelievable. Be Resourceful every day. Be Resourceful. You got to be resource. You’ve got to say it like that, but just it’s so often that people say, well, I don’t know how to do.

Excel will freaking teach yourself. Your boss does not need to be the person who knows how the printer works. Teach yourself, be resourceful. It’s not about resources. It’s about resourcefulness and sure, I’m just telling you, Felicia is so good at being resourceful. It’s not about resources, it’s about resourcefulness and are so many people that just for whatever reason, can’t seem to figure that out. It’s unbelievable if you like. Okay, let’s, let’s talk about this. This, this podcast. Okay. I’m not tomorrow, but soon. We will be switching over our microphones to these slate microphones. Now Chubb, what kind of micro we use in here? Do you know the brand of this? Can you see it here as it and so it’s a electro sonic? I believe so, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That’s it. It’s an electro sonic microphone. Do you see that? Does it say that brand name somewhere on that microphone.

Do you see the brand? I feel like it’s. I feel like the model number is written across the top. So the model here. Hold on. What? Hold on, keep talking. So we use the electro sonic microphones. Well why do we use these mics? Because they were well-reviewed and we heard from numerous sources that they were a good mic to do. Podcasts, electro voice, electrical. There are already 3:20 are e, three slash 20 electro voice. We’ll put a link it on the show notes so we record the show with those mics. Now why do we use those bikes? Because we researched who’s weak myself. I researched them and we marshal research them. How do we ever recorded a top 10 podcast before? No, no, we had. So we decided to research them. We got aggressive about it. We bought these microphones. I think I own 12 of these microphones right now.

I think the, the microphones, I think if you can buy them on Amazon right now, chat for maybe $300 to 99. So I invested after tax is about $4,000 in those microphones. Okay. So now soon I’m going to be switching over to the slate microphones. Now I have ordered one. They’re back ordered right now, but the slate microphones are the same microphones used in a lot of the elite recording studios in the world. Um, the slate microphones are absolutely an incredible product and they’re significantly more expensive and because they’re at a next level now, the slate microphone, it blows my mind, but it’s a hybrid system that utilizes distinct, called the extremely transparent condenser mic. It’s a, what happens is basically this, this, these, these signal comes in to the mic and then the microphone, um, can be adjusted real time to mimic almost any other kind of mic you can buy within about a one percent accuracy, so any more.

So instead of having, um, you know, um, a specific condenser microphone that records a certain way or a certain, like we can buy one mic and then adjusts. So the entire system will ultimately wind up having a system that will sound at the quality of the Oprah masterclass. And if you’re out there and you love podcasts, and I do, and you ever get a chance to listen to the Oprah podcast, it’s called the masterclass. The brightness and the richness of that audio is awesome, which is why soon we’ll be upgrading to that microphone. Well, how come you haven’t upgraded to it yet? Because I’m learning that microphone technology and I reached out to my good friend, one of our clients, Colton Dixon, the uh, recording artists, Colton Dixon, and I asked him what kind of microphones are you recording on? He mentioned these slate microphone and that is how we have discovered the slate microphone and why we’re going to be ultimately upgrading to that kind of microphone. I want to upgrade to it until I have mastered it. I’m not going to try to go out there and do it until I’ve mastered it. And, and, and, and, uh, Felicia does such a good job of making sure that she masters something before she goes out there. She doesn’t practice on customers. Now the final attributes, number four and five, give it to us.

So number five here is Felicia is very diligent. Okay? If she’s not out on a shoot, you can guarantee that she’s going to be standing right there at her desk, editing videos, editing photos, organizing them on dropbox where they need to be checking out or to do lists, making sure that deadlines are going to be hit. She’s never hanging around at the coffee pot or at the water cooler. They’re trying to talk and chill. She is very diligent. She wants to get her work done so she can go home and enjoy her family. Um, and so the Felicia is super, super diligent. It’s great. Have a team member like that and

everybody out there who’s curious. Uh, I do not have a water cooler at the thrive offices I did because I throw it away. I guess I famously broke it through in the dumpster and I’ll tell you why I did that. Um, we have a bar area at the thrive time show offices where we have coffee and I wanted everybody to always have to go to that area to get food and to get beverages. I always want people to have to go to the bar to get food and beverages and chip. Can you a guess as to why I wanted everyone to go to one central point to grab beverages and food? Well, so you can keep an eye on everything and, and that’s what I would guess. It forces conversations. Okay. So we just hired Leslie. Yep. The incredible editor who used to be a teacher in Japan.

Yep. Oh yeah. No, it’s easy to not meet her because she works in a different part of the building. Right when she comes to get her lunch and she runs into somebody else getting her lunch. I got that idea from Bloomberg when I went to Bloomberg in New York and toured it. They have all of the lunch, uh, an area that the food and beverage areas all in one place. So everyone throughout the entire massive building in downtown New York City in Manhattan who works at the Bloomberg building, put a link to, on the show notes by the way, Bloomberg, the Bloomberg building. They all have to congregate in one place which forces conversations like, Hey, what’s your name again? Or who are you? Or what do you do? Or where are you from? And I want everybody to meet each other and I want to have a happy office environment and a half.

He office environment cannot happen unless we have happy people. You can have all the, you can have the best office build out, you can have the best equipment, you had, the best microphones, the best a decor. You get the best overhead music, but if you don’t have great people, it doesn’t work. In fact, I would argue that your most important assets as a business owner, go out the door every day. Think about that. The most important assets that you have as a business owner. Go out the door every day and you hope that they come back. That’s why people should never leave your office upset. And Felicia brown, if I’ve ever failed to, uh, lead you the right way, I apologize. Um, as a leader, it’s tough because you always want to hold yourself to the next standard. You always want to be the best boss possible. I think I may be one of the, uh, uh, maybe a b plus, b minus should maybe you could do a podcast about what it’s like to work for a c minus boss. But Felicia, I appreciate you. Uh, I hopefully that you feel appreciated and if you’re out there wanting to grow a successful company, you’re going to need an army of great people like Felicia Brown, thrive nation. Those are the attributes of an a player, Felicia Brown. We appreciate you. Welcome to the employee of the month club. And now with any further ado, chapter three, two, one. Boom.

Feedback

Let us know what's going on.

Have a Business Question?

Ask our mentors anything.