Dr. Zoellner & Clay Clark Teach How to Effectively Manage a Large Team of Employees In a World Where 85% of Job Applicants Lie On Their Resumes (Inc. Magazine) & 75% of Employees Steal from the Workplace (U.S. Chamber)

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

You have questions? America’s number one business coach has answers. It’s your broda from Minnesota. Here’s another edition of Ask Clay Anything on the Thrive Time Business Coach Radio Show.

Thrive Nation on today’s show, unfortunately, we are going to answer a question that I get asked by at least 75 % of my clients. That is right. I get asked this question by at least 75 % of my clients. you might ask? Well it’s because the US Chamber of Commerce teamed up with CBS News to do some in -depth research and they found that 75 % they found that 75 % of American employees admit to stealing from the workplace and in fact most do so repeatedly. Again in fact most do so repeatedly.

So what do you do when you catch your employees stealing from you? Today’s guest, today’s question comes from a home builder who writes, what would you do if you were to find out your employee has been stealing money from you by using the company credit card for personal expenses? How would you respond and react? Well, let me tell you how I want to respond. I would like to attack them personally. I would like to threaten them.

I would like to go off. However, the legal system as well as the world we live in allows people to go on Glassdoor and write whatever they perceive to be true and people accept it to be true. The world allows people to go onto Facebook and write what they believe to be true or perceive to be true or are lying about and then most people are not business owners because again in our in our American population think about this there are 330 million Americans and what percentage of Americans actually start a business it’s less than 10 % according to the Small Business Administration so again Less than 10 % of the people on Facebook, on Glassdoor, are employers, and therefore when they read the comments or the reviews or the way you handled it, they will think, what’s your problem? You need to calm down. But when your life, when your very livelihood, when your golden goose, when your money tree is being attacked, I get it.

I understand how scary it can be when you watch somebody who you’ve trusted steal money from you. So I will list off for you, Mr. Listener, Mr. Home Builder, several of the bad things that have happened to me. Back in the day, I interviewed somebody to work for me. They did a good job during the interview and they did a good job shadowing me. And then systemically, when I ran djconnection . com, they would actually steal customers.

So the phone would ring and they would say, thank you for calling DJ Connection, how can I help you? And the customer would say, are you guys available on June 6th? And they would say, no, we’re not, but I have a great recommendation for you. And they would recommend themselves and they would do that every third to fourth week. And that was also the weekends that they were requesting off. And so they were using my marketing system, my marketing machine to create leads for themselves.

Um, I have had family members steal an excess of $25 ,000 of cash from me, family members in one month before I caught them one month. I’ve had family members take money from me and buy a truck using company money without asking a large fee. I have had family members date employees of mine while being married.

Think about that. Think about that.

What would it be like to be approached? Imagine you’re a female working in a company and you’re approached by a family member of the owner to have a relationship and you are what are you going to do? I’ve had that happen. I have had, I have had a situations where I have worked with churches and I have seen a church. I’ve discovered that a church had almost seven to $8 ,000 a month they couldn’t account for. And when we looked into it, we found out that the daughter of the pastor was using the church’s credit card to finance a swagalicious lifestyle to the tune of over $100 ,000 a year.

Think about that. I have had so many situations where crazy stuff has happened. So what I want to help you do is I want to help you run into a situation where this never happens again. So step one, and I hope you’re taking notes because I am, step one, you want to schedule a weekly accounting meeting. You want to schedule a weekly accounting meeting where you’re going to look at the numbers and you’re going to verify that what was purchased was actually purchased for the company. You have to schedule a weekly accounting meeting to verify purchases.

You have to do that. You cannot abdicate. You have to delegate. So you need to schedule a weekly meeting to look at the purchases. I personally have chosen for my personal hell to occur on Fridays. So on Fridays, that’s when I discover people taking my cards and using and abusing them.

And this happens a lot because 75 % of employees what? Steal from the workplace and most do so repeatedly according to the U . S. Chamber of Commerce and CBS News. Now according to my personal experience, I think the number is higher.

But step one, you want to schedule a weekly meeting to verify purchases. Okay? Every week. It’s the same time every week. Now step two, step two is you want to document Issues because the way the world works is again what percentage of people actually start a company 9 % rights only 9 % of our population will ever will ever start a company now according to Forbes 9 out of 10 businesses will fail so if we’re math wizards we would determine that less than 1 % of people actually ever start a successful company. So therefore, if you were to take this into court of any kind at all, the vast majority of people who are jurors, your peers, those people would think that Business owners are bad and employees are good because the vast majority of people are not business owners.

So step one, you want to schedule a weekly accounting meeting to verify purchases. Step two, you want to document all of the issues. Document the issues. Step three, install keystroke recorders. A keystroke recorder is a program that allows you to actually track what people are typing into the computer during the day because if you do not do this in the digital age, people will be going online and applying for jobs on your dime. They’re going to do it.

So you have to install a keystroke recorder. I know I’m supposed to do it. but have you done it? The question I have is, are you doing it? Well, I want to do it. Have you actually gone to ActiveTrack .

com and installed keystroke recorders for your employees? The next step, step four, you want to install call recording. I recommend that you use ClarityVoice . com. Clay, it sounds like you’re paranoid all the time. I want to trust my employees.

You can’t trust your employees. Why? Because 75 % of people steal from the workplace. So again, we install the keystroke recorders from ActiveTrack . com. Step four, we install the call recording from ClarityVoice .

com. Step five, install GPS systems. Install GPS systems. on company vehicles. Why would you do that? Because you want to verify that your employees are actually going to the job site because usually they’re not.

When they say they’re going to Lowe’s to pick up supplies, they’re usually going to anywhere but Lowe’s. Step six, you want to install cameras. You want to install cameras. I recommend the company called Nest. I recommend the company called Nest Now, there are other companies that have affordable camera solutions, but I recommend using Nest. It’s nest .

com. Now, you might say, well, Clay, this guy stole money from me, and what do I do? How do I handle it? Well, I’m trying to help you treat the root of the issue. Deal with the root, not the fruit.

The root of the issue is that we probably don’t have, most businesses don’t have the paranoia required to be successful sustainably, according to the founder of Intel.

According to the founder of Intel think about this for a second only the paranoid survive only the paranoid Survived now who said that who said that take a guess. of dell and his name was andy grove only the paranoid survive so we have to make sure that we are sufficiently paranoid if we do not have these systems in place we will lose time and time again and we will always find ourselves saying what do i do How do I deal with this? What do I say? I’m trying to help you fix this problem forever. So step one, schedule a weekly accounting meeting to verify purchases. Step two, document issues.

Step three, install keystroke recorders. I recommend ActiveTrack . com. Step four, install call recording. Step five, install GPS systems or on company vehicles. And step six, install cameras.

Again, step one, schedule a weekly accounting meeting to verify purchases. Step two, document the issues. Step three, install keystroke recorders. Step four, install call recording. Step five, install GPS systems on company vehicles. Step six, install cameras.

Now step seven, or kind of our bonus step, is this person obviously is stealing money from you and doesn’t have a problem with it. So we need to make sure we tread lightly. We want to gather all of the information, gather proof that the person is in fact using your card for personal purchases and then document the issues and then pick a date in the calendar when it is most convenient for you. Pick a date. Is it November 7th, November 8th, January 5th? Choose a date in your calendar that’s most convenient for you because step seven is we must conduct a weekly group interview.

Conduct a weekly group interview. group interview because he who has the most options wins. So document all the issues and in your mind determine when you’re going to fire this person. And then when you have the most options, when you have a backup, when you have, I mean, it might cost you less to have someone steal from you every week than it would to replace them right now. Think about that.

And then choosing your mind when you’re going to fire them. And through the process of the group interview, you will find great candidates. There are great people out there. We have great people that I work with on a daily basis. Great people like Sean, like Claire, like Harley, like Robert, like Amanda, like Amelia. like Andrew, like Larry, like Felicia, great people on our team that can be trusted on a daily basis.

And these great people. are abundantly available if you do the group interview. But if you feel stuck or trapped, you might have to stick around with them for the short term. But do not let the emotions get in the way of the motion you need to take. Don’t get emotional about this. Don’t not fire them because they’re family or friends and don’t fire them immediately because you’re so mad.

Choose the right time for you to fire this person. So the question is what to do when you catch your employees stealing from you. My answers to you would be step one, schedule a weekly accounting meeting to verify purchases. Step two, document the issues. Step three, install keystroke recorders. Step four, install call recording.

Step five, install GPS systems on company vehicles. Step six, install the cameras. Step seven, conduct a weekly group interview so that you can fire people when you need to.

My name is Clay Clark. I’m a business coach, and I’m going to go swim in the pool with my son. Without any further ado, three, two, one, boom. On today’s show, Claire Yinger, the business coach who works at the Leadership Initiative with Mr. Clay Stairs, joins the Thrive Time Show to ask Dr. Z about what an ideal day looks like for him, his thoughts on life balance, how to know whether you are a bad manager or whether you just have bad employees, how to hold your employees accountable, Delegation 101, and much, much more.

You have questions?

America’s number one business coach has answers.

It’s your Broda from Minnesota.

Here’s another edition of Ask Clay Anything on the Thrive Time Business Coach Radio Show.

And I’ve been here, slaving away by the river.

We thought we had to evacuate.

We evacuate, we bring the stuff back in the whole time, and I just missed you.

Down by the river. I missed you because you have that unique ability to, you know, it’s like there’s a scab forming and you pull it off. Yeah, quickly though. And I missed that. Well, and here we go. This scab’s going to get ready, set, there we go.

The intro talks about my broda from Minnesota. You know what? I think that’s a little bit of a misnomer. You spent a hot minute of your life up in Minnesota. What percentage of your life? You’re 37, 38?

How old are you right now? 39. Okay, I missed it by a year. I’m 38. I’ve mentally anticipated

39. I’m

38. I’m 39 in November.

Okay,

38. Thank you.

How many years of those 38 did you live in Minnesota? 12 in Oklahoma. Correct.

Then I moved to Minnesota.

Okay, here’s the deal.

Then I came back and I was 18. So, okay, so six years.

It was the wilderness years.

It was bad.

Winter was coming.

It’s not quite one -sixth of your life you spent there, right?

Because six times six would be 36, so 38, so not quite one -sixth.

always been Oklahoma -y at the core. I know.

But I am from Minnesota.

But I think that that…

I came back from.

I think you just used that because it rhymes with Minnesota, Broda, from Minnesota. I think you relied because Minnesota was easier to rhyme off of than Oklahoma. No, the rhyme scheme for Oklahoma is easier.

We can really get into it.

Then why don’t we have that one?

We could be talking about stomas and comas and just…

It could be hot. I understand that, but I think you’re just being a little disingenuous by talking about being the powder for Minnesota. Taser yourself because we got to move on. We got to move on because we have a thrive. I’ve said my piece. She works with Mr. Clay Stairs, a great guy.

Let me tell you that this person entered into our lives here. Clay Stairs has been a long term client. Great guy. Great. He’s the former school teacher turned millionaire guy.

You know, claystairs .

com.

Great guy. And Clay Stairs, he says, I’m thinking about hiring said person. I said, Oh, really? Because you the first hires, you know, Sean.

And Sean, Sean is a great guy, very diligent guy.

And I’m going, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. Because, you know, Sean set a pretty high watermark. You know, Sean is like the great flood of Tulsa from 86.

He’s a high watermark.

Oh, yeah. And he says, I know this.

I’ve done this lady for a long time. Met her at Shepherd’s fold camp. She’s served as a counselor there at the Metro Christian. Nice lady.

And I’m glad I doubt it.

Well, I doubt it.

It sounds too good to be true.

And then we met her and the team likes her. She’s a great lady.

She’s been a great coach, great consultant.

And now she’s here on the mic. Claire, welcome onto the show.

Hello, hello, hello.

All right, Claire Yanger, what questions do you have for Dr. Zellner? Oh, I came so ready and so prepared. Here we go. For my questions with you. I’m a little scared. So I kind of actually first have a personal question for you.

OK, hit on me.

A real day in the life of Dr. Zellner, what is your actual ideal day?

Waking up going to the airport

and asking myself, where do I want to go today?

And then making sure I pack the appropriate clothes, or if it’s, I’ll make sure I have a credit card to get there.

And then, no, I’m teasing. My perfect day is, a lot of people ask me what I do. And I tell them, I say, I’m like the old vaudeville act. Are you familiar with vaudeville? I want to go with no. Okay.

All right, and I’m going to go with a yes.

I am aware.

And there was an act which goes something like this.

You have a stick, and on top of the stick you have a plate. And what you do is you spin said stick, and it makes the plate spin, and it sits there on top of it. It’s like a miracle. It’s like a physics miracle.

And then you go and you get up another stick.

You put a plate on it. No, get out of here.

It’s like Festivus.

You spin it, and pretty soon you’ve got like 12 sticks with plates on the stage spinning. And you stand back, and what do you do? Do you run to the plate that’s spinning really well? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, And you spin that stick and you get that plate to where it’s back on level ground and spinning again, okay? Yes. And that’s basically what I do.

I own multiple businesses and every day there’s a business out there that the plate’s wobbling just a little bit more than the other.

Just a little bit.

Just a little bit more. Now I have scheduled things in that, vendors and reps and new business ideas and what I’m working on. So I’m going to open up a new business, I’ve got to meet with the architects and the contractors and the landlords and the future employees.

So there’s a lot of busy work and starting a new business.

business, which I’m in the midst of right now. And there’s also then the the constant of balancing the plates with the sticks. And so a lot of my my perfect day is, is all the plates I was getting at. All the plates are spinning really well. How often do you have a crisis?

A crisis?

How often do you have a crisis? Stuff that I need to deal with personally, every day. How often do you have a crisis that would make the average small business owner cry, but for you, because of your high watermark. Well, it’s every week, probably once a week. Back in the day, you know, and I’ve used that analogy before, once the watermark gets up so high, you know, anything lower than that, you’re like, that’s no big deal. We deal with it when it’s up here, right?

This is kind of like our man cave, your man cave. It’s got three feet of water in it.

It’s kind of crazy.

Yeah. And so now anything less than that, you’re like, yeah, it’s not a big deal. So I think to answer your question, my perfect day is when all the plates are doing well and I can actually get done my to -do list that I need to get done.

I don’t have to put anything on hold because I’m having to deal with something.

I didn’t even know it was going to be coming up this morning. So I think for me, that’s when everything’s kind of running the way it’s supposed to, the way you assume it’s going to run. This is going to sound crazy, Claire, but when everybody’s actually doing the job I’m paying them to do. Are you saying that you expect people that you are paying to do They’re just – Are you talking about – Does that sound mean?

Does that sound mean?

It sounds like a lot. I know it does. It sounds like I’m being an ogre. Basically, I should paint myself green and put on about a hundred pounds. Claire, does that answer your question? That does answer my question, which actually leads me into my next question, talking about how to manage.

Okay, so this is coming from a client that one of our coaches works with, who’s down in Norman, and talking about how to manage the work -life balance. When you’re working at home,

hours a week oh yeah and this is coming from someone who wants to who they do they deliver an A -plus product okay but they have a hard time of letting go of wanting to deliver a B -plus product to have an A -plus life so how is it that you Dr. Zellner what would your advice be about how to do that work -life balance balance when you’re working 80 hours a week.

I have a quick insert.

I want to insert away. When Dr. Z was seeing patients, he was just phasing out of doing it at the time that my wife started working for you in 99.

I think you were in there like each location, maybe one day a week, but you were managing it, you know, very correct.

But you were, I think you were in there once, once a week and each one may be seeing occasional patients just to keep your finger on the pulse, you know, correct. And you were building up to guys like Dr. Boatwright, really good people that could be on your team for over a decade.

But you were funny.

And people used to talk about how funny you were and I used to hear stories about your ridiculous you know, eye chart things you would do, and the funny stories, and the segues, and the way you would greet people, and it was just, you got it down to a show.

Well, you’ve got to be yourself, and I default to humor. I love humor, I default to humor. But it was good. Humor kind of breaks a lot of tension. A lot of people come in the doctor’s office, and it’s their stress, their, what is my prescription, whether they’re nervous, you know, what’s happening here, my vision is so important to me.

What’s wrong with me?

Right. Is it getting worse, am I gonna go blind? And you have a great team now, but when you left, and it was like a comedy show meets optometry.

Correct.

And when you left, and the other guys you hired before you built that team you have now, when they were good, they were competent, they were confident, but they weren’t funny, and people, there was one lady who pulled you aside and said, hey, I’m really frustrated, I came here to meet Dr. Zellner.

Remember that?

And this lady said that she wanted to, she was super happy with Dr. Zellner and didn’t wanna see you.

Do you remember that? She wanted to see Dr. Zellner. She didn’t wanna see you. Well, they called me down and said, there’s a Zellner only in room two. So I’m like, okay, well, it’s a Zellner only, I’m here, I’ll go down inside. him right so I grabbed the chart and that’s back when we actually had paper charts it’s very old long ago you may not know what paper is you young kids.

I mean I was born in the 80s so I got it. Oh you do remember paper. Crazy. Hello. So I’m flipping through the chart and as I’m noticing as I flip through the chart it’s the last doctor that saw her was Dr. Boatwright. Boatwright, Dr. Boatwright.

So I’m getting down about her fourth visit, you know, it’s kind of a thick, thick file. And now I’m walking in the room and, and I’m didn’t think I’d introduced myself. But I’m before I introduced myself, she said, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

And I just stopped my tracks.

She goes, I’m sorry, but I, this is going to sound maybe I don’t know how you’re going to take this. But I wanted to see Dr. Zellner.

And I requested him and I said, Well, I’ll go get him.

So I walked out of the room, put the chart back in, switched it over to Boat Ride only. So anyway, it was fun because Boat Ride would always go, stop at McDonald’s on the way to work every morning, and we always give them scrubs.

So on the left side of the scrubs said my logo, Dr. Zoner and Associates.

On the right side of the scrubs, it had their name, Dr. Boat Ride, Ron C. Boat Ride.

And I’ve got eight doctors that work for me now, and they’re all great people.

My daughter’s one of them, in fact. She’s very funny. Very funny.

Anyway, so he goes to the drive -thru every morning to get his biscuit and whatever from McDonald’s, right?

McGriddle. Yeah, McGriddle, whatever. Yeah, McRib if they’re in season. I mean, that’s a big deal, right? That is a very big deal. Thank you.

So he goes through. towards the person at the window is his left side, and they see the logo, which happens to be my name, Dr. Robert Zellner and Associates. So every time he comes to the drive -thru, the lady says, Dr. Zellner, you’re back again. How are you doing? You aren’t your same, or here’s your same thing, so good to see you. And first he’d say, no, I’m not Dr. Zellner, I’m Dr. Bowright.

He said that, he said, I don’t know how many times I said it, and finally he was like, thank you, okay, you just accepted it. So they’ve all learned to channel just a little bit of Dr. Zellner. So when you were delegating off to people that at first weren’t quite up to your standard yet, because you hadn’t trained them yet, you hadn’t trained to that level yet, you hadn’t built that A player team you have now, you know when you had to go down a little bit in that quality during those years, how did you deal with it emotionally? Well I think the thing is, to get back to your question, Claire, you always want to make sure, and this is very important, listen to this, ears to listen, listen to this. this is going to be hard but I’m telling you what for the long -term benefit of your mental health, your financial banking account, your heritage that you leave your grandchildren, you want this. You always want to make sure you’re doing whatever you can to put out the A -plus product.

When you say to yourself I’m going to devalue my goods and services so that I can X, Y, Z on the personal side of life, you’re really missing the boat on your business.

You have to make sure your business is a plus and running well and doing whatever you can to do that. Now, what happens is clear is that what I see done wrong. It’s not the amount of time people are spending with their personal life, either spouse, either children, either siblings, their parents, whoever is pulling on them. It’s not the amount of time they’re spending with them, but the quality of time anymore. In other words, a guy spends 10 hours at work. hustle hustle hustle hustle works going great now he pops home it’s about dinner time right he pops in for dinner but at the dinner table he’s got his laptop up because he’s expecting an email from a vendor that could come that night right he has his phone sitting up on the table because if there’s an emergency at the shop he’s getting a phone call right yes he is and he’s over here on this and now he thought you know what she’s bringing out dessert right now i’m going to google my competitors website.

I haven’t checked on them in a while. I’m going to do that. And all the while, his two children are at the table talking about the soccer game that they have this Saturday, and he’s not even listening to them. And I think that’s the thing that I find so much is that

I tell people is this is that they go how do I know when to go home because I love working my business is rocking I’m doing good I know it’s my future I it’s got to have my attention right now right and I said you have to do one thing listen listen to your spouse listen to your children and whenever you get that call of you still my dad or what do you look like or it’s you’ve had the call I’ve had the call and I’ll say this if you’re out there listening just examples of you know the McDonald’s brothers people don’t know their names but they actually served every burger for years and then the idea of scaling made them cause them to make certain compromises so the totality of all the parts allowed the quality to stay high but they couldn’t personally serve burgers to that many people. So some said, it’s not the same as when they used to make the burgers. Some said, but billion said, it’s still pretty good.

It’s still pretty good.

Yeah. And so it’s, it’s not that you’re openly trying to devalue your quality. It’s just, it’s saying like the elephant in the room, I used to answer all the phones when we first opened. And it’s not that like, I want more calls to be bad. We have a great team now, but I can only answer the phone so many times. So in a way, your ability to serve more people goes up, which I think is a, as a, an A plus.

But yeah, it might not be the same jokes as Dr. Zellner, and you just got to get to a place where you’re okay with it. It may not be an A +, to be honest, but it may be a solid A. It may be an A. But it’s unsustainable for me to see every patient that’s come in the door. It’s unsustainable for Clay to answer every phone call that comes in. Day one, you can. Although we tried. Day one, you can.

But it’s unsustainable. And so you have to Train up people and get them as close to your DNA as possible put as much in as you can because nobody will care as much as you do about your business and So, you know, you just have to get as close as you can and then let them let them run with it And know that so when did you realize that you were ready to let them run with it? Oh goodness pretty soon early. You give up little pieces of it pretty early. I think that’s the thing that some people do.

They hang on to it because they do it well.

They know it do well.

They know they do it like clay. I promise you this. Nobody answered the phone better than he did at Elephant in the Room.

I promise you that. You could put up a hundred phone answers and I would put my money on this show next.

It’s his business, he wrote the script, he gets it, and he knows what he’s doing. And so that’s the kind of guy that’s almost impossible to clone, and yet you try to clone him, and you clone him by by just like you used to do with your DJs. Here’s the script, copy it, repeat it, copy it, repeat it.

Here’s the playlist, you plug it in.

Over and over and over and over. Call, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot. You just role play and you put people in those scenarios.

And so what happens is by default they get pretty good. Maybe they don’t have quite the enthusiasm, maybe they don’t have quite the… I find over time they might actually get better because that’s all they’re focused on is that thing. You might be right. So at first you kind of go down in quality, but then over time they can surpass you.

It happens a lot.

Claire, what other questions do you have for the great Super humble. Dr. Robert Zellner. So I have a question about management.

And this is from a contractor down in Alabama, Alabama.

Okay, so the question is, is how do you decipher if it’s your poor management, or you have poor employees?

It’s always a little bit of both.

No matter how great a manager you are, you’re always going to You know, you’re always going to have a little bit of yourself in there that doesn’t need to be in there. And you know, it’s always a little bit of both. I don’t care how great a person you are, you’re always going to be infallible. You’re never going to be perfect. Absolutely. And whenever you’re dealing with another human being, you’re gonna find out that they’re not perfect.

But I’m telling you what, if it’s not working out, they go and you don’t go.

I got a funny story for you about how you, these are kind of a checklist of things we need to do to make sure that you are a good manager, okay?

And then it’s a funny Dr. Zellner story that I’ve never talked to you about.

Oh my. Please share. So one, you need to have a checklist for everything possible. Not to the level of ridiculousness, but you want to have a checklist for everything. Get everything out of your head and get the expectations in writing.

That would be step one.

If you don’t have that, you are a poor manager. If you’re just running around giving people verbal traditions, the Bible is written down that way it’s clear if you’re in violation of the Ten Commandments or not. Don’t run around with having a verbal, you know, that tribal knowledge crap. That’s ridiculous. Yeah, we’re assuming that people can read your mind or it’s common sense.

And two, don’t be the person who doesn’t… To be a great manager, again, one, have the checklist. Two, always show up. Don’t be the manager that misses work all the time.

You don’t see the guy that’s just flaky and unreliable.

That’s good.

That’s an issue.

And three is never stop recruiting because you’re going to end up, if you stop recruiting, you’re going to end up just accepting the people that are around.

So that would be kind of my checklist. You’re a good manager if you have the checklist, if you never stop recruiting, and if you do what you say you’re going to do. That’s like my big three. The thing about it that gets kind of frustrating is that when you see a manager that is trying to be friends and not a boss.

And that’s a tough thing, because everybody wants to be liked as a human.

I mean, we like the default, too. You know, hey, you like me, I like you. Let’s go do lunch together. Oh my gosh. What’s your Facebook account? Because I want to be friends with you.

Everybody wants to be friends.

And even parents out there today, they want to be friends.

Kids need parents.

Employees need bosses.

Preach it.

And so a manager has to understand that they’re a boss and that they’re held at a higher level.

And when you look out there and you see a manager that’s not living up to their expectations, they’re not

living up to their potential, they aren’t doing what you’re paying them to do, and they’re out there trying to be buddy buddies with everybody and not try to make the hard decisions. You gotta have a real deep talk with yourself. Is that my guy or my girl going forward, you know? So here’s the story we’ve not talked about yet. Uh -oh. Get a little story time?

Well, this is.. . This just in? My wife worked for you back in the day.

Oh, yeah.

And some of the friends she went to college with worked there, too.

Uh -oh. And everyone thought, this is gonna be the hot job. Dr. Z pays well, he’s a great guy, he provides respect. This is gonna be awesome.

They thought it’d be a hot job. But what ended up happening was, it turns out you have a nomenclature system.

Mm -hmm back in the day when there’s paper. Oh, yeah, so if Claire came in to get her eye exam I came in you would have it sort of how is it sorted see how are you supposed to do it?

It’s crazy Six letters they actually come in an order you’re supposed to actually do that It’s crazy, and there was somebody that I knew we’ll just keep it.

I can’t clarify the gender Somebody somebody this person though would just play the game of like let’s not do do it alphabetically. Now see, what would happen if everyone on your team occasionally saved things, put things, medical records, et cetera, in the wrong place consistently? You know, what would happen?

People would go crazy.

It wouldn’t work.

We would spend hours trying to find this chart. I mean, it’s just crazy. My understanding is you quit occasional explosions around 98, 99. When was the last time you had a good, like, are you kidding me? When was the last time? Good old -fashioned, take someone out back and just take them to the woodshed.

The word that I was told was, he stopped firing off the cannon.

at a certain age. When would that be? I run out of gunpowder probably in the late 90s. I mean, I but I mean, there was a few people that were around then and you got a cannon, but you got no cannonballs and powder. You’re just here. What’s the point?

But you don’t I mean, you made a change, right?

you know, you have to.

I mean, I think that as you mature in life, you realize that throwing an absolute fit is not necessarily.

But there might have been a time earlier on where you may have.

Oh, I think you get early on, you know, you’re a tad bit more emotionally charged, you’re younger, you’ve got your juices are flowing, as we say, Claire, real passion, real passion about that thing. And then you realize, you know, hey, it’s gonna be okay. And this person put the thing in the wrong place. Oh, all the time. And apparently, a person who was managing the business who take your took your spot was like, let me tell you what, if Dr. Z would have seen this back in the day. Let me tell you, let me tell you what had happened.

And it became this big like. It was like an epic journey. It was like we’re talking about like the Odysseus and the Iliad. It was like a big thing, you know? And so I’m picking my wife up and this person taking him home and they were like scared about what you used to do. Wow.

Or what you would have done.

Wow.

Or what.

And then they were scared of the way that she spoke and the way she talked. And my wife was all about high and tight, put stuff in the right place. But this person was like, and then she raised her voice and she was getting aggressive and she was just intimidation. And I’m like, so did you put it in the wrong place? Well, yeah, but… So I’m just saying is, but that’s, you could, if you didn’t have a agreed upon nomenclature system, an organizational system, a checklist, then you couldn’t be upset really because there would be no expectation.

Right.

You’re right.

And you think about it is management’s difficult. True. Management is the hardest part, you know, because you’re not, you’re not the owner. And so, you know, you’re, you’re charged with taking this person’s basically child and raising it. When they come in and check in on you every now and then oh, yeah, and and it’s a it’s a challenging thing to be in management And so, you know because you’re judged upon how good the people underneath you are doing and how well you manage them And it’s a tough deal to inspire people, you know, because there’s always the stick or the carrot, and…

You gotta have both, though. You gotta have both, and how to motivate, black hat, white hat, when to write someone up, when not to write them, when to be the good cop, when to be the bad cop. Sometimes you have to, like, a lot of times I’ll have to know I have to be nice to someone on a Thursday, because I gotta go off on Monday. That happened as recently as a couple weeks ago. There’s someone who I, they were really in my doghouse, And I’m going, I gotta lay it down on Monday. It’s hard to be nice ramping up on Wednesday.

You got to get into that nice, you know, Thursday nice. You got to get that Friday nice. I mean, management is tough. It’s tough. And I think one of the keys is, is that when you get a manager on board and you’re going that direction, is to have them physically be around you at first as much as possible. I love the way Clay brings somebody in new.

They shadow him and they’re around him.

And what that really does is saying, hey, I really want you to see it.

Now in my business, they have a saying.

And it’s WWZD.

What would Z do in that situation? And I’ve taught them enough. I’ve been around them enough. I’ve poured enough of myself into them that for the most part, I would say 99 % of the time they get it right. And I don’t have to be there because I’ve been there enough with them and they followed me enough. They’ve seen what I do.

They’ve heard me.

They, you know, I put on speaker phone when a patient calls in all upset and they’re around, they’re listening and I handle it the way I do. And they’re going, oh, that’s how you handle an upset patient. I’ll get it. You know? And so they learn by you doing, you don’t.

You don’t want to just hire one and say, hey, I’m headed to Bermuda.

I’ll see you in six weeks and take off.

Don’t let bad employees train your new employees.

That’s the worst. So you never stop training. You never stop training and you always want to spend time with those managers.

You want to make sure people come through those managers.

They have problems and you really want to honor them and give them the authority.

But like I tell them all the time, I’ll go up to a manager all the time and say, is that employee over there doing the wrong thing? Yeah. I’m not going to fire them. I’m going to fire you.

Yeah. Because it’s a reflection of you.

And just the other day, Claire, you know, I was asking Z, I said, hey, Z, tough situation here. I feel like I’m handling it good now.

I’m not freaking out.

Let me tell you the situation how and you just you you is a manager you have to be the mentor that people can go to In the moment that your people quit asking those questions.

It means you’re not a good enough of a manager They don’t come to you, but that would be now you have we have time for two more clear questions Two more questions two more clear questions clear questions of the day Okay, who aspires to be like Ellen or Oprah in the future, but not oh you would get it talk show Nice.

Today’s show.

Yep. Shunda. Okay. So when it comes to finances, so when you first started your optometry clinic, being your own boss, how involved were you with your finances and did you handle that or did you hand that off to someone else? Why or why not?

I handled it myself.

Very important very first of all weren’t that busy so I could handle it. I made all the deposits This month I had a whole 20 a huge huge.

I fill out the deposit slip myself No, I did it for a while.

I did probably for about six months I mean myself personally and it was the craziest thing I had she had a CPA come in was a patient became a patient he goes Hey, you have a CPA or account I go now why the heck do I need one of those and And I was laughing, going, I knew I did.

Eventually I was gonna get one.

I got time right now. I don’t need that. I got plenty of time on my hands.

and we actually get a little bit busier you know you start doing a little advertising start taking care of people that you know word gets out on the street that you’re not a complete idiot they think you’re funny they want to see the show they want to see the show you know i have puppets and you know all kinds of a pony that we’re bringing on occasion this is amazing do we have video of this no of course not i could be i could be a little disingenuous on the pony part but uh the pony part but i didn’t want to have a pony walk through the office at certain times.

I would not be mad.

Thank you. You’re welcome.

But he came in and said, hey, let me be your CPA. And so we negotiated a deal and got it down pretty good. You won’t believe this.

This is 27, 26 years ago.

Here’s my CPA for $75 a month, I can say that. I pay $550 a month per store for Elephant in the Room, I think.

Well, this is today’s dollars. This is back in the day. For 26 years you paid that? No, I didn’t. No, no, no, no, no. I said that’s what I started at 26 years ago.

I’ve been in business now 27. But anyway, you know, whenever you… don’t have the time to do it, or you don’t want to do it, or you’re not good at doing it, then you’ve hired that out. And you never delegated knowing the numbers.

You delegated someone doing the entering of the data, the bookkeeping, the paying of the checks.

Correct. That’s a good clarification.

But you never said abdicate. Hey, you go run my finances.

You always looked at it, and you were aware this is how much is in my bank account.

My office still texts me daily numbers.

I still get a daily touch on every day on numbers, on my businesses, what they’re doing.

And this is from your accountant?

No, this is from my staff. And then I then I meet with my accounting team once a month to go over numbers. Just last week, he always knows how much is there? How much money is there? You got you have you have to know it.

It’s your accounting. Don’t don’t overspread talking about depreciation. I’m not talking about write offs. No, I’m not talking about the strategy I’m talking about. You have to know how much cash is in that bank every day. It’s the scoreboard scoreboard.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And not how much should be in there, but how much is in there.

What is your next question, Claire?

We have time for one more question. If you’re sneaky, you can sneak in a couple. So my next question has to do with, well, this is another finance question from a doctor down in Hotlanta, a . k . a. Atlanta.

Okay, so what does an accountant need to actually do for you? Question of, do they do your taxes? Do they do your payroll? Do they handle your insurance? What would you say that your accountant needs to actually be doing for you? I’m going to go first and let Z pile on and one up me here.

One, your accountant has to make sure that strategically you are paying the amount of taxes you owe, not less than you owe or more than you owe. And that turns out to be tricky.

A lot of accountants want to make sure you pay no taxes to help you out, but then they’re not the ones held accountable if you get busted for not paying taxes.

Your accountant should make sure you’re paying enough taxes, the right amount, not too much, not too little, no editorial, just this is how much you owe. That’s one. Two, an effective accountant should make sure that you’re looking for They’re not loopholes in a bad way. Looking for the specific deductions that our Internal Revenue Service has created on after Congress has voted on to stimulate the economy. There are certain tax credits, things that are out there that are designed to get businesses to move to certain cities, to open new offices, to buy real estate, and your accountant should make sure you’re using all the tools. Or to hire certain people.

I mean, there’s all kinds of stuff. They need to make sure they’re on top of that. And three, they’ve got to make sure that the numbers are accurate. That is my opinion of what they should be doing. Turns out I see a lot of accountants who are really aggressive with their strategy, putting entrepreneurs in a bad spot, and then four years later when they’re not your accountant anymore, you owe a ton of money, that’s not good. I see a lot of accountants not being proactive with their clients, not saying, hey, here are, by the way, if you’re gonna interview four people right now, just so you know, there is a tax credit right now, if you hire four people in this city, as opposed to this one, you can benefit.

or there’s no strategy going on. See, I just see a lot of accountants reacting to you and saying, oh, by the way, you owe back taxes, file an extension. An accountant should help you be proactive, but they are not responsible for you collecting money from your clients, setting your prices. That’s not what they do. You can’t delegate any math to an accountant.

You can’t take the entire math part of your business and say, Mr. Accountant, could you set my prices?

Mr. Accountant, should I set myself, how much should I pay myself?

The accountant is not that.

Z, I’ll go back to you.

Well, I think there’s two levels of accounting, and when I think about it, I think about my internal people that are on my staff.

I’ve got about, I’ve got a CPA, almost a CPA, and two other accountants, I would say.

So I have an internal team now that does my, profit and loss statements that monitors the day to day that I meet with on a monthly basis, if not more often. And we talk about strategies, we talk about how the business are doing, we talk about, hey, what were you know, my what’s this cost and what that’s cost me do an analysis of this what’s my you know because those those prices keep creeping up you know i mean i set the price for a pair of glasses a pair of frames and that price i may have said five years ago and now guess what it’s twice as much i’m still selling for what i’m selling for so they can help pull invoices i put them on different assignments i put them on different things internally to look at um and they do help me with air can we can we save money on a certain insurance can we you know call guy going 15 minutes that’s your employees though full -time staff this yeah this this This is my accounting team that works for me.

Then I have an outside firm that is CPA.

We hand them all of our stuff at the end of the year and he helps you with that deep thinking.

He’s like the deep sea fisherman.

He’s the one that says, hey listen, we may need some tax credits this year.

I know of some tax credits that we can get that are being offered in Oklahoma.

They’re legal, yes.

Are they right? Are they wrong? You can debate that all day, but they’re out there, they’re available, and it’s something that I can get my hands on for X amount of dollars, and it helps defer taxes, or it helps minimize my tax liability. And so he’s a guy that I meet with, not every month, but he’s a guy that I meet with a couple times a year for the long -term strategic, and he’s the one that puts his stamp on our tax returns every year, and kind of helps that and makes sure we’re being as aggressive as we can without raising too many red flags. That’s kind of the game.

It’s kind of like what raises a red flag, what doesn’t, what’s the gray zone, where do we feel comfortable and you have to be able to find someone at that level that is aggressive enough for you, that’s not too aggressive or not aggressive enough and so you know that’s a kind of a personal thing and so you you shop those and you meet with those. Yeah I was gonna say how would you go about finding the right accountant for you and or CPA?

Well I think what you do is you get three or four maybe areas that are in the gray for your business and you say hey listen I like to have 15 -30 minutes of your time I’m looking for a new CPA and they’ll line up trust me they’ll line up oh new account a new account sure you know and so they will show up and you can ask them a few tough questions and see how they what they think about.

Meet with three. Yeah.

Always meet with three.

I’m just telling you, you got to meet with a minimum of three because your best friend from high school, your best buddy from college, they might not be that great at their job, even though they are a CPA.

True.

Right, exactly.

So I think we have time for one more sneak attack question.

Why not? Sneaky, sneaky. OK, so this has to do with systems and processes. Oh, God.

My favorite.

What is the most efficient way to make systems and processes?

It sounds crazy. But what you do is you just get a big whiteboard or a big something to write on and you literally grab your core couple, three people that are closest to you in the business that are high, high ranking the business. In other words, if you have like two VPs or you’ve had the president of the company, you have a manager that runs a big area. You get a couple, three people, not too many in that room with you and you get up, you get a black erasable felt.

I just did this today for the real estate business.

And you’ve got an eraser in your left hand and you literally start writing down.

What’s step one in our process of checking in a patient? Just happened today just with the real estate business I work with Sam Adams Realty we had a newer real estate agent who was representing a buyer so not my agent okay representing a buyer okay and their buyer wanted to buy the house. Okay perfect. So they made the check out to Sam Adams. Well, you got to make the check out to the title company, to the closing company, because it goes into escrow and escrow is a third party account. It doesn’t go into my account.

Not yet. It just goes into a holding account to confirm the deal. We’ve agreed on the price.

Money’s clear.

We’ve set a closing date.

And they wrote the check to me and not to the closing company.

Well, I thought to myself, you know, I don’t know why they wrote a check to our company.

I asked our agent, did you tell them to write it to us?

She said, nope.

I said, okay. Has this happened before?

She said, yeah, but it’s one of their times someone did that.

I said, okay, well, we need to just move forward.

We need to have a checklist for confirming a deal.

So step one.

Because you saw where the problem was, and you’re like, oh, we don’t know what to do.

And we whiteboarded it out.

And we moved it around a bunch, and we thought this step goes first, this goes second. And whiteboard’s so great. You move it around. And Andrew, put a link on how to make a whiteboard for under $100.

Because you can spend like $1 ,000 on a huge whiteboard, or you can make one for like $80 by buying a thing called ShowerBoard.

And I’m the ShowerBoard king.

No one has more ShowerBoard than me.

It’s a great tool. It’s very effective.

Do you ShowerBoard in your shower?

Do I use shower? No, I put carpet in there.

Oh, that’s it.

You’re all about comfort in the shower.

I get it now.

Oh, yeah. That’s your time off. That’s your time off. Smells like a wet cat.

Oh, yeah.

That’s the best smell ever.

Good times.

Good times. Does that answer your question?

But this brings up a good question.

So when it comes to making your systems and processes, where do you start?

Where do you begin? So you just said that you guys were talking about real estate. I write on the board. I had to get a white board out, and I wrote on there today the issue.

Because it came out of a conversation. Yeah, I just anytime you hold people accountable to a certain standard and the standards not met I always ask, how could I answer this question one time so I don’t have to answer it a thousand times again? That’s good. And then I write it down and I’m going, how does, how did an agent think, if you’re a real estate agent, you need to know about escrow. You have to go to class for this and they should know that they write, but obviously people don’t know.

Right. Cause you as the owner, you know. Yeah. And I just, in that, in photography, we used to have people that would just go to a wedding and take just bizarre photos and I’m going, how could one possibly think that that’s the photo the bride wanted? No. So I made a checklist of images that the photographer had to get of the bride.

We had a photographer one time, I remember this, it was the first kiss, the bride is looking at the groom, first kiss, and then she took a photo of the mom’s reaction and didn’t get their first kiss and didn’t get the groom seeing the bride for the first time. You always want to get the shot of the bride seeing the groom for the first time. Absolutely.

That’s the money shot.

That is the money shot.

And then the backup shot is the grooms, and she didn’t get any of this stuff. And she like lives in this esoteric world of hipsterism. When he’s kissing her, she took a picture of their feet.

That’s the move, right?

Andrew’s seen this.

We had one photographer who literally asked the bride.

He goes, he says to the bride, can I see your wedding ring?

She says, yeah.

He goes, let me get an awesome picture.

And Andrew was with this guy.

He takes the ring, puts it on the limb of a tree that’s dangling over a cliff, where if the ring were to fall off of the tree, they would lose the ring forever.

And he’s like, put it right here. Kind of a little bit of wind going.

Let me get the photo.

Everyone’s like, are you kidding me?

So you end up putting it on a checklist, so when you train people, you say, a deep rule, a deep thought here, guys.

Anything we can do that would ruin the bride’s dress, Ring cannot happen cannot happen because we’ve had we had photographers who are like why don’t you guys hold up the wine glasses?

Like you’re really excited, but not too excited.

So doesn’t spill on your dress and it spilled on her dress

Oh, yeah, like the whole thing.

I’m going you cannot have that if you’re questioning it Maybe just don’t yeah, but this common sense is not common.

So you got to put on a check Any other question for dr. Zellner the Zolhan We have One more.

Okay, this is it.

This is the final show. Final question of the show. Okay, so this has to do with management again. So when we’re talking about doing constructive criticism and also keeping your team motivated, what are your easy how -to’s? What would your suggestion be for a small business owner who’s frustrated but wants to motivate to see things happen? You always want to finish every spank with a pat.

Kick and hug.

Or some would say kick and hug.

Hero sandwich.

Carrot and a stick.

Hero sandwich, you got the bread, you got the meat, and the bread.

So it’s soft, hard, intense, soft.

The sandwich technology is where we lost me there.

I’m gluten free, so that’s, you’re trying to kill me? Me too! You’re trying to kill me now?

No, we could use gluten free bread.

Oh, there are options.

You’re so smart.

There’s gluten -free pizza.

I know I just had some today.

So good.

It’s good.

It’s chewy. So the question is, how do you manage people consistently? How do you do the kick and the hug, the Darth Vader? It’s a black hat, white hat. So here’s the deal is that when someone screws up, you got to talk about it. And nobody wants to hear about how they screwed up.

And people get embarrassed. They want to make excuses. They want to Crawl into a rock. They want to, for heaven’s sakes, not be told in front of anybody else they screwed up, right? Go on Facebook, write about it.

Go on Facebook.

I’ve seen that move a lot recently. Get the plane.

to pull the banner, you know, Billy screwed up yesterday.

Everybody’s on the beach. I find that the literal mistakes are very easy to correct. If someone misspells something, they missave something, they mistype something.

The ones that are hard, and it’s about a third of the issues, are the more nefarious ones where they intentionally didn’t do something and they mask it with the three excuses that humanity’s come up with.

I forgot.

I forgot.

There was a miscommunication.

I wasn’t sure what to do.

Or there was an emotional like, my dog died last night.

Do you care more about my babies or my checklist? Yeah. This is weird. Those are the three every time. The three every time. Those are the hardest ones to deal with.

Those are the hardest ones to deal with. But the key is, is that you need to be a good parent knows when to discipline. A good parent knows when to reward.

A good parent knows when to say yes. A good parent knows when to say no.

So as an owner of the business, what you have to do is you have to look at it and take a deep breath.

And when a manager or an employee does something wrong, you have to come in and correct them. And the more you can do that in love and not anger, and I know that’s easy to say, so sometimes you may have to do the old count to 10 before you say anything or go in the room and kick your dog or something. Whoa! Sorry, Peeta. Violence. We do not promote the kicking of dogs.

You’re referring to a stuffed animal and the shape of a dog.

It’s a stuffed animal.

It’s not really a dog.

Thank you, SPCA.

Actually, you were really going to bring it in.

You were reading the cue card that Andrew left for you. How dare you? I know. You’re just reading the cue card. Andrew! Peter, when you raid the facility, his name’s A -N -D -I -T.

You made my wife cry right there. When you said kick the dog, immediately there’s tears. But my point is, get your act together, then talk to them.

But then I think it’s also, the more difficult the conversation is, for obvious reasons, like Clay was saying, some of the easy stuff is easy.

So you say, come into my office, my son.

You’ve done a really great job. of copying this verse.

But verse has an S and not a C in it.

I should write that down.

That down has an M in it, right?

An M. An M or an N. It’s an M or an N. Just stop.

You’re hurting my ears right now, son. You’re hurting my ears.

So what we’re going to do now, do you see the stick over here?

That’s right.

Put out your hand.

I’m going to flog your hand now.

12 times.

Thank you.

I have another.

Shunda.

Oh my gosh. There’s a certain amount of tough love that you have to do and you have to, you can’t pussyfoot around it. You have to be to the point. Here’s what I expect. If you didn’t know that and they’re going to try to drop on those three excuses on you or they just may man up and say, you know what? You’re right.

I’m sorry.

I’ll do better next time and rock on with it.

But I think sometimes the more that some people handle Criticism better than others some people handle correction better than others and some it really just you could just see it destroying them You can see it just deflating them.

You can see it really Zapping the life out of them And if you’re it never criticize attention never criticize something that they can’t control by the way, that’s a bad boss Yes, if you’ll go hey mark, I you know your haircut sucks Well, they can’t control that.

No, but I’m saying, if it’s the shape of his head.

Okay, that’s a thing, yeah.

I’m serious, I see people like, criticizing people like, hey, I hate your laugh.

Well, they can’t fix that.

They can’t fix that, right.

You don’t want to criticize people, they can’t fix. You don’t make it personal, it’s the job, doing the job. Come on. But then, the more that you see them kind of shrinking, then when you’re done with that, then you have to give them a little positive mojo. You gotta give them a little love.

You mean you don’t like when I blow into this?

I really like when you make like a deep like sound of a like You don’t like when I do that I do like it actually

Oh really?

I thought you said upturn.

I was offended.

I’ll just go back to doing it then. There you go. I’m your newest employee. You’ve got to give them a little love. You’ve got to maybe tell them some things they did right. You’ve got to give them a win of the week.

You’ve got to give them something that encourages them and edifies them and pumps them and builds them up because you’re a coach.

And a coach is a difficult thing.

You’ve got to correct the play they did wrong.

Correct. Also, though, keeping them in the game, keeping their mind focused and letting them know the game’s not over. Game’s not over, Billy. We still need you.

Come on, Billy.

Still need you.

Stay in there.

I need my guy.

I need my guy. Come on, Bill.

Come on, Bill.

You’re my guy for a reason, Billy, and I need you over here.

You’re doing great in this area, this area, this area, this area.

Keep up the good work.

Let’s just make a little minor correction over here, and let’s rock on with it, okay, Billy?

And rock on with it.

That’s good. Are you mad? Are you mad? The kick and hug. Okay. The spanking.

The spanking. What did I say?

Spank?

Mine was a spanking.

Mine’s a slap and a hug.

Mine’s a slap and a pat.

Slap and maim.

Slap and a pat.

That’s what he said.

Slap and a pat.

You always taught me the slap and a maim method, and for years I was doing it.

He said, no, I meant kick and hug.

I’m like, oh, I’ve been slapping and maiming people. That’s why it always gets weird. You know, I kill his attention, and he pushes the ball off to the right. You’ll never, you’ll give up the game. Well, Z, I think it’s now time to end the show with a boom. Are you psychologically ready?

You know what? I’m a little spent. I feel a little spent. Are you ready? I felt Claire came in hot. Are you ready?

I am prepared. Okay, now with any further ado, three, two, one, boom! Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio and podcast download.

My name is Clay Clark.

I’m the father of five incredible humans. And my wife is just a gorgeous, wonderful lady, and I’m a man -bear pig, you know? And so I’ve won the game of life. I’ve got a great wife, great businesses, and the trade -off, you see the trade -off of that.

This is the trade -off.

The thing, it’s the trade -off. No one wants to talk about the trade -off, but the trade -off is thing. See, I had to get up this morning at 3 in the morning. So what I did is I got up at 3 in the morning so that I could end my day at 2 p . m.

And the reason why I have a great wife is because I trick her into staying married to me every day. Well, it’s good that she can’t see as well. That helps. Well, because Z is such a nice guy.

He refuses.

He refuses to give her the correct diagnosis.

He gives her the opposite prescription. So she might be in 2020. Let me give you those 2100 contacts and see. No, but seriously, it’s a process that you must go through if you’re going to be a successful entrepreneur of embracing the tradeoffs. You see, freedom isn’t free. And you see, check this out, this is huge.

Those who cannot self -discipline themselves must be disciplined from the market, from the legal system, from the mortgage company, from the boss. These are all things that happen. And so, Jeff, we have a question that was asked from a Thriver, and I want to tell everybody what we’re going to be talking about here, but I want to make sure you’re getting this.

No matter what we’re teaching you to do, If you don’t do it, it won’t work.

Nothing works unless you do, to quote Maya Angelou. That’s true.

Nothing works unless you do, to quote Maya Angelou.

That’s a best -selling poet, author. Now Chip, what are we talking about?

We’re going to be talking about how to create an employee experience that inspires and retains quality employees.

Okay, I’m going to walk you through the steps of how to do this.

And this is this is this is big, but I want to make sure that everybody listening to the show here, that you would take notes on this because if you don’t, we’re going to lose here.

I’m going to read the data what quotables and chumps going to break down what to do with it.

Okay.

Reid Hoffman.

This is the founder of LinkedIn, one of the founding partners of PayPal and the venture capitalist partner behind Greylock Partners rights.

One of the challenges of running a startup is solving critical short -term problems without neglecting long -term ones. Recruiting is a long -term problem. It’s almost never the answer.

to the problem of the month.

Clearly you need to have the right talent on board, but it’s not like to solve the key problems your business is facing right now. Yet the longer you wait to do the long -term things, hire good people, the more likely it is that you’re going to die from something that requires a longer time frame to be solved. You’ve got to constantly interview. Why do you have to constantly be recruiting people forever? a employee, that unicorn employee, that person that you’ve been looking for for years possibly, if you’re not hiring the week that they get fed up with their boss or whatever reason they decide to move on, they’re not going to find you. You’re not going to find them.

Then you have to schedule, step two, schedule a weekly time for your team meeting with your team. You’ve got to have a weekly meeting with your team. For your weekly level 10 meeting, it’s called a level 10 meeting. It’s taught from Geno Wickman’s book called Attraction. He calls it the EOS, the Entrepreneur’s Operating System. This is how you do it.

I’m going to tell you how to do the meeting, okay?

So this is what you do. What you do is you say, one, we start the meeting on time.

That’s a big one.

Then you report.

Everyone has to report what they did because everyone’s held accountable and everyone has to be in the meeting. You can’t do it via email.

I got a question on this.

Okay.

What if you got somebody out there, and maybe all of their staff doesn’t work every single day, Clay?

Make them all work on that one same day. Say it again. What do you do? Make them all work on that one same day. Gotta make it happen. I pay, just so you know, we have a Thrive Coaches meeting every day at 6 a .

m. , and everyone who’s there, blasts my check, gets paychecks. So I thought about it with Vanessa, because we’ve thought about this, and on average it costs me about $1 ,000 to do that meeting that I do every day. That’s $4 ,000 a week I spend on training the team. Right. It’s the team you need to train.

people accountable for their numbers every week. So start on time, hold the team accountable. Third, you want to identify problems. Fourth, discuss the problems. This is all in the show notes by the way. You discuss the problems.

Five, you solve the problems. Then you assign the to -do list. So who needs to do it? What needs to be done? And when is the action item supposed to be done? Now this is the part where people get it twisted.

You don’t ever talk to your teammates again during the rest of the week because they now know what to do, they know who needs to do it, and you don’t see them again until the next week. I gotta jump in right here as well. I’m gonna keep jumping. It’s like a trampoline in here. Jumping, jumping. Make you want to jump.

Jump! Jump! Jump! Jump! accountable and you assign the items in that meeting and you say, I’m not going to speak to you again. Not.

at all until next week.

So are there any questions you have that would prevent you from getting this done? They have ample opportunity to do that then, but they cannot call you after that because if they did need to call you, then you would have to micromanage them, which would cause you to be insane over time. So what you want to do is people that do need to be micromanaged, you do need to micromanage them until you can replace the face. So now the notable quotable from Elon Musk, he says, I find it remarkable that I can explain the reality of a situation to people and still not change their point of view. The facts are very plain and the reasoning is very clear, but they still won’t agree with the conclusion. It’s crazy.

Rather than learn from their experiences, they choose instead to engage in wishful thinking. Perhaps it’s more comfortable than reality, but I think that wishful thinking is one of the most profound human failings. The major reason that people adhere so strongly to wrong ideas. This doesn’t mean that you can’t be optimistic. You simply have to be realistic as well.

This is the guy who built PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity. He just is saying, if you have the meeting next week, and they didn’t get the action item done, you would say, okay, so you, I would say this in a meeting. I say these things. I would say, okay, so you didn’t do the item. Okay, last week, you knew what to do, right? Okay, cool, all right.

And that’s what I would say. And then the silence would be deafening, and then as soon as the meeting’s over, I pull them aside, usually when it’s myself and one other person. If it’s a female, it’s always me and someone else.

If it’s a dude, it’ll be me directly, and I say, here’s the deal. You didn’t do your action item, and there’s really, there’s like, a few excuses that I don’t tolerate.

And one is saying I didn’t know what to do. Two is saying there was a miscommunication. And three was saying I forgot.

And so henceforth, that can’t happen anymore.

And so what happens is you just follow up and there’s uncomfortable conversations are what drives the growth.

And over time, people don’t want to have the uncomfortable conversations.

And so they begin to do what’s needed. And so Tony Hsieh with Zappos chimes in, he writes, being successful is just about doing whatever it takes to get stuff done. In the early days of Zappos, we, not he, we did everything. If we had 100 orders that needed to go out, everybody stayed late at night packing boxes and chipping in. This is true for all of us, not just for me. People get that wrong so many times I see working with different clients is that they’re the ones whose schedules just getting torn apart.

You’re the owner working your butt off. Right.

You tell them, hey, if you want this job, you have to do what it takes.

And if you don’t want to do it, then you don’t work here.

Exactly.

So then you got to schedule time in your calendar, a different meeting than this meeting. This is a different meeting.

This is a second meeting. And every week you schedule a meeting to teach your team how life works. So you actually have to motivate and inspire the people. John Maxwell chimes in. He writes, the heart comes before the head. John Maxwell, leadership expert, the author of 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.

He writes, the heart comes before the head.

I would say management today is mentorship. You must invest the best of yourself in training your team of people. People have to know that you really do care about them or they’re not going to care about doing their jobs correctly. So I don’t care how much they know what to do. If they don’t feel like you sincerely give a crap, then they won’t do it.

So what you have to do, home skillet, is you’ve got to schedule a time to meet with the people to hold them accountable.

That’s meeting number one.

Meeting number two, though, is to motivate.

And let me tell you what, sometimes you have to have a motivational meeting when you’re not motivated yourself.

True, and if your team’s not motivated, it will transfer through to the customer.

I just want to let you know, they will pick up on that.

So here’s the deal.

Chup, you see me each week do those meetings, every day at 6 a .

m.

? Yeah. Can you talk about those meetings and what that looks like for people that maybe have not been to our meetings?

Well, first of all, it’s every day, right? It’s consistent. Every day. We go over any questions that we have for any clients so that it’s a learning opportunity for everyone. You don’t have to repeat yourself. What time do I show up for that meeting?

Right as it starts. You notice I’m right as it starts, right after? Like right as it starts, yeah. I do on purpose because I don’t want to see anybody before that meeting. Yeah. Because I want the meeting to get started with John and I want to come in with a blasty blast of phantasmagoria and I don’t want any negativity getting on me.

No negative waves, baby. Then I peace out.

Can’t happen.

He’s ready.

On to the day.

So that’s how it works. You gotta do it. So, Chuck, for somebody out there who’s saying, I cannot find the time to shoot this video on my website for, you know, recruiting new people. I can’t find the time to have the weekly training meeting. I can’t find the time to hold my team accountable. I can’t find time for these two meetings.

What would you say? Start saying no to things that don’t matter. If it’s not one of your F -16s. if it doesn’t help you make more money, if it doesn’t help grow the business, put it through that filter. You’ve got to say no to it if you’re passionate about your business. You know, Eric Chup, business coach, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but I like to end the show with a three.

What? And a two. And a one. Then I put the little boom after.

Oh, okay.

So you ready to do it? I’m ready. Here we go. Three, two, one, boom! Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, it’s Business School Without the BS. Featuring optometrist turned entrepreneur, Dr. Robert Zellner with USSBA Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark.

bragging to your wife and kids. Said your wallet’s overweight, but it used to be thin. Some say this is play broadcasting with the zen, with the focus locked in like San Quentin. Can I get a B to the O, O to the M? You’ve heard the rumors. He is I, and I is him.

He be the Z, and I be the C. Now it’s teaching business skills from plate to Z. We both grew up poor, but we’re poor no more. The goal of this show is to help you score. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. Now today’s show is going to be a little bit interesting.

It’s going to be a different format than we’ve ever had in the past. We’re going to have a lot of guests on the same show. Let’s do it. Oh my gosh. Here’s where the idea came from. We have had a lot of business owners reach out to us.

A lot. When I say a lot, pretty much everybody who’s attended the workshop at some point or another wants to know how to manage people. as a business coach, if you see that. I feel like there’s three big issues, three big superpowers. We talked about it yesterday, but three big superpowers that you have to have to grow a successful company. That first superpower is, you must sell a product or service that people want.

That’s step one. So you have to sell something like carpet cleaning, haircuts, products that somebody wants, burritos.

You have to find a need and fill it.

You’ve got to find a need and solve the problem.

You’ve got to find the problem and solve it. But then the second issue is you have to be able to market that thing. So once you have a product that people actually want, you’ve got to be able to market that. Now those first two steps in our coaching program, from my experience, from my opinion, those are the two easiest aspects of running a business. But the third aspect, where a lot of business owners get stuck, and I would say pretty much all business owners get stuck, is they get stuck at a place where they don’t know how to find good people and to manage good people. Managing people, it seems like almost an impossible task to some people until they know the proven system.

Would you agree that managing people and finding good people is the hardest challenge for most business owners? have their issues, they’re unpredictable, you don’t know when somebody’s gonna quit, you don’t know when they’re gonna be late, you don’t know what their attitude is gonna be a year from now, and so you pour into them, and it’s really stressful and really draining on a business owner when you’re just managing people, man, it’s hard. So think about this, if you’ve ever been married, I’ve been married now for 17 years, if you’ve ever been married, if you are married, if you’ve been married, if you know somebody who was married, if you ever were a kid, if you’ve ever been around adults, if you’ve been on the phone, for any amount of time at all, you’ll notice how hard it is to maintain a positive relationship with people. It requires work. And just like a garden, you’ve got to tend to that garden.

And so what we’re going to do today is I’m going to be playing audio excerpts. We interviewed the members of our team and our videographers asked them essentially, what’s it like to be married? from your perspective should actually work for me?” We asked them, and the idea was we had two or three employees that actually came up to me and said, hey, I know a lot of times on Glassdoor or Google, places like that, people will say that you’re a bad boss. I think it’s because you have a radio show and you’re in front of a lot of people, but I’ve worked here for years and I like it. So if I could share my experience, I’d like to share what I perceive to be the good part and the hard part of working for you.

And I had like three people come up to me and ask me, I thought, you know what, let’s interview the whole team.

So we interviewed a lot of the team members. And so without any further ado, this is one of our managers. of one of the call centers, a lady by the name of Daisy, and this is her experience of working with me.

So, working with Clay Clark at the Thrive Time Show.

Without any further ado, our exclusive interview with Daisy about what it’s like to work for a man -bear pig by the name of Clay Clark.

Yes, my name is Daisy Capehart and I’ve known Clay for roughly seven months. So I am the call center manager for Elephant in the Room, which Clay co -owns and coaches on a weekly basis. Clay has been awesome. I would say he is my goat, my greatest of all time. He’s been a really solid mentor. I’ve learned a lot of information about how to be a better leader in a very short amount of time.

Since working with Clay, I have definitely learned a lot about how to be a better leader.

how to be a more solid manager, how to motivate yourself.

team, empower my team.

how to hold my team accountable, and also how to help them bring that enthusiasm that makes our work culture so awesome. If you didn’t know Klay, he’s very straightforward, he’s no BS, but he’s also hilarious.

So he’s got the best parts of a personality that you could want in a boss, in a mentor, in a person. I think people who are driven, they’re motivated. I think the kind of teammates that would like working with Klay want success, they’re motivated, they’re passionate. It’s really fun. They work hard and they play hard. I would say Clay’s passion for helping business owners grow their business is overwhelming.

He really does bring that optimistic momentum to everyday.

never a shortage of information that he shares with everybody.

He always has a really funny story or some kind of parable to go along with the things that he’s teaching.

And he has so many coaching moments that just come out of ordinary everyday situations.

And I think that that really shines through just in his daily interactions with everybody.

Clay’s management style is not for everyone.

And the reason why I say that is because he holds people accountable.

And I think not many people are used to being held accountable.

However, if you want to be successful, if you want to win, if you want your dreams and your passions to come true, you have to be held accountable.

And I think that Clay does an awesome job about that.

But again, it’s not for everybody.

So what do you do when you catch your employees stealing from you? don’t like being made to do your job. If you are not comfortable stripping, if you are not passionate or you don’t have an aim in life, you’re just kind of floating around, but you will love clay if you are the opposite of that and want that success. You want to make your dreams come true and get the results that you want. I think Clay loves his turkeys, chickens, and cats so much because they provide him endless entertainment.

My advice for anybody who’s about to meet Clay would be you’re gonna want a notebook, something to write with, a pen, and prepare to get a lot of information that’s going to help you be successful.

You will definitely be enlightened.

And people accept it to be true.

Employee wrote a yardstick and therefore when they read the comments of the reviews the way you handle it they will think where excellence is expected so let me just give an example of why your very livelihood is so hard as it relates to this when your money tree is being attacked. I get it you and I are good buddies with a third party. Okay, so you and I are buddies with some guy named Doug. Doug. Somebody who you’ve trusted. And so you and I are grilling meat.

Right money and it has to do I will list off mr. . Mr. .

Where the purposes of several of the bad things that have happened to me So we’re really neat, but we haven’t we haven’t worked buddies with Doug We’re grilling meat for the purposes of being buddies, like in our backyard.

If I poorly cook the meat, I’d actually steal customers. If we’re buddies, what’s pretty much the man -in -law? How do you handle the situation if the three of us are cooking meat, and I overcook the meat, but we’re just buddies? What do you do? I just make fun of you. No, we’re not.

But I have a great grilling skills and lack of grilling prowess. So you would just kind of joke about it. And they would do that. every third to fourth week. Let’s say that we’re grilling buddies, we’re making meat, we’re grilling meat for the purposes, again, of fun. And we drop a piece of steak onto the concrete, and it falls there for maybe a second or two.

What is man law? How do we handle that? We pick that thing up, we dust it off slightly, we throw it right back, cook that stuff, we cook it off, throw it back on. Exactly. Man law. And I drop the meat on the ground and I overcook it and Before it’s like almost an ethical Mary to pick that thing up and eat it as long as it hasn’t gone rotten to be on the ground food on the ground, what is the ethical code there?

You pick it up, finish cooking it, and eat it yourself later. I’ve had that happen. You cook a new thing for a restaurant, for a customer. Or you throw it away. Right, that would be what most people would do. I would probably eat it.

All I’m saying is, it’s a different level of expectation when you’re dealing with friends than when you’re dealing with work. So now the three of us go to our jobs, and I overcook the meat, and you’re my boss. And you’re my boss, and I work for you, and we’re still buddies. We were just grilling yesterday for fun, but now we’re grilling for compensation I have had for pay so if I overcooked the meat what are you gonna have to say to me if I do it twice? Well, we’re gonna have to talk about why this keeps happening and if it can’t stop happening then this is the wrong seat on the bus for you and maybe we’ll try to find somewhere else because I am. What if we’re good buddies though?

We’ve been good buddies since college, right? That’s a hard part. And I keep scheduling a weekly accounting meeting. I’m not stealing, I’m not lying, I show up on time, but I just overcooked the meat.

And I’m your very good friend,

college Just I keep was you actually what’s gonna happen for the company eventually a weekly accounting mentally to verify I know Right there. I have to do that. It’s because in personal situations Especially for small business owners personally it’s hard to not become buddies Because you spend so much time when I discover right and see that taking my cards are using and abusing people We come back we have an interview with 75 % of employees what five years inch steel person from the workplace most do so recently She actually worked with me with a company called Epic Photography. Now according to my personal experience, I think the number is higher. But step one, you want to schedule a weekly meeting to verify purchases. Every week at the same time every week.

Now step two, at Epic Photography, I pretty much only recruited people that had never been photographers before. I can vouch for this, I saw this process. We won awards every single year. because the vast majority of people are not business owners. So, step one, you want to schedule a weekly accounting meeting to verify purchases. Step two, you want to document all of the issues.

Document what it’s like to work with us. I’ll tell you this, I know what it’s like from a first -hand experience to work with a janitorial service that actually keeps our bathroom clean. We’ve had janitorial services in the past that are typing into the bathroom cleaner, yet that is their core competency. So we decided to make the switch and to use a company called Classic Janitorial. Now Classic Janitorial is the janitorial service of choice for DuPont, for Google, So you have to install a key stroke recorder. I know, I know I’m supposed to do it.

I have you done it.

If you’re up there and you say, I am looking for a better janitorial service, I’m looking for the best janitorial service I could possibly find in the Northeast Oklahoma area, go to the classic clean Again, that’s theclassicclean . com. If you’re struggling to find it, it’s theclassicclean . com. Write it down and check them out during the break. Welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio.

Chuck, have you ever seen the movie The Truman Show? Explain to the listeners out there roughly what the Truman Show is all about. Starring Jim Carrey. Yeah, so Jim Carrey’s character, Truman, he lives in what he believes to be a normal natural world, but in reality it is a TV show that they are hiding from him, that they are filming his entire life from behind the scenes. So there’s cameras behind his mirrors in his house, there’s cameras all over the streets, the ocean isn’t real, it’s just a big fake movie set, and he believes that it’s his life that he’s being filmed. so one thing I’ve thought about money for me, and I’ve never done it yet Of the issues I thought about not the fruit of the issue is that we probably don’t have Most businesses don’t have the paranoia required to place every second of every day sustainably according to what happens could just be No, according to the founder right and what happens is with the internet about this profound idea We’re talking about managing people today and think about this profound idea only the back of the paranoid back in the 80s even in the 70s the 60s the 50s every time it previous to now yes, it’s the founder the only time that you got a voice his name was and he earned a platform and Only the paranoid survive.

So we have to make sure that we are sufficiently paranoid. If we do not have these systems in place, we will lose time and time again and we will always find ourselves saying, what do I do? What do I say? I’m trying to help you fix this problem forever. recording. But in the world of business, what happens is people a lot of times will form an opinion based upon what they hear from other people.

Even if it’s not true, if they see enough people write something online, then they assume it’s true. So what we’re going to do today is we’re going to be interviewing members of our team. We actually did interview members of our team and asked them, what’s it like actually working for me? So that way, instead of you hearing from me what it’s like to work for me, you can hear from actual members of our team. and work for me again. And she didn’t really care what company it was, she just wanted to come work with me again and my wife because she knows what it’s like working for us and she likes that culture.

So before we replay her interview, Chuck, can you read the notable quotable from Colin Powell? Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off. My name is Felicia Brown, and I have worked at Thrive for about four years.

I’m a photographer and videographer here, but I didn’t always start out that way. When I started, I started as a graphic designer, and my first day is something that I’ll never forget. I walked in the door, and everybody was hollering and cheering and so excited. All the sales team were on the phone with clients, and we were literally hollering for them, because we were so happy we were going to help them change their lives. I knew from that moment that this was the type of place that I wanted to be at. But working with Clay is not as easy as it looks.

The people with Clay and his team are very hard -working individuals. Everybody is diligent and passionate about their clients, and they want to make sure that they’re meeting those deadlines, but not only meeting the deadlines over delivering. Most people couldn’t work for Clay, and I’ve seen a lot of people come in and try and fail. But the people who succeed are A players. They’re people who know what they want out of life and care about the job that they’re doing. And most people aren’t able to do that.

Working with Clay has been an experience that has literally changed my life. I’ve worked as so many different jobs before. and none of them have been this way. I’ve always left my job feeling discouraged and feeling like I just didn’t give my full because nobody cared. But that’s not the case here. Everybody cares.

Clay is the type of person who We’ll take you aside and coach you and help you not only attain your professional and career goals, but he’s going to help you with your personal goals too, because everything matters. When Clay takes you aside and talks to you, he’s going to be very straight to the point. He’s going to give you so much information all at once, and all of it is important. So you need to make sure to bring a notebook and a pen so you can write down all of this stuff. But not only is he going to give you lots of helpful information that is going to help you professionally and personally, he’s going to incorporate humor so that it’s going to be funny. So it’s not so awkward and you’re actually paying attention because if you’re not having fun, you’re not truly engaging and that is something that Thrive is all about.

So if you feel like this isn’t the type of work environment for you, you don’t want to give your all every second of the day and you just want to clock in and clock out, then this probably isn’t going to be the place for you.

Because this place isn’t only going to help you like hone in on your skills that you already have, it’s going to push you to learn new skills you never thought you would need to know or want to know. Since I’ve been here, I’ve learned graphic design, SEO, coding, photography, videography, you name it, because they’re going to push you and make you uncomfortable, because that’s the only time that real growth happens. So I’ve known Clay and his family for a long time, and They are truly amazing people the more I get to know them the more I like them and one thing that stands out with them that most people you don’t see especially with people who own businesses and are so high up in this chain of our society. is that they love animals they have turkeys and chickens and cats so I think that clay loves these animals because he can relate to them. These animals were put on the earth to do a job. They were put here to do a purpose.

And they all do that. They eat, they breathe, they sleep. They do what they were meant to do. And that’s something that people and humans don’t always do. We were put here to thrive and to succeed and to get the most out of life.

And most people, they just pass it all by. don’t want to get up at 4 o ‘clock in the morning like most of the people on the Thrive team. They don’t want to work until the late hours. They don’t want to give their 100 % in every aspect of their life or schedule that out. And I think that that’s why Clay relates and loves these animals so much because They were put on this earth to do a purpose and they do that purpose. And it frustrates him and frankly pisses him off when humans won’t do what they were put here to do.

So if what I’ve described to you today just doesn’t seem like your cup of tea and you don’t think you’d be very happy here, then just go ahead and go somewhere else. But if you like what I’ve talked about and you feel like you could really thrive working with us, then go ahead and join our team. We would love to have you.

There are so many nuggets of knowledge that Felicia just shared, but I want to harp on a couple of them. If you work with me, if I manage you, I will hold you accountable to a standard of excellence because my customers hold me to a standard of excellence. And we’re going to laugh a lot along the way. And when we come back from the break, I’m going to talk about the importance of humor in managing people. Because if you’re going to push people and hold them accountable, you have to have a sense of humor.

Because a spoonful of medicine, to quote the late, great Mary Poppins, a spoonful of medicine makes or sorry a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down the spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down stay tuned get ready to enter the thrive time show Welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio and today we’re talking about a topic that I would say from my perspective as a business coach of now 13 years I’ve been doing this I can say that this is the number one challenge for business owners. It is managing people.

How do you manage people?

Especially in the world of social media, where anybody can write anything they want at any time, and where the masses believe the anonymous comments of somebody on Glassdoor or YouTube or Facebook, Twitter.

I mean, so what happens is, just as recently, we had a member of our team in one of our companies that frankly was not performing well.

But the person, he happened to be a veteran, right?

A veteran, a member of the United States, former military member.

So what happens is, what do you do?

You go on there and you start stirring it up. You start writing that you don’t like your boss, your boss is a bad boss, and you can say whatever you want.

Well, pretty soon, if you say something enough, it gets perceived as true.

And this is really a disturbing idea, that you could say something over and over and over, and then people will eventually accept it as truth. And that’s crazy to me.

That’s crazy to me.

But that is what that’s what that’s what happens how it works.

And so we’re going to play audio interviews.

from our actual employees that work with us at either Thrive or Elephant or Make Your Life Ethic or any of the brands that I’m involved in, so you can hear their personal perspective of what it’s like to work with us.

Now, Chup, this next idea I want to hammer home, and then I’m going to read a Colin Powell quote, is a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. We’ve all heard this song.

A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.

The medicine go down. The medicine go down. Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down in the most delightful way. That’s a little Mary Poppins for you, right? So why?

I don’t know why.

I’m not sure why the human brain works the way it does. All I can say is that I push my team to perform at a high level, and if I wasn’t funny, or intentional about being lighthearted, it wouldn’t work. Now, Chuck, you’ve managed a lot of people. You’ve been around a lot of people that manage people. Why do you have to have at least a sense of humor in order to hold people accountable? Because that’s how you bring people back up, is by getting them back into a good mood and helping them move past whatever issue that they’re having right at that moment.

And if all you do, if your only interaction with your team members is just course correction, if you’re berating them all the time and you’re not having any fun at the workplace, you’re not going to be able to keep any talented people in your organization. So Robin Williams writes here, Robin Williams, the late, great comedic personality, the actor, he writes, comedy can be a cathartic way to deal with personal trauma. So all I would say is use a little bit of humor if you want your team to respect being pushed and held accountable. But Chip, go ahead and read some Colin Powell. This is the second former secretary of state. the first African -American Secretary of State for the United States of America.

Read a little Colin Powell quote to us here. Some of your friends will not want you to go on. They will want you to stay where they are. Friends that don’t help you climb will want you to crawl. Your friends will stretch your vision or choke your dream. Those that don’t increase you will eventually decrease you.

This is big. If you want to understand the Clay Clark experience, what I’m all about, literally, if you are peeing in my mental pool, imagine you have a pool of water and somebody that you know who’s over the age of 30 is peeing in the pool. I don’t know if that would go over well with you, but you’d probably say, hey, could you stop peeing in my pool? And you’d probably think it’s weird. Right. But if they’re just like, pants down, middle of the day, in front of everybody, just, they’re not drunk, it’s not late night, it’s not under the water, they’re just peeing in your pool.

From outside into the pool. Right. Not good. You would say, stop peeing in my pool. Hey, bud. I’m telling you this, anybody that is mediocre, I am an enemy of average, anybody at all that is mediocre pisses me off.

That’s right. I don’t like them. So, if you’re out there and you say, I think I’d like to be a Thrive coaching client. No, no, no, you wouldn’t, unless you’re a diligent doer. Very true. If you’re willing to actually execute, like the Delrics, like Phone Doctors, like Tip Top Canine.

Shepard Automotive.

Like Shepard Automotive, like so many of the great clients we have, like our great friends in Tucson, Arizona, Miss Jennifer out there, then you would love our program.

But if you’re lazy, you’re not going to like it.

Not at all. And so without any further ado,

we’re going to play another audio excerpt of our interview where we interview the actual employees that work with me on a daily basis, many of which have worked with me for years. And they explain their experience of working with me.

They explain their experience of working with me in the office on a day -to -day basis.

That way you and I can all learn a little bit more about how to manage people successfully.

Stay tuned.

My name is Victoria Woods, and I’ve been working with Clay for about two years.

I am currently a business coach with Thrive 15, but when I first came on here, I started in sales and learned a lot of different things.

So working with Clay has definitely been an experience.

You learn something new every single day. You’re always moving forward.

Since working with Clay, I have learned so many different things, not only in terms of business knowledge, but in my personal life as well. Honestly, it would be really hard to go in and list the different things that I’ve learned, but I do feel that I’m at a place now where I could go anywhere if I chose to and be really successful, thanks to the things that I’ve learned from working with Clay.

The type of people that are going to enjoy working with Clay are going to be you know, go -getters, people who are always looking for new opportunities to learn a new skill or, you know, move up in whatever their personal goals are.

You know, somebody that’s not going to take the easy way out and is just going to get the job done.

Clay’s passion for helping other business owners grow their business and be successful is very apparent.

Everything from his radio show to the day -to -day coaching that he does with his clients.

Because when he helps his clients win, that’s, you know, he’s the best, so he’s winning. You know, it’s just a white, hot passion for helping people reach their goals. And it’s really great to see somebody who’s not always just trying to get the best for themselves, but help somebody else reach their goals. The type of people that would not like to work with Clay would be the people who Call in sick all the time for a runny nose. Somebody that is always gonna look for an easy way out.

Shortcuts that just make their life easier.

Somebody that’s nefarious. Anybody that’s shady, because Clay’s very transparent in everything that he does. So if that’s not you, you probably wouldn’t like it. So if you don’t know Clay, he is a very unique person. He uses humor a lot and it’s a really good way to interact with people and help people actually obtain whatever you’re trying to get through to them. And he’s just a very passionate person about reaching his goals and completing what he sets his mind to.

My best guess of why Clay likes turkeys, chickens, cats so much, you know, those unorthodox animals, is because Clay is not the most orthodox human. So, you know, he relates to them. If you are about to meet Clay for the first time, I would highly recommend three things. One, bring a pen and paper.

Two, do not yawn.

And three, stay off of your cell phone. Okay, well, there’s a lot to unpack there and I would just say that if you are out there and you have struggled to manage people You need to get out to our workshop because managing people is one of my Superpowers that I’ve developed over time. It’s a skill that I’ve developed. I wasn’t born with the talent I had to learn that skill and if once you learn how to manage people and to hold them accountable, then you can really begin to scale your business and to achieve massive success. But if you can never manage people and you do everything possible to avoid managing people, if you create apps, software, programs. I’m sure you’ve seen clients who try to manage their team via an app, via some software.

Does it ever work? Never. Never. You have to be there. Somebody has to be watching them, or they’re going to take shortcuts, and that’s going to ruin your business.

You can’t manage people via email. When we come back from the break, more about how to successfully manage people, and interviews with members of our team who’ve been with us for a long, long time.

Stay tuned.

can do it, I know you can too, but you must stick to it like postage do.

And while Merton’s on the chorus, singing what he sings, I encourage you to dream big dreams. Today is your day.

Today’s your day.

And now is your time. It’s your time. This is your year to thrive. Sing it. Sing it. Success you will find.

Today is your day. It’s your day. And now is your time. It’s your time. Today is your day. No negative emotion, cause that’s what business is.

Always dominate, cause I got five kids. I will not lose, I don’t break for clues. They can talk about me, I can take that abuse. Here is the truth, while they make that excuse. I’ll be up grinding, cause the scoreboard’s the truth. He is my mentor, like my Yoda dude.

He showed me the force, like I was a young moose. All right, Thrive Nation, we have some special updates and announcements for you. I want to make sure that we clarify, that we share this concept as much as possible so you understand. We’ve got a lot of people that have asked us if we can start taking call -ins, where you could call and actually ask Dr. Zellner and I a question. And the good news is, yes, you can do that. You can do that.

So starting now, this is how you do it. If you will leave us an objective review of what you like about the show on iTunes, you just subscribe to The Thrive Time Show on iTunes, leave a review, or you can leave a review on Google. And if you’ve already done it before, that’s fine. Then just email us in the proof that you did it to info at Thrive15 . com. Well, along with your question and your phone number, what we’ll do is we will call you, we’ll arrange a time, and then we will call you on a recorded line and we will answer your question.

We’ll just mention your first name and your industry. We won’t, you know, divulge your last name or the name of your company. And that way all the listeners can benefit from it too. There’s thousands of people that reach out to us all the time via email and we want to be able to answer your questions on the actual show. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun for you and for the listeners. But again, if you want to have your questions answered, just leave us an objective review on iTunes or Google, and then email your questions to info at Thrivetimeshow .

com. And then we will call you from a recorded line. We will not divulge your name of your company or your last name, just your first name. And then we will interview. You can actually ask us the questions, and that’ll become content on the show. This is a huge opportunity out there, Thrivers, because people will pay a lot of money for some of Clay or Dr. Zellner’s time.

And in some cases, especially with Dr. Z, might not even matter how much money you’re trying to pay. Right. My man is off the grid. That’s right. So getting your questions answered by these two guys is huge. So take advantage of this and let’s get you guys on the show.

We have a lot of thrivers that always ask us via email. They say, how do you manage people? How do you do it? Well, what I wanted to do on today’s show is I wanted to play excerpts from interviews with our actual employees or actual teammates. So you could hear not from me, but you could hear from them what it’s like to work with us on a daily basis. But before we do that, Chuck, continue reading from the Colin Powell quote, please.

Oh my gosh, wow, Colin Powell. So if you’re out there listening to our show, And then you try to share these ideas with other people. Unless somebody is a successful entrepreneur, they will not ever agree with what we teach on the show. Everything we teach does not work well within our pop culture. It produces success in business, but the average person is not successful. The average person has less than $400 saved, according to the United States Federal Reserve.

The average American doesn’t like their job. 70 % of Americans hate their jobs, according to Forbes. 90 % of businesses fail, according to Forbes, so most people won’t like what we teach here at the Thrive Time Show. So beware of who you’re getting your counsel from. So without any further ado, here’s an audio excerpt, an audio interview with a member of our team, Mr. Robert Redmond, as he shares what it’s like to work with me on a day -to -day basis. My name is Robert Redmond.

I actually first met Clay almost three years ago to the day. I don’t know if he remembers it or not, but I wasn’t working with him at the time. I asked to see him and just ask him some questions to help, you know, direct my life, to get some mentorship. But I’ve been working with Clay for now just over a year. The role I play here is a business coach, business consultant. I work with different businesses implementing best practice processes and systems that I have learned here by working with Clay.

And the experience working here has, to put it real plainly, has been just life -changing. I have not only learned new things and have gained new knowledge, but I have gained a whole new mindset that I believe, wherever I end up, will serve me well throughout the rest of my life. Since working with Clay, I have learned so much. I mean, I would like to say it was everything about business in terms of the different categories. I haven’t learned it all. But I’ve learned all about marketing.

I’ve learned about advertising. I’ve learned about branding. I’ve learned how to create a sales process for organizations in any industry. I’ve learned how to sell. I’ve learned how to create repeatable systems and processes and hold people accountable.

You know, how to hire people.

It’s almost like every aspect of a business you can learn. I have learned a lot in those different categories. And then, again, the mindset that I’ve gained here has been huge. You know, working here, you can’t be a mediocre person. You are a call to a higher standard of excellence. And then as you’re called to that standard here, you begin to see those outcomes in every area of your life.

That standard of excellence that you want to implement no matter what you’re involved in. I would like to describe the other People that work with Clay are people that are going somewhere with their life.

Marshall, in the group interview, talks about how the best fits for this organization are the people that are goal -oriented. So they’re on their own trajectory, and we’re on our own trajectory, and the best fits are those people where there can be a mutually beneficial relationship, that as we pursue our goals,

and we help the business pursue those goals, the business helps us pursue our goals as well. And so I’d say people that are driven, people that want to make something of their lives, people that are goal -oriented, they’re focused, and they’re committed to overcoming any adversity that may come their way. Clay’s passion for helping business owners grow their businesses is, it’s unique in that, I don’t know if there’s anyone else that can be as passionate. You know, whenever a business starts working with Clay, it’s almost as like Clay is running that business in the sense that he has something at stake. You know, he’s just serving them. They’re one of his clients, but it’s as if he is actively involved in the business.

Whenever they have a win, he’s posting it all over his social media. He’s shouting it across the room here at Thrive. He’s sending people encouraging messages. He can kind of be that life coach and business coach in terms of being that motivator and that champion for people’s businesses. It’s, again, unique because there’s no one else I’ve seen get so excited about and passionate about other people’s businesses. The kind of people that wouldn’t like working with Clay are people that are satisfied with mediocrity.

people that want to get through life by just doing enough, by just getting by, people who are not looking to develop themselves, people who are not coachable, people who think that they know it all and they’re unwilling to change. I would say those are the type of people. In short, anyone that’s content with mediocrity would not like working with clay. So if I were to describe meeting Clay for the first time, the advice I’d give you is definitely come ready to take tons of notes. Every time Clay speaks, It gives you a wealth of knowledge that you don’t want to miss. I remember the first time that I met Clay, I literally carried a notebook with me all around.

I was looking at this notebook the other day, actually. I carried a notebook with me all around, and I just took tons of notes. I filled the entire notebook in about three or four months just from being around Clay, following him, and learning from him. And then I would say, come coachable. Be open to learning something new. Be open to challenging yourself.

Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted. I think Clay loves his turkey, chickens, and cats. First of all, because Clay actually spent some time on a farm. I believe in Minnesota, he talks about how his uncle, who’s been somewhat of a mentorship figure to him, spent time on a farm with him. And I remember a story that he tells where he says that he didn’t wake up on time, and his uncle was telling him, hey, if you don’t wake up on time, you’re not gonna eat. And he didn’t wake up on time, and he didn’t eat.

And there’s another time where he didn’t try hard, basketball game as a goal said 8 says you’re not trying to get a walk home and he literally walked out so he had that farm experience. But I think on a deeper layer. Turkeys and chickens and cats they’re not too dramatic. I know that clay does not like dealing with gossip with with drama with you know it’s emotions. And then those animals kind of have an aspect of purity to them.

And I believe that deep down that Clay loves anything that is wholesome, good, and pure. Stay tuned as The Thrive Time Show on your radio. We’re talking about how to manage people effectively. Presenting the world’s only business school without the BS. This week we’re talking about how to effectively manage people. And I believe that this topic is absolutely super duper over the top important for a lot of our listeners.

In fact, I say a lot. all of the listeners, anybody out there listening, if you own a business, you run a company, you run an organization, or you ever want to, this is the show you don’t want to miss because we’re talking about how to effectively manage people. We talked about it on yesterday’s show, and so many of you have emailed and have had questions about, well, I love you talk about the group interview. That sounds great. I love the idea of having staff meetings. I love that.

That sounds great. Key performance indicators. That sounds great. But how does it actually go over with the employees that actually work for you, with you on your team? Well, okay. That’s a great question.

First thing is I don’t think anybody works for me. I think they work with me, and that’s maybe a distinction. I think anybody on our team, we’re all working towards a goal. So my first step when I hire somebody is I want to make sure that they are not the antithesis of our goal, that our values are not diametrically opposed, that we don’t have two clashing worldviews. So if you work with me, let me tell you my worldviews. That way, you’ll know if you would like to work with me or not. I am very, very, very libertarian, guns and gold kind of thing.

Like, get out of my way government like, hey, let’s pay as much taxes as we have to. Let’s honor the tax code. But let’s try to spend as many days and years as possible in a row without ever interacting with a member of the government.

I would never, under any circumstance, turn to the government for help.

I believe the government’s role is to not provide us happiness, but to allow us to pursue If you look at the Founding Fathers and the documents that they created, I think it’s very, very, very important that you look at the Founding Fathers and you look at the Constitution, you look at the Declaration of Independence, and I’d recommend that you’d read the Federalist Papers.

And I’d like to put this on the show notes. There’s three books, three documents that every American should know. And at some point, I think in the coming weeks, we’ll probably do a show on this as we head up into the 4th of July. But everybody needs to have read the Federalist Papers. We don’t have time to get into it, but you should have read it.

The Declaration of Independence is powerful.

The Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. Because as you read those documents, you begin to see that the people that started this great country left King George and the oppressive rule of Great Britain and the United Kingdom because the people wanted to no longer have to be essentially controlled by a king. They wanted the ability to pursue happiness. They wanted the freedom to pursue happiness. It doesn’t mean that we were guaranteed happiness. Oh, there’s a distinction.

It means that freedom isn’t free. So we have to work hard. We have the opportunity to earn happiness. but we’re not given happiness. And so I’m very much that way. To me, it’s not about resources, it’s about resourcefulness.

To me, it’s about getting it done. To me, it’s about wake up at whatever time you need to wake up to get your job done. To me, it’s about achieving results. To me, it’s about, people ask me all the time, what does it take to be successful? And I would tell you, whatever it takes. It’s just whatever it takes.

You’ve got to do whatever it takes. I think a lot of people don’t grasp that idea.

People say, what does it take to become successful? I would say it takes whatever it takes. I’d also say that being present is a present and every day is a gift. So what does that mean?

I mean, get off your cell phone.

So if you work in my offices, I’m going to make you be off your cell phone. You can’t be on your cell phone when you’re working with me. Why? Because I don’t want you being stupid. I don’t want you being distracted. According to Psychology Today, we’ll put this on the show notes, the average person is interrupted 75 times per day.

And unlike, if you put on, the article is called, Is Your Smartphone Making You Dumb?

And if you read it, it shows that the average American is interrupted so many times, today with social media and negative comments on Facebook and Google and emails and text messages on Twitter and all these nefarious Platforms and he said nefarious you mean intentionally trying to cause harm is what you’re saying.

Yes I literally do believe that many of the apps out there are inherently nefarious. It’s like snapchat in my mind is inherently a nefarious Application some of these inventors of these apps talk about it, right, right? They don’t even use them themselves because it’s a hamster wheel that you get trapped in Yeah, Neval Ravikant one of the investors and minds behind Facebook he talks about he just doesn’t go on social media and he was one of the guys who invested in Because it is a hamster wheel that you can’t get off of those notifications keep coming in people keep commenting and it’s is what’s really, really, really bad, is that on social media, there’s a lot of charlatans out there. You might say, what’s a charlatan? Well, a charlatan is somebody that doesn’t actually know what they’re talking about, but just says it enough that people believe them.

And that’s a really bad deal, because there’s a lot of that out there. There’s a lot of people out there on social media that will teach you how to grow a company, but they’ve never done it. So I would just say, why don’t you come to one of our stores? You know? Come to Elephant in the Room and watch it. Schedule a shadow day with me.

Come to a workshop. Go to Dr. Zellner and Associates. Go to the lobby of the business. I mean, go to the auto auction. See it. I mean, these are real things.

I mean, Dr. Z really did invest a lot of money in Regent Bank, and it really exists. The bank’s now worth over $400 million. And Z really did invest in that bank at a time when the American economy was not doing well. A time where I don’t think anybody else would have invested with Dr. Z and Sean Copeland. except for a few crazy people. But that bank has done great because what we’re teaching, we’re teaching what works.

We’re not teaching the theory. Simon Sinek is writing about the theory of how to lead people. He doesn’t lead people, though. He doesn’t understand. Steve Jobs has been described by ex -employees. Bill Belichick, the head coach of the Patriots, has been described by ex -Patriots as being a not nice person.

Former employees for Jack Welch and Oprah say that they’re not a nice person. It’s called accountability. When you hold people accountable, that does require irritating people. And so without any further ado, we’re going to talk about managing people. Chep, could you read the notable quotable from Colin Powell, who Colin Powell is the first African -American Secretary of State, and he’s a retired four -star general in the United States Army. Chep, please read the notable quotable.

along the river. of life.

Wise is the person who fortifies his life with the right friendships.

If you run with the wolves, you will learn how to howl. But if you associate with eagles, you will learn how to soar to great heights. That is profound. Wow, Colin Powell dropping knowledge bombs. Now, without any further ado, let’s get back into it. We’re actually playing audio.

We actually interviewed the members of my companies, and we asked them, what’s it like to work for me, with me, in our offices on a daily basis? That way you could hear where the theory meets the actual application. Without any further ado, our interviews with our employees. Stay tuned. My name is Marshall Morris, and I’ve known Clay Clark for the past nine years. Up here in the office, I serve as one of the business coaches, and over the past nine years, it has been fantastic working with Clay.

I originally started working with him over at DJ Connection, and I’ve been with him through the Realty Group, and through running for mayor, and building of Thrive15 . com, and it’s just been fantastic. It’s been a roller coaster of a ride, I’ve loved every minute of it. So in the time that I’ve been working with Clay, I’ve learned a whole capacity of different things. In fact, I think that that’s one of the most differentiating things up here in the office is how many different things that you can learn. I’ve learned search engine optimization, sales skills.

Clay is one of the best sales trainers in the world.

And as well as website development, managing people, managing clients’ expectations.

These are all invaluable skills that you can and learn up here in the office and that Clay’s taught me. So for somebody that doesn’t know Clay incredibly well or you’re just meeting him, the first thing that you need to know about his personality is it’s very polarizing, black and white. and really that’s how you know whether you’re going to love working with him or maybe not like working with him right off the bat. And he’ll tell you and you’ll know it, and it’s okay if it’s not a good fit for a relationship or a friendship, because what’s most important is developing a deep relationship with somebody that you’re going to be working with. One of the important things to understand about Clay and all the people that surround him, all the team members, the partners, the people that Clay associates himself with, are they’re all people of high integrity and high character.

And that comes back to the core values that he has for himself, his family, and his life.

And it’s polarizing.

So if you don’t share the same core values, you’re not going to like working with the other team members up here in the office. And so we protect that.

We’re almost like cultural warriors up here in the office, protecting the core values of integrity and character. So Clay’s passion for helping other business owners grow their business, working in their business, working on their business, it’s unmatched by any other business coach in the world. Not Tony Robbins, not Tai Lopez, not any of these charlatans that want to help you set up a click funnel or set up the 67 steps for success. But Clay sincerely cares deeply about helping other business owners get from where they are to where they want to be. And that is one of of the coolest things in the world. So Clay’s management style is a little bit unique, but effective.

He’s going to hold you accountable, which means that we’re going to celebrate the wins up here in the office for whatever it is that you’re doing when you achieve a task or a project.

But you’re also going to be held accountable. So if you’re not meeting expectations, you’re going to hear about it. And so I think that can be a little bit of a turnoff for some people. But for eight players, it’s really a great way that we have up here in the office. The people that would not like working with Clay are those that want to be assigned to tasks and then never followed up on it at all.

So zero accountability and people that yawn.

So if you’re meeting Clay for the first time, I have a couple tips. One, be brief. Two, be funny. And three, be witty. He might not acknowledge it at the time, but when he’s in his man cave at 3 a . m.

, he’s gonna remember that joke and think the world of you. So Clay loves his turkeys, cats, and chickens so much, because they’re his closest group of friends. He talks to them all the time, because he’s spending so much time at his man cave.

And so these turkeys, chickens, cats, they’ve never screwed him over.

And so that’s why he appreciates his relationship with them so much. And I think that’s pretty cool. I really do believe managing people is probably the hardest aspect of running a business for most people. For me personally, I’ve never found it to be that challenging. Because I’m not naturally a person who wants to be liked I don’t care and the great irony about it is that If you read the books if you read like 11 rings the story of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and their head coach Phil Jackson you’ll discover that Michael Jordan wasn’t very likable and Kobe Bryant wasn’t very likable but yet everyone likes them because of their success and so I would just say this if you run a business and Your number one desire is to be liked You will probably never be liked and you will never grow the company. But if your goal is to be successful, you will be as a general rule.

feared and respected, and not loved and liked. But then eventually, over time, people will go from just fearing and respecting you to actually loving you and respecting you. But I don’t know if they can ever move into the category of liking you. Maybe they can, maybe they can’t. And so we’ll be interviewing more members of our team during today’s show so you can hear their experience of working with me on a daily basis.

We produce results, so I always point at the scoreboard, but I want you to get a real interviews and real perspective from real members of our team so you can hear what it’s like to be managed in our companies. And before we do that, I want to tell you about a company called Onyx Imaging.

Onyx Imaging.

Well, are you spending too much time and too much money getting office supplies and printer supplies? No, you are. Of course you are.

And so if you want to save time and money, and who doesn’t, go to onyximaging . com. That’s onyximaging . com. That’s onyximaging, easy for me to say, onyximaging . com.

Check it out during the break. Stay tuned. 3, 2, 1, boom! You are now entering the dojo of Mojo and the Thrivetime Show! Thrive time show on the microphone, what is this? Top of the iTunes charts in the category of business.

Drilling down on business topics like we are a dentist. Providing you with internship like you are an apprentice. And we go so fast that you might get motion sickness. Grab a pen and pad to the lab, let’s get in this.

Time to best some fruit like some Florida oranges.

Three, two, one, here come the business ninjas. Hi, Thrive Nation, Eric Chep here. Welcome back to The Thrive Time Show on your radio. We are talking today about managing people and actually what it’s like to work for Clay at The Thrive Time Show. We’re going to be getting into some interviews with some of our actual team members, talking about what a day -to -day life at Thrive Time Show is like.

And so from my perspective, what I would say is being a boss in my past, having a boss like Clay is awesome because there is a level of accountability that you’re not gonna find in a lot of places because, Clay, I would say you really don’t care about the day -to -day emotions.

It’s all about the results. Here’s the weird, weird meta idea that hopefully someone can understand. You’re a parent, I’m a parent, okay?

I have five kids, so I wanna make sure that everyone gets this idea.

I really, really want my son and my daughters to grow up to not be idiots.

So my daughter right now, Havana, is working in the offices, she’s 13, one day a week writing search engine content.

And it’s hard, it’s difficult. It requires her to move out of her comfort zone. I don’t know if a lot of our listeners know this, but my wife actually requires my kids to run around the track every day. Really? And to work out. No, I’m not kidding.

And we require them to do gymnastics. Yep. And they’re required to read. They’re required to do piano lessons. We have drum lessons.

There’s a lot of things they’re required to do.

I don’t care at all about how my daughter feels. I care about making sure that she gets out of my house with the skill set, mentally, physically, spiritually. I want her to have all the tools needed to be successful. I care so much about her and her future, and that she will grow up to be successful, that someday when I’m gone, she’ll be fine. I care so much about that, that I don’t care about how people feel. I attach myself emotionally so much to the long -term goal, that I don’t care personally about how I feel during the path.

I feel like managing people is a lot like being a parent, and where I see a lot of parents go off the rails, especially as their kids get older, is they want to be best friends with their kids. Oh, preach that. Come on now. It’s exactly like trying to be best friends with your employees. If you are best friends with your kid, you’re not going to be able to hold them accountable. They’re going to get mad at you, and it’s going to make you feel bad, and you’ve got to get over that, especially when it comes to your team members and your employees.

I 100 % agree, and that might be the wisest thing you’ve said so far. I believe that. That is a great analogy and a great example, and that is really how I view the members of our team. Now, this next guy, as we’re talking about how to manage people effectively, we’re interviewing members of our team and asking them what it’s like to work here. And this next gentleman worked with one of my companies, and I sold that company. Then after I sold the company, when you sell a company, you can structure deals however you want, but one of the ways I structured it was all the employees that worked at the company had to stay with the company for a window of time.

And then at that window of time, I wasn’t allowed to hire them. They’re free to do what they want, but I wasn’t allowed to hire them until a certain amount of time had passed.

And then after that time had passed, anybody who wanted to come work for me could.

And it’s interesting how the only people that I wanted to come work with me did.

And so they all, I didn’t reach out to them at all. They reached out to me saying they wanted to come work with me. And so Andrew is one of those guys. And Andrew is a hardworking guy. And he likes working with us so much that he referred his wife to us.

And now his wife left Chick -fil -A to come work at Elephant in the Room.

Impressive young couple they are. And I believe this. I believe that Chick -fil -A does a really good job creating an environment where people want to work. Yep. but I think I do a better job. And that’s why I have a lot of Chick -fil -A people who’ve applied to work for us.

Also, so much so that there’s one particular Chick -fil -A owner that I have had to, I promised him I will not hire any more of his employees. Peace treaties have been signed.

Because people have, from his company, continue to apply for jobs with our company. And one funny story, we have a competitor in Tulsa, a hair business in Tulsa, and their entire staff literally came to our office and applied. to work within a seven day period. Oh wow. Every single member of their team. That’s hilarious.

And I decided to take the high road and to not hire all of them. because I knew it would put somebody in financial peril, so I didn’t do it. And again, the competitor’s a nice guy, and so I’m not going to do that. We did hire one person on the team, and he and I have had a dialogue back and forth. I hired one, but I said, I’m not going into your stores to recruit your people. I wouldn’t do that.

I don’t do that. I do mystery shop, and I do send people to spy and make sure that we’re doing a better job than you are, but I don’t hire your people. And he’s like, OK, fine. So it’s kind of like a pirate agreement. So now that he further ado our interview with Andrew Bloomer, a member of the Thrive team, about his experience working under our management system. Stay tuned.

like how to manage time with family and relationships and faith and how to upkeep all of that and a lot of time management as well. Clay’s personality is very passionate, he’s very driven, he’s very passionate about what he does here at Thrive and he really does care for all of the clients and helping them grow and he’s not neutral. The kind of teammates and employees that like working with Clay are ones that really like to grind and get things done. The ones that like to get here early and leave when everything’s finished and doesn’t mind accountability and the question of when are things going to get done and the ones who really do love to learn new things. Clay really does have a passion for helping other business owners grow their business.

He’s not doing it for the money.

He’s not doing it for any other intentions.

He really does. care about helping those business owners, you know, getting to the next level and helping them improve their lives and growing more than just their business, but, you know, helping improve their lives in every aspect of their life, whether it be the business or their personal life.

One of the things that’s really polarizing about Clay’s management style is he really does hold people accountable. And that’s something a lot of people aren’t used to, whether it be previous jobs or any other place you’ve worked. He really does like keeping people accountable. And he really does like to see people grow here. The kind of people who would not like working with Clay would be the people who aren’t very coachable. You know, not ready to learn, not looking to learn something new, not able to hit deadlines, not able to be held accountable.

If you don’t like being held accountable, this probably isn’t the place for you. Clay probably loves his turkey, chickens, and cats so much because they’re not going to screw him over. They’re not going to be late or miss any sort of deadlines. If you’re preparing to meet Clay for the first time, I would say, Make sure you have something to write with, because he’s probably going to have something to say that you’re not going to want to forget. You know, Chup, speaking of something you don’t want to forget, you don’t forget to pay your taxes. That’s a big deal.

You do not want to forget to pay those taxes. I know as an entrepreneur, you can get busy, life happens, and then you need somebody to help you stay on top. of your taxes and your accounting. And if you need help with your taxes and accounting, I recommend you check out hoodcpas .

com. That’s hoodcpas . com.

Stay tuned.

No negative emotion, cause that’s what business is. Always dominate, cause I got five kids. I will not lose, I don’t break for clues.

They can talk about me, I can take that abuse.

Here is the truth, while they make that excuse.

I’ll be up grinding, cause the scoreboard’s the truth.

He is my mentor, like my Yoda dude.

He showed me the force, like I was a young moose. Alright Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. I consider myself to be sort of like a business Jedi and I feel like that Dr. Zellner is like my business Yoda. By that I mean the guy is been probably the nicest person in the world to me. And it doesn’t make sense. And I can tell you this, I can say this before God before he before me before everybody, before we all of us, I’ve never screwed him over.

And anytime I work with somebody in business, I will always on my end, do my part, I will.

So I will over deliver and I’ll deliver.

And that’s what Z does too.

Dr. Z, he set the standard for that.

And so I really love being his partner and his friend. And I cannot explain to you how important our relationship is because of the kind of person he chooses to be on a daily basis. I can also say that not everybody in the world gets to play the part of a Jedi in a Star Wars movie, and going with that analogy, in the Star Wars movies there’s a lot of people. There’s stormtroopers, there’s actors, there’s people in the background, there’s different characters, but very few are Jedis. A Jedi is like a select, elite group of people that know how to use the force which is like the spiritual laws the universal laws to do things that no one else can do.

They have had the ability to manage the force. Unlike Star Wars where the people who have the force have this natural born gift where you basically can be a Jedi or you can’t based upon how you were born. I don’t view it that way. I view as an entrepreneur, anybody can be successful if you make the decision to become successful.

Anybody can do it.

Anybody can become successful if you choose to be successful. But the force, one of the superpowers that a business Jedi must learn is you must learn how to manage people.

So many people struggle to manage people, but you have to learn how to manage people. You have to do it. If you wanted to become a Jedi, you got to learn how to use that lightsaber. Why?

Because that was a move.

That was the thing. So I would just say if you want to run a business, you have to learn how to manage people. And it’s not natural. Nobody knows how to do it. A lot of people struggle with it. There’s endless books written by charlatans who’ve never run a business.

I mean, you got guys like Simon Sinek who are writing books about how to manage people, but they’ve never done it. You’ve got all these motivational speakers.

Think about the motivational speakers out there. Think about the names, the Tony Robbins, the Les Browns, the Brian Tracys, the Dale Carnegie’s. Think about these people. Did they run successful companies?

And if they did, I would listen to what they’re saying.

But if they didn’t, I wouldn’t. Because a lot of these guys teach you systems that sound great in theory, but they don’t work when it comes to real life application. And one guy who achieved massive success, the first African American to become the Secretary of State for the United States, a four star retired general, Colin Powell, wrote a book. And he just has so many books. bombs in his books. But I want to read some notable quotables from Colin Powell.

So, Eric Chup, the renowned business coach, can you read this excerpt, this notable quotable from Colin Powell? Because that is a knowledge bomb for somebody out there. I would be happy to. So, he says, “…a mirror reflects a man’s face, but what he is really like is shown by the kind of friends he chooses.” The simple but true fact of life is that you become like those. Time out.

Yo. This is why I block people on Facebook. And from your house with a wall and a gate. And from my phone with the block feature. Right. So if you, I’m just throwing this out there.

There’s somebody I know that recently decided to live with a woman who was married, but he wasn’t married to her. So he was having an affair with a married woman. And I’ve known this guy for a long time.

So I told him what I thought about it, and I blocked him.

So a 10 -year relationship is over.

Boop, boop.

Person I’ve known for a long time smuggled drugs and got arrested, went to prison. See what I do?

I block him. God gives you unconditional love. I don’t. I would refer you to a church. You’re out there, you’re going, gosh, I need unconditional love, baby.

I need unconditional love. That’s great. But if I’m a police officer and you’re speeding, you’re violating the laws of the land as it relates to speed, I have a duty as a job as a police officer to hold you accountable to the laws of the road. And I’m going to pull you over and I’ll give you a ticket. If I was a police officer, I would pride myself on pulling people over all day, er, day.

No warnings. I’d be like, hey, how’s it going? Good to see you. You doing all right? Awesome. Hey, I’m gonna give you a ticket because you’re going too fast.

And I’d be funny about it, nice about it. Triple stamped and double stamped. I might say did you think the speed limit said 130?

Okay, cool.

Well, here’s how it works typically People who are driving 130 miles an hour might kill somebody and so what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna give you a ticket and I’m gonna give you a Massive ticket the biggest one that I’m allowed to give you But I’m not gonna recommend we put you in jail because I could do that where we just tow the car right now, right? I’m gonna give you a huge ticket and if I catch you again, I’ll do it again I pride myself on giving the same people tickets over and over and because because I recognize your vehicle, I’ll keep doing it. And so, that’s what I would do, that’s how I manage people as well.

And so, that’s kinda, what Colin Powell’s talking about is huge here. You are guilty by association.

Chuck, can you read the notable quotable from Colin Powell?

Yep, he says, goes on to say, the simple but true fact of life is that you become like those with whom you closely associate for the good and the bad.

And he has a note here. Be not mistaken, this is applicable to family as well as friends. Yes, do love, appreciate, and be thankful for your family, for they will always be your family no matter what. Just know that they are human first, and though they are family to you, they may be a friend to someone else and will fit somewhere in the criteria above. I can say this, outside of my very close family, like, let’s say, I don’t know, the people who gave birth to me and, you know, my actual kids that I have and my wife, I don’t like family at all. I wish I didn’t have a family because their pot smoking, their joblessness, their poor work ethic they bring, it contaminates me by association.

It’s like, oh you’re related to that person. pretty much categorically unfriended, blocked, deleted, any type of family association I have at all, except for the ones that I share the same values with. Because I am not somebody who, I just don’t want the drama. I don’t want to be surrounded by idiots. And so a lot of people ask on this show, they say, gosh, you’re, you’re, are you the reason why I’m able to have success in the areas of faith, family, finance, fitness, friendship, fun, why I have a great life, why I like what I do is because I literally am only around happy people all the time. People

People say, that sounds so exciting. Gosh, I wish I could do that. I would love to live behind a wall as well, where I’m surrounded with only people I like.

I mean, I can sincerely tell you, I love the man cave and I love all the guests we have in the man cave.

We have folks like Aaron Antis on the show.

Good dude.

I feel like a brother to Aaron Antis.

We have people like Dr. Zellner on the show.

We have great people. on the show, in the studio. And you know why?

Because we don’t let the idiots in.

And if you want to have a happy life where you’re not constantly embattled with human drama, you’ve got to set boundaries and punt certain people out of your life.

Say no. Say no sometimes. Say no sometimes. Also, when you’re managing people, certain people need to be fired. Yes. That’s what is required to have the life that you desire.

Preach. You’ve got to fire people that aren’t a good fit. And if you’re not willing to do that, you simply will not be be successful. And one guy who is the top chiropractor in Tulsa, I want to tell you about this guy before the break here, is Dr. Sibley. Chuck, tell us his website and tell us his contact information. You can get a hold of him at drjohnsibley .

com, drjohnsibley . com, or call him at 918 -749 -5741. Again, 918 -749 -5741. He’s right over there at 51st and Harvard, drjohnsibley . com, 918 -749 -5741.

No negative emotion, cause that’s what business is Always dominate, cause I got 5 kids I will not lose, I don’t break for clues They can talk about me, I can take that abuse Here is the truth, while they make that excuse I’ll be up grinding, cause the scoreboard’s the truth He is my mentor, like my Yoda dude He showed me the force, like I was a young Luke

Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. My name is Clay Clark, I am the former USSBA Entrepreneur of the Year and the father of five kids, sent here on a mission to get you into a great financial position. And to do that, you’re going to have to learn how to manage people effectively. If you own a business, you’re going to have to manage people effectively. Now again, I go back to my analogy, the circle, I go back to the circle, where we started off the show. But Chup, you and I, I consider us to be friends.

Um, because I like you, hopefully you like me, but I like you, you’re a good guy, and so if we were grilling out there behind the building, we’re just grilling out there behind the studio. Chilling and grilling. We’re just, we’re just buddies grilling.

I would say this, Eric Chupp is probably the most man -tastic and fantastic griller I’ve ever seen.

This guy, but you worked, where did you work?

What was one of your first jobs?

Well, one of my first jobs, I was 12, 13, 14 years old, and I worked at a restaurant out in Catoosa, Oklahoma called Molly’s Landing Steakhouse.

But you’re very good at grilling.

I love to grill. It’s one of my passions. Right, but you’re very good at it because you spend a lot of time at it. Right. You also take pride in it. Yep.

And so if Chupp and I were buddies and were grilling back there, which we’ve done before. His food is fantastic. I’m just telling you, Eric Chopp is probably the best griller I’ve seen in a long time. I just absolutely, I’m just telling you, I love his food. He does a great job. But I can also say this, systemically and categorically, I am probably the worst griller ever.

Now, I recently have gotten better because I’ve kind of learned some of his moves, but I’m just telling you, I’m bad.

So if we’re out there grilling for fun, I would say, Wow, Chup, your food’s great.

If I overcooked the food, he would just rag on me, we’d joke about it, like, dude, that was pretty terrible.

But we would just, it wouldn’t be like an issue.

Because the friendship is an unconditional thing. It’s like, hey, we’re buddies because we know each other, we have certain things we like about each other, whatever. Right, you could mess up the grill meat 10 times in a row, and it’s not that big a deal. Right, but now if I worked for you at Molly’s Landing, which is known for having high quality food, and I messed up the food even twice, for a customer, you’re probably going to have to fire me or think about firing me.

Yeah, at least meet with you, explain to you what’s going on, see if we can fix the problem, and if we cannot fix the problem, then you’ll have to move on.

It’s because we’re trying to serve a customer who is exchanging their dollars, their hard -earned dollars, for goods and services.

Completely different expectation, right?

Right, and so you, if you and I are buddies, And I said, Chup, gosh, I’d love to come work for you at your steakhouse.

If you knew anything about me at all, and you cared about our relationship at all, as my friend, you would have to say, hey, here’s the deal.

I know a lot of guys.

I’ve met a lot of guys. Let me tell you what.

You’re probably the worst griller I’ve ever met, and you know this.

So why don’t you not work for me so we can still become buddies?

Because in the event that I did hire you, I would also have to fire you for doing a poor job, and I don’t want to fire you because we’ve been buddies forever. Right.

Well, as a guy who’s been self -employed in some way, shape, or form since the age of 16, I mean, I was 16 years old.

I remember I was DJing a Students Against Drunk Driving dance in a Cocado, Minnesota, and I hired a guy by the name of Oswald to provide the speakers to me. I rented the speakers from him. He was in a band. I rented the speakers and he delivered the speakers. So we had like this relationship like, man, I paid you and you let me rent the speakers and I brought them back on time. But I hired two other people whose names I shall not mention, because they didn’t show up. so the day of the big dance occurs we’ve got all these people attending the dance my first big gig as a DJ aspiring disc jockey 16 years old and two of the three people that I counted on to be there didn’t show up and so I learned real quick age 16 like man welcome to business welcome to business and so I quit being friends with those guys because they did it again the second time And I realized they didn’t care.

Their word was not their bond.

It didn’t matter to them. And so because I’ve been self -employed since 16, I’m 37, this is 21 years, I can honestly tell you, I have had to fire probably a thousand people. And then we only have in Tulsa, can you look at the population of Tulsa? Like how many people live in Tulsa? Tulsa, Oklahoma. I don’t know the actual number, but I would speculate.

400 ,000. So there’s 400 ,000. That means out of every 400 people. So if I walk into a Walmart, I fired somebody in there, whether a customer or an employee, because there’s only about 400 people in a Walmart at any given time. If I go to a Drillers game, I for sure, I mean think about this, what’s the seating capacity of the Tulsa Drillers Stadium? I think it holds like 20 ,000 people maybe, maybe 15 ,000 people.

The Tulsa Drillers, it’s downtown Tulsa. For those of you who don’t know, they’re a minor league baseball team, double A team. They’re an affiliate for the Los Angeles Dodgers. What’s the seating capacity of the Drillers Stadium? Let me find it. Oh, Drillers website’s down.

Come on. Let’s just say right now it’s 15 ,000. Okay, that would probably be better. I mean, and maybe I’m wrong, but let’s just say it is.

That means that I have fired 37 .5 people at every Drillers game. So it’s like a deal where I don’t like to go out very much because as soon as I go out I want to go back in. I went to a Jerry Seinfeld show there and I went to go see Jerry Seinfeld and I’m literally going

to a bar with my wife to grab a beverage before the the concert and gosh sitting right next to me is somebody who, long story short, this person’s engaged in an extramarital affair with a current member of my team. And so I see them on a date with somebody they’re not married to, and it’s like weird, right? But then I go to the bathroom and I run into somebody I fired, that was beautiful, and then I’m sitting right by somebody who actually did a very good job very, very good job while working for me. So I’m like, yes, this is an up.

Then I’m out there in the lobby with my wife, about ready to get in.

We got great seats.

and the guy next to me, oh my gosh, I’m so happy that I ran into this guy. This is Randy, the guy who introduced me to Pinionwood. Oh, really? The guy who introduced me to Pinionwood. I’m gonna try to get him on the show. That’s awesome.

Randy with Five Oaks Lodge was there, and he was like, Clay Clark, and I’m like, Randy! His wife’s the one who introduced me to heavy thread linens for the DJ business. But it’s like, I know a lot of people now.

And so all I would just say is if you’re going to manage people, gosh, you’ve got to become comfortable.

with making people upset. You have to. You’ve got to be comfortable. One of my favorite one of your stories like that is you talked about being at church and peeing in a urinal. Oh. Some guy’s trying to talk to you about firing his kid at the urinal.

Fired his daughter. Hey man, eyes forward, no talking, man law. I’m trying to use the urinal in peace and a man has explained to me he’s very frustrated that I fired his daughter when I’m going to the bathroom at a church.

That’s over the line, come on.

This is why you won’t typically see me in a Tulsa church. You’re going to see me in a church in other cities, you’ll see me watching online, but I just try to avoid. You won’t see him watching it online because he’ll be here. Right, that’s a good point.

So without any further ado though, we’re going to play audio excerpt with a member of our team, so you can hear what it’s like to be managed in our systems. If you are a member of our team, you can hear about what it’s like when we manage. That’s the big struggle for entrepreneurs, is how do you manage people? And we teach how to do it all the time, but we took the time to interview members of our team, so you can hear from them directly what it’s like to be managed on our team. Without any further ado, interviews with our team members.

My name is Dee Tucker, and I’ve known Clay for going on about five years now. I’m the lead designer here at Thrive, and working with Clay, Clay is an anomaly.

If Thrive is a set of principles, watching Clay is like watching the standard. It can be an amazing experience just being around him.

In my time working with Clay, I’ve I’ve really learned how to simplify things in life, and I’ve learned to say no to some things.

Improving my work -life balance has been huge. I think people who are kind of curious about their own limits and love trying new things and like being challenged, I think you’re going to enjoy working with Clay. Clay’s passion for helping people grow their businesses, I would say, is just genuine. He really hates to see people struggle, and he wants to help them in any way he can to grow their business. What I’d say is the most polarizing about Klay’s management style is that he doesn’t let you get your own area and get comfortable. He’s always pulling you into things that terrify you, pulling you on the radio show and just making you stretch yourself and expand yourself.

I think if you think you’ve got it figured out pretty much, you’re gonna have a hard time working with Klay. If you’re about to meet Klay for the first time, definitely be on time and be present in the room Be focused on what you’re there to do and don’t be distracted by phones and buzzing and texting and all of that. Not to get too deep, but I think what Klay sees in his turkeys, chickens and cats, I trust is not And trust is kind of huge. And trust is not an element of perfection. You don’t trust people because they’re perfect.

You trust them because they’re consistent. And I think consistency is something that he really appreciates in people. And to me, those animals kind of epitomize consistency.

It’s easy to get into a routine with those animals. You know, he knows what to expect. If you have ever struggled to manage people, go to ThriveTimeShow . com. That’s ThriveTimeShow . com and book your tickets for our next in -person workshop, June 22nd and 23rd.

Three, two, one, boom!

Clay, my honor to be on your show and thank you for all you do. I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects. You know what I mean? People rave about what they learned from you. So congratulations. Sean, guess what’s happening April 9th and 10th, 2026.

Uh, we are probably going to have an amazing business conference here at Tulsa, Russell. Yes, we are joined by Tim Tebow. Tim Tebow is going to be joining us right here at the Thrive Time Show world headquarters, June 5th and 6th. He’s a very successful football player, obviously a Heisman award winner, but he’s also a very successful entrepreneur. Now, when you work with real clients, Sean, real clients, you really work with to help them grow their companies. Do you ever hear a business owner tell you that they didn’t have time to get something done?

Every day. How often is is not having enough time a problem for business owners? All the time. It’s almost it’s like maybe 90 percent of the issues as people are trying to grow their company. Well Tim Tebow is going to come join us here at the in -person Thrive Time Show two day interactive business Workshop.

And he’s going to teach us time management and his approach to personal self -discipline and getting things done. Also at the workshop, I’ll put up on the website so people can see it here. Also at the 2 -Day Interactive Workshop, Sean, we are going to be teaching accounting, systems creation, marketing, human resources, how to hire, inspire, train, and retain great people, accounting, social media advertising, Search engine optimization. Sean, what’s the area where most clients ask you for help the most? Is it generating leads? Is it hiring people?

What’s the biggest issue that most business owners have by default before they come to one of our workshops? make the best decisions based on numbers rather than emotions is a big area.

And we teach all of this stuff at the business conference, particularly you, Clay.

You love to hammer on time management. It’s my favorite part of the conference. Now, I’m going to pull this up real quick here, because we’re going to go through it. If you’re not excited, I want to get you excited about what we’re going to cover at the workshop here, OK? OK.

All right. The two -day interactive workshop. This is my 20th year hosting workshops. So I’m telling you folks, we’re in rare form here. So one is the idea of establishing your revenue goals. I think most entrepreneurs don’t know their revenue goals.

Would you agree or am I off my rocker? No, that’s totally a very important point we do with every one of our new clients that come on board is we have to establish the revenue goals. And generally speaking, we have a vague idea, but not an exact idea that can be engineered down into like the daily goals for sales. And so that’s a really big one. even numbers oh yeah what kind of sales do you have to do to do to even break even yeah third is how many

hours per week do you want to work?

What is your ideal schedule as an entrepreneur? Box number four, how do you stand out in the clutter of commerce? What makes your company unique from all the different businesses? In a world of brown cows, herds of brown cows, proverbial brown cows, the analogy of brown cows, how can you be the purple cow that stands out? How can you be the squeaky wheel that gets the oil? Box number five, branding.

How do you improve the perception that people have of you, your business, your brand. Box number six.

Marketing, your three -legged marketing stool. What is a turnkey way for you and your company to generate leads so you can succeed?

Because if you don’t have any leads, your business will bleed.

If you can’t sell, your business will go to hell. You’ve got to generate leads. Sean, how often do business owners by default tell you they have a hard time generating leads? It’s almost all of the time. It’s really a huge struggle.

And many times, they may be creating leads, but just through word of mouth.

So they get to a point where we’ve implemented systems, and then they need to create more.

leads, but they’ve never had to do it.

So there’s a lot of different scenarios where business owners are like, how do you create leads?

Something we hammer on at the conference a lot. Box number seven, create a sales conversion system. Again, box number seven, create a sales conversion system. Sales scripts, recorded calls, one sheets, pre -written emails, lead trackers, all of the sales tools, the sales print pieces, the one sheets, the big screens that you see inside the business, whether you’re a doctor, you’re a dentist, you’re a lawyer, you’ve got to have sales systems in place. We help you with that.

Box number eight, what does it cost you to get another customer?

Step number eight, what does it cost you to actually acquire a customer? Step number nine, it’s hard to build organization if you’re not organized.

We’re going to teach you how to create repeatable systems, processes, file organization.

Box number 10, we’re going to teach you how to manage people, real people, on the planet Earth. This just in, we’re going to teach you how to manage real people on the planet Earth. Box number 11, how to create a sustainable schedule that works for you and your family. Step number 12, how to create human resources systems for recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining great people. Box number 13, accounting. This just in, we have to cover accounting.

It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep. We’re going to cover all the accounting things you need to know.

And step 14, finally, What is the point of even achieving success? We’re going to go over what is the point of even achieving success, how to design a life that you’re excited about, how to design a life where you carve out enough time for your faith, your family, your finance, your fitness, your friendship, your fun, and where you’re going to spend your focused time. We’re going to go through that, all this and more. Now, the workshop, Sean, it’s April 9th and 10th. It’s a two -day interactive workshop.

And tickets, we always do it.

It’s $250 or whatever price that someone can afford. Sean, why do we let people name their price? Why do we have scholarship tickets available? if somebody can’t afford the $250 general admission ticket? Well, we don’t want anybody to miss out on it. You could be at a startup phase, or you could be way along in your business.

But we want to make it accessible for everybody.

I think it actually goes back, too, to a story of your dad. And it goes all the way back to how you’ve always done this as a business coach, trying to make sure that your average people out there have access to the things that work. Now, 7 a . m. to 5, Sean, why do we go from 7 to 5 both days? I mean, it’s 10 hours a day, 20 hours of training over two days.

Why do we do 10 hours a day, Sean, of back -to -back workshops? We do a 30 -minute teaching session, we do a 15 -minute question and answer session, and then we take a break. 30 minutes of teaching, 15 minutes of question and answer, then we take a break. Why do we do that format, Sean? That format is so that we can keep people engaged and not just sitting there listening, but also getting involved. We really encourage people to ask questions, And that’s really where the juiciness of the conference comes out is you can put your personal situation and your questions on the board, and Clay will tee off and give you direct advice.

Even without being in our coaching program, you can get direct coaching from Clay.

It’s really a very engaging format. I enjoyed it a lot. Once again, folks, this event is April 9th and 10th, 2026. Get those tickets at thrivetimeshow . com. Once again, that’s thrivetimeshow .

com. person, two day interactive business workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I think it’s, uh, did you say it’s $250 or whatever you can afford? That’s right. $250 or whatever you can afford. Sean, how do you spell Eric Trump backwards? Uh, P uh, M U R T C. I -R -E.

Ooh, that took a long time. I’ll have to listen to this. All right, again, that’s Sean Lohman. I’m Clay Clark, and inviting you to come join us at the in -person Thrive Time Show two -day interactive workshop. This event is April 9th and 10th, 2026. Get those tickets at thrivetimeshow .

com. Once again, that’s thrivetimeshow .

com.

Right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tim Tebow, baby. It’s Tebow time in Tulsa, Russia. Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy Clay? Clay’s the greatest. I met his goats today.

I met his dogs. I met his chickens. I saw his compound. He’s like the greatest guy. I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs. So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen, right?

His entire life, Clay Clark, his entire life is marketing. It’s Luke Erickson here with the Thrive Time Show. As you can see behind me, we’ve got all kinds of energy going on. People are starting to show up. for the conference and it is hot in this place. We’ve got grill guns over here.

We’ve got people playing the drums. We’ve got a fire and then people come in. My name is Kevin Thomas and the name of our company is MultiClean. We are a commercial janitorial service and we serve the entire state of Oklahoma and Kansas and soon to be Arkansas. We have probably grown probably five times.

We’ve added, I think when we first started with you, we had 60 to 65 employees and now we have a little over 300 employees. Before we got involved with Thrive Time, we didn’t really have any systems or processes in place. I’ve probably been to, oh, in six, seven years, I’ve probably been to 12 to 13 business conferences and Amazingly, each time I go, I learn something new and I’m so excited to bring it back and show the team. 4 ,000 % from February to February. Now, I can better that. Okay, Clay, I don’t think you know this.

I don’t think you know this. I’m pinching myself, and if I cry, forgive me. In the last two and a half days, we have bettered our entire month of February. in the last two and a half days. none. It’s a high energy really cool atmosphere to be around.

Contagious I would say just just something every entrepreneur I think would appreciate and love. I’d say humorous high energy and full of substance which I think is the key. A lot of business coaches or seminars Maybe you’re high on motivation and making you feel good, but don’t have a lot of substance that you could take back and implement, you know, the following Monday, where his does. Man, there’s a lot of valuable things. I’m gonna say, like, I came to, this is my second workshop. The first workshop I took back really the importance of a group interview.

I used to spend hours and hours interviewing people, screening resumes, and that saving my time on that part is valuable. It was that and then the sales scripting that have been two major things just so far. And I think they’re missing out on expert advice from somebody who’s been there, done that, built companies, has learned a lot of lessons. That’s what I’m always looking for is somebody that I can learn from that’s ahead of where I am. And I think if you choose not to come, you’re missing out on a lot of good advice that can help your business. Hi, this is Charles and Amber Kola.

We’re the owners of Kola Fitness.

We heard about Clayclark through Paul Hood, our CPA. We’ve worked with Clayclark for the last two years. Clayclark has helped us take our three locations in three different states and create a great checklists, workflows, task lists, time blocks for every employee. He’s helped us with creating systems and audits for every department, quantitative scorecards for each department and every position so that everybody has a number. It’s been able to give us a lot of time freedom and financial freedom and peace of mind to know that everything’s running efficiently and he’s been helpful with A lot of marketing, search engine optimization, helping us really rank high in Google, and pretty much every area of the business. It’s been very, very helpful.

We would describe the experience of working with Clay as very energetic. He’s full of energy. He’s very encouraging, very motivating, but also accountable. So he keeps us accountable, and we love that accountability. It keeps our drive in the right direction, so we’re not chasing things that aren’t worth spending our time on. He’s a great coach.

He helps push us on certain areas, helps coach us in certain areas. You know, we’re all emotional creatures and we go up and down and he actually will tell us kind of where we’re at, how we can get from there. And even like emotionally, like when we’re stressed about something, he’ll have a story to relate to. And it really helps us in every area of our business. It’s been very, very helpful. I think Clay’s ability to have a whole team behind him that helped him with all of his clients, all his coaching clients, is that it allows Clay to do what he’s really good at and that’s

working one -on -one with the client and coaching them.

And then he can have his amazing staff come in and help you accomplish all these goals that you’re setting. And of course he has all these resources, whether it’s videographers or whether it’s web developers. that they can quickly jump on your project, knock things out. He can quickly give you the right coaching. He’s just got a whole team of people that whatever area you’re lacking in, in your own company, he’s got resources from like video, web design, search engine guys who are just knowledgeable in that. Even though he knows a lot of that stuff, He’s got these capable lieutenants that are ready to just take off and help you get that stuff done.

More stuff gets done on a weekly basis than you would on, like, probably most, yeah, than an individual or some other company. We’ve worked with several companies before. It’s just not as many things get done on a weekly basis. It’s been very helpful. Well, the conferences for me, I’m a slow learner, so I have to learn like over and over again, hear things over and over again. I’ve been to like, I think, eight different conferences, and each time you come, I learn a few new components.

Some things are repetitive, but a lot of the stuff just resettles and I get a little bit more depth into each component. So, I mean, I’ve been to eight of them. They’re all super entertaining. He’s very funny, very encouraging. You get to kind of self -reflect a lot, and a lot of the stuff is really polarizing. personal inventory of yourself and you’ll think like, hey, I’ve really got to work on this, really got to work on that.

So every time you come, I still get a lot of value out of it. And as much as every conference is the same, it’s totally different. So I think we’ll hear stories we haven’t heard before. He’ll have entertainment or he’ll have speakers he didn’t have before. And you, like you said, you just always catch a different part of the material that maybe you didn’t catch before. it’s worded differently.

And it’s really cool because some people that you’ve seen like a year ago at a conference, now they’re, you know, being showcased as a success story and you get to see their website, you get to see how their stats and all their metrics have improved and the revenue improved. So it’s really cool to see people that just a year ago, that of course we’ve been here two years, that just came, that I met, is now being successful. It’s really encouraging to see other people, you know, accomplish that stuff. So McClay has helped us optimize our website and helped with really topping the right search engines that we need to make sure that we are very, very competitive with all of our other competitors. He’s done Basically, he outlines exactly what you need to be accomplishing and he creates tasks that we have to accomplish and his team has to accomplish. I would say over the last two years, we’ve totally ramped our website.

We’re topping Google in every one of our markets. I would say just doing really, really good. I feel very, very confident in all of our future locations and making sure that we’re in front of the ideal and likely buyer. It’s very encouraging. It’s important to me that to know when I’m working with Clay, you know, I’ve been in business for a while and met with him even when I already had three, three businesses in three different states. And to know that what I share with him is staying private.

He’s not sending that out to anybody else. to know that when he’s working with me he’s only working with one other, no other gyms that are in direct competition with me. It’s very encouraging to have something you can trust and rely on that he isn’t going to like somehow tell your trade secrets or give information away. Just really awesome that he’s a trustworthy guy, really cares about you as a client. For us, it’s been a complete mind freedom because Clay has helped us create a lot of different documents and one sheets for every department, put quantitative scorecards to each department. And so for us, it’s been very encouraging.

It gives us peace.

Like as an entrepreneur, it’s stressful. You go to bed at night, you’re worried, like, did we cover this, did we cover that? So he helps extract everything out of your brain, everything from your business, put it into document creation, put it into checklists and workflows for every person in each department, and make sure that everything’s getting done every week, every month, and funnel that all into KPIs, or key performance indicators, as you can see, on a weekly basis, to make sure you’re moving the needle in the right area of your company. It’s very encouraging and gives you a complete mind, freedom, and peace to know that that stuff’s created so you’re easy to duplicate and scale your company. Right, and then we can spend time doing what we’re really good at and just trust the system.

I honestly believe everybody needs a coach. I think we’re all inherently lazy, selfish, and carnal. I truly believe that humans are humans. If we’re standing, we’d rather sit. If we’re sitting, we’d rather lay down. And if we’re laying down, we’d rather be asleep.

So to have somebody that challenges you, have real active candor and be honest with you on every aspect of your company is really, really encouraging to me because I want to know, I want to work on what we’re weak at. I want to see any areas that we’re not doing well in and see his perspective from a third party. Because you can look at your own business and just see the good. It’s good to have somebody who’s done this with hundreds of companies. You know, really look at your company, reflect on your company, and see like little chinks in the armor to make sure you cover that up so your competition can’t get to you and that you’re successful overall in the big picture. Yes, I would recommend Clay Clark because he is a great friend, great encourager.

To me, he’s been a wonderful friend. He’s also, you can tell he cares. And he also, he has this wealth of knowledge. He’s worked with so many different companies and different businesses. He could take a concept that he’s used before in the past somebody totally different industry and see how it would work perfectly.

for you and whatever niche market you’re in or whatever type of service you’re providing and so his brain is just a wealth of knowledge and just to have that type of perspective on you know as a part of your team and your own company is huge super valuable so I would definitely encourage people to use him but one thing is you got to be coachable you got to be wanting to get feedback you got to be wanting to really grow your company you got to want to put that extra 10 hours a week to working on your business and not just in your business. And so, yes, I would recommend it to anybody who’s wanting to grow their company and provide great systems, checklists, workflows, great encouragement, and have accountability. Hi, I’m Chris with Shaw Homes. I first heard about Clay through a mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them. And I actually noticed he was driving a Lamborghini all of a sudden, so I was willing to listen. In my career, I’ve sold a little over $800 million in real estate.

So honestly, I thought I kind of knew everything about marketing and homes. And then I met Clay, and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed. After doing $800 million in sales over a 15 -year career, I really thought I knew what I was doing. I’ve been managing a large team of salespeople for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes. And I mean, we’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years. We’ve become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area, and that was without Clay.

So when I came to know Clay, I really thought, man, there’s not much more I need to know, but I’m willing to listen. The interesting thing is our internet leads from our website has actually in a four month period of time has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 leads in a month to 180 internet leads in a month. Just from the few things that he’s shown us how to implement that I honestly probably never would have come up with on my own. So I got a lot of good things to say about the system that Clay put in place with us. And it’s just been an incredible experience.

I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with Clay. So the interaction with the team and with Clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening. One of the things that I love about Clay’s perspective on things is that he doesn’t come from my industry.

He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry.

I’ve listened to all the experts in my field.

Our company has paid for me to go to seminars, international builder shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the experts in my industry. But the thing that I found working with Clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do, I’m not paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing. And Clay really brings that perspective for me. It is very valuable time every week when I get that hour with him.

From my perspective, the reason that any business owner who’s thinking about hooking up with Thrive needs to definitely consider it is because the results that we’ve gotten in a very short period of time are honestly monumental. It has really exceeded my wildest expectation of what he might be able to do.

I came in skeptical because I’m very pragmatic and as I’ve gone through the process over just a few months, I’ve realized it’s probably one of the best moves we’ve ever made. I think a lot of people probably feel like they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because they maybe are a little bit prideful and like to think they know everything. I know that’s how I felt coming in. I mean, we’re a big company that’s definitely one of the largest in town. And so we kind of felt like we knew what we were doing. And I think for a lot of people, they let their ego get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs.

I would just really encourage you, if you’re thinking about working with Clay, I mean, the thing is, it’s month to month. Go give it a try and see what happens. I think in the 35 -year history of Shaw Homes, this is probably the best thing that’s happened to us. And I know if you give them a shot, I think you’ll feel the same way. I know for me, the thing I would have missed out on if I didn’t work with Clay is I would have missed out on literally an 1800 % increase in our internet leads, going from 10 a month to 180 a month. That would have been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot.

I would absolutely recommend Clay Clark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing. I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about and I would go straight to Clay and his team. I guarantee you’re not going to regret it because we sure haven’t. My name is Danielle Sprick, and I am the founder of D. Sprick Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After being a stay -at -home mom for 12 years and my three kids started school and they were in school full -time, I was at a crossroads and trying to decide, what do I want to do? My degree and my background is in education, but after being a mom and staying home and all of that, I just didn’t have a passion for it like I once did.

My husband suggested real estate. He’s a home builder, so real estate and home building go hand in hand, and we just rolled with it. I love people. I love working with people. I love the building relationships. But one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things, the processes and the advertising and marketing.

I knew that I did not have what I needed to be successful. make that what it should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time and he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand, help market our business, our agents, the homes that we represent. Everything that we do is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us. We launched our brokerage our real estate brokerage eight months ago. And in that time we’ve gone from myself and one other agent to just this week we signed on our 16th agent.

We have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million in pending transactions. Three years ago, I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in today, building a business, having 16 agents. But I have to give credit where credit’s due. And Clay and his team and the business coaches that they’ve offered us has been huge.

It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing.

Don’t ever limit your vision. When you dream big, big things happen. I started a business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way. I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient. I don’t answer to insurance companies.

I don’t answer to large corporate organizations. I answer to my patient, and that’s it. My thought when I opened my clinic was, I can do this all myself. I don’t need additional outside help in many ways. I mean, I went to medical school. I can figure this out.

But it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63 ,000 embezzlement. I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan. He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees, using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult.

He helped me in securing the business loans. He helped me with web development and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic. Clay, my honor, my honor to be on your show and thank you for all you do.

I hear the ripple effects from you are good ripple effects. know I mean people rave about what they learn from you so congratulations this year to we’re at 400 that’s what we’re gonna hit see so we’re pretty excited about that pretty much just listening to what they have to say their hiring process has just really been incredible as far as finding good quality help and the just the accountability of meeting up with them weekly and such good insight, the resources they have for specific business questions. It’s all been really incredible. It’s been a great experience. So I’d recommend it to anybody. What I’ve seen from Clay and his group at Thrive is they’ll give you a simple system.

And it’s the simple systems are the ones that people can wrap their brain around. They’re the ones that people can work with on a day -to -day basis. Hi there, my name is Stephanie Pipkin. I am 24 years old and I own Black River Falls Cleaning Services. We opened in April of 2019 and it is now mid -June of 2020. So I wanted to talk today about the success and growth I have achieved by implementing the Proven Path with Clay Clark’s team and my business coach, Luke, from Thrive Time.

It has been insane, to say the least. I started working with them in mid -February of this year, so we’re about four months in of working together, and it has completely transformed my business in pretty much every facet. So I’m going to check my notes here. So in four months, my leads have tripled. I was getting probably like two leads a week.

Now I’m getting more in the like 10 to 15 leads a week. I have doubled my number of employees. I’m now hitting the highest revenue weeks in the history of the company, week to week it seems like. We went from about six appointments today as our highest in February to now 14 to 15 appointments a day. Hiring quality employees has become much simpler and less stressful by using their systems for hiring I typically only get maybe two complaints a month if that and everybody shows up to work I just have really high quality employees now, especially in something people typically consider a high turnover type of work You know cleaning houses cleaning businesses I have amazing employees now and I get rid of the ones who are not so amazing and bring on new ones because of you know group interviews and interviewing every single week. It’s just been great and I don’t waste as much time.

low -quality candidates anymore. And your coach will hold you accountable, which I love. Again, the tough love is really great. Luke’s like a stern father figure, but he’s also nice, but also stern when he needs to be when I’m being lazy and not doing the things that I know I need to do because I don’t want to do them. So that’s just great. Worth every penny.

I mean, I’d pay him a million dollars a month if I can, and maybe someday I’ll be able to, but I would just say go for it. If it seems like a good fit, just go for it. do what they say even if you think it’s stupid or ridiculous just do what they say because it’ll work you know people when they look at my business you know people in my town they think I’m lucky they think I’m just you know things just happen for me and you know maybe I am lucky, but it has a lot to do with hard work and, you know, perseverance and, you know, working till you cry sometimes. That’s just being an entrepreneur, which if you’re a business owner, you understand that. But it’s having these systems in place of, you know, of course I’m going to be successful.

It’s an absolute because I have all this stuff in the background happening. And I have Luke and Clay and everybody on their team working really hard to make sure that I’m a success. And I can tell that they are just so excited every single week when I’m having all these wins and things like that. They’re so excited for me. So it’s the best thing ever and I would suggest to anybody to work with them. So sorry for the long -winded reply, but I just had so much to say, and I could go on for hours probably about how amazing they are.

But thank you to Clay and Luke and the entire team there, everything you guys have done for me, and I am so excited to continue to work with you for years to come. Thanks so much for watching. My saying is, if it’s important to you, hire a coach. And I think that’s one of the reasons people are not successful is they You know, they eat a cheeseburger instead of hiring a coach. You know what I mean? And so my coach pushes me.

They’re younger than me. They push harder. They’re trained. And as my rich dad always said, you know, amateurs don’t have a coach, but professionals always have coaches. So I’ve always had coaches for whatever was important. My rich dad was one of those persons.

I wanted to learn how to play Monopoly in real life. So he was my coach.

Transcribed with Cockatoo