Employee Bonuses | When, How and Who Do You Give a Raise To? – Ask Clay Anything

Audio Transcription

All right. Thrive nation. Welcome back to another exciting edition of the ask us anything edition of the thrive time show on your radio and podcast download. Now, you may be asking yourself, how can I ask my questions? Well, there’s two steps. You take one. If you are a member of the Thrive Nation, Aka your somebody who’s a member of thrive time school.com. It’s $19 a month. You get access to over $300,000 of templates and tools that are all available for [email protected]. You also get access to the in person workshops. Um, you get access to get the access to one in person workshop per year. And you can also email us your questions to [email protected]. And when possible we have you on the podcast today. We have a long time, a coaching client and a great guy, but the name of Luke Owens and Luke Owens is the founder of the hub. Jim, uh, the hub. Jim, if you google search it, it’s uh, what, what’s, what’s the, the domain there? Luke. What’s, what’s your web address?

It’s super simple. The hub gem.com

via [inaudible] dot com. Is that Jay? I am. Oh, the hub James? Yes. Is that Jim? Oh, Jim. And that’s located in broken Arrow, Oklahoma. So should you be in the area? Should you be looking to get fit? Check out the hub Jim Dot com today. Luke, what questions do you have for us today? My friend?

So I have three questions. The first is what factors help you decide how and when to give an associate a raise and how do you handle it when an associate directly asks you for one?

Okay. So let’s go into, um, giving a race, giving a raise. Let’s get into the. These are kind of the specific line item aspects. I’m going to have clay stares, chime in with some editorial on this. Okay. Thank you so much. Go and deep already. Okay, so step one is you want to be very clear about that. The expectations. That’s step one, right? And Chapel. Put this on the show notes. Got It. Step two, you want to only give people a raise if they exceed the expectations, yes, preach it, and if they exceed the expectations for six consecutive months, right now, step three, step three, you want to be completely clear about the expectations for the career path. So you want to clarify, there is a path, this is the path we’re going through. A very, very important that you do that. And the fourth is that in today’s world management is mentorship.

So you really do have to mentor your people. So let’s get into the, into the first area there. So somebody in terms of giving them a raise, I’m clay stairs. Let’s say we go to elephant in the room, men’s grooming lounge, and you’re managing one of the stores and you’ve managed a. You know, you’ve managed a large Christian camp. You’ve obviously been a successful school teacher, you’ve managed large teams. You’re, you’re used to this. Yes sir. But you go in there and you have an assistant manager, you hire the person and if it’s adult in the room, just so we’re clear, this person would make about $15 an hour. Okay? So this is significantly more than most entry level jobs. It’s one step above that. You tell them, hey, you’re making $15 an hour approximately. I don’t have the org chart in front of me, we’ll just say approximately 15 an hour.

And you say, just so we’re clear, I expect you to complete the checklist every single day and to hit your numbers. And for sake of time there was a certain number they have to get a certain number of objective reviews, a certain sales percentage, a certain amount of complaints is the maximum they can generate x, y, z. and then you can’t ever be late ever. So if you’re late, even one time during that six month window, no go for you. Alright? So then step two, you say, here are the, uh, you know, these are the expectations. So if I’m asking you as a manager or in this case, as an assistant manager, to make sure you sell a 55 percent conversion rate for memberships, that’s the minimum. That’s the minimum standard. So if you want to get promoted, you’re going to have to go above the minimum, so you’re going to have to be shooting in the sixties or seventies or 80 percent.

The third is the DD career path. You want to be very clear and say, hey, here’s the career path. If you work at elephant in the room and you do a great job for six months, you’ll be promoted to this position. Should you do this, then you can do this. Should you do that and you can become a manager. Should you become a manager, you’ll eventually you could own your own store. And here’s the Thursday. Here are the steps for owning your own store. Now, step four is management is mentorship. So inbetween the day by day basis of managing the company, there will be little issues, and as a leader, you want to mentor your people. You want to mentor your people so that they can feel a sense of security and they can get those quick corrections, those quick coaching moments that happen day by day, minute by minute. So clay, let’s go. I’m gonna. Have you break them down here? The first is be very clear about the expectations. Where do you see a lot of business owners getting that wrong as far as having printed clear, written out expectations? Well, they get it wrong so often before they come and work with us, they get it wrong and that they don’t have printed clear expectations for their employees. There’s some. And

in Luke I just want to let you know you, you were here in clay talking about those metrics, those, the measuring sticks and that is going to be a key thing for you to do with your people is make sure that there is an actual measurable metrics that you give to them. Measurable metrics. Can I do that? No other debt, impressive ems and wrong. Yeah. I like that. And uh, because so often if we don’t have anything that’s measurable, then it, what we are left with as a default is just emotional. And so it’s, well they’ve been with me for a long time. Well they really been working hard and, and so you’re wrestling with this emotional thing and then they are thinking emotional. So in another example is in the NFL, a lot of teams refer to Yak or yards after contact bill bellacheck, the coach of the Patriots is obsessed with tracking numbers.

So if you drop the ball a certain percentage of the time, you will not be on his field. If you don’t set blocks a certain percentage of the time, you will not be on his field. If you don’t average a certain number of yards per carry after contact, you won’t be on his field. But they’re very specific expectations and everything needs to be a number. So this is a sub point on, on point number one, every specific, uh, expectation you have, must be quantifiable. Do not make it qualifiable but quantifiable facts because otherwise people will start to say what clay said. I’ve been here a long time. I feel good. I feel like I’m part of the team I’ve bought in. These are all non quantifiable things. Yeah, and people start going, well, they just got a raise because you like them more now. Now you’re that world.

Yeah. That’s what’s happened. You know, I actually received a letter, a note from one of our colleague, and they’re not an employee. They’re actually a contracted a trainer, but outlined basically all of what you just said, a requesting an increase in the percentage of payout, so I’m dealing with this real time.

Nice. Nice hot ticket.

Yeah. One more thing on on being clear about the expectations is, is if you’re running a business out there, you’re managing people. You’ve got to make sure that you are aware of the curse of knowledge that you suffer from. Okay. The definition of this, the curse of knowledge, the curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual communicating with other individuals unknowingly assumes that the others have the background to understand what you’re saying. I have the curse of knowledge, right? You’re. That’s a backhanded compliment kind of when you’re explaining what needs to be done. That’s what clay is saying. It has to be quantifiable. Don’t assume that these people know what they’re talking about, especially as you’re beginning to train someone. Really break it down step by step.

Can I share with you chop a story that, well, how do you guys get

to bless and help luke because he’s dealing with his real time, but I think it may take some of our listeners some of their days down to the bottom. Are we, are we okay with that? Are we okay with that? Started from the bottom. Okay, so here we can scaled back. A lot of times there’s people that want it, but they don’t have the ability to do it, so you have to want it, you have to get it and he had to go to do it to bring it. So you have to want to do the job, but then you have to actually get the, you know, you have to understand what’s being asked of you. Then you actually have to deliver it. And so I remember years ago we had a Christmas party at the Dj connection and there was a guy on our team who, he’s a solid b minus singer and as a solid c plus singer, I can relate to this, but he, but I, I typically as a c plus singer, I don’t want to dominate the mic. So, so he, he accused up the music,

he accused it up, look around and he’s Kinda like excited for his debut and none of us want to hear him. You know what I mean? But you’re going to hear him. He gets up there and he’s bringing it. And he’s Ashton. Here we go. Christmas Day to save. Stop saying it now. Here we go. Last Christmas. My best. The very next day to some special. Give me a raise. Some of the best. Give me a raise. You know, I saying the best I could possibly be here for awhile. Oh yeah.

Everyone’s saying no, no. Mike, you were raped us. Come on, it’s terrible. But the guy was singing it. I’m not kidding. With passion. Enthusiasm. When everyone was going, dude, this guy, not only is he so intoxicated, he doesn’t know how bad he is, but he’s back on Monday. I’m not kidding. The Guy, we come to our Monday staff meeting in the center Friday or Saturday party. He says, guys, I gotTa tell you I’m so excited about the next party. Uh, I think I’m going to do cover some air guns and roses. Oh No. And he thought he was good and I’ll never forget it. One of our teammates looks over at him and says, listen, you are awful at singing. That’s not a gift you have. And I just want you to know everyone’s like true like 20 dudes, you know. All. All I’m saying is that if you’re not clear about expectations, you start talking about feelings and you start to say, well, I’ve been here a long time.

I tried my best to craft together. So write down the expectation. So as an example for a trainer, you’d say you need to retain your average client for this many months. Your average client needs to pay this much. You need to bring in this number of new clients per month. Yup. You need to. There’s got to be metrics to it. Now, the second part of your check lake, without the execution, you’ll fall back on effort every time. Oh, oh. Now the next. There it is in my mind just exploded, but because I have duct tape, I was able to keep in the gray matter. We put it back together, so now only give people a raise if they exceed the expectations for six months. Now, can I tell you a tough, rough, terrible story? Luke, we’ll go with Dateline Dallas, Texas. Two thousand 10. There’s a young man on our team who was a manager.

I her, I put it where I promoted him to manager status. Now our manager meetings typically start at 7:00 AM for the epic photos company back in the day, and this Guy Luke wanted it man he wanted and he got it. He could get it done. He was a great photographer, so I promoted him to be in charge of the Dallas location and our 7:00 AM meeting man. He shows up on time for the first time, second time. I don’t remember the specific times. I remember clay stairs at one point. He showed up one day, like at seven, 10, but he looked like he woke up at seven. Oh, three. There you go. And he’s the manager. Oh boy. And everyone like who was there. It was like, dude, that guy. And it made it. By the way, if you’re a manager you have to be late zero times.

So he does it again, but then the next it’s like back to back to though. So he never been late and it’s like twice in a row. I call the guy and I said, hey, I just want to be clear. You are getting it done as a photographer, you’re doing a great job as a photographer who good. Here’s the deal. You have your. You’ve been late though. Twice in a row. What’s going on? He says, well, I have four kids and my wife left me so I’m raising all the thrill is gone. And I said, well, where’d she go? True Story. He says, well, it’s complicated, but the point is I have custody and our babysitter backed out and I go, that’s what I don’t care about because I’m a business owner. So like starbucks doesn’t put up a sign every day that says, um, you know, hey, sorry, we’re closed.

Such and such has four kids and he’s running behind today. Um, you can’t, uh, southwest airlines doesn’t say, Hey, we’re not taking off today because captain such and such attention passengers, passenger Smith has four kids and his wife left him his. We’re not taking off today. Big businesses behave like big boys. They figured it out. Yeah. But little little mom and pop shops a lot of times deal with the slop. They just kind of. I heard that mom and poppy makes a sloppy. It’s gross. The point is, you see it all the time. People are very casual and casualness causes those casualties. Yes. So I told the guy as a friend, now he’s a friend, not as a business owner, as a friend. I Care Vanessa, and I’d love to meet with you. We’ll help you business wise, don’t you ever not show up again?

Well, that guy hard to. I hate to say it. Did it again. MMM. So we fired him and of course that caused the social media outrage and people say I’m a bad person and he’d been with us a couple of years, but can I keep, was there a couple of years and then he was late three times and you fire it up. Yep. In a row. But it’s a deal if he’s a manager, now this is a higher expectation, right? And it’s no different than the NFL. If you’re playing for the NFL and you drop, you know, I don’t know, three, four passes in a row and you’re a prime time receiver, you pretty much won’t be playing very much. So it’s a higher expectation. So, um, I would just encourage you to put the expectations in writing and then hold the person accountable to exceeding the expectations for six months in a row because anybody can get excited about a new thing. A chef. Can you look up the word Neil file real quick? Yep. Neo File. It sounds like a terrible, terrible word, but neil file, you might say to yourself, yeah, let me. Doesn’t. It didn’t feel very well either a word file

it immediately. People start to go pedo, Leah. No worries. It’s neo file. Okay. Did you find that we’re phrasing the jumper? You are you. Are you spelling shop? Are you going with the PA shop? Are you guys at a Ph? Pah. Ph Balance, chuck. It’s given me a weird. It’s a term popularized by cult writer Robert Anton Wilson is a personality type characterized by strong affinity for Nevada, for Nevada, for Novella T. okay, fine.

Here’s what I’m doing. Here’s what I’m doing. Here’s what I’m doing. What I’m doing is I’m painting. Jump into a corner. I apologize. I’ll put it on the show notes here. Let me just make sure we’re getting this idea. The average person is obsessed with new things. Neo and experiences. They love new things. They just, they love the idea of a new job. Uh, they love the idea of a new career. They love that you have a new girlfriend who need a new house. Yes. And so these people, they love new. This is somebody who has a really bad marriage but wants to have a kid because they feel like that’ll make it better. You’ve heard that before. Like, our marriage is struggling. We’ve just needed a new child. It’s a bizarre idea because if you, you would never want to be fruitful. Uh, you didn’t.

You never want to quote, demonstrate Tim Redmond here. You would never want to be a fruitful, you know, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t wanna multiply until your fruitful be fruitful then multiply, right? Yeah. Tim used to say that all the time at tax and accounting software when I was good for one of his 450 employees, you’d always hear the phrase, don’t be fruitful until you multiply. The point is you wouldn’t want to, um, you know, promote somebody who’s not doing well at their current job. And if nothing else, um, consistency is close to godliness in the world of management. I mean, if you are consistent, that right there, check that. That’s rare.

And those people, I want to encourage everybody out there that everybody’s always saying, how do you find those people, those people that can actually show up for six months, they’re out there. The problem is you actually have to recruit them. So

never stop your group interview. Never stopped the weekly group interview so that you can replace the people that are not exceeding the expectations. Hey, we found a good guy today. We did. Um, yeah, I didn’t get a chance to meet him, but apparently Jordan and his father was into our podcast shout videographer. I’m excited. Jordan. Welcome onto the team dude. Uhm, now the next step, be completely clear about the expectations for the career path. Clay stairs. If someone wants to be a coach for the leadership initiative, the clay stares corporation. Um, talk to us roughly about. I don’t expect to grill you on point by point, but overall, wow, what sort of the, the, the, the path. If someone said, I want to become a business coach under your leadership, what does that path look like? Yeah. Well, very first step in this path is for the first month to five weeks, you’re making 200 phone calls a day and you’re writing seo articles.

W how many, how, how many calls. Again, 200 phone calls a day. And when you said 200, what I heard chop was 200 right around ballpark. $200. If you round up it’s 201. Why would you want somebody to make 200 calls a day if they’re going to be in your, you know, as a coach, which is kind of as high as it gets. Why would you? Why does someone have to vet? What is, why is it, why is that a vetting process that works for you? Well, as a coach, you’re going to be talking to your clients about their need to make phone calls and they’re going to come up with all kinds of clay. I remember talking to you, coming up with all kinds of excuses as to why I didn’t need to make phone calls. I hurt my thorax. It’s not even a part of the human body body as this invite and you need to have that experience.

You need to have lived through that and overcome that. If you haven’t overcome it, what does he can’t lead where you don’t go, so you’ve got to be able to work through that and go through a, you know, all of the struggle and all of the difficulty to get on the other side so you can coach somebody and a champion. Jump Up. I have a hot take. One of our callers called in here. We haven’t screened this collar, but they had. They wanted to add in a little. Let him on when they wanted to chime in on. Just let them on. It’s a wild. We’re like, wow, so someone has to make 200 calls.

Surely you can’t be serious and don’t call me Shirley.

Wow. That was a hot take from one of our listeners are oddly familiar. I don’t know where it came from. So that’s the first step. And you do that for five weeks and you’ve got to do with consistently. Oh, okay. Go do it. Consistent. Now, when you say consistent, do you mean every day? I mean every day and clay. I have had somebody that we did hire. Man, it was great. We were thinking they were going to do really good and they. They took a break and they disappear. Very first day. Took a break, disappeared. Chuck, he ghosted you show. Here’s the deal. You got to make your calls every day. See abroad to get at boody. I laid down a smack that luke write that. That’s

a tip. Whatever. When you write that down, please tell me what they said because I don’t know. Whatever, whatever. Collect beats with someone who’s like, why do I have to make these calls? He’ll immediately turned to them and he’ll say,

you know what? They say, see abroad to get that booty down. Smack back on. The point is you have to do it. How about this? How about this? Even back Luke, even when I was a track coach up in Kansas City, I always brought every one of my track athletes through the door of the open quarter. Everybody trained for the open court open court because if you can run the open quarter consistently, what’s the open cooler? Then I can use 400 meters so far. If you can do that, then I can now run you in the hundred to 200. The 100 meter relay, the 200 meter relay, the open container, the 400 meter relay. And so I always took people through that doorway of difficulties, want people that I’m surrounded with and people in my company that can overcome struggle.

Just saying that the insurance policy is the quarter open on the 100 yard called full circle. No, no, no, no. So just of an ellipse, you’ll run. Stretch the circles. Touch.

Yeah. So I mean I, I love having that. I love the path. I mean I get all jazzed up about the path because I’m all about growth. I’m all about development and so I want to know early on if somebody has the, how has the character and the depth to be able to make it to the end.

As an example, if you wanted to become a 1990 saxophone artists to step number one, okay,

your path would be you got to listen to this kind of like a. You want to have kind of like a like a Rick James kind of a purple. You just have that, I don’t care, but you know what I do and most people would never do that, so they would stop and then you weren’t able to hold a note though long ended up in the Guinness Book of World Records and you want to be like the bridge and a Brit pop song in the 1990 [inaudible] the fact that it was in the eighties, but now you never hear a thumb with a fax or phone and math walk the CDG. It’s no longer around her very much.

Okay, so now the next step, next step they get to Kenny. G management is management is mentorship. If you’re gonna manage your people, you have to understand that the people now they know the path. Occasionally they’re going to go into the shoulder of the road to go mobile, blah, blah, blah, blah. They’re going to show up. You tell them you got to be there 15 minutes early. Okay, we are meeting starts at seven and someone will be there at 6:59. You don’t freak out at them. You just pull them aside and go, blah, blah, blah, blah. Hey, that’s the shoulder. Here’s why we do it. Boom, boom, boom. You’re going to see someone’s supposed to make 200 calls a day and one day they make one 97 and you go blah, boom in the shoulder. Hey listen, this is why we make 200. They’re going to be.

Do you ask them to dress up sharp every and they come in one day putting on their makeup or finishing getting dressed up after the work starts in USA, Blah Blah. You’re in the shoulder and so you have to bring people back and this is called the one minute management philosophy, but the point is the book, the one minute manager will put on the show notes. One minute manager. It talks to you about the mentorship is more of that one. It’s the minute by minute. Whenever you catch a we’d kind of sprouting up. Don’t let it get huge. Just pull it out real quick. It just just call it out as when you see a problem. Just call the person out real quick and I think clay stares. That’s one of the things you do really well when you see a member of your team just kind of operating out of bounds. I think you do a really good job of immediately nipping, nipping it in the bud and then corralling it. Cool. Just how to do it today. Oh really? Yep. Just said to do it today. Nice. Yep. And uh, but it went real well again because it wasn’t a huge deal. It was just small deal. Now Luke, you had another hot and fresh question. This just in from Luke Owens with the hub Jim.

Yeah. So my second question was, was there ever a time in your, in your business career or your life where you felt like, you know, this maybe isn’t worth it or are you just throwing in the towel?

Okay, well I, I do throw in the towel often. Um, but I throw in the towel before I start, so as an example, my wife and I are seriously contemplating purchasing a home in Costa Rica. That’s a baby and we’ve thought about it or that ghost rica, but I mean Puerto Rico, just talking to a guy on the phone about Costa Rica, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, and Puerto Rico is a US territory, not a state. And they’re in the process of trying to make Puerto Rico into a state. Essentially they’re not gonna pull. Politicians are going to come out and say they’re doing this. Where they’re trying to do is get enough, uh, former, um, members of the contiguous us United States to move to the territory because of issue, when they vote to decide to become a state or not, there’ll be enough people there to vote for it. So they’ve made all sorts of tax benefits to move there.

They’re trying to get the American dollars to go down there. American corporations that are offering a huge tax incentive. And a friend of mine, John Lee Dumas, with the entrepreneurs on fire podcast, he decided to move down there. I have several doctor friends of mine who go there multiple times a year and uh, so I, I have at least four or five data points of people who said I really, really enjoy my time there and I think you would love it given your personality type. Let me, I’ve heard people say that to be specific. And I’m saying, okay, well why would you say that? And I said, well, um, you know, you’re right there by the water. I know your, your wife and kids love the water. You have everything you need. There’s a mall there, there’s gas stations, it’s, it’s, you know, modern transportation, you can get one flight and you’re in Florida.

So it’s a quick deal. Southwest Airlines flies in there, it’s a, it, you can keep the same cell phone number. The Internet connection is consistent. Um, the weather is a consistent 80. Um, you could record your podcast or do client calls from there. You can grow trees. I mean, I’ve heard a lot, I’ve heard a lot of positive things. That’s awesome. So, um, and then the tax rate is four percent, four percent. And again, looked that up before moving to porter w before moving to Puerto Rico, talk to your tax advisor, but the catch is you have to live their 183 days a year, which would to me be exciting, you know, uh, because I have no social interaction at all ever after work I go home, I live behind a wall so I and I, my wife and I really don’t like Oklahoma spring or summer.

We love the winter and the fall so we could live here during the year centers, kids to school here and then move to Puerto Rico during the summer months and we could time it out and thought through it. And so logistically luke, it makes sense. But before I’m going to pull the trigger, uh, we’re in the process of renting an airbnb for probably a week and I’ll be there and I’m going to live in an actual neighborhood for a week or a few days and just see what it’s like to live there. I mean, does the power go out? Are the neighbors weird or is there really nice places? Are there as many former United States citizens as a, as I’ve heard living there is it really is the Mall Nice? Um, would it have a hard time going to the store is the cost of living where we want it to be with my kids feel safe.

There’s all these questions I have and there’s no way to answer that. Then by watching, like I watch youtube videos and people were like, I love it. It’s the best ever. Or you had the guys said it’s the worst ever. I Hate Puerto Rico. I can’t go. I can’t even afford to go back, you know, it’s hot, so I don’t know. But before I pull the trigger, I’m going to go there and experience it first. So I went with like the DJ connection. I knew what I was getting into before I started it with this podcast. I’m with the quest to mentor millions and to ultimately be the number one podcast in the world on the itunes charts. I knew what I was in for when I signed up for that. I’ve thought about these things. Um, we’re on page two of Google right now for the phrase business conferences.

I knew it would cost millions of dollars to do that. I’m totally aware of the trade offs of what I’m going into. I think when you begin to ask this question, it’s probably when you sign up for something and not really know what it’s going to take, you know, because you think it’s something different. So I think a lot of people think, oh, I like fitness. I should start a gym. Oh, I like cookies. I should start a bakery. I’m really good at making cakes. I should start a bakery. Hey, I’m really, really, really into graphic design. I should start a graphic design firm, but I want somebody to write this down. Chap Chap, I want somebody to write this. I was going to put this on a tee shirt, put it on a Dexa scan.

Here we go. Here we go. If you start a bakery because you are in to cookies and baking, I want you to understand the only thing that you will never do again when you own a bakery is to ever make bakery items. If you get into a gym

because you like fitness, the only thing you’ll ever never have time to do again is to focus on fitness. If you started insurance company because you are passionate about protecting people, the one thing you’ll never talk about is protecting people hot. Who started a DJ company because you liked pop music. The one thing you’ll never do when you build dj connection.com. I can’t believe I actually did this. I never listened to music. I have no idea what songs were even on the radio. What is it ran it ran the nation’s largest DJ entertainment company. If you’re a pastor because you want to help people who, the one thing you’re never going to spend your day doing is helping actual people. Somebody give me a category running org charts and preparing your sermon. You’re not going to be spending your time meeting with each individual member of your church.

If you’re the pastor of a mega church, you don’t have time to even say hello to all 20,000 members or your staffing. You’ve got to focus on the production. Where are the cameras? Were they not? Do we have a big enough of a building? Are you bringing in enough revenue? Who made the brochures? Can we make them better? Do we need. We do. Can we hire a multimedia guide? Do we have a better server? Do we have enough bandwidth there? Do we have enough Internet connection? By the way, where’s everybody? Where’s everybody going to Parr? Who’s on coffee? Why are we getting fined by the city for not having the light, the right licenses? There’s so many details that go into running a church and none of which are related to reaching people, and so what you have to do is you have to carve out time in your schedule to focus on reaching people so you don’t drift. You gotTa, you gotTa. Make sure that that’s a thing and if you’re a fitness guy, you got to carve out time to focus on creating programs for fitness, but then the rest of your day is holding your team accountable and I think that luke is where I see a lot of people feel like they’re thinking about throwing in the towel. Is there a specific area where you’re, you’re, you’re referencing here where you,

yourself, like this is bad.

Oh No, no, no. Thank goodness to uh, to the coaching that I’ve received. I just wanted to know in your experience, you know, because a lot of times we learn from experience, right? So I didn’t know if there was a experience for you where you might have a hit that wall yourself, which has given you the insight that you help other people with today. So

I totally get it. I get pitched ideas all the time and when I look at it, I look at the upside and I go, I remember one lady years ago, she made cupcakes and a clay. She says, uh, I sell my cupcakes for. And by the way, this is not, I’m not, I’m not saying that all women talk like this, but this is how I processed. It was just frightening. Oh my gosh. I love cupcakes. They’re adorable and they are cute and they’re awesome. And I’ve opened up a location here, right up by the mall within hills mall in Tulsa. It’s awesome. I’m thinking by the mall, I mean that is expensive. So I said to the person, because I’ve known the person for awhile, that’s a lot of money to be them all like we’re talking like six grand a month in lease. Can I ask you, um, you know, how much is the lease?

Oh, it’s $7,200 a month. Okay. Now how many, uh, what, what kind of profit do you make per cupcake? And I don’t remember the specific numbers, but it was like under, under fifty cents. I’m going, whoa. So just to pay the lease my friend, we got to take 7,200 times two. You got to sell 14,400 a month now how many days a month are you open? She said, oh, we’re helping 30. And I’m like, well are you really open 30? Because I feel like you’re not open 30. I feel like you’re open like five days a week. She’s like, Oh yeah. So okay. So let’s say you’re open 21 days a month because every month has four point three weeks in it, you know, so you take, you know, you say let’s say 21, 22. So my friend, you’ve got to make, I mean we’re talking about an insane amount and we pulled the math real quick here. It’s like $600. Six hundred 85. Yeah. Six hundred and 85 cupcakes just to break the lease. Not even break even. And I said, what about hiring your staff or what about buying the ingredients? Ingredients or. I mean,

right. And we’re adding it up. And in this happened by the way, with a hamburger franchise that I worked with. Um, what this is, uh, about five years ago, I go in there and I said, hey, just to break even, you’re going to need to sell this many hamburgers a day. And we did the math and that even if the business was open, um, beyond capacity, like if all the ovens and all the kitchen area they had, we’re fully going all the time. All the time. They couldn’t break even because they got a space that was so expensive. Wow. It happened. So I’m just trying to tell you this. You out there as listener, do not sign up for something that you don’t want. Ask Yourself, do I really want this? Look what’s your next hot and fresh, your final hot and fresh question on this edition of the ask us anything thrive time show podcast.

So my final question is going to help every person thinking they might want to be an entrepreneur. Oh boy. What is the biggest difficulties facing entrepreneurs today in your opinion?

Focusing in delaying gratification, focusing and consistency. I would just say this. I’d say I agree with you. I’m not going to argue about the semantics. I would say that if you’re going to delay gratification, you have to consistently do that. So I’m going to give an example of there to listeners about the life that you might want or not want. Okay. I set my alarm today for 3:30 in the morning as I pretty much do everyday right now. And the reason why is because I want to help you. You, the listener, grow a company, and Luke, you’ve met me in person, you know that chuck, you know that clay stares, you know, that I want to help you. And um, I, I, I really, really want to help mentor millions and I believe the podcast is the most effective way to reach you and I believe that thrive time, school.com has the best tools to help you, but in order to do that, I have to write an outline for each and every show, unless it is a question and answer for them.

So I have at least two to four hours a day of show prep before the show. Then I have the show, which is real time, right? Then we’ve got to take the content from the show. It has to be uploaded to the podcast player, which takes about an hour. Then we have to add in the key words, add in the transcription, which means we have to transcribe the content. This entire process to produce the show you’re hearing right now is about a five hour process and we release two a day and oh, by the way, I own other companies. So the thing people have to understand is that we’re the only podcast in the world that’s going to release 14 episodes a week and you’re not gonna find anywhere else like we’re almost minimum. Yeah. And so we’re going to pump them out, but I have to focus.

So you’d say, well clay, how do you do it? I have not taken a personal call today and at the time of this recording, it’s 4:38 PM, so between 30 3:30 in the morning and 4:38 PM, I have not taken a personal call, meaning there’s not a call that I’ve taken with anybody that relates to anything not related to business. Then I’m going to turn my phone off and then I’m going to not going to take any business related calls are business related activity after I wrap it up for the day. So my focus is I’m saying no to everything except for business during the day. Yeah. And I’m saying no to everything except for family at night and I think people try to blend the two. I think people with the smartphone, they have 85 interruptions a day. Yeah, I think they’re taking a call from their wife around noon and the call could be, if you’re like the average American man, I’ll throw myself in this group.

We have a unique way of irritating our wives about every 60 days just to just to see what’s going on. We’re just curious. We want that adrenaline rush there at clay stairs, so we want to just kind of make them mad. And if you’re not careful, you know you’re going to have like these personal like debates or issues during the day. Maybe you have a son or daughter at college or a son in school and they’re acting, acting a fool, or you bring your personal drama into your work day and nothing gets done. Yeah. So you’ve got to treat your. When you’re self employed, nobody holds you accountable to that standard. But you have. Let me tell you what, if you served in the marines or you’re a surgeon or you’re a southwest airlines pilot or a professional athlete, anything that pays well, if you’re a pilot, if you’re a pro athlete, you’re not going to see Lebron James on the sidelines taking a personal call.

Timeout about, come out, baby, baby, baby, baby. Come up. You’re going to see yourself. You’re going to see a southwest airlines pilot going, baby, come on, baby. You can’t be probably up here. I’m trying to fly a plane. I can’t be calling. Maybe you’re not going to see that, but you see small business owners all the time bickering with their spouses during the day on facebook talking about crap that doesn’t matter. Arguing with about politics. They’ll be on facebook during the middle of the day on facebook. Arguing about politics. Yeah, promoting their favorite candidate, running around to the chamber, having cheese cubes and pineapple and talking about random crap that doesn’t matter, and then delaying gratification. You’ve got to save homes. I mean you to have to say, you got to delay. You got to say, I’m going to live below my means. My wife and I turned off our air conditioning and we had three. I had three jobs. Target, DIRECTV and applebees. Now applebee’s, for those of you out there, I don’t get it. I want the listeners out there to overhype applebee’s of you will say applebee’s. Wow, that’s impressive. That’s impressive. Applebee’s, even Harry Carey called in today.

Oh God

sided applebee’s. While you’re at the pinnacle of a job target target. Oh my God. How did you get all these great jobs? They’re great brands. You were to or Lucky Benito. Shopping at target. Direct TV. I love direct TV. I watch TV often directly and then my wife’s working at office depot. Wow. You guys, man. You guys at the retail. My wife was working on a scholarship for cheerleading at oral Roberts University. I mean, we were delaying gratification. We eight budget gore may chicken Panini. I see people out there who don’t have any money. Lease it. Alexis. I see broke idiots out there buying the yeezys. Oh yeah. I see people that have no success spending as though they already have it. So clay stairs. Let’s talk about these two areas. Why do you see a lot of clients a struggle with focusing before coaching and how have you been able to help? How do we help clients through the coaching program to focus?

Well, uh, again clay, but one of the things that I find out so often with clients that we first begin working with is their time management. And what they’ve done is they’ve had a skill as we’ve talked about. They’ve had a great skill and they got tired of working for somebody and they said, well, I’m pretty good at this. I should do it on my own. So they take their skill into the marketplace and what do you know Louis? They’re successful. People actually say, yes, you’re good. And before long you’ve got two, three, four projects going. And when you saw yourself with that company, you were probably at the beach, you were probably walking around carrying a cup of coffee. You’re probably thinking that you’ve got time freedom and financial freedom and then all of a sudden you find out really quick that you are overwhelmed with the work and you just can’t get focused, so it.

It’s clay. It’s a huge shift. Everyday you got to wake up one hour before you see anybody else get to do list. Make your day timer. Talk to clients about this today and what asked to be on your calendar as an owner. What has to be on your calendar, thrive nation. Do this for me. It’s free. Go to thrive time, show.com, forward slash tower of power, thrive time show.com, forward slash tower of power, and we walk you through the foundational steps you need to take to make it the money that you want. A Mega, mega, mega, mega mom

it the, what do I do? My time showed a tower, sits with them resources like me wearing concrete shoes and he delivered the resources figuratively speaking, of course, but you want to wake up in bed with a horse head time slash toe up to do. I want to tell you something. I don’t think you’d. I’ll get those to you.

Okay, so just real quick character. Chuck has snakes, snakes. I want you to walk up job.

The one on Fourth Street. I don’t want to knock three times, not the green one, but three times he’s got the resources.

Hope that’s helpful. Delay Gratification. I’ll do it. You have got to delay gratification. You can’t be out there. You can’t be at your job at target. Hopping on the mic. Imitating Italian characters here on the top 10 on itunes. Clay. That is so hard because that’s why we leave our job in the first place because we are not gratified and the whole purpose that we start our new company is that we want gratification cert. Make the company serve you.

There it is. You have this show. It’s really gratifying to me. I would just say right now and I do shut up when I’m looking at you. I think the other thing, I don’t know if is a playful time to air this, but I would say that you got it. Like I was listening into a John Legend now scrolling through on spotify and this is a long story. I was go through them and I thought, this song, your body, the one delay in and I thought, okay, well I think you have a tech notice. Who did ms.mom, Ms Dot and I also sent you one them was a trip and you didn’t respond to you and I’ll tell you what, if you. Is that when you texted me, I want to play you like a guitar. No, nope

guys, I didn’t understand the tests. You’re taking the show out of balance there. We have a guy who has a gym. He’s trying to grow as fitness facility. I’m trying to keep this show right on the straight guys. Take it to the shuttle. We’re getting into shoulder. You got immediately gain. Luke, we appreciate you being on the show today and we’re going to hang up on you so you don’t have to hang up on us. It feels. It makes us feel better. Good talking with you. Here we go. Three. Two. One.