How Do I Become the Next Dr. Z? | Dr. Z’s 3 Simple Steps to Starting Multiple Successful Businesses

Show Notes

Specifically, how did Dr. Z move from his optometry practice to each subsequent business? How do you find businesses that are struggling, where you can add value?

    1. Step 1 – Be fruitful then multiply (Become profitable before thinking about venture #2)
      1. After the optometry clinic was fruitful (8 years later), then Dr. Z moved on to the next business.
    2. Step 2 – Hire high-quality managers that you keep with golden handcuffs
      1. A lot of people skip this step and work directly with the employees for many reasons but in the long run, taking a step back in profit is worth it to hire a manager.
    3. Step 3 – Look for real problems that real people have that are really willing to pay you to solve in a scalable way.
      1. Being a realistic business pig versus a visionary innovator
        1. Doctor Z versus Elon Musk
          1. As of June 29th, 2018, Tesla still was not profitable a full 8 years after its initial public offer.
        2. Doctor Z versus Jeff Bezos
          1. Jeff Bezos didn’t turn a profit at Amazon.com for 9 years.
        3. Doctor Z versus Jack Dorsey (co-founder of Twitter and the founder of Square)
          1. Twitter which was founded in March of 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams did not become profitable until 2018 – https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/02/08/why-twitter-is-now-profitable-for-the-first-time-ever/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.992e6ca5a72f 
          2. Square was founded in February of 2009 and was still not profitable as of July of 2017.
      2. Henry Ford and Thomas Edison did, in fact, change the world but they were geniuses. Read stories about people who start and grow businesses that are tangible.
      3. You have to find something that exists and make it better than the other guy.
      4. If you can do anything that can connect to your current business (a mechanic that sells tires) you can increase sales by solving problems that are close to you.
    4. Why did you decide to not scale your business nationally?
      1. The “Board of Optometry” in Oklahoma makes it much more difficult to open 2 stores.
      2. I could grow the company outside of Oklahoma but I would have to travel much much more.
Business Coach | Ask Clay & Z Anything

Audio Transcription

How Do I Become The Next Dr. Z Thrivetime Show Slides

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? Oh yes. I’m telling you why I’m fired up. You’re going to love this question. Bring it on donkey

Kong. You’re going to love this question and you’re not song by a, it was the Gatorade song and it’s like, let me get my Kalb already remember that. But it was like we’re watching TV and yeah, you’d be watching a bulls game on a Sunday. Oh yeah. And that’d be bowls versus like the Nicks or something and Pat Riley’s all furious and Michael Jordan somehow winning and then somehow sometimes I dream magical, but he is me. He got to see you. That’s how I dream to be. Remember that day you have the Gatorade commercial? Two times I move. Sometimes I grew like Mike. If I could be like Mike that so, Oh yeah, be like Mike. Well, we have a listener out there who says, I want to, I, I want to know how do I become drZ ? Hmm. There. The question was how do I become doctors?

Eat. And so I went ahead and um, I jumped ahead a little bit and I went ahead and put a little meat on the bones cause I kind of know where you’re gonna go with this. Oh, I have two easy. I want it to the two easy button. So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna, I’m going to tee up three observations I’ve seen about how you became you. Okay? And then I would like for you to supply whatever moves you want. But this is the listener who’s a very successful doctor. And he says, look, I want to move beyond optometry, bro in Alabama and I want to move into ODA Bama. He wants to move into owning subsequent businesses. And he says, how do I find struggling businesses? How do I add value? How do I find the right niche? So step one I’ve seen you do is one, you are fruitful and then you multiply it.

Amen. I’ve seen you, Hey, I’m going to get my first business successful. And when I say successful, I mean making a lot of money where you’re not working in it and it’s making a lot of money before you would ever think about doing the second business. Correct. So your first business, the optometry clinic, how long did you run just that company before you knew it was time to open up the other business and how long did that and what was the next business? Um, the next business was with sleep center and that was about seven to eight years after I had the optometry. Maybe nine if you depends on exactly when, you know, pipes up eight, eight years, eight years in one business before you did the second one. Correct. And then, then it went faster than, and then, then the next one was three or four years.

So step two, I’ve seen them, this is what I’ve seen. And again, you, you, you, uh, go as long and deep as you want on this thing, but I just, I’ll make sure that I’m supplying just the, what I’ve seen you do. Step two is I’ve noticed that you always will hire high quality managers and you will set up what I would consider to be golden handcuffs, golden parachutes with ideas. They’re getting paid very, very well to manage the business. These are not entrepreneurs necessarily people crazy enough to go out there and start their own business and make very little profit for seven years in order to delay gratification, to start throwing things. These are capable, qualified, um, managers who you’ve mentored and you’ve trained so, so now they would, so now whenever they have run a rough situation, a tough decision point, they say, what would he do? What would he do? That’s right. But you pay them well and you’ve got high quality managers, don’t somebody will. So again, step two is you hire high quality managers. See, I see a lot of people skipping right there. They don’t want to hire high quality managers. No, they want to say, I’m not going to have any managers. I’m going to deal direct with the employees.

Or the other thing that you could do too, this is a fun super supermoon fun Superman. Did you find a super dude, super person that is excelling in their industry. Got it. And you, um, I taught this, moved to my brother and he found a guy that was a, um, bug exterminator. He was an exterminator. And so Phillips said, Hey, you’ve just, you know, you weren’t here. You’re a great guy. Your diligence, you do. You know, you’ve come to my house, Thomas several, several times. Why don’t you start your own place? Well, I could never do it. You know, I, I couldn’t, I don’t, I don’t know the first part about that. He goes, well, I’ll do it if I started one, would you run it up? I gave you a piece of it. He says, absolutely. So then what he did, knowing nothing about the exterminating business, he then started Zoellner exterminated and now I think they’re up to, I don’t know, six or seven trucks and they’re rolling along and doing, doing really well. So, but he did it because he found the person. Why exterminating? Because that’s what that person person get paid. Yes. He paid him. And then he also, yes, he paid. You

see, I see a lot of entrepreneurs though, because you want to make sure we’re getting this step one, you’re going to be fruitful enough to pay somebody and then you give them sweat equity of like 10% okay, 10% now, now the guy’s an owner, so now know the guy’s getting paid and he’s becoming an owner. Right. Okay.

And I think he had it to where you know it all vested. If the States stayed around too long and then he’s taken good care of him and so now they’re, they’re rocking along. He’s got a partner that’s running it and yet he still owns the vast majority of it, making all the high level decisions and writing it. But then he has a guy that knows what he’s doing is rocking out.

I see step one typically not going like this. I see simple and typically not being, let’s be fruitful and multiply. This is how I see step one typically working. Yeah. My first business, there’s not really doing so well right now. When I got this new idea and it is going to be a home run, so I’m going to be negligent and let my current business continue to bleed me dry, barely survive while I focus on the new idea, a new idea, a new website. Now of course we need to know print piece. All we need, new territory. I am now going to hop from the food industry into the fitness industry with no knowledge and no, not enough capital to be able to afford to pay anybody. Let’s go. Let’s go. That’s a great idea. Doesn’t work. Then I see step two, they go hire a quality manager.

I know that I talked toZ has to do this, but I’m going to skip. I’m going to see what I can get from about 20 GS a year. Yeah, good luck. I’m going to give 80% equity away. It’s going to be cute. So now you got a guy that you hired from taco bueno who has no knowledge of anything, right? You’re expert now. Yes. And then down here comes step three that I see you do, is you look for problems that people really have that really willing to pay to solve. As an example of what you don’t do. And I’m not, this is not a backhanded compliment. Okay. Elon Musk, who you, I consider you that to be the business pig. You consider yourself to be the business pig. You’re somebody who looks for real problems and Tulsa. Yes, Elon Musk goes, you know, I don’t think there’s a problem out there.

I don’t, I don’t see it. The world’s not begging for PayPal, but all go ahead and lose money for six consecutive years raising money endlessly in hopes that eventually I will create a technology that you will want. Yes, and then he does it and he’s like done $200 million. Then he doubles down and says, I’m going to start Tesla. This is a fun factoid for you. Tesla went public in 2009 into the year 2000 as of June 29th of 2018 they were still losing money. Yeah. Check this homie out. The guy who started Twitter, he started Twitter on March of 2006 Twitter with a Noah Glass biz stone and Evan Williams. These are the four Amigos. Okay. Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass biz stone, Evan Williams. As of 2006 they started Twitter in 2018 they still had not turned a profit, still hadn’t, and this is what this is what the guy did.

Jack Dorsey says, well, given the fact that we lose a lot of money over at Twitter, let’s open up another one. So he started square in 2009 and that didn’t make a profit until 2017 yeah, I don’t see you losing money for eight to nine ten second years. You can’t, no, no, no. You can’t. You cannot do that. I mean your, your, your mindset can be that way. Now those guys are our deep thinking and they’re their deep, what am I called? Deep sea fishing. I’m just saying, no, you can’t be right. A good pond gets a big bass out here, out there. If you’re out there listening right now, stop reading the books about Henry Ford. I’ll tell you that, that guy lost it all five times. You’re like, yeah, but he changed the world. Well, let me tell you what, you’re probably not going to, yeah, that guy’s a freaking genius.

Seriously. Thomas Edison, that guy loves on the Teeter, on the verge of bankruptcy for years. And then once he invented the light bulb was he got credit for the light bulb, which some say you stole from Tesla. He then was like, what’s record sound? They’re going, what? And he almost lost it all again. You know, he tried to make an entire neighborhood of concrete homes, solid concrete homes. Do you know about this? No. Yeah, he took all of his fortune and treaded to make an entire development of concrete homes. And guess who bought it? Nobody. Nobody. Cause it’s weird. Weirdest crap. They’re like, look dude. The other example of what Jeff Bezos, nine years in to Amazon, they’re going, Hey, if you’re gonna make a profit here TFE he’s like out of his parents’ garage. Yeah. And he that he asks his parents for all of their savings.

Now he’s the richest man in the world, right? So I’m saying quit reading stories about these people. Jeff Bezos, Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk. Unless you’re a CIC, free can start reading stories by though. You got to write that book. I’m going here. He start reading books about the business pig cause the business pig. He goes, here’s the deal. My brother’s sees bugs. I am aware of bugs. My brother says, I want to make time freedom. And you say, brother, let’s connect. Let’s talk. But you man cave it up. Next thing you know, you have how many trucks? He’s got. Six or seven now. Yeah. You look around, you go, Hey, there’s banks. You guys are familiar with the concept of banks. You weren’t the first one to invent the concept of banks. No, let’s buy him bangled stuff. Well, you gotta use one. Might as well make money on something you gotta use.

A buddy of yours comes to you and says, I am the president of a bank. Sean Copeland is on the president of a bank. Whether he was the head of grand bank at the time or something, but he’s like, Hey, come deposit money in my bank. I said, no, let’s just go by our own bank. This is what this is. This is how the business pig works. Exactly. And then you go, Hey, I have a theory there are already optometrists on the planet yet just make a better uptown. But your clinic right? Not, but that’s it. It’s so different. Other people want to reinvent the wheel, change the universe, and that’s painful. It’s painful. It is really painful. So you find something that maybe you can do. What? Another, another little super move this in this three-step move that we’re going over right now. Give to three-step observation.

Yes. Is anything he could do vertically integrated in. Didn’t think that you could do that. That it feeds off of your current business that you have. Okay. So you want it. If you, if there is a, a sector, for example, I opened up a sleep center, was a sleep diagnostic. Is that you say sleeps sleep center. Is that a homeless shelter? No, not currently. Um, it’s called dr Z’s. Oh, center. Now I have a different picture in my mind and you’ve got to give me six hours of sleep, hook up 24 electrodes to you and a few years after that we thought, well now we’re doing all the sleep studies and then we’re sending them off to get there. A lot of the people had sleep apnea, which is the number one reason why people aren’t sleeping well at night and when caused it, but not the only cause and then they would go get a C CPAP machine.

So then we would hand them off to some other company. I thought, well why don’t I own that company? You’re like, that’s smart to do that. So then I opened up a C-PAP company. You’re a DME, durable medical equipment company that’s vertically integrated with that one you then I can hand the patient from here, hit there. You’re looking for real problems that people really have. Yeah, you can really solve. They’re already in the funnel. They’re already in there. You’re, you’re sleeping them. Are you passionate about, I know you care about the company, but I liked sleep by the way. I mean, I mean are you, did you get into the auto auction business because you just go, I like it cause I like that cause something I like about it and let me know. You want a nice car if you’re out like a upset, you don’t have to be passionate about cars to open an auto auction.

No, not at all. Did you do, did your brother love to pet bugs? I don’t think zone you could have a bug know about. Is there any way I can touch your book? I tell you why I want to touch the, there’s not a bug like what’s going on? Are you passionate? Are you passionate about uh, banking? You just love, Oh gosh, this checks. No, I’m not checking. It’s something you have to use. And so I thought, well if I’ve gotta use one, might as well use one that I owned a piece of. Do you know a ton about those little shoots where you put your deposits and he goes show? Did you know a lot about that? Is that why you got involved? Cause you knew a lot about the technology. Just loved that technology. That’s why actually why I’m into banking, Josh. I loved that. What questions do you have for doctors? He final question about how to become a doctor Z. How does that open up multiple businesses? What question would you have Josh, with living water irrigation? So my questions dr Z would be, so obviously you’ve been tremendously successful in our market and the local area. Why did you not choose to have 17,000 doctors ease to bear for $99?

Well, number one, uh, in Oklahoma, there are a set of rules that until they’re questioned in the court of law, they are the governing rules of my organization. And in their infinite wisdom, the board of optometry in Oklahoma said that you can have as many locations as you want, but whenever you go past two, in other words, a primary and a secondary, whenever you go past two, you then have to go over and be [inaudible] and use the same laws that commercial entities have to use. In other words, the optical and the doctor have to be separate. So if you go in the mall and you see like LensCrafters or you go into mall and you see like an I master will not, I’m actually right.

I’m going to start picketing on behalf of dr stoner. I’ve been really sure I have a chance. It’s worth changing trade law.

So therefore I was, I was by this rule, I was limited to two, which was fine because Tulsa was really about a two market Todd. Anyway. Okay. And so then I thought, well, I could go outside of Oklahoma and open up all through the Midwest and all of them and did a lot of great towns. Open up my concept in and that, that will do that. I would have to be traveling a lot. You, you have to, cause I was a four year my life. I actually ran a, uh, a commercial, uh, optical company and I grew, uh, doubled the size of it. Did I think we had 25 new locations in the year I was there. And so I would travel. I would go, I have to find a location. I’d have to go recruit dr and Kim managers. Yeah. My children were young.

I thought, you know, do I, what do I want to do? So I thought, well, I’ll just stay home. So in order to expand my tent, I needed to then expand into other businesses, which I loved. You don’t have to fund your ships entreprenuership if you had to sell a pizza, you know, you don’t have to sell a car, you have to sell a car, you know, you know how to sell a sleep study. You know what I mean? You understand the concepts of business. Yeah. The fill in the blank product is different, and maybe some of them are business to business. I remember business to the public and there’s different methodologies with those, but still it’s the same concept of running a business.

Speaking of running a business, running a business, there’s a guy who we’re gonna interview her in just a moment. Yep. Who was the chief technology officer for Google at Google? Was it X? Google X? Google X. unbelievable. This guy’s going to be on the show here. I’m not sure when you’re going to hear this show, but we’ve got to go see. We got to interview this guy. We got to put, it’s going to be a bit further. I do. Here we go. Three, two, one.

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