Entrepreneur | Part 2 – 8 Secrets To Manage In A Dumb, Dishonest, And Distracted America

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show! Look, look, as a father of five, that’s where I’mma dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s C and Z up on your radio. And now three, two, one, here we go. We started from the bottom, now we’re in. Started from the bottom, and that’s what we gotta do. Management secret number four. This is management equals mentorship. Yep. Management equals mentorship. Here’s a little statistic for you, okay? This is from your book. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 24 million children in America, one out of three, live in homes where their biological father is absent. Why did you quote that in your book and why is that applicable during this section? Okay, and our program observer is going to have to add this stat to the screen, and so I’m going to need you to find it and put it on the screen here. But if you look at the men and women who are in jail, almost 3 quarters of all people in jail did not have a biological father present. So maybe that’s just luck. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that three out of four people who are in jail didn’t have a father. And no, it’s probably just random. But then when you think about one-third of your workforce didn’t have a family, they don’t have some of the things that people who had a father had. Such as like, stop doing that or I’m gonna break your leg. You’re like, okay dad, I’m sorry. Stop doing that or I’m gonna, you know, now and today you would never say spank your kid. You’d say, stop doing that or I’m gonna talk to you strongly. Right. Not too strong though, Billy, because we know you’re important. You know, but anyway, the point is, is it like, you know, they didn’t have somebody in their life that held them accountable and they’re coming to work every day with the, you know, much, you know, it hurts your confidence when you’ve never had someone tell you you’re awesome. Right. So a lot of people come from broken homes. They’ve never had a mom or a dad who’ve ever given a crap about their life at all. And they’re bringing that doubt, they’re bringing that lack of discipline, they’re bringing that confusion, they’re bringing that all to the workplace. And so if you are not going to mentor people, you don’t have any right to try to manage people. You have to mentor people. And I’m telling you because your job, so many people are like, I want to travel to Africa to help people. I want to travel to Russia to help people. I’m sure Russians are like, I want to travel to America and help the Americans, you know. But the thing is, is it, the thing is, the people right who need the help are right in your workplace. They’re right there. They work for you. You have to sacrifice and help these people and mentor these people. I feel like I’ve seen you put a huge emphasis on this, but one of my favorite notable quotables is John Maxwell, when he’s talking about how no one cares what you know until they know how much you care. Yeah. The mentorship shows that. I mean, that aspect of it. Well, you got to invest the time. The example, my wife and I met with a young man, it was probably about a year ago. I remember my mother-in-law was with us in the car and I was like, this person’s done this, I got to go deal with it right now. So Vanessa and I drove over. I remember, you know, their question was, why aren’t you going to fire the guy immediately? I’m like, because he doesn’t have a dad. And I know that he’s never been told these things. So my wife and I talked to this guy, and he’s crying. And he’s like, thank you for telling me. I’m so sorry. And he’s changed his life. Because you have to care enough about people to mentor people. You can’t mentor people who don’t care. So I’m just telling you, if you’re frustrated with your staff, you need to care more, not care less. But why can’t I just expect them to show up and do their job? I hired this guy to make 100 calls a day. Why do I need to just, you know, put this much time and effort into him? I’m just, just show up and make calls. Why do we have to poop and have to eat ice cream? I didn’t realize I had essentially asked that question. But I guess that’s what I asked. I mean, I mean, I couldn’t think of anything more disgusting than pooping. And I couldn’t think of anything more awesome than eating ice cream. Okay. It just happens. It’s life. Life sucks all the time. So it has to happen. Life’s like a great big vacuum, just sucking all the time. So you’re saying if you want to be successful, you have to mentor. Yeah, I mean, you can’t say, I want the ice cream, but I don’t want to poop. I mean, I guess you can, but you’ll probably die. Right. That’s good. Hey, how about this? Here’s a fun one. Why don’t you eat as much ice cream as you can and then try not to poop ever again? And just see what happens. Commit to it. It’s a science experiment. Is this an action step? Or what is this? Go for it. An ask yourself? Well, you’re asking me a question. Election nugget? You’re asking me why does someone have to mentor and I’m asking you why we have to poop. I don’t know. It’s for the same reason. All right. So you’ve got to do it. You’ve just got to do it. You’ve got to do it. How does my cell phone work? I don’t know, it just does. This is how it works. This is just life. Because of your incredible examples and the visuals you’ve given us, I now buy into it. I have to mentor. So how do I do it? Do you have some action items? Like how do I mentor? Yeah, four ways. Okay. One is you have to model the behavior, okay? So you have to model the behavior you want your employees to display. So example, your employees will tend to do what you do about, like they’ll do about 80% of what you want them to do. So as an example, in my office I always get to work, I always get to work before the day starts, like before the workday starts, before I’m expected to be in an appointment. I always do. Right. Always do it. So the other day I look around and I noticed that Jonathan Kelly is at work at 3 in the morning and I’m like, he can’t beat me at work. The honey badger. No! I get to work first, he can’t stop it. Then I get to work the next day, he beat me again. Then I look around, there’s two people now. There’s Caleb and there’s Jonathan. I’m like, what the… Then I get to work and Marshall’s there. The goal for four people to be there before four in the morning is just, these people cannot have a soul. Then I look around, there’s five people. Yeah, then there’s six pretty soon There’s almost seven people at work every day before I get there Yep, and it why I talked to him I talked to one of the guys and I said hey just curious Why are you getting there? He’s like well, I figured out that you know you haven’t become successful by getting to work You know nine to five so I went out working I figure I’ll beat you and I’m like you see that’s the kind of mentality now the other their example There’s a lady I can think of right now, always gets to work 20 minutes late. Her staff is always 20 minutes late. Nothing gets done. Why? Because she’s modeling the wrong behavior. Model the right behavior. And you never ask your employees to do something that you don’t do yourself. True. I mean, your employees aren’t in danger of working harder than you, I don’t think. Yeah, well, Jonathan’s giving me a run for the money. Jonathan Keller’s giving me a run for the money. Coming for you, buddy. What else do you have here as an action item to mentor? Public praise. You want to catch your employees doing something well and praise them for others to see. So if you catch an employee, you want to catch them. You’re like, oh my gosh, that was awesome. Example, Hannah works with us. She did an awesome thing. And I don’t think that she thought that I noticed. So the meeting, I went out of my way to go, Hannah, awesome job. Here’s what Hannah did. Because she did an awesome job. She needed that praise. She needed that. Now we have Dr. Zellner, you know. Dr. Z is our CEO of the business. He’s funny, but he’s doing this whole management mentorship stuff. He knows that I’m a feeble human and I need encouragement. So he’ll do little things like, hey, good job. I’m like, outside of my wife, that might be the first time I heard that in like six months. So I start to go, I don’t even care really. But secretly I smile more. And I’m like, wait a minute. You’re blushing. Yeah, I know. So public praise, you want to praise people. The next thing is, third, you want to have a signed required reading. Okay. Now, I’m going to change that. Change that rule. Change that rule. Change it. Stop the press. Here we go. You want to do a signed thriving. Wow. Make the people on your team do ongoing education. Yeah. I believe the research is in, people would rather watch videos, that’s what we’re building this site. Yeah. Make people do it. Don’t say, if you want to do it, make them do it. And if they do it, they’re going to… Follow this. If you change what you listen to, what you see, the environment you’re in, you begin to change how you think. And if you change how you think, you change what you do. And if you change what you do, you change the habits you make. To change the habits, pretty soon you change the results. To change the results, pretty soon you’ve changed. So that’s part of mentorship, is making sure that they have this continuing education. I know for you, you have rewards. Yep. And you have, you know, penalties. You’ve got to do it. So are you expecting us to work those in as well? Yeah. For mentorship? Anything you want done, there has to be a reward or penalty okay go back to ice cream no we don’t need to I’m going to present let’s not go back to the room so if you’re eating ice cream and there was no penalty I mean if you can eat as much as you want and you could not gain weight would we ever stop eating I wouldn’t I freaking love it yeah sometimes I think if I just eat it when no one’s looking you won’t gain the weight. Yeah. So the thing is that you have to be able to, there’s got to be a pillar reward for everything or it doesn’t affect your behavior. So the government put up a speed limit sign that you should drive around 60 to drive what’s safe and prudent. Yeah. I’m going to drive like an idiot, right? I mean, there’s no, so next thing is candid feedback presented with love. Right. If people do a bad job, they need to understand that you’re their champion, you care about them, you’re cheering them on, you want them to do well, and even though they made a mistake, it doesn’t mean they’re a bad person. To quote David Robinson, you want to separate performance from people. So you’re separating. You’re not coming down as someone who’s a bad person. You’re kind of saying it’s a bad performance. You’re separating performance and people. You’re not saying you’re a bad person, you’re saying it’s a bad performance. That’s one thing that I struggle with because I’m so passionate about. I realize that you’re going to have a hard time in life if you don’t work harder. It’s hard, but you’ve got to do it. Those are the four action items that we can implement as far as mentoring goes, which is definitely required if you want to be a good manager. Then to make these things happen, three other moves that you want to do to make these four happen is one you’re going to want to create a buddy system Which means you’re going to want to make sure any new employee has a wingman, okay? So we just hired a new guy, so I’ve got a new guy right I’ve got a guy right now who’s mentoring the new guy, okay? Hey your job is to make sure this guy is a smooth transition. Who do you choose to be a mentor of the new guy? How do you decide which employee is going to be the one that whoever’s performing at an alpha level a level okay? Alpha level, A level. OK. When we brought an employee on a while back, I remember telling you, hey, I want you to help this guy. He’s a neat guy. Help mentor him, encourage him. You always want to do that. Because there’s only one of you. OK? You never want to hire somebody without having a buddy system there. That’s beautiful. The next thing is you want to publicly praise people in your weekly meetings who did a great job. OK. Put it in your system. Put it in your agenda. In the calendar. Who did something great this weekend. Look for something. Try to find something to praise. And then with the required readings, you do want to make sure you have those bonuses and penalties in place if people do or don’t choose to do. Beautiful. That’s the fourth secret there. The fifth secret here, Five out of Eight, the fifth secret. The secret love. That is, candor must be constant. Candor must be constant. You love candor. Yeah. Candor just means the truth and honesty at all times, whether it’s fun or not. Why is it important? Because most people are, they sugar coat everything. Everything is false kind. So people, you don’t know if they’re being real, because they’re usually not being real. Why is there usually a lack of candor in the office? There’s usually a lack of candor in the office because people would rather talk behind someone’s back than to say to their face what needs to be said. I don’t know why that is. I don’t want to get super spiritual or I don’t really know, but it becomes a deal where like we I think we have we avoid anything that is challenging. It’s kind of uncomfortable. Maybe it’s hard. We naturally don’t want to do it. So it’s kind of hard to tell somebody like, hey, the comments that you made to your employees or to your teammates are offensive, they’re misplaced, they’re misguided. There’s one employee in the office, if you remember, I think early on when you started, I said, the comments you made were inappropriate. They were misguided. There’s no rational reason why you should work here anymore other than I care about you in a completely irrational way. So I love you. I want you to be successful, but never, ever, ever do that again. That’s totally… and they go, I didn’t know. Oh, well, you didn’t know. Well, now you know. How do you find that line? Because I know we started off with talking about these people that aren’t good at showing bad employees the door. How do you find that line between mentoring somebody, caring about them, and figuring out when it’s time to say goodbye in part ways? Well, you’re not a church. Unless you are a church. You’re watching this, you’re a church, I don’t know what to say. You’re probably a church, I’m just kidding with you. But seriously, if you’re a church, we’ll come back to you in just a second. But if I’m running a business, I have to produce a product and service that the customer wants. Always remember, the customer is the boss. Right. So if the customer is the boss, and you’re not producing a high quality enough of a product or service to keep my customer happy, you have to go. That’s how I decide. I don’t decide. The customer ultimately votes with their dollars, and you as an employee ultimately decide. You decide if you’re going to bring the level of service needed or not. Okay. So that’s kind of the breaking point for you. The employee gets to make the decision. If they choose not to perform at the level, they choose to move on. Okay, good deal. That’s the candor. Is there action steps that you would implement though for a business owner right now who struggles with candor? What do you tell them? What do they do right now? One, you always want to commit to always telling your employees sincerely what you think about them at all times. OK. So I remember this funny story. There’s one employee working with us, and I told her recently, I said, I am pissed at you. Pissed, pissed, pissed. Mad. Angry, frustrated, becoming, changing, caring. Now I’m called. Was pissed, now I’m called. So I need you to not do this, this, this, this, this, this, this again because if you do that it causes me to switch over here to the pissed again. So I need you to commit to not doing it. Were you aware that you were doing it? Did you not know or did you not care? Well, I didn’t know. You didn’t know? Really? No, I didn’t know. You never actually told me. I’m like, okay, well, now you’re probably pissed, pissed, pissed, pissed, pissed. But you have to be candid. If I never told her and she had never told me, then we would have had this bogus thing where I was frustrated and she would have been wondering why. Right. So you got to be really candid. Commit to it right now. Next thing is you always want to commit to attacking the performance and not attacking the people. Okay. But don’t just put up with the people because they’re… Don’t put up with the bad performance because you like the person either. This person’s my brother. He’s my brother. He’s going to be like your unemployed wingmate. You don’t want to be unemployed together. We’re going to stick this out together. We’re going to suck together. You want to have a deal where you both want to be successful. So don’t do apologetics. And a lot of people watching this, I know a lot of small businesses are husband and wife teams. That’s hard. And there is people out there who are successful as husband-wife teams. I’ve just never met them. There is people. I’ve just never met them. Now there is, and I’ve never met them, but so if you’re watching this and you are a husband-wife team, you’re gonna have to understand you can’t give each other hall passes and false kindness just so you can stay happy. You might need to switch roles or do something where maybe you don’t report to each other in the office, somewhere you can be absolutely candid at all times. Okay. And then the third is you want to set up a quarterly performance review for your employees to make sure that candor is the top priority. Okay. So make sure that review happens and at that review you tell people unapologetically, this is where you stand and this is what you need to do to improve. So it’s not just one end of the year, hey, your last year sucked, try to do better, but it’s a consistent on the schedule thing. And I’m telling you, if you’re, some right now, if you’re watching this and you’re like, well I don’t really know how to rate people, it’s probably because you’re not awesome yourself, you’re not an A player yourself, so you have a hard time giving someone a review because you yourself aren’t bringing it. Have you, like when you’ve had poor performers in the past and you’ve got the merit-based pay system, have you ever just given somebody a bunch of coal as their payment? Have you ever done that? Like, hey, you did so bad, you earned yourself coal. I’ve not done that. I have done a deal where I did take an employee’s chair away. Interesting. I said, you know, you have consistently done this, this, this. And so you don’t get a chair. And they’re just like, chair? Well, my boss just did that to me. He didn’t make enough calls at Faith Highway. You couldn’t sit down. That’s awesome. So I think the guy was mad, but he made calls. He got his chair back, but he never used it again. There you go. The secret number six here. This is secret number six, inspect never expect. Inspect never expect. This is a notable quotable here, this is from the great president George Washington. He actually once said, I cannot tell a lie. Unfortunately, usually your employees are not George Washington. Is that why this matters here? Is this sixth secret? The thing is that we all believe, we do things where we’re like, because this person is high quality, I’ll give you an example. On Thrive, we make content, we try to make the best content we possibly can make it, but if I spell check it, I bet you I’m going to catch 95% of the errors. 95%. The problem is it’s not a hundred percent. Now if somebody else, let’s say Paige, she goes in and checks it as well. Paige very rarely looks at a page without finding an error. Right. So she’ll catch the other five percent and boom, we fixed it. Yeah. But if she ever starts to think, well, because he’s, you know, the founder, I’m not going to check it because he’s the founder. Yeah. Or I’m not going to ever check it because Paige is normally pretty right. Right. Then we always are going to miss because she’ll never be 100% perfect and I’m not perfect. So if you expect it to be perfect, you’re going to have somebody else check it. Yeah, I mean if you have like God working for you, if you have God in your office and you’re like, who’s the deity? Oh, it’s God. Oh, he works in sales. Nobody has God or George Washington. Then you probably are not going to, you know, then you don’t, George Washington, or then you wouldn’t even need to follow up on him because he’s, you know, he’s going to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So we’ve got a notable quotable here from your book. You said, you must develop a verification system for anything in your business that you expect to happen. I know this kind of became a reality for you when you took one of those first vacations. It was a little bit into your DJ career. You’d started to build a business. You had the fruit fly incident. Tell us a little bit about this. What you do is if you have a system where you say, all right guys, well I’m gone. I said, guys, I’m going to go on a cruise with my wife. We’re leaving for seven days. I’ve never really gone on a vacation before. I’ll be gone. I want you, sir, to run sales. You, sir, to run accounting. You, sir, to work in the maintenance area. You, sir, you know, these people have tasks. But there wasn’t any accountability. So I come back seven days later, I’m not exaggerating, they literally missed weddings. They didn’t show up to brides’ weddings. Nobody DJ’d the wedding. Ruined someone’s wedding. And I’m like, did you guys not check the voicemail while I was gone? Oh, I didn’t know, we need to check it every day. Okay. So I’m like, almost like crying at this point. Then I go down to the hall and I open up the trash can, because I was going to throw something in the trash can. And flies come flying. I didn’t take it out of the trash in like eight days. Then I go down to the maintenance area and they’re like, yeah, we lost a lot of speakers this weekend. Like, no one knows where they’re at. You were gone for a week. Yeah. They’re like, you idiots. Yeah. Well, who was the idiot? I was the idiot. Because I didn’t have a system in place for accountability. And because I’m an idiot, I was an idiot. I was so stupid at that time in my life. I had all these C players working there. Yeah. And so there wasn’t an A player to follow up. But an A player would have held them accountable. Right. An A player doesn’t, I mean, the A player would have followed up with all of them. And if they were all pissed at him, he wouldn’t have cared. Right. The A player cares about the performance more than he cares about their personal feelings. So the A player would have been like, nope, take out the trash. Nope, return the voicemails. And this is not an unusual story. We had a Thriver email in. He’s got the print shop. Yeah. He went, was it, I don’t know if it was vacation or his honeymoon or whatnot. He was gone for about the same period of time. He was gone for a week and he told his employees to make good decisions, make sure that you proof the prints, whatever. And these employees printed like massive sheets, big oversized prints all wrong. Cost them thousands of dollars. Every time he printed, according to this guy, he has about a 20 to 30% margin on these big items. So he had to reprint it. So he ate it. If you make a 30% profit on an item, how many times can you jack up? Zero. But if you do jack up, you have to do now three great customer deliveries just to pay for the one you messed up. And these people are messing up all weekend. So practically, what does this look like? How do I set up accountability? Anything that you delegate, you need to have a follow-up time. OK. Where you will follow, where you, as a set time to follow up. Anything you delegate. Anything you delegate. Ever. You have to have a set time to follow up. Anything I ever delegate, I follow up. I’m not kidding. Anything. If I said, Caleb, will you do this? I follow up. And if I don’t, it never gets done. No matter what, who I’m asking to do. If I ask someone to do something and I don’t follow up, it never gets done. Ever. Is that the action item? What’s the action item here, right? Always follow. Well, one is make sure you’re not putting up with a bunch of C players. Okay. You can’t delegate to C players. Yeah. But the next thing is well on this on this specific point. Yeah. Whenever you delegate an item you have to inspect it. Okay. You got to inspect it. Don’t expect anything about inspecting. So say Caleb I need you to do this item today and I’ll follow up with you today at 5. Okay. Have a set time to follow up. Okay. So set a time to actually follow up for anything that you delegate. Love it. All right, so the seventh secret here, secret number seven, fire those whom you cannot inspire. So we started off talking about how you need to hire the A and B players, talking about how important it is to inspire them, and we’ve talked about how mentorship’s a part of that, but now you’re saying if there’s those people that you’ve tried to mentor, you can’t inspire, you need to just show them the door. Okay, I had an example recently. I had an employee who smoked some pot. If you’re watching in Colorado, maybe you’re smoking pot right now, I’m not going to judge you. The point is, you can’t smoke pot in the state that we’re currently in. Smoking some pot, but not only is he smoking pot, he’s showing up late, not getting his stuff done, working slow, whatever. So, I tell the guy, I have reason to believe you’re smoking pot. I would like you to stop the behavior of being late, of being lazy, of whatever, and you can continue to work here. But if not, you’re gone. A homie posts on his Facebook a picture of himself with the pot community the same day after we talked. Pull him aside, buddy, you just posted a picture. I’m not sure if you’re aware of how Facebook works, but when you hit post, whatever you were posting will post whenever you posted it. So hit post, post happens. Oh, okay, well, that wasn’t me, that was a friend of mine. Okay, sure. Well, to that situation, you’re like, you can’t work here anymore. Either you’re really dumb or you’re just really dishonest. But the point is you’re gone. And I know we started off this training by emphasizing the importance of putting the customer first and how the customer is ultimately the boss. With your company, you knew that you had mentors, you’ve got people that are thrivers and subscribers. If anybody sees somebody working here smoking, the customer’s first. If there’s anyone in your company right now who you wouldn’t let watch your kids if you had to, get them out of your office. Your notable quotable here from the book says this, if you’re going to run a successful business, you are going to have to be committed to your customers 100% of the time. If the customers begin to tell you that they don’t like a certain product or service you offer or an employee that you have working for you, you must be willing to act based on their feedback if you find it to be factual. And again, you can’t do the brother-in-law rule. You can’t do the sister rule. You can’t do the, you can’t apologize for someone doing a bad job because they’re related to you. In small business, this is a huge problem. You have to listen to the customer. They are your boss. If they don’t like you, they’re not coming back. Why is it so hard sometimes to show people the door? When you’ve tried, you’ve tried to mentor, you’ve tried to inspire, there’s multiple reasons, but why is it so hard? I feel like you’ve been told since the age of a little kid you shouldn’t judge people. And I’m telling you, you should judge people. So I’m probably the first person who’s told you you should judge people and therefore you’re like, it’s terrible, I’m said to judge people. You have to judge people. I mean if you’re a referee, let’s say I’m a referee, and every time someone steps outside of the boundaries of the football field, every time someone steps out of bounds, if I feel bad that I told them they’re out of bounds, that’d be weird. Hey, you’re, hey, the players like, oh, wasn’t that a bounce? You’re like, okay, you’re close enough. Continue. You know, if you’re playing like a volleyball, you play volleyball, and if someone hits the net on a serve, they hit the net, they clearly hit the net. It didn’t hit the net, come on, it didn’t hit the net. All the players, every time you watch professional sports of any kind, the players always argue when it’s obvious. I didn’t touch the ball. I didn’t foul him. And you’re like, oh, yeah, yeah, I can see your point. You’re right, you’re right, it’s okay. Then the fans on the other team would boo. Boo! Then the next play, boo! So you’re saying as a manager, you have to judge performance. Let me tell you my first encountering with judgment. I don’t know if, I think my wife knows this story, but it’s a good one. I like it. I had to ref a girls’ basketball game. I’m like, it’s a sixth grade girls’ basketball game. And I’m like, ninth grade. Right. And so I’m running down, I’ve got my zebra shirt on, running around, and it’s girls basketball. And this girl clubs another girl. So I blow the whistle. Look, foul on, you know, whatever, do the whole thing. Pretty impressed that I could call the foul, point, anything, I was pretty excited about it. This dad’s like, are you kidding me? There is no way that my daughter, there’s no way. Are you blind, ref? Pull your head out. So the next time down the court, I thought, I’m going to look for a foul on the other team because maybe I was wrong. Right. So, going down the court, someone else does something, I’m like, Pfft, foul! And the other team’s like, Are you kidding me? Yeah. I’m about two quarters into the game, and I’m realizing, everyone hates me. Yeah. I even hate me. I hate me, they hate me, I hate this. So I decided, oh this second half, it’s gonna be… What’d you do? Well, I’ll tell you what I did. So I did is anytime that somebody would talk back You know what I mean? And just shut it up. It’s awesome. Some, he goes, are you kidding me? You know, they’re a coach. I’m like, boopty, oh! You know what I mean? He’s just like, you know, all of a sudden he’s like, whoa, that was crazy. So as a manager… I’m saying those real quick because I focused on making sure the rules were followed the rest of the game. By the end of the third quarter, everyone shut up. Everyone hated me, but they shut up. The rules got followed and girls weren’t mauling each other. But by the end of the first half, I let it get so out of control, there was people shoving. I got to the point where I wasn’t even going to call anything. I’m like, I’m not even going to call it. The girls are shoving each other. It’s exciting to watch. So I’m just saying, it was like a semi-organized shoving match. Wow. That’s awesome. I love it. What’s the impact though? Because we talked about why it’s hard. Sometimes they’re family members, you don’t want to let them off. You know, your fear of the confrontation. That’s why people stick around. What is the impact of letting people stick around who definitely should not be on your team? What’s the impact for your business? Well, customers will leave. They’ll just disappear. The customer’s like, well, while you guys are unable to call penalties on people who break the rules, we’re leaving. Hey, while you guys are unable to deliver your product on time, we’re leaving. Hey, while you guys are trying to work out your family dynamic and whether you can fire this person because it’s related or not, we’re leaving. And they just don’t have any patience. All of us are that way. If we go to a restaurant and the food’s bad, we don’t go back. We’re not like, oh, but it’s somebody’s daddy. I’m sure he’s a good person. They’re going to work it out. We don’t need patience. The other thing is that you begin to create an environment where C players start to want to work there because they realize it’s tolerated. So they’re like, hey, you should come work here. I remember I worked at one place called the Pizza Factory. This is a good one. Everyone in town knew if you worked at the Pizza Factory, you never had to clock in or out and you could eat as much food as you wanted while you were there. All of your friends got free food. Wow. So, anybody would come in, like, hey, bro, you got a free pizza? Yeah, dude, it’s a pizza. You know? And they knew the owner, were like, guys, I feel like we’re going through a lot of dough. And my boss at the time, he was like, Ricky, he goes, what’s the boss, straight up? I don’t know, man. I don’t know. Some friends have come in. I’ve given a few ones away, but not a ton. He’s like, all right, we’ll just try to give away a little less. Okay, I’ll try. Next minute, within like an hour, girls pull up that he liked. They’re like, hey, can we get some pizzas? Sure. He’s like working for hours making pizzas. I have a friend of mine who worked at Subway for a new franchise owner. He would just give away sandwiches to any high school player of any sport. Anybody who came in with a uniform on, he’s like, hey, I support local sports. Hey, hey, hey. You know, and the franchise owner was like, stop giving away stuff. But you have a seed player and you’re going to get more. Well, because of the rumor spread. That’s where you go for the free stuff. That’s where the bad employees go. Yeah. So whatever. Now, I want to go back just real quick to why it’s so difficult. Yeah. There’s four main reasons why it’s so difficult to fire. One, usually it’s because they’re family or friends. That makes it hard. Family or friends. The second is you’re too busy. I’m too busy. I’ve got too much stuff going on. The business is exploding. We can’t afford to let this guy go now. Yeah, we’re so busy. We get to this one quarter, we get to this week, we get to this weekend, if we can just get through all these shh… snikies, they’ve worked here for three years, oh no! They have a family to support. Well, the guilt trip. Well, unless they were raised by, what, a bear? I guess bears let their family just go into the wilderness, but I mean, how many people are like, he was a bear cub and he was just left in the forest. No, unless they were raised by a bear, they all have a family. Stop it with that crap. Recently their family has been going through a sickness. Who in his family hasn’t? My freaking dad got cancer this year. It doesn’t mean that I get a hall pass through life. He’s had a hard year. He just can’t figure it out. Just stop. The other thing is, they fear confrontation. I don’t want to confront. I just hate. You know George McFly from Back to the Future? I just hate confrontation. I don’t hate the rejection. I just, you can’t be that way. So that’s why a lot of these people who should be fired are not usually fired. And again, these are the people you’ve tried to mentor. You’ve tried to inspire. You’ve done it a few times now, and you know, it’s time to shut on the door. There’s a book about being a business rhino. Who’s the, I wrote the book. It’ll come to me in a minute. John Acuff. John Acuff. It’s about being a rhino. Any successful entrepreneur I’ve ever met has learned to become a rhino. Right. It’s where you put your head down, you get your one horn, and you just charge. Right. That’s how I fire people. So is that the, what’s the action idea? It’s not working out. It’s not working out. That’s the action step for firing people, is just stick their head down and run into them? No, I’m literally, a lot of times I don’t even make eye contact. It’s not working out. You just, you know, boss, it’s weird, you’re not looking at me. I’m not your boss anymore, it’s not working out. Just put your head down and hard charge. Seriously, just get it done. You gotta fire those. Fire people. You got to. That’s the secret move number seven. The number eight, secret number eight here is you choose to win or lose. I like this because this is how you kind of summarize your book. I know this is something you really believe in this. So we’ve gone through a lot of the specifics, the action items on how to manage your team, how to inspire your team. But in your book, you actually believe you have the choice and the power. You said, if you decide right here and now that your business is going to be wildly successful, you’re… The notable quote here from your book, this is what you said. You said, if you decide right here and now that your business is going to be wildly successful, your business will prosper. I want to… I don’t want to lose the magnitude of this or the importance of it, but Clifton Talbert, one of our Thrive mentors, doesn’t have mom and dad. Right. No biological check. Yes. You can make some checks. Yeah. Write these down. So no father check. Okay. You got no biological Grew up in poverty, check. Wasn’t allowed to read because he was African American, check. Legalized segregation. Yep. Couldn’t go into banks because he was, or couldn’t use a certain drinking fountain, couldn’t go, check. Was asked to leave a circus as a kid because he was black. In front of thousands of people, thousands of people, they ask him to leave because he’s black. Check. Well, it sounds like he has the makings of what you would need to be successful. He has the perfect checklist. Richard Branson, he’s dyslexic. Check. Really failed out of school as a kid. Check. It sounds like he’s got everything you need to be successful. Henry Ford lost it all five times. Check. Okay. Dropped out of high school. Yep. Check. Thomas Edison dropped out of high school. Check. Abraham Lincoln. A lot of people joke with me on this because they don’t understand it’s possible. Yeah. Abraham Lincoln became a lawyer and he taught himself. Right. Check. You know, Rockefeller, his dad was married to two women or was basically living with two women simultaneously and his mom didn’t know. So at the age when he should have been in high school, he drops out to support his mom. Check. Walt Disney. Walt Disney. Failed twice. Check. Accidentally killed his own mother in a carbon monoxide poisoning incident. Check. These people have a lot stacked up against them. It’s called life, man. If you’re watching this, you are coming from a place where you’ve had brokenness, you’ve had struggles, you’ve had stuff happen to you. It’s called life. And unfortunately, you don’t hear this enough, but I believe that you have a massive, there’s a big plan for your life. And if you’ll just decide to thrive and say, I’m not going to accept mediocrity more. I want to move and do something big with my life. If you will commit right now to doing that, I’m here to support you. We’re to support you. You can do it, but you’ve got to decide right now Am I going to become a victim or a victor? A victim would say I was sexually abused and therefore I cannot have success. A victor was Oprah who said because I was abused I will basically be there to help more girls and women than anyone else. So she opened up a school for girls I mean, it’s either a victim or a victor. And you have to decide right now. Is it going to motivate you? Is all the stuff you’ve dealt with going to motivate you? Or is it going to justify why you’re not having success? And there’s really no middle ground here. There’s not. Later in your book, you said, doubt is the opposite of faith, and the two cannot exist together in the same time and place. Either you believe or you don’t. So you’re saying the choice is up to you and you’re a believer. Talk to a guy the other day, he’s an investor in a business I’m consulting with, and he made a comment of, I don’t know if that business will ever work out. And I said, well, based upon the fact that you’re in a leadership position, I know you’re right. What do you mean? Well, I mean, if you believe it’s going to work, then it’ll work, and if you don’t believe it won’t, but your employees see it every day. So if you’re going to believe it, you’ve got to get out there and make it happen. Because all the stories of success, whether it’s George Washington and how they ended up winning versus the British, or you look at Richard Branson launching the airline that went head-to-head with the British Airways, or it’s Walt Disney overcoming poverty, or it’s Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb, they don’t make sense. But at the core of it, it was somebody that had faith and no doubt. Doubt will kill faith. It is like… If you had a glass of water, can you picture a glass of water? Got it, I’m picturing it. And you were to take just an ounce of blue food coloring and you put it in there, all the waters change. I can see it. And it’s not gonna be clear water anymore. You can’t have just a little bit of blue. It’s just either clear or it’s not. And that’s how it is with doubt. Just a little drop of doubt can ruin the whole thing. So everything you’ve been emphasizing, what are your final words here for the thrivers that are watching this because they want to improve in the Area of management they have a team, you know that keeping everybody inspired morale high keeping everybody accountable That can be tough. They can be tiring. What do you say to these people that want to improve as managers? I would just say this is to do a questions for you is one. Do you want to win? I mean, do you want to win? Do you really want to have success? Is this what you really want? Because if you do want it, you realize you’re going to have to mentor people. You’re going to have to hold people accountable. You’re going to have to occasionally make those awkward conversations with employees. You’re occasionally going to have to piss people off. You’re going to have to inspire people every day. You’re going to have to bring the energy every day, you’re going to have to… Being successful requires all of this, all of this stuff right here. But being unsuccessful only requires just this little. If you want to be successful, if you want all this stuff, to be successful you just have to do all this, all these things. It’s very hard things, do hard things, a lot of hard things you have to do. But if you don’t want to be successful, it’s so easy. Except for when you want something. Right. Now, the person who’s doing all this, whenever they want something, they do no effort. It’s easy. And the person who didn’t do the effort has to do all this just to get the thing. So it’s a deal where if you’re willing to do the things you don’t want to do, you’ll be able to do the things you do want to do. If you’re willing to do the things you don’t want to do, that will enable you to do the things you do want to do. Yeah. That’s big. Boom. I appreciate you, your time, helping us. I feel like you let us in your brain a little bit with all your stories. I feel like the Thrivers got to know you more. I love being able to just introduce you and show you to some of the Thrivers. I got a question for you, just so people can feel like they get to know you better and better and better. On a scale of 1 to 10, what is your favorite color? Red 7. Red 7. There it is. Clay Clark, the incredible pale leader. I appreciate you and you smell terrific. All right, JT, so hypothetically, in your mind, what is the purpose of having a business? To get you to your goals. So it’s a vehicle to get you to your destination. Whoa! And would you need profits to get there? I mean, when you have a business that’s successful and you’re in your mind, in your expert opinion, would you need profits to get you to your goals? Yeah, because if you have a $15 million business, but you have $15 million of expenses, it’s kind of pointless. Holy crap. All right. So the question I would have here for you. If you could take like, I don’t know, 10 minutes or less and see if you could save $3,000 a year by reducing your credit card fees, would you do it? Yes, absolutely. Holy crap. Why would somebody out there who’s listening right now, who has a sane mind, why would they not go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card, thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card to schedule a 10 minute consultation to see if they can reduce their credit card fees by at least three thousand bucks a year. Why would they not do it? Yeah, why would they not do it? Maybe because they don’t understand how you set the website. This tree is a symbol of the spirit of the Griswold family Christmas. No, that’s clear. Okay, so that can be true. So I encourage everybody to check out Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card. What would be another reason why someone would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they could save $3,000 or more on credit card fees? Maybe they think it is a waste of time and that it won’t, it’s not possible. There’s somebody out there that’s making more than $3,000 every 10 minutes and they’re like nah, that’s not worth my time. We gettin’ that rap money. We gettin’ that rap money. There’s probably some, someone out there. Okay. They would think that. Well, I’ll just tell you folks, if you’re out there today, and you’re making less than $3,000 per 10 minutes, I would highly recommend that you go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash hard. It, because you can compare rates, you can save money, and, you know, the big, the big goal, in my opinion, of building a business Your profits, holy crap now one way to maximize your profits is to increase your revenue Another way to do it is to decrease your expenses Profit deal JT, is there any other reason why somebody would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they could save a total of $3,000 a year on average? I am at a loss and I cannot think of any other. Shampoo is better. I go on first and clean the hair. Conditioner is better. I leave the hair silky and smooth. Oh really fool? Really? and smooth. Oh really fool, really. Stop looking at me swan. Well let me tell you a good story here real quick here. I actually years ago compared rates with this company here called IPS. It’s integrated payment services and I scheduled a consultation. I don’t know if I was skeptical. I just thought whatever. I’ll take ten minutes. I’ll compare aids. I can’t tell you can tell me I’m a doctor No, I mean, I’m just not sure but can’t you take a guess? well Not for another two hours You can’t take a guess for another two hours and in my case in my in my case my particular case I save over $20,000 a year Wow, which is uh, you know like groceries when my wife goes to the organic stores. Find everything you need today? Yeah. Great. Okay. Oh, God. Everything okay, ma’am? It’s just that you’ve only scanned a few items and it’s already 60 bucks. I’m so scared. Okay, I’m a trained professional, ma’am. I’ve scanned a lot of groceries. I need you to stay with me. It’s just that my in-laws are in town and they want a charcuterie board. This isn’t going to be easy, so I need you to be brave, alright? What’s your name? Patricia. Patricia, alright. I need you to take a deep breath. We’re about to do the cheese. You know, that’s the difference between eating organic and not organic. So because my wife eats organic, I had to take the ten minutes needed to compare rates to save the $20,000 a year on credit card fees just for one of my companies. One question, what’s the brand name of the clock? The brand name of the clock, Rod. Brand name of the clock. It’s an elegant from Ridgway. It’s from Ridgway. Let’s buy the clock and sell the fireplace. I encourage everybody out there, go to thrive time show dot com forward slash credit dash card. You schedule a free consultation, request information. A member of our team will call you. They’ll schedule a free consultation. It should take you 10 minutes or less. And they’re going to compare rates and see if they can’t save you more than $3,000 a year off of your credit card processing. You were hoping what? I wouldn’t owe you money at the end of the day. No, you don’t owe us money. Because at the end of the day, at the end of the day, the goal of the business is to create time, freedom and financial freedom. And in order to do that, The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma. We have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah, so what we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now, okay. I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex, they’re both 1.3 billion dollar companies. They both have two to three thousand pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually non-existent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has, by being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts, and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on what they’re listing and ranking there with Google. And also, we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, asking our customers for reviews. And now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pest Salon company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. So 411% we’re up with, with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now our closing rate is about 85% and that’s largely due to first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process. And that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah. So here’s a big one for you. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. We actually booked more deals and more new customers last year than we did the first five months. Or I’m sorry, we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year from before we worked with Thrive. So again, we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. It’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews, that way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists. Everything gets done and it gets done right. It creates accountability. We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly, both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned that has really, really contributed to our success, but that, like I said, the diligence and consistency in doing those and that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives and also, you know, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten the success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business. And we were in a rut and we didn’t know… The last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah. And so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. They implemented those systems, they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind. Absolutely, it’s been a grind this last year. But we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again we were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut and and if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it. Do the action and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline but that’s what it’s going to take in order to really succeed. So we just want to give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore. I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month. And overall, our average is running about 40 to 42% increase month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing the use of services, you’re choosing to use a proof-and-turn-key marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you’re looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crockrell, head of Disney, with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, and graphic designers, and web developers, and they run 160 companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. So in the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks, he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks, he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up, and he teaches people a 13-step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. So I’ve seen guys from startups go from startup to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system of critical thinking, document creation, organizing everything in their head to building into a franchisable, scalable business. One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So, amazing guy. Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. That’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. I was really most impressed with him is when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it. I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. And anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. Anytime I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company, or navigating competition and an economy that’s, like I remember, we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to how to get back open, how to just survive through all the covid shutdowns, lockdowns. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9 and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to make your life epic. We love you guys. We appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house, right? This is where we used to live a few years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? Neighborhood. Nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing, and this is our old team. And by team, I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing. And this is our new team. We went from 4 to 14. And I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past. And they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales. Which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman. So we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts, and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd. We’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. The Thrive Time Show, two-day interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13-point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because, as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. And I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying. I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever, and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. If we go back eight years ago, think about the number of clients you had back then versus the number of clients you have now. As a percentage, what has been the growth over the past eight years, do you think? We gotta inspire somebody out there who just doesn’t have the time to listen to our call. Okay, so Clay, it’s like I would go up and down from about $10,000 a month up to about $40,000, but it’s up and down roller coaster. And so now we’ve got it to where we’re in excess of 100 clients. That’s awesome. And so I would have anywhere from 5 clients to 20 clients on my own with networking, but I had no control over it. I didn’t, without the systems, you’re going to be victimized by your own business. For somebody out there who struggles with math, if you would say that your average number of clients was 30 and you go to 100, as a percentage, what is that? I have doubled every year since working with you. So I’ve doubled in clients, I’ve doubled in revenue every year. That’s a hundred percent growth every year I’ve worked with. Now so, I’m looking, we’ve been good friends seven, eight years and I’ve got doubled five times. Which is just incredible. I mean the first time you do it, that’s one thing but when you do it repeatedly yeah I mean that’s unbelievable. We’re working our blessed assurance off this year to double. We’re planning on doubling again. We’re incorporating some new things in there to really help us do it, but we are going to double again this year. I started coaching, but it would go up and down, Clay. That’s when I came to you, as I was going up and down, and I wanted to go up and up instead of up and down. That’s when it needed a system. So creating a system is you have nailed down specific steps that you’re going to take no matter how you feel, no matter the results, you lean into them and you do them regardless of what’s happening. You lean into them and it will give you X number of leads. You follow up with those leads, it turns into sales. If you don’t have a script and you don’t have a system, then every day is a whole new creation. You’re creating a lot of energy just to figure out what are you going to do. The best executives, Peter Drucker is a father of modern management, he said, the most effective executives make one decision a year. What you do is you make a decision, what is your system, and then you work like the Dickens to make sure you follow that system. And so that’s really what it’s all about. So with a script here, we have a brand new gal that just came in working for us. She nailed down the script and she’s been nailing down appointments. Usually we try to get one appointment for every hundred calls. We make two to three hundred calls a day per rep right and she’s been nailing down Five and eight appointments a day Somebody out there’s having a hard time script. What’s so she’s making how many calls a day? She’s making between two and three hundred calls a day and our relationship is weird in that we we do If someone were to buy an Apple computer today Yeah And or let’s say about a personal computer a PC the computer is made by, let’s say, Dell. But then the software in the computer would be Microsoft, let’s say, or Adobe or whatever that is. So I basically make the systems, and you’re like the computer and I’m like the software. It’s kind of how I would describe our relationship. Tim, I want to ask you this. You and I reconnected, I think it was in the year 2000 and, what was it, maybe 2010? Is that right? 2011 maybe or maybe even further down the road maybe 2013 2012 okay, so 2012 and at that time I had five years removed from the deep from the DJ business And you were how many years removed from tax and accounting software. It was about 10 11 years we met How did we remeet? What was the first interaction or some interaction where you and I first connected? I just remember that somehow you and I went to Hideaway Pizza. But you remember when we first reconnected? Yeah, well we had that speaking thing. Oh there it was! So it’s Victory Christian Center. I was speaking there. My name is Robert Redman. 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 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, 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. 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, you know, 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 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’s 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 you’re 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, he 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 Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted.