Clay Clark | The Real Value Of Having A Business Coach

Audio Transcription

So many different times in my life, I’ve played with broken or hurt things, broken foot, broken leg, broken hand, broken arm, broken sternum, broken collarbone. I could keep going if I just thought more about bones. Why, man? Because I loved it. I loved playing the game. I was passionate about it. One of the reasons I even get encouraged at seeing all of you here, you know why I get encouraged by that is because you could be anywhere doing a lot of different things, but you chose to be here Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show But this show does in a world filled with endless opportunities Why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses? five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use. Because they believe in you and they have a lot of time on their hands. This started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show starring the former U.S. Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body. Dr. Robert Zurnack. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and I’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here to climb Started from the bottom, now we’re at the top Teaching people systems to get what we got Colton Dixon’s on the hoops, I break down the books She’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks As the father of five, that’s why I’m alive So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi It’s the C and T up on your radio And now 3, 2, 1, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here to climb Started from the bottom, let me show you how to get this Alright, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation. My name is Clay Clark. I’m a former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, the father of five human kids, and I’m also broadcasting today live from the Man Cave, which is a place where we’re always earning, learning, and burning. But inside the Man Cave today, we are in for a very, very special treat, because we are joined with a guy who has… He’s known as the millionaire school teacher. He’s a guy who used to be a school teacher, and there’s nothing wrong with being a school teacher, but he was a school teacher who was passionate about teaching people, and he was also a guy who was living on a school teacher income, basically. And he did the dream. He left the wage cage, and he went on to start his own successful business. Now he has his own successful consulting practice, and he’s really, really doing well financially while working hard to maintain that life balance. I mean, how many of us have actually achieved a financial success and then had to give up all sense of life balance to do that? But this is a guy who has a great life, a great wife, a great, great income. Clay Stairs, how are you doing, my friend? I’m doing fantastic. Thanks so much for asking, Clay. I’ve just had the mother of all coffees. Yeah, everything has to have the mother of all from now on. So this is like the MOAC of coffees. I’m excited about this today. Okay, well here is, as we’re talking about MOABs and bomb references, I’m going to let you today, I’m going to do a prepare the thrivers for the knowledge bombs that you’re going to drop on them. So here’s a little fun factoid we’ll start off with. During today’s show, what we’re talking about is the real value of having a business coach or someone to lead the way, someone to show you the proven path. Clay, according to Forbes magazine, Bloomberg also has a statistic on this, 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs who start a business are going to fail within the first 18 months by default. Forbes said that 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs will fail by default. So Clay, I want to ask you this as somebody who coaches clients today, why do most business owners fail by default without a business coach from your perspective? Well, I think that most business owners, when they have an idea to start a company, they start because they have a skill. They have a talent, they’ve got a gift, they’ve got a service, a product, an idea. And so, we get blinded by our gift. And so, we think, oh man, I’m going to start this company, I’m going to start this thing. But we don’t realize everything else that comes around that gift to actually allow you to make money at it. And this was one of the huge pieces as I started my company. I knew immediately that I better get somebody really close to me that’s going to be able to help me develop the business around my gift because I didn’t know how to do that. Again, I was a school teacher. They don’t, Clay, they don’t teach you a whole lot of business when you’re going through the education program. You know, Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, he has been quoted as saying, the advice that sticks out I got from John Doerr, who in 2001 said, my advice to you is to have a coach. The coach, he said, I should have is Bill Campbell. I initially resented the advice because after all, I was the CEO. I was pretty experienced. Why would I need a coach? Am I doing something wrong? My argument was how could a coach advise me if I’m the best person in the world at this? That’s not what a business coach does. The business coach doesn’t have to play the sport as well as you do. They have to watch you and get you to be your best. He goes on to explain the value of having a business coach. But our relationship is kind of interesting because you reached out to me about five years ago and I started out, I was honored to work as your business coach. And as your business has grown, you actually coached so many successful entrepreneurs now. I mean, it’s amazing to see the success of the people that you coach. So let’s kind of start with the relationship that you and I had. So, because I think a lot of people don’t know what a normal business coaching relationship should look like, you know, if it’s healthy. We’ve joked about this a little bit, but there was times in our relationship where I was almost paid to be a not nice guy. Maybe that was not the word that I used to describe it. It was not the word that I used when I said I need to change the relationship. Okay, so so can you kind of explain to the Thrivers what our relationship was as I was initially business coaching you? Yes, we first started out Clay I remember just being brand new to the the entire idea of business Obviously, I’ve been a teacher for years. I’ve been a trainer developer a coach. I knew that world I knew how to speak I’ve been I think my first actual speaking engagement was when I was 12 years old. So I knew how to be in front of people. I had the gift. I had a talent. But as I started working with you, the whole idea was, all right, it’s time for me now to have somebody that’s going to teach me the back end, teach me the backside, teach me the rest of the story. So, if I can’t dive into this a moment, Clay, there was a ton of pre-work that had to go on inside of me, I feel like, well, I’m convinced, a ton of pre-work that had to go on inside of me before I was ready for a coach. Can you explain the pre-work? Because here’s the perspective that I think a lot of people have when they meet you and they see you and they see somebody with the gift. I think a lot of people are actually in awe of you. They respect you. A lot of people who know you say, I know a lot of people who know you and they’ll say, man, Clay Stairs is a great speaker. This guy, man, this guy is good. I’ve coached a lot of business owners where they’ll say, wow, this person makes incredible cookies. Their business is going to be awesome. Or wow, this person is such a gifted builder. Their construction company is going to just take off. And there’s almost a, you’re on a pedestal. And I think it could be humbling, I think it can be hard for a lot of the listeners to come down from the pedestal. I mean, think about an Olympic athlete almost. These Olympic athletes all have a coach. I mean, all of the Olympic athletes have a coach, but yet they’re up on a podium and America’s cheering, and you almost have to come down off of that podium and then go to your coach and say, okay, what do I need to do? You mentioned this thing called pre-work. What do you mean by pre-work? What kind of things did you have to do internally? I think for me, probably one of the biggest things that had gotten in my way, and Clay, let me toss this out too. I did not meet you until I was 47 years old. 47? Yeah, and so- You were looking like 27 then. Well, thank you. But I’m in this spot of, I think up until 47, I had resisted having anybody really tell me what to do and I I was I was the guy that I got it You know I get no problem all the way through high school through college things came naturally to me Things were not really difficult. I attended you know is that whole thing of I was very blessed right But but somewhere along the line somewhere along the road. I picked up this idea of I can do it. So that idea kind of set me up for a very difficult 25, ages 25 to 35, extremely difficult. So let me ask you this, because when we started working together, a lot of people have never worked with a business coach at all. They’ve never had one. And so what they, well, I think a lot of people fear is that your coach is going to pull you aside and go, all right, here’s what we’re going to do today. We’re going to do a campfire. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to talk about our feelings. And then after we establish our feelings, we’re going to walk on hot coals and we’re going to have kind of a mystical trust fall. So if everyone can put on your robes, I’ll meet you at the man path. I think a lot of people feel like that’s what a business coach relationship could look like because maybe that’s what they’ve seen in a movie or maybe that’s what they’ve heard from a Tony Robbins conference. Walk them through on a very literal, very physical, very weekly, what is the routine of having a business coach or what did the routine of you and I working together look like? Yeah, well I think, you know, once again, we’re getting together once a week, which I think is most important. Anything longer than that, and there becomes more and more of a dissonance, more and more of a disconnect between the coach and the student. As we began to get together, Clay, again, I think the very first thing that I had to do, and this is very important, I think in any successful long-term coaching experience, is that I had come to a position where I finally said to myself, I need to submit to another person. anybody listening right now, you need to have a lot of doubt in your mind that you’re able to push past. The only way that I know to do it is I encourage you to look up the notable quotable here from the CEO of Google where he says, the advice that I got sticks out. The advice that he received that stuck out the most was, you need to hire a business coach. So I would just look up Eric Schmidt and the word, hire a coach. And you can find the CEO of Google is telling you to do this. I think if you look up Warren Buffett during the break, you go to YouTube and type in Warren Buffett, Dale Carnegie School. You’re going to find that Warren Buffett said the number one most impactful aspect of his business career in terms of mentorship was attending the Dale Carnegie School and learning to communicate effectively. I think if you go ahead and do a search for Bill Gates and May of 2013 TED Talks and the phrase everyone needs a coach. Bill Gates is telling an audience that everybody needs a coach. Without a coach there is no continual improvement, there is no feedback, but it starts with you getting to a place where you now can accept that you need a coach. Whether you hire myself, whether you hire Clay Stairs, whether you hire one of the Thrive of Teen coaches, whether you hire the Traction Business Coaching Program or the E-Myth Business Coaching Program. But I want to hit a notable quotable that you referenced. This is from Michael Gerber, the best-selling author of the book called The E-Myth. He says, most entrepreneurs are merely technicians with an entrepreneurial seizure. Most entrepreneurs fail because you are working in your business rather than on your business. So once you’ve got to a place where you say, okay, I’m ready to reach out to a coach, the next thing that’s going to happen is a coach is going to help you define your key performance indicators. I like to do this first. I like to figure out how many clients do you need to have, how many customers do you need to have to achieve your financial goals. So let’s just say you’re a bakery, let’s say you’re a consultant, let’s say you’re a speaker, let’s say you cut hair, let’s say you repair automobiles. How many customers do you need to have in order to achieve your financial goals? And then the customer, then the coaching client will typically say, well, I don’t even know what my goals are. And that’s sort of what we’re going to work on when we come back. So when we come back, I want everyone to come back with a piece of paper, a pad, a pen, perhaps some Oklahoma Joe’s baked beans, but don’t spill on your notes. These are some profound notes. I don’t know if you, a lot of our clients tell me that they’ve actually kept notes from our first interactions because it’s had made such a big impact. We’re going to talk about knowing your numbers and specifically how many customers do you need to have in order to achieve your financial and life goals. His name is Clay Stairs. My name is Clay Clark. I’m super excited to be with you today. Stay tuned. We’ll be back after the break. This moment we own it. I’m not to be played with because it can get dangerous. Oh, and it can get dangerous once you put all of your money, all of your time, all your resources, your energy, and your family’s security to a certain extent into this crazy thing called a business. And now that business has to be able to provide income for you. I mean, the very basic level when you’re starting a business or growing a business, that thing better provide enough money for you to be able to buy groceries, to pay your mortgage. It can be a very scary time. And I think what happens for a lot of people out there is you and I get so busy. We get so busy just trying to pay the bills that we don’t realize how emotionally reactive we’ve become. We’re so busy. And then for a few of us out there, I was able to do this through, I think it was through waterboarding, some business coaching, and just fear, but I was able to learn how to sell pretty quickly. I had built a business where I didn’t have time freedom or financial freedom, but my company DJConnection.com, which is now the largest wedding entertainment company on the planet, I was probably four years into the business before it occurred to me, I don’t have any time freedom at all. I don’t have any financial freedom at all. I have a ton of money, but no financial freedom and no time freedom. And so today, Thrive Nation, we are so blessed to have a super guest on the show because this guy here is a guy who is now known as the millionaire school teacher. He has shared the stage with some of the biggest names around the world as a speaker. His consultant, business consulting practice is doing very, very well. And he was actually a business coaching client of mine back in the day. So at the age of 47, he got this crazy idea to leave the wage cage and to go out there and to start a very successful company and to become a nationally recognized speaker. And so Thrive Nation, put your hands together because there could be nobody better than Mr. Clay Stairs. Sir, how are you? I’m doing wonderful. Thank you. All right, so for the Thrivers out there, we were just talking about a business coach and what a healthy business coaching relationship should look like when it first starts. So Clay, kind of take us from when you and I first met to that work you had to do behind the scenes to get yourself to that coachable level. Yeah, once again, as you were talking at the end of the last segment, starting to dive into the numbers, what are the goals, what is the target that we’re trying to hit? Pardon me. The idea, once again, Clay, I want to slow down just a moment and talk about how important, once again, how important it is for, how important it was for me to come to this realization that I need to submit to somebody. Because again, as an entrepreneur, the whole idea, what was it out of the e-myth, I also have it as a part of my e-model that I work with customers, is that we’re in this place, everybody has an idea. Ideas are a dime a dozen. But the idea, to move from idea to startup, takes a certain amount of cojones. It takes a certain amount of confidence. And I think that so many times entrepreneurs have this idea of, I can do it. I’m an individual. I’ve got the power. It’s me. I can make it happen. Okay, I’m going to get into the mind of three different personality types who are listening. Someone’s going to say, that’s me. How did you know? Okay, there’s three different kinds of entrepreneurs that I’ve worked with a lot over the years. One is I call this person the laser show. There we go. The laser show. You are so good at whatever you do. People cheer and so therefore you just keep rocking. You just keep rocking. But behind the scenes you’re going, I don’t know what I’m doing. But people keep cheering for you. Yeah. And it’s because you’re so great at making wedding cakes that people just line up. You win these awards. You’re such a good disc jockey. You are such a good tile installation guy, people cheer for you. The second type, I want you to break down, Clay, as well, is the person who you just have to sell something soon because you’re going to be homeless. And the third entrepreneur is somebody, and this is sort of the awkward one, but you’re unemployable. You know, and I know, and we all know, that you can’t hold a job. And so the only thing that you can do to provide for your family is to start a business because you’re going to be homeless if you try to work for somebody else. So let’s start with the laser show. Clay, you’ve coached clients. You’ve been a business coach who’s helped many clients. Talk to me about the laser show. How is it sometimes difficult to coach the human laser show? Well, again, this human laser show is an idea that is kind of the temperament or the mentality that I’ve got it. I just need someone to give me one or two tips. I just need somebody to give me the power move. I just need someone to give me the silver bullet that’s going to make it all come together. I just need two quick super moves. Exactly. And then I’m good. Absolutely. What do you got for me? What do you got for me? But what happens is immediately in a coaching session, somebody’s saying, hey, this is what’s going on in my life, and so here we come as a coach, and we go, okay, here’s something that we need to do. Here is a change that you need to make. Well, the idea, if you are the human laser show, is like, no, I don’t need to change anything. What you need to do as my coach is you need to add on to what I’m already doing. And that doesn’t work. I see this all the time. I just feel like there’s somebody out there, Clay, who’s listening who’s saying, so I am a laser show. I mean, seriously, I’ve got all the moves. When these people talk, this is the kind of phrases they typically say. You’ve heard them, Clay, so it’s almost hysterical. Basically, all I want is a little boom, a little bam. They don’t even use adjectives now. I just want a little boom, boom, a little bam. All I need to do is just kind of put the thing on the thing and the next thing you know I’m just, and they say, I want to be viral. And you go, what? That’s not a strategy. No, all I need is a little, help, help solve it to me. They hire a coach. They hire the coach to say, okay, should I do a Facebook ad or should I do online ad? You know, which one? It’s like, really? That’s what we’re doing here? You know, and so, so this idea of, of add on thinking is, is a huge piece of what I try to help entrepreneurs navigate through. And again, with our relationship, Clay, that was the big step that I took is I cannot do add-on thinking anymore. I have to do replacement thinking. Replacement thinking. Replacement thinking, meaning when you gave me ideas, Clay, this is what you have to do immediately. And I’ll let everybody know right now, Clay, when you said you need to make a hundred phone calls a day. A hundred phone calls a day. I mean, that just, that blew my brain. That was like, nobody in the history of humanness has ever made a hundred phone calls a day. Clay, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. That’s not really my style. What I’d like to do is X, Y, and Z. I remember that. I think this, and you’re going, got to make a hundred phone calls. I remember. But Clay, I’m more of the face-to-face. I’m more of the guy that, you know, we kind of want to do this. And see, that’s me coming to you with this foundation of I want add-on thinking. And so when you give me an idea, and I already have an idea, so many times in a coaching relationship, that will create conflict. And I have to determine right there in the space of that conflict, am I going to listen to my coach or am I going to listen to me? Am I going to do my idea? Well, my idea had gotten me in debt and gotten me to about $42,000 a year. Ah! Now, Thrive Nation, Rooker, we come back, Clay is going to get more into this concept of pushing back against this add-on thinking, this concept that you are the human laser show and you know everything there is to know, but yet your wallet won’t grow. Yes, yes. And now, broadcasting from the man cave, located in beautiful Broken Arrow, within the heart of the great state of Oklahoma. We are now here on the Thrive Time Show, broadcasting from my audio dojo of Mojo, a place where learning, earning, and burning continue every weekend. It’s the Man Cave, and we’re broadcasting here on this fabulous Monday. And if you are just now tuning in to the Thrive Time Show, let me tell you what you’re in store for today. Clay Stairs is on the show. I encourage you to Google search, who is Clay Stairs? Clay Stairs is a guy who’s kind of an American dream living boss. This guy went from being a school teacher to now being known as the millionaire school teacher. He’s a guy who’s built a very, very successful business and he’s done what we’ve all dreamed about you know taking your big idea and turning it into reality and so he’s actually had to start though with this with this he had to start somewhere right who didn’t have to start somewhere but why I want to praise clay is here he was at the age of 47 and so many people feel like I can’t be successful because I haven’t started that business yet and I’m 52. I’m 35. I’m whatever that is. You put these labels on yourself. You put these qualifiers and you say, because I haven’t started a successful business by this certain age, I don’t qualify to do it. But if you look up the elephant in the room, the men’s grooming lounge, I actually started that business almost at the time that I first met you, Clay. So I’m 36 now, and at 31 is when I started that chapter of my business career and now the EITRLounge.com, that business is booming, but that thing started about the same time that you and I met and now your business is booming as well. So we’re talking about business coaching and Clay, you were talking about being coachable and we identified the three different personality types that make it hard to receive coaching and that one is the human laser show, the guy who’s awesome at everything, but not very good at running a business. The second is the person who just, they’re just in a place where they just need to sell something. They’re just in that dramatic situation where they just have to sell something. And the third is that person who’s unemployable. So let’s talk again about the laser show. Is there anything else that the person listening out there who’s maybe a human laser show, people have told you, you are great at what you do. Is there any other kind of mental blockage that we need to work through before the human laser show can become a coachable business person? Yeah, as we were talking about in the last segment, this idea of submitting to somebody. I hate, it’s like the S word. I hate the S word. Submitting, I want to be in control. I want to be the one calling the shots. I know better it’s like ah but the thing was is that me knowing better had gotten me to the place of in debt Making forty two thousand dollars a year wanting to go on a vacation, but going okay How am I gonna do this you know and and my wife Lisa and I? Constantly being in this place of hey spending freeze because ending free you know we need extra money Okay, spending freeze and and to try to get the money so that we could go on a vacation. It was so frustrating. And you look out into the future and you’re going, all I see is more of the same as I look into the future. How am I going to get out of this thing? So I had to come to a place in my life where I was prepared for a coach, where I was mentally and emotionally and spiritually ready for a coach. Clay, I remember when you and I first sat down and meeting each other and you said, okay, Clay, that’s going to be $1,500 a month. $1,500 a month. I like pooped my pants. I was going $1,500 a month. In my world at that time, it was like, you don’t have any idea. Clay, that is so much money. There’s no way that I would ever be able to pay this. I just, you know, it’s just like, ah, drop the pants and poop right there. Can I explain to you why we charged and why we do charge $1,500? Sure. Jump on it. Well, when I built DJ Connection, before I sold it, we did 4,000 events per year. And I typically made a profit of about $165 per event. So and you say, well, where does that number come from? Well, that’s the number after the cost to acquire the customer, the cost from marketing, the cost to pay the entertainers, the cost of accounting, taxes. By the way, we have a lot of taxes in this fine, fine country, so we can afford the dropping of MoAbs on terrorists there. You see yet another MoAb reference there, Clayston. Oh, I love it. Yeah. Keeping it relevant. Exactly. But the thing is, is that I don’t… If you’re a business person, you’re very successful, I don’t want to take an oath of poverty to help mentor people. I don’t want to say, that’ll be $400 a month there, and then meanwhile, our coaching sessions are going to occur under the bridge. We’ll be meeting under the bridge. Are you homeless? No, no, we’re just going to be doing coaching sessions by the river and under the bridge because I can’t afford office space. You want to make sure that as a coach, I would caution anybody out there who’s hired a business coach who’s doing this for like five hundred bucks a month or four hundred bucks a month because how is this person financially getting… how has this person achieved financial success if they’re not making any money? So you have to understand that if you’re going to get somebody who knows what they’re talking about, it’s going to cost some money. The second thing that both you and I do now for our clients is that we do the back end support. So once you… Love the back, okay, I probably shouldn’t have said that. Sorry about that. Go ahead. Once you learn what to do, somebody still has to make your logo, somebody has to make your website, you need a videographer, you need a graphic designer, you need a coder, you need an app developer, you need a search engine optimizer, you need a content writer, you need all these different disciplines in this digital age we live in. And most people can’t afford to go out and hire even one of these people full-time. When I built DJ Connection, we had full-time people, Clay Stairs. You’ve met some of these people. Full-time people, that’s all they did. In fact, your daughter was a full-time graphic designer and photographer for one of our businesses back in the day. And when you have a full-time person, you’ve got to pay that person, right? And we’re not paying that person $1,500. Well, they appreciate that. Well, we’re not paying your daughter $1,500 a month. I mean, these people can make $700 a week, $1,000 a week. The more talent, the more skill they provide, you have to pay these people. So that $1,500 includes not only the coaching, but it includes that support and all those deliverables. So, Clay, as we move on to the different personality types, the first one is the laser show. Very hard to coach a person if you think that you are God’s gift to America and you don’t need to know anything. But the second is, what about that person who’s in such a weird spot, such a desperate spot, such a tough spot, that they have to sell something immediately. In the entire meeting they’re going, I have to sell something right now. And they can’t put the phone down for even one hour in the meeting. They cannot put their smartphone down for even one hour a week. They can’t get there on time because they just have to sell something. They were just on the phone with a new deal. Any phone call, they cannot miss any phone call because that could be the savior call. Yeah, Clay, exactly. It’s this idea again of add-on thinking. Okay, yeah, I’m going to go to my coach. I’m going to spend time with my coach, but while I’m spending time with my coach, I’m also going to do business all at the same time. And it’s trying to add on. I’m going to do this and this as opposed to the replacement. Going back to the idea of when you said, Clay, that’s going to be $1,500 a month. My first thought is I can’t. Immediately, my first thought is I can’t. So right at the very beginning, there is this challenge between the thoughts and the mindset of the coach and the thoughts of the mindset of the student or the client. I can’t. And so, the lens that I was looking through, which I feel like is so often with this, what I will call the desperate entrepreneur, is that you’re looking through the lens of where I am now. I can’t do that because I don’t have it now, as opposed to where this is going to take me or where I can go. Again, if I’m not careful, I will make decisions based on where I am now that will keep me from being able to make the decisions I need to make today to go further, to take the next step. You’re listening to the Thrive Time show on the radio Started from the bottom now we Started from the bottom now we all right if you have started from the bottom, but you are still at the bottom You know again if you’ve started at the bottom, but you’re still at the bottom It’s kind of one of these you know you have the Rocky story where he goes in there And he just starts taking punches from the Russian and the Russians just beating the heck out of Rocky and he just keeps taking the punches from Ivan Drago. Well at the end of that scene what he does is the the Russian is convinced that he has nothing left to give. The Soviet has nothing left to give. Ivan Drago he’s just punching and punching he’s like I cannot break this guy I can’t knock him out and Sylvester Stallone then somehow conjures up the final burst of energy the adrenaline needed to come out there and start delivering punches and he eventually knocks out the Soviet after taking all the hits and taking all the knocks. And sort of the idea behind that was, the idea behind that movie was that you just have to push through the pain to ultimately overcome your enemy or the obstacles in your life. For many of you, you’ve been taking punches for 45 years. And Clay, as we’re talking today about business coaching, we have Clay Stairs on the show today. This is a guy who is now known as the millionaire school teacher, a guy who I had the honor of coaching years ago. Clay, can you kind of explain what it feels like to be 47 years old and to be taking punches like you’re getting hit from Ivan Drago, but to not actually win? I mean, what that feels like to be 47 years old and have been taking punches for 47 years and you don’t actually end up winning. Can you explain what that felt like? Oh yeah, love that. It started from the bottom and I’m still here. Oh my gosh. I mean, Clay, you know, there was a season where I lived in my car. This is where it was. I actually was homeless, living in my car. And then catch this. And then my car got stolen. Are you kidding me? While you were in the car, did you wake up in a garage? No, then my car gets stolen. It’s like, how does this work? I don’t get it. You know, I mean, it was just a season of my life where, you know, everything was just, I guess, getting downsized. And oh my gosh. And so, but all along the way, when I’m like every weekend just going, okay, hey, can I come and stay at your house for this weekend? Will that work? Hey, buddy. You know, and I’m kind of going from friend to friend, spending a few nights, and catch this. I had a two-year-old daughter at the time. You know, and so I’m trying to do, I’m a teacher, I’m homeless, I’m riding a bike, I’ve got a two-year-old daughter, and I’m moving around from home to home to home. But the idea was is that I knew that wasn’t going to be my future. I knew that there was something better, but I had to get through it. So the idea was to keep moving forward, keep moving forward. But again, this idea that we’ve been talking about so far in previous sessions is not having this add-on thinking, but a replacement thinking. Can you explain to the, can you help, because you obviously coach businesses that are on all different entrepreneurs that are coming to you from all different mindsets but what about the entrepreneur that can’t hold a job? This third kind of entrepreneur where they’re not employable and they have not ever said out loud that the reason why I started a business is that I always get fired. They haven’t admitted that they they just refuse to save their files the right way. Dennis are you listening to this? They will not show up on time to a meeting. They just won’t show up on time just because they’re irritated that somebody told them what time to be somewhere. They’re not going to save something in the right place. And, oh, by the way, they’re not going to let you talk. They’re going to hire you to be a business coach, but they’re not going to let you talk because that would require some form of submission. Can you kind of help the entrepreneur through this who’s a fighter and an unemployable person? Yeah, I mean, this is Dennis, and Dennis, I hope you’re listening out there. Dennis and I spent about eight months together. You know, and it’s just, Dennis, you’re paying me, but you’re not doing anything I’m telling you to do. You’re not showing up for the coaching sessions, and even when you do come in, you’re talking on your phone, you’re doing it. I mean it was so frustrating. And we had this conversation over and over and over of, Dennis, you think that you can just take some of the ideas that we talk about and some of these skills and just add them on to your life, but dude, your marriage is tanking. You I mean just your life, you are going further and further in debt, bankruptcy is coming up and he’s just not making the decisions. We talked several times about how he’s going, yeah, Clay, I’ve never worked for anyone. I mean, that’s red light. I have never worked for anyone. That is red light for me. It’s like, oh my. Because what’s happening is now I’m getting ready to ask you to follow me. I’m getting ready to ask you to do what I’m telling you to do. Where do I think that you’re actually going to listen to me? You haven’t listened to anybody else. That’s why I love working my relationship with Dr. Zellner. You know, Dr. Zellner, if you don’t understand organizational leadership, you just can’t be successful as an entrepreneur. So here’s how it works. If Dr. Z says, the other day we did the radio show, and he said, hey, could you take me to Mahogany’s after the show, drop me off. If I had sat there and badgered him with, well, why do I have to take you? Couldn’t you Uber? Is there any way you could get there cheaper? Do I need to do that? Is that the best use of my time? I don’t know if I want to do that. If I was like that, if I ever pushed back about anything he wants me to do, we couldn’t get anything done. But I have to respect him as an authority. I mean, here’s a guy who’s built the most successful optometry clinic in the region. He’s got the most successful auto auction. He’s invested in a very successful bank that’s growing rapidly. Regent Bank has just taken off. He’s invested in so many different businesses. He owns A to Z Medical. I’d go on and on all the companies he has, but every time that I reached out to him as a young entrepreneur, when I was building my first company, DJ Connection, and then growing EpicPhotos.com, and then when I was growing Elephant in the Room, and when I’ve grown Make Your Life Epic, our PR company, all the different businesses I’m involved in, I’m not gonna sit there and argue with the guy. He knows the way, he goes the way, he knows it, he shows it, he lives it, he is it, he’s doing what he’s saying to do. That’s just the thing I want to help you with, Mr. Thriver out there, is that you’ve got to be coachable. But now, once you’ve got to a place where you’re coachable, your coach, whether your business coach is Clay Stairs or somebody else, they’re going to help you, they need to help you get your branding right as soon as possible while simultaneously figuring out how many customers you need to achieve your financial goals. So let’s start with the financial goals aspect here. Clay, why is it so important that everybody listening knows exactly how many customers they need to achieve their financial goals? This is beautiful. I had one client that I worked with clay, you know And we always start just like you started with me. We always start with the top three. What is the gross the gross revenue? You want what’s the gross net? What is the net that you want to make how much money you want to keep in the next? Well, how many customers do you have to have to reach these numbers and we found out really quickly that here’s a guy He’s trying to reach a certain number a certain net and a certain gross revenue, but to get there, the number of customers that he was going to have to meet did not fit. It’s a restaurant. He was going, Clay, I can’t do this many customers. And it’s like, oh, then we need to make some adjustments. But here he was for like six years. He kept trying to, he had this dream, he had this goal of trying to get to a certain target, but he didn’t even realize that his restaurant would never be able to accommodate that goal. You know, this is a very specific example from my own life. The elephant in the room are Men’s Grooming Lounge. Each store needs approximately 400 members, okay, who pay an average of about $37 a month to break even. About 400 members per store to break even. Well, today we have 3,600 members and we add about 200 a week and we have three stores. So we know how many we need to break even about 400 per store. And currently we’re operating in about 1,200 members per store. And we said in a meeting, we said, once we get to about 1,200 members per store, we will start franchising. And that means we’re going to start selling our concept, our proven concept, to other people who would rather buy a turnkey business than to start from scratch. And one of our partners, his name is Jonathan Barnett, and if you look up his company, Oxifresh, he has his metrics. He knows how many customers his franchisees need to have to break even and I’m just telling you when you don’t know how many customers you need to break even that’s a scary place there Clay. When someone has no idea how many customers they need just to break even that’s crazy. Yeah you know what the answer will be every single day? More. More. I need more. I need more. I need more. Even though you’re breaking records I still need more. I still need more. There appears to be a hole in the wagon. Yeah, yeah. You’ll just lay in bed, stare at the ceiling. I need more. I need more. I need more. Because we don’t know how to measure. What is it, Clay? What you measure will grow. Absolutely. I see this, Clay. I see people who don’t measure something. So they have a wagon that’s filled with money, right? And they’re out there trying to get as much money as they can, but they have a hole. It’s like a three foot by three foot hole in the wagon, and money’s just coming out. You know? And they’re going, Greg, I think we’re losing some money there on the road. Like, just go faster, Darryl. Come on, go faster. And so the money is just falling out of the wagon. You’re going faster, faster, faster, losing more money, more money, more money, but going faster, faster, faster. You’re hiring more people to make it go faster, and then your brand explodes. You end up living in a van down by the river. And that’s not where we want you to end up. So when we come back, Clay Stares is going to walk us through how a business coach will help you with your branding, your marketing, your branding, your logo, your website. All these things have to be top notch if you want to build a first class business. Stay tuned, Thrivetimeshow.com. Alright Thrive Nation, welcome back to the conversation. It is the Thrive Time Show on your radio and today we are talking all about what a healthy business coaching relationship looks like. I just, I can’t tell you how passionate I am about helping you to achieve financial success. Yes, we like to have a lot of fun on the show. Yes, we like to joke around from time to time. But on this segment, I want to just, I want to be very, very transparent with you. I want to get into that uncomfortable place where you are doing the best you know how to do and it’s not good enough. Because the market doesn’t care how many hours you work on something. They don’t care how long you’ve thought about that idea. And so I’ll give you an example. Back in the day when I started DJConnection.com which went on to become the largest wedding entertainment company on the planet. I remember getting in front of a corporation in Tulsa, and I finally booked an appointment after just tons of cold calling. I’m making hundreds of calls a day, and I get in front of them, and I have cargo pants on, I have a T-shirt of some kind on, I’m sure, and I’m presenting, and I just remember them saying, you know, we’ll have to get back to you. Which is code for in Oklahoma, that’s like, why don’t you screw off because your business is stupid? You know, I mean, that’s basically, look, in Oklahoma, people are nice, but they’re not gonna buy from you if you don’t inspire confidence. And so I find myself in the office of Clifton Tolbert, who is a guy who helped introduce the Stare Master into the marketplace. He’s a guy who was told as a young kid he couldn’t go into banks because of the color of his skin. He grew up in Glen Allen, Mississippi. He couldn’t even go into banks, to the front door of a bank, because he’s an African-American. He went on to start his own bank. He introduced the Stairmaster into the marketplace. He is a best-selling author. His life was made into a movie called Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored. It’s an unbelievable movie. Siskel and Ebert gave it two thumbs up. I’m in his office asking him, I’m saying, hey, I can’t afford air conditioning. I’ve been at this for two years. I can’t afford air conditioning. I have literally turned off the air conditioning and in Oklahoma summer so I can afford to pay my rent. I have a yellow page ad, people are calling, nobody’s booking, and he says, well, what do you wear to your meetings? And I’ve said, well, I wear these cargo pants and I wear this shirt. I tuck it in though. He’s like, you’re wearing a Wu-Tang Clan shirt to a meeting with a client? And he has this look on his face like, oh boy. And then he says, do you dress like that? And I have my double hoop earrings in. And I said, yeah. And he goes, do you wear those earrings? Yeah, absolutely. And he says, what kind of car do you drive? And I’m like, well, it’s a hand-painted Mazda MPV, Mazda minivan. You know, it’s a maroon hand-painted vehicle. And he said, where are you meeting these people for lunch? And I said, I’m meeting most couples at McDonald’s, you know, right there off of 71st and Riverside, you know that area, 81st and Riverside. He says, so you’re meeting people at McDonald’s, you’re showing up in cargo pants with a t-shirt tucked in, you’ve got your double hoop earrings, do you have a website? And I show it to him and it’s the nastiest thing Clay stares, it is the nastiest, grossest looking website. And I’m working so hard. I’m going 90 miles an hour the wrong way. Clay, if you were sitting down with a business coaching client who’s in that situation where you meet them, and I’m sure it’s happened to you, you’re sitting down with a business coaching client, they’re working super hard, they’ve got the double hoop earrings in, they’ve got the cargo pants on, their website looks like garbage. What would you say if you’re sitting there talking to somebody? What does that coaching session look like when you’re helping somebody develop a world-class brand and you almost don’t have the heart to tell them how awful everything that they’re doing related to their marketing is? It’s extremely painful as you’re looking at this and going, okay, how am I going to say this? I usually do that. You know, I’m kind of, even what you just did there, you know, okay, I try to make it look like it’s really painful, because it is really painful as I’m telling them. But Clay, once again, with the entrepreneur that has this technician, this entrepreneur seizure, this technician with an entrepreneur seizure, they are focusing on their gift and their talent. And so what needs to happen is, for me to gain clients, for me to gain customers, I need that customer to be near me. I need them to be with me. If I could just get close to them, if I could just get them to eat my burger, if I could get them to eat my cookie, then I will sell them. But the problem is I can’t get anybody close to me long enough. I just need somebody to spend time with me. I just need somebody to hear me speak and then they’ll hire me. But the problem is I can’t get anyone to hire me because no one’s heard me speak. So this whole idea of what you did with me, of helping me build a brand, I mean it was hilarious. I mean it was all about growth at the beginning, and it still is. That’s still one of our core values is growth. But I remember you and I talking about, okay, we’re going to go speak and it’s all about growth and it’s almost like there’s a chainsaw. You remember that? Absolutely. And we ran with that sucker. My very first speaking engagement in San Antonio. Yep. Oh my Lord, it was working with a bunch of government workers. Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I broke out a chainsaw in the middle of my speaking engagement. That was interesting, getting the chainsaw on the plane going down there. But I broke out the chainsaw and I put on the gloves, I’ve got the music going, I’ve got the goggles and the whole thing, and I cut through this log. That video is on my website still to this day, my very first speaking engagement of breaking out the chainsaw but that the idea there was was beginning to build my brand and I’m gonna say this is what this is what this is what a branding is okay Elon Musk are the guy who started Tesla on the guy who started the space X the guy who started what is now PayPal I is the richest man in Los Angeles California he says brand is just a perception and perception will match reality over and over and over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product. And so I’m gonna encourage all the thrivers out there, I want you to go to eitrlounge.com, that’s elephant in the room, it’s one of my businesses. And I’m not trying to convince you to book a haircut. The reason why I want you to go up there to check it out is because I want you to see what other people see for the first time. They go up there and the elephant in the room, we want you to look inside the business. Just a little sneak peek with video. You can look inside and see what the atmosphere is like. You get a chance to see a refined logo. You can see how your first haircut’s a dollar. The reason why we do all that is because we want you to understand that this is a well thought out professional atmosphere. It’s like the country club of men’s hair. We put the little as seen on, we call it the social proof bar. We’ve been featured in, we were named as the best haircut in Tulsa by the Tulsa people. We’ve been featured in the journal record. We’ve been featured in the Business Journal. We’ve been featured there in the Tulsa World Success Magazine did a feature on us. And we only put all that up there because people are going to judge the business. People are going to judge you based off of that first impression. And so when working with you, here you are a really, really good speaker. And Clay Stairs is, if you ever get a chance to see Clay Stairs speak, you’re in for a treat. And if you haven’t, you should book him for your corporate event or something. Because if you go to Clay, C-L-A-Y, and then stairs, S-T-A-I-R-E-S dot com, you’re going to see now what I believe to be Mount Awesome. But I want to explain to you how we got there. The mother. Well, the mother of all websites. The mother of all websites. The mother of all websites. The mother of all business websites, the Moab of websites. But his website now, through the process of I call it layering, he’s been able to build the look you see now. So the first thing we had to do is we had to figure out what’s the color? What color do you want to be? And you were like, I want to do something with growth. And a lot of entrepreneurs will take months defining what logo they want to have. And you know why that’s such a dumb idea? Because these graphic design firms that are charging you like $300 a revision or $4,000 a month for a 12-month contract or these videographers that pay you per change or these photographers that get you for $2,500 a session, they want you to explore all of the opportunities for $2,000 a piece. They want you to do that. And so we had to define a color, then we had to define a logo, then we had to define a call to action, then we had to define the book title that you’re working on, we had to define your philosophy, your principles, but we have to do that fast or you’re going to end up living in a van down by the river. So Clay, when you’re working with a client, talk to me about the speed, how fast do you want to take them through the entire branding phase where they can nail down their logo, their website, their print pieces, I mean, how long do you want to get? How long should it take you to get through that process? Oh, man. See, once again, Clay, this is a wonderful example of this add on thinking. There is a pace to success, but most people are in the wage cage pace. Most people are in this, I’m just doing the best I can pace. And so they want to think about it. They want, well, you know, I just, I need to go back and think about it more. And it’s like, we’ve got to take action. We have to move forward and make these decisions. I’ve got clients right now that we’ve been, I mean it has been a painful, Pam can you hear me? Pam! It has been a painful experience just getting their website launched because every time they look at it before we’ve launched it, they’re going, you know, I think I need a, I think we need to add a word right here. And I’m going, forget the word, let’s launch it and we’ll work on it later and they’re going no we can’t Clay it’s got to be perfect it’s got to be perfect before we go. I’ll tell you this Conrad Hilton okay Conrad Hilton just to pile on to what you’re saying Conrad Hilton is obviously the guy who started the Hilton Hotels but he has this notable quotable that 100% dovetails it piles on to what Clay said. Clay I want you to break this down for me he says success seems to be connected with action. Yeah. Successful people keep moving they make mistakes but they don’t quit moving. Clay, break it down. Oh, see, and I just, just this last week was talking with this client and I showed him this graphic of who is the guy that started LinkedIn? Do you remember the guy? Yes, Reid Hoffman. There you go, Reid Hoffman. So I’m showing Reid Hoffman. If you are not embarrassed by your first website, then you are taking, then you are going to, then you are launching too late. And when I read Reid Hoffman’s quote where he said that for the first time, it sort of blew my mind. But I would just say this, you as an entrepreneur have to move forward because there’s this process called layering. Some of you might call it mastery. Layering or mastery, this is something that I really want to dwell on for a second here. Once you get your site launched, the next thing you have to do is you have to attempt to sell 100 things. Every time that someone tells you no, every time a prospect says, I’m not interested, you add that layer of knowledge that you can’t possibly get in a conference room. You add that layer of knowledge to the website. As an example with Clay Stairs, when you started marketing yourself for speaking events, people would call you and they would express interest. They would fill out a form and say, hey, I would like to hire you to speak to my group. And after you’ve talked to about a hundred prospects, you start learning, hey, most event planners want A, B, C, and D, but they don’t want one, two, and three. They want A, B, C, and D, so I should probably start doing that, but they don’t want one, two, and three. But the only way to learn is to get out there and do it. Do it. Yeah. Clay, what would you say? What advice would you have for the person out there who says, I’m stuck. I know that I’m not ever financially getting ahead. I have some serious reservations about hiring a coach. What would be the encouragement you would have for the person who doesn’t want to hire a coach, but wants to continue doing nothing and expects some changes? Well, the advice, again, I’m doing this all the time with potential clients that I’m talking with is the option of not having a coach is to have the same thing tomorrow that you have today. Oof. Now, Thrivers, I’m going to tell you, when we come back, Clay is going to break it down about how a business coach helps you learn to sell something. Because once you’ve got the idea, the vision, and the branding done, you now have to actually sell something. And selling can be very, very scary. Alright Thrive Nation, perhaps you’ve been waiting for a time in the distant future where farther along you’re going to start to achieve success. You know, farther, somewhere in the distant future, just a few minutes from now, a few hours from now, a few years from now, when things in your faith get alright, once your family situation gets resolved, when you get in shape, when you physically are finally at that level of fitness, when you finally save up that money, at some point in the distant future, when things just get right, when things are just perfect, that is when you’re going to start a successful business. You’ve been saying that, you’re 41, you’re 42, you’re 43, and then you’re 47. And you’re 47 years old, and you realize, you know what, if it’s gonna happen, if it’s going to be, it’s up to me. You’ve read the Napoleon Hill quote that action is the real measure of intelligence. You’ve read the Conway Hilton, the Conrad Hilton quote, where Conrad says success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit. And then it occurred to you, okay, I’m going to have to actually start my business. I’m going to have to actually refine my business. I’m going to have to actually start making some massive changes this year if it’s ever going to happen. If it’s ever going to happen, hell or high water, it’s going to happen this year. If that’s you, then you, my friend, have something in common with our guest today. Clay Stairs is now known as the millionaire school teacher, a guy whose income is just tremendous now. He’s doing very, very well. Every time I see the guy, I want to hug the guy because it’s been fun to see his transformation. I’ve had the honor of being his business coach, and now he’s been able to have so much success that people have been reaching out to him saying, how do you do it? And like a good MLM, he is teaching people underneath him on his downline almost. No, but seriously, he has begun to teach other people his moves over the last few years, and his business is growing. And as those clients are having success. They’re telling other clients, and it’s just an unbelievable kind of a lineage, a family tree of business coaching. So, Clay, we’re talking about the difficulty, though, of selling something. So set the table. When you’re 47 years old, we figured out how many customers you needed to have to break even. We figured out your branding. We got your marketing done. How scary was it when you had to actually go out there and sell something? Oh, terrifying. Terrifying, Clay. And I had always, again, I had always had the personality. I was the laser show guy. Laser show. Laser show. I’d always had the personality. Could always get out in front and talk to people. And I’ve had people tell me for years, man, you’d be great in sales. Be great in sales. And I just had this mindset around this idea of selling that was, you know, to be a salesman was all about being slick, was all about being deceiving, was all about being underhanded, was being forceful, greedy. I just had this mindset, this picture in my head of what it meant to be a salesman. And so now here I am with you, Clay, as my coach. And I realized, I remember this early on, I realized I’m actually trying to become a person that I hate. I’m trying to become this person, a wealthy, successful businessman. I’m trying to become this person that throughout my life I had built up this very negative connotation about. You sent me down to Dallas to a T. Harv Ecker workshop. Remember that? I did. There’s two things that we did. We had a conversation. We were in the hallway of the 1609 South Boston offices where we used to run. Elephant in the Room was out of there. Thrive15.com was out there. DJ Connection was there. Epic Photos. And I remember you looking at me, and I brought it up first, and you had sort of like a teary-eyed look. And I said, are you okay? And you go, I’m eventually going to have to sell something. And I said, I know. And so I’m out there. That’s in my future. And I’m not kidding. That’s why with our coaching program, we only have 60 clients at a time because subconsciously I’m thinking about the client all the time. And I remember I told you, I said, Clay, there’s a conference you need to go to. You need to get out to it. This is before we had our in-person Thrive Time workshops. Now we have these workshops ourselves. I said you need to get down to the T. Harv Ecker Seminar. It’s the millionaire mindset, but do not bring your wallet. You need to watch them masterfully sell and sell well and you’re going to learn some things. T. Harv was a guy who had built a successful fitness company and sold it and then started a brand all about teaching people how to build million-dollar businesses. I said but do not bring your wallet in there. But Clay, what did you witness? What happened when you were down there? What experience or epiphanies did you have? See, Clay, again, I think you sent me down there just to watch how they were selling. Like I was just going to learn how they were selling. But I went down there, and this is like a transformation for me. It was something, you know, we have those signposts in our life. You look back and you have these key events in your life. That’s what this thing ended up being for me. I’m like bawling snot everywhere, all these strangers. Because I’m realizing, it was all what was the millionaire mindset. It’s an intensive, it’s like 10 hours a day, you’re in there and they’re just hammering you. And I’m realizing how jacked up I think about money. My thoughts on money and success were just jacked up. And so I’m just, oh man, I’m just going through this like I’m being reborn. You know, it’s ah! Well, you know, as a business coach, I want to tell you, this is what we have to do. We have to give you intellectual support. Yes. We have to show you the technical systems. Yeah. We also have to give you the emotional support. Oh, yes. You have to have a knowledgeable expert who’s obsessed with your business growth. All these things have to happen. And I will say, when you came back from the conference, well, first you called me from it, and you had said, I think I want to buy. Clay, I’ve got to buy. Clay, I’ve got to buy this. How much was the program? How much was the thing they were trying to sell you? They had a number of different things. Like every other hour, they were coming up and going, hey, and if you want this, go in the back and sign up. You’ve got to do it now. It was like $16,000 or something. And I’m calling you, and I’m going, Clay, I think I really need to do this. And you’re going, get out of there! Don’t, don’t. Get out of there! Don’t do it! Yeah, but once again, this is an example, Clay, of me being willing to transact with you on my thinking, being willing to say, I’m not going to do what I think is best. I’m going to do what my coach is telling me. When I’m coming to you and saying, you know, eventually I’m going to have to sell something, aren’t I? Exactly. It’s like, yes, you are, Clay. I could have very easily, because I’ve got a client right now who’s just struggling with this. You know, Scott, are you listening here? He’s just struggling with this. Scott, at some point, you have to sell something. Coaching isn’t going to sell it for you. Another book isn’t going to sell it. At some point, you have to sell the thing. There are four things that a business coach is going to give you. Clay and I are going to break these down when we come back. I want to make sure that all the Thrivers have a chance to write these down. Your business coach, as it relates to sales, is going to help you first with the mindset. We’ve got to get through that quick. We’ve got to get through that in a session or two. You can’t get stuck on that. The second is they’re going to teach you the systems, the proven scripts, the pre-written emails, the technical stuff, the scripts, the recording your phone calls, the text messages, the emails, the landing pages, that’s the technical systems. The third is they’re going to teach you, and this is big stuff here, Thrivers, you need to write this down, they’re going to be teaching you the metrics because you need to measure these things. The fourth thing they’re going to teach you is the level of persistence needed to have success. When we come back, we’re going to break down sales 101, 202, 303, and 404. Stay tuned. It’s the Thrive Time Show on your radio. My name is Clay Clark. Go to thrivetimeshow.com. I want to be a billionaire so fricking bad. All right, Thrive Nation, perhaps you’ve found yourself in a spot where you need a business Yoda. Well, we don’t have a business Yoda for you at Thrive, at the Thrive Time Show. But what we do have is a business Broda. A business, Broda is kind of like a mixture of where Yoda’s knowledge dropped off and where a brother from another mother can help you learn what you need to know and in the area where they just say there’s no courses that they don’t they don’t teach this at business school which is insane they don’t teach this at business school i repeat which is insane it’s sales i mean without sales you will fail i mean without so if you don’t sell your business will go to hell but when you sell your business will do well and so many people never get past that part. So your business coach first helps you figure out your branding, okay, they help you figure out the number of customers you need to achieve your goals and financial freedom, because the whole goal of building a business is to build a business that will serve you. Any business coach that doesn’t teach you that has got their head very far, it’s shoved very far up a part of the human anatomy that really shouldn’t be possible. But a business coach shouldn’t be teaching you, what you want to do is you want to work 95 hours a week for the rest of your life because that’s what awesome looks like. No, you want to create time, freedom, and financial freedom. And so you first define how many customers you need to break even, your goals, your goals for your faith, your family, your finances, your fitness, your friendship. Then the second area is you move into the branding, the marketing, getting your logo, your website, while teaching you the mindset of success. And then the third aspect is sales. You have to eventually learn to sell something. And so the four aspects that you need to learn when going through a business coaching program is first the mindset. Now at the TR Becker seminar, there was some crazy stuff that happened there. I told you, I said, leave your wallet in the car, don’t buy anything, but can you first tell us what kind of mindset things you were taught at that workshop that blew your mind, and then give us just a little look into the craziness of them trying to high pressure upsell you. Oh yeah, man. I remember just one of the phrases that they talked about for me that just really nailed me was this idea of a financial thermostat, that everybody has a financial thermostat. And so whether you are making $40,000 or let’s say $25,000 a year, or $250,000 a year, if your thermostat is set at $25,000, then even if you’re making $250,000, you will spend all of your money and live life as if you were only making $25,000. It’s like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. And this is why, you know, a phase that I have had to go through as my business has grown and I’m making more money, I remember the first thing in talking with you about this, Clay, is that, okay, what’s the deal? I have doubled and then I had tripled the amount that I was making as a teacher, but why don’t I have any money? What’s going on? Where did it all go? And it’s because of this whole thermostat idea. But man, they began to, as they were talking about sales, and I was taking notes all over the place, not just by what they were saying, but how they were saying it. And just watching them, the way that they were moving the crowd through these emotions, I mean, it was just masterfully done. And I don’t, I think it was wonderful. I think it was a beautiful thing. I have encouraged several of my clients to do this same workshop. But then all of a sudden they’re going, okay, you need to go back in the back and you need to sign up for this thing right now. My brain was just, I was so fried. It was like, okay, I’ll go. Where do I sign? Did they actually have you line up and burn money? Oh, they did. You’re supposed to take a $100 bill with you. You don’t know why. So, at day three, after you’ve been there for 72 hours, just in this hot box, they’re going, okay, everybody, pull out your $100. We are now going to line up and we’re going to come up here and burn. Burn it, baby. Burn your $100 bill, because you don’t want to be trapped by money. You don’t want to be like, okay, okay. Everybody’s pulling out their $100 bills. I guess it’s international. Yeah, and the guy’s intense by this time. He’s like, oh. So we’re lining up and we’re coming up to burn the hundred dollar bills, and then he stops everybody and goes, what are you doing? Thinking you can burn money. That’s the worst idea. And it’s like, okay, I’m just confused. Just tell me what to do. I don’t know. I don’t do anything you tell me. It’s like a parent that says, go out in them woods and get yourself a switch and get a good one so I can beat you with it. You’re like, what? Crazy uncle. Crazy. Yeah. Well, here’s the deal, Thrivers. So one is the business coach will teach you the sales mindset, but the second part is he’ll teach you the actual systems. Oh, the systems. And the systems are intense. I’m talking about search engine optimization. I’m talking about landing pages. I’m talking about Facebook ads, AdWords, writing ad copy, sales scripts, pre-written emails. Clay, there’s so much technical, web development, graphic design, coding, there’s call recording, there’s so many things that a business owner needs to know. And I argue that without a team, without a business coaching program like what you and I offer, it’s almost impossible to do this stuff now because we live in such a digital world where, I’m telling you this, my wife and I, I had worked at Target, Applebee’s and DirecTV at the same time. I worked at all three of those, so Target, DirecTV and Applebee’s all at the same time while she worked at Office Depot and at Oral Roberts University. So we had five jobs between the two of us. We’re working about 160 hours a week between the both of us, and we took all of that money, and that’s how we were able to do it. But unless you have three, four jobs, and you’re making copious amounts of cash, it’s really hard to hire a team that can build your website, do your graphic design, do the print pieces, record the calls, write the sales scripts. Just kind of walk me through that blender of all that stuff, all the technical stuff that a business coaching client needs to be able to execute and be successful. Yeah, this idea. The two packages that I have, one is just the strictly business coaching type of thing, and this is for that entrepreneur that’s just saying, hey man, I need to learn, I need to know the skills, and I need to know the knowledge. Help me with this type of thing. So we spend time, like you’re saying, Clay, the systems. Here’s what you need. Here’s what you need to go do. We’ll design it here in the, we’ll put the script together here in the coaching session and then you need to go do this. And here’s another system that you need to go build. And here’s another system here. And then you need to go out and get some pictures and you need to go out and get your website taken care of. And of course, at this point, you’ve got the entrepreneur going, Clay, I’ve got to go do the work. I’m a plumber. I’ve got to go plum. I’m the builder. I’ve got to go build. I don’t have time to do all this stuff.” And that’s where the second package, like you’re talking about, the second package that I have is this idea of, let me do all that for you, rather than me loading you up with tons of extra stuff. Let me do that stuff for you so you can stay focused on your gift. You can stay focused on your talent. You can stay focused on your passion and let me take care of the backside. And when I made that move to being able to provide that for each of my clients, 100 percent of my business clients moved over to that package. Yes, do this. Do this. You know what’s interesting is that if you were to hire a full-time person, let’s say you’re withholding taxes and you had to pay insurance and all the costs that come with the embedded costs that come with hiring somebody, you’re going to spend about $13 an hour. Well, if you hire them 40 hours a week, you’re going to spend a lot more on that employee than you would spend on an entire team of business coaching ninjas. You get the graphic designers, the photographers, the web developers, all of that included in our packages for less money than it would cost you to hire just one full-time person. When we come back, we’re going to teach you the specific moves that you need to know in order to move beyond just surviving, but to actually thriving and achieving your purpose. Yeah, yeah. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation. We’re talking about business coaching. We’re talking about you. We’re talking about how to help you get to where you want to go with your business career. Financially speaking, there are so many people out there who are trapped financially in a place where they’re not getting ahead. And as you are looking into your future, you realize there’s really nothing that’s going to change That’s going to get me to a new place financially You’ve almost become hypnotized with this rhythm of I go to work. I go to church I go to home and I hope I have enough money to get to the end of the month And if that’s you we are absolutely committed to helping you get out of that financial rut through our online business school called Thrive 15, where it’s a dollar for your first month for the world’s best business school. Through our podcast, we’re here to absolutely mentor you and to help you achieve success. And so on today’s show, we have brought on today a guy by the name of Clay Stairs. And if you’re just tuning in, Clay Stairs is living that American dream. He’s actually a former school teacher who’s now known as America’s millionaire school teacher. He’s a guy who’s written a book, he’s traveled all around the planet teaching entrepreneurship, he’s become very successful and I had the pleasure of coaching him back in the day. So the student has now become a teacher and it’s so exciting to see the success that he’s having. And so to tee up this segment, I want to play a quote here from Steve Jobs, the late Steve Jobs, the founder, the co-founder of Apple and the former CEO of Pixar. I’m going to I’m going to queue up this audio clip and I want Clay to break it down like fractions. I want to get his reaction to the great late Steve Jobs and his thoughts about seizing today. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 730 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. Clay, what, I mean, break it down. What’s Steve Jobs talking about and whether you’re, you know, someone who has a critical illness or not. Talk to me about the importance of seizing the day. Yeah, I think everybody has to come to some critical impasse in their life. I mean, you know, God forbid that it has to be something like cancer, something like where you’re facing death, but this critical impasse of realizing I have to take action. I need to move forward. I can no longer wait. But unfortunately, what I remember for myself, what I had fallen into was I had put all of the emphasis on effort. I’m trying my hardest. I’m trying my best. I’m doing everything I can. All of the emphasis was on effort. But the effort wasn’t getting me where I wanted to get. I think one of the things that Steve may be alluding to here is it’s not until you focus on production, not just on effort, but production. It’s not knowledge. It’s not willingness. Those aren’t enough. You have to move to application. Willingness is not enough. We must do. I think that that’s my man Bruce Lee, okay, or Bruce Lee. I love, you know, just movies with him, but the way that he attacked life. As we have said, there is a pace to success. I never knew that pace until I was 47 years old and I connected with a young man named Clay Clark. I began to say, okay, I need to know the skills. I need to know the knowledge. I need to have a model in my life that can show me how this thing is done. Number four, I need to be surrounded. I need somebody to introduce me to a sphere of influence of other people that are moving at this pace. I did not have that. I did not have that in my world just five years ago. What kind of impact has the business coaching experience had on your life? The impact is everything. Again, I had the talent. I had the skill. Yes, I completely have honed it and improved it, but I had the talent, I had the gift, I had the skill. What I didn’t have was the knowledge of how to grow a business, how to make money, how to create a vehicle with that knowledge, how to create a vehicle that was going to take me into the future that I desired. Now, Clay, I want to share this because I hate to cut you off. I want to share this. Don’t cut me off. I am so sorry. I want to share these three profound nuggets of knowledge that I think the Thrivers are coming to us from different places in life. Brian Tracy, the bestselling author, he says, no one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things we need to learn to achieve our goals. But somebody’s saying, you don’t understand though, like I graduated from college with a ton of debt. Oh, I do understand this. I get it because this is so normal, unfortunately. You know, Gallup did a study and it showed that fewer than one in ten college graduates who majored in business reported receiving any emotional support from faculty and any practical knowledge. They basically graduated from college, they have a degree, but they have no clue of what to do and now they’re just absolutely saddled down or weighed down with debt. The three mindsets I see is one is that you’re trying to learn everything from scratch. Two, you’ve got a ton of student debt you’re dealing with, and three, you have a degree, and so you have this false belief that you should know what to do. But they never taught you what to do in college. They just taught you how to get a piece of paper and how to pass tests and play the great game of memory for four years in a row. Clay Stairs, help somebody out there. Oh man, being a teacher, that was the focus. Unfortunately, again, I will completely admit that I feel like we have one of the strongest educational programs here in the United States. But unfortunately, it is still so lacking because it is on the back of the foundation of education here in the United States is all about memorization. It’s all about creating people that can take information and just regurgitate it back. And unfortunately, what is it? The whole Prussian system is what it’s founded on, you know, being able to produce factory workers, being able to produce soldiers, not being able to, it’s not based on producing people that can actually function, people that can actually expand and grow their world and start businesses. It can be extremely difficult. The pain, I mean, the birth canal that you have to go through, the birth canal, the eye of the needle that you have to go through to get to this place of success is not easy. And I just promise you, you can’t get there on your own, Clay. I don’t think that even the universe has it set up for you to be able to do it on your own. I just feel like it’s a universal principle that there is a need for others to submit to others to say, help me, to get to that place of humility, to get to that place of meekness where you’re able to say, help me do this. I don’t think friendship is set up to do this because a business coach is trying to help you solve problems, not just talking to you about past issues. A business coach is, it’s like business school without the BS. A business coach is focused on solutions and not beating you up or dwelling on your past mistakes. They’re not going to sit around and have like a, they’re focused on results. They’re not having a kumbaya moment with you. They’re helping you focus on achieving the profits that you need so that you can achieve the time freedom and financial freedom that you’ve been looking for. So Clay, we have four ways that we can help the entrepreneurs out there who are listening today. Let’s talk. One is every Thriver needs to go to thrivetimeshow.com and subscribe to this podcast so you will never miss an episode of the radio show. You can go back and listen to previous segments you might have missed today, and it’s free. Move number two is you and I, we’ve invested money together to build the world’s largest, the world’s most successful business school. It is, and it’s a dollar. It’s the world’s most affordable business school. It’s a dollar, a dollar. Try it out, Thrive15.com. It’ll change your life. And when you do sign up for a dollar, guess what? You get to now attend our in-person workshops. You can attend those. Learn more at thrivetimeshow.com. And finally, Clay, one-on-one business coaching can be a game changer. Can you explain to the Thrivers what they’re missing if they don’t go to thrive15.com or go to one of our workshops? Well, what you’re missing is support. What you’re missing is, one of the things that I hear from my clients, and again, Clay, I love my clients. I love working with the entrepreneurs, the people that have said yes to me, the people that have said, Clay, help me transition, help me move through this and navigate these waters into this transition to success. I love working with them. Oh, it’s incredible when their eyes open and they see it. I mean and it doesn’t always happen in the first month two three four sometimes it happens after two years Doug are you hearing me sometimes it happens after 18 months Pam Bob are you hearing me where eyes open up and they’re going you know I think we need to do what you’re saying yes yes so you’ve got to go to this ThriTime show live right now and sign up and do this workshop. You do not have to be alone on this thing. Drivers, as always, we are here to serve you and we always want to end it with a bang. So here we go. Three, two, one, boom! JT, do you know what time it is? Um, 410. It’s T-Bo time in Tulsa, Roseland, baby. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma during the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th, 2024. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Growth Workshop. Yes, folks, put it in your calendar this December, the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business growth workshop. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old. And a lot of people have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field. And off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well they’re gonna have to come and find out because I don’t know. Well I’m just saying Tim Tebow is gonna teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s gonna walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is gonna be a blasty blast at Tulsa Russelam. Folks I’m telling you if you want to learn branding, you want to learn marketing, you want to learn search engine optimization, you want to learn social media marketing, that’s what we teach at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive workshop. If you want to learn accounting, you want to learn sales systems, you want to learn how to build a linear workflow, you want to learn how to franchise your business, that is what we teach at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. You know, over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. The top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrive Time Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, a company that creates apparel worn by celebrities all throughout the world. Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, has spoken at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshops. We have the guy, we’ve had the man who’s responsible for turning around Harley Davidson, a man by the name of Ken Schmidt. He has spoken at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops. Folks, I’m telling you, these events are going to teach you what you need to know to start and grow a successful business. And the way we price the events, the way we do these events, is you can pay $250 for a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. Yes! We’ve designed these events to be affordable for you and we want to see you live and in person at the two-day interactive December 5th and 6th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. Everything that you need to succeed will be taught at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop December 5th and 6th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the way we do these events is we teach for 30 minutes, and then we open it up for a question and answer session, so that wonderful people like you can have your questions answered. Yes, we teach for 30 minutes, and then we open it up for a 15-minute question and answer session. It’s interactive. It’s two days. It’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’ve been doing these events since 2005, and I’m telling you, folks, it’s going to blow your mind. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Thrive Time Show 2-Day Interactive Business Workshop is America’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshop. See the thousands of video testimonials from real people just like you who’ve been able to build multi-million dollar companies. Watch those testimonials today at thrivetimeshow.com. Simply by clicking on the testimonials button right there at thrivetimeshow.com, you’re going to see thousands of people just like you who’ve been able to go from just surviving to thriving. Each and every day we’re going to add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup, but I encourage everybody out there today, get those tickets today. Go to thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s thrivetimeshow.com. And some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? I don’t know what I do. How does it work? You just go to thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to thrivetimeshow.com. Again, you just go to thrivetimeshow.com. You click on the business conferences button, and you click on the request tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket, or whatever price that you can afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. Did you start out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that. Did not get an inheritance from parents, anything like that. I had to work for it. And I am super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton. I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Jerusalem, Oklahoma. I suppose it’s Tulsa, Russelham. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa Ruslim, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show and Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now, for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office and so it’s going to be packed. Who? You! You’re going to come! I’m talking to you. You can get your tickets right now at thrivetimeshow.com and again you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford and we do have some select VIP tickets which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things and those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re going to give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical, it’s actionable, and it’s TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Russia. Get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine, and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California where I have represented over the last 35 years 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. I’ve represented a lot of major stars and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies. And I think I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California, in the beautiful, sunny weather of LA, come to Tulsa? Because last year I did it and it was damn exciting. Clay Clark has put together an exceptional presentation, really life-changing, and I’m looking forward to seeing you then. I’m Michael Levine. I’ll see you in Tulsa. Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops because we teach you what you need to know to grow. 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, 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. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and 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’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person, two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money, so if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person, two-day interactive business workshop all you gotta do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets and if you can’t afford $250 we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you I learned at the Academy at King’s Point in New York octa non verba watch what a person does not what they say good morning good morning good morning Harvard Keele Soccer Theory Standard Radio Show today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re close, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done this show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts as a mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend Eric Eric Trump But we’re also talking about money bricks and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour so clay Clark is a very Intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing But I thought since you and Eric are close Trump What were you saying about what Trump can’t what Donald who’s my age and I can say or cannot say First of all, I have to honor you sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here There’s a name of Jeremy Thorne who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old working at Faith Highway I had a job at Applebee’s Target and DirecTV and he said have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? And I said, no. And my father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books. And I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner, to the investor. And I owe a lot of that to you. And I just wanted to take a moment to tell you, thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success. And I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just want to tell you thank you sir for changing my life. Well not only that Clay, you know thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. More than anything else you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because as you know there’s a lot of fake influencers out there too, or bad influencers. Yeah. Anyway I’m glad you and I agree so much and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not a thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life. I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy at Kings Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Whoa!