7 Steps to Developing Long-Term Relationships with Customers

Audio Transcription

Learn How To Create Lasting Relationships With Help From Business Coach, Clay Clark : Podcast Transcript

Background voice 1: [background music] Now broadcasting from the center of the universe and the thrive15.com world headquarters.

Background voice 2: Let’s go.

Background voice 1: Presenting the world’s only business school without the BS, with optometrist an entrepreneur Dr. Robert Zoellner and of course small business administration entrepreneur of the year in your ear, Clay Clark. It’s the Thrive time show, on talk radio 1170. Three two one boom

[Background music]

Clay Clark: Boom, boom and boom thrivers, welcome back to your favorite show, it’s the thrive time show on your drive time home and today it is a wonderful Wednesday Z. We’ve reached the end of a political fatigue, Z half the country is upset, half the country is rejoicing, half is upset but we are not going to get into that, what we are going to talk about today, is we are going to talk about the seven steps to developing long term relationships with customers. My name is business coach, Clay Cark, am the former SBA entrepreneur of the year in your ear and I am joined as always with the co-host with the mo-ost it’s Dr. Robert Zeollner, sir, how are you?

Dr. Robert Zeollner: It’s hump day, I would say you are half way there but technically now that you are driving home, your three fists away there.

Clay: Because the election was yesterday we are now- it’s hump day, we are like half way to the end of the world, [chuckles] half the country is upset, half the country is excited, we moved right over right in the middle there Z.

Robert: Well the good thing is people don’t tune in here to get gardening tips. They don’t tune in here to get like Hilton dieting tips.

Clay: These are things we do not discuss.

Robert: They don’t listen to us to get their political views manipulated.

Clay: That’s right, we would not do that, we would not even attempt to do that.

Robert: [laughs] I don’t think we could do that, they call it because you know why?

Clay: Why do they call?

Robert: Because more than not 57% of people are out there listening. This is like a stage.

Clay: According to Forbes.

Robert: This is just numbers, it’s the math I am throwing at you right now. Secretly inside their little brain, there’s a little seed called entrepreneurship that wants to grow into a business. So as you’re driving home and listening to this going, “You know what I have always wanted to start my own business.” We are going to help you, that’s what this show does.

Clay: Absolutely we brought on a very very special guest today, we have a little over half of our listeners apparently are ladies so we are bringing more and more of female entrepreneurs onto the show, on a drive time moment. Today we have the owner of royal landscapes Miss Kathy Worley, how are you?

Kathy Worley: I am fantastic thank you so much from having me on.

Clay: We are excited to have you. Today we are talking about again these seven steps to developing–

Robert: Wait a second, wait a second, would you say Royal Landscapes?

Clay: Royal Landscapes.

Robert: Should we refer to her as queen Kathy I don’t know it’s–

Kathy: Yes I don’t mind.

Clay: I don’t have an official theme song or an anthem for this, of royalty but I do have this.

[Background music]

Robert: I guess

[Laughter]

Clay: That to me is how I wanted to show my tribute to the royalty here, we just kind of.

[Background music]

Robert: Okay, there we go, there we go, I feel much better now talking about royalty.

Clay: Absolutely, now Z we were talking about this step number one, is deliver on what you promised. I want to ask you this, I want to pick your brain before we get into this, how many times have you seen it in Tulsa, because you’ve been in business a long time, how many years have you been open as an optometrist. How many years have you had your optometry clinic?

Robert: You know what this Friday will be my 25th anniversary, 11 11. In two days.

Clay: That’s incredible,

Robert: Yes 25 glorious years, so it is my silver anniversary.

Clay: Silver are you going to get yourself a cake?

Robert: [laughs] probably yes I don’t know yes, maybe celebrate. That’s one of my core rules in business, when you reach milestones, when something awesome happens you have to celebrate.

Clay: The thing is though as your business, year after year, you begin to grow and as you look at the pie chart, if you are listening to this right now, I want you to picture a big pie chart and picture– this pie chart represents where your customers come from. So when you first start almost all of your customers are from advertising, you just got to advertise, advertise, advertise and advertise. So 80% of your customers are from advertising, 75%. But as you grow, a tipping point occurs if you do it right and you start to generate word of mouth business.

Then that becomes the majority of your business is that word of mouth business. So the question I have for you is what advice would you have for have for that Tulsa entrepreneur out there that is struggling to get their team to deliver on their promises. They are struggling to get their team mates, they are advertising their market, they are bringing new customers, but they are struggling to get their team to deliver on the promises they are making to customers.

Robert: Well, I tell you that’s the core thing, that’s what you are in business for and shame on you for not duplicating yourself because the thing about is when you start your business, you all have enthusiasm and you have a passion for that thing, right? Otherwise don’t do it. You keep punching the clock, showing up nine to five, working nine to five, working nine to five pum pum pumpumpum but when have that passion about it– now the key is instilling that DNA into the people that you hire with controls. So that’s what this show is all about is a needy greedy down in the trenches how to do it, because it is easy to say, “Yes, okay folks do this way-“

Clay: Do what want you to do.

Robert: “Do what I say, don’t do what I do, no no do what I.”– Any way so there’s a process there and that process is not rocket science. It’s not rocket science.

Clay: Why isn’t it rocket science?

Robert: Unless your business is building rockets it would be.

Clay: Yes, Elon Musk it is rocket science. We are sorry Elon.

Robert: Sorry, yes it could be, but the point is that by listening to the show and following the steps, we would teach you how to do that. We will teach you how to train, how to make check list, how to keep them on point and sometimes, you bring up a good point, sometimes when someone just doesn’t get it and you’ve just beat your head against the wall, and you go, “Why won’t this employee, do what I want them to do. I pay them money.” You know what you do then?

Clay: Do you get out the bomb?

Robert: You get out the bomb and you as we love to say–

Clay: You promote them to-

Clay and Robert: Customer status.

[laughter]

Clay: Nice. Okay, now I am going tee this up for Kathy, I have a question for her about this, but first I am going to give a notable quotable from our good friends and Harvard, our good friends at Harvard, okay. The service profit this is what it say, it says, “The service profit chain establishes relationships between profitability, customer loyalty and employee satisfaction, loyalty and productivity. The links in the chain, okay, the links in the chains are as follows: profit and growth are stimulated primarily by customer loyalty.

Loyalty is a direct result of customer satisfaction.” [unintelligible 00:06:41] but the point is, what they are saying here, from the article called the service profit chain by Harvard, is that you’ve got to wow your customers in order for them to become loyal which will make your business grow. So if you want to get your customers loyal like royal, you want to listen up here. So Miss, Kathy what advice would you have for the entrepreneurs out there listening, who are maybe struggling to get their team mates to deliver on the promises that the business is making to customers?

Kathy: Very nice, well played. We actually believe that you have to have the same customer experience vision from the top down. Like Dr. Z was saying you can’t just have a vision for your company and hire people and expect them to see that. We don’t want to just get the sale the first time for instance that we do a job for someone, we want a life time customer, we want a relationship, so if we don’t go there with that attitude the very first time, the customer is going to choose to experience something else. So we want them not to just get the service from us but the experience.

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Clay: Now you brought up something there Kathy that for some reason I didn’t put this on the outline I should have, but in the service profit chain, the most successful pizza guy in New York, the most successful pizza guy in New York, he owns the Dominos I believe but in the service profit chain book this case study. Z do you know what he tells his pizza deliver guys and all his pizza people?

Robert: Be on time, be nice?

Clay: He says, “When you are delivering a $10 pizza whatever the cost is, I don’t want you to think of $10 I want you to think of the life time value of this customer to our business.” I don’t want to make up the number but if you get the book, you’ll have the specific, but it’s like $4,000, is the lifetime value of somebody in New York City– a family that continues to buy pizza from him every week and every month and they focus on that lifetime value Z.

Robert: Yes and what Kathy said was right on point and do you know what it does?

Clay: What does it do?

Robert: It takes me onto one of my favorites segments.

Clay: Oh what’s that?

[background music]

Robert: You know what one of my most favorites segments are. Farm logic.

Clay: [grunts].

Robert: Yes except today I am not going to use my favorites farm animal the pig, as we all know, love me my pig, but I am going to take you to another famous farm animal and that’s a sheep.

Clay: Sheep.

Robert: Sheep. What she was saying was so true and that is, it goes along like this, you can shear a sheep over and over and over, but you can only eat it one time.

Clay: You only eat it one time. Greg what does that mean?

Kathy: [laughs]

Robert: What does it mean?

Clay: Greg Greg.

Robert: What does that mean?

Clay: What does that mean Greg?

Robert: What does that mean, farms are so confusing sometimes.

Clay: Do I need to put on pants for his episode?

Robert: [laughs] No the camera doesn’t get you above the table, you are fine just as long as you don’t stand up. The point there is that if you go in and you give them a bad experience and you say, “We got them. Oh men we got them big sale, we got them oh yes. Look at that we planted look how much we charged to plant those flowers, to cut the grass, and to trim their trees, and remove their leaves. Oh yes that was the best sale of the month, high five team, high five team

Clay: What you do is you’re unleashing a magical story that it’s straight to come up–

Robert: Far magic does that.

Clay: Here’s the deal. My wife and I went to Vegas. I was an idiot, I had no money but I felt I’d take her to Vegas. We’d been married about a year and a half, so we go to Vegas. When you’re on Vegas, when you’re walking down the street there’s a couple things that are going to happen. One I’m not going to talk about because this is a family show. The second thing that’s going to happen is something is going to pitch you a timeshare tour. What you do is you get a free buffet and a free show if you go on the tour.

Robert: Oh yes.

Clay: The third thing that happens is Vegas is there’s just lights everywhere. There’s flashy lights. If you’re easily distracted, Vegas is not the place for you. So, I’m walking down the street and this guy says, “Hey man. Do you want to get a free buffet and you want a free show? Free tickets. All you got to do is take this little timeshare tour.” Ever been on one of those little timeshare tours? You’ve been on those little ones, those little timeshare tours?

Robert: I did one back when I was in college, and I don’t know how I got in the list. It was in Branson, Missouri. Up in that area.

Clay: What happens is that little tour becomes a four hours saga.

Robert: A four hour tour.

Clay: What he does is he realizes that I’m a Skipper and that she’s Mary Ann. It was Mary Ann a character in the show?

Robert: Yes. Ginger, Mary Ann.

Clay: She’s kind of a Ginger-Mary Ann combo, but the point is that they decided to divide and conquer.

Robert: That’s the move, that’s the move.

Clay: What they do is they pull me into this room over here and they start talking to me about this, meanwhile they’re getting her pre-qualified, getting that credit pre-qualified. They realize this guy has got a seven, eighty credit score. This guy has got some money saved up. This guy is an easy mark. So we come back, we’re going to talk about what happens in your attempt to be a hog or you attempt to kill the sheep. We’re going to talk about it when we come back here, the importance of not killing sheep and what happens when you attempt to do so.

Robert: I’ll tell you what, that’s what farm does. Everybody’s out there still going, “What does he mean by sharing and eating it? I don’t get that.” When we come back, it’ll all become clear.

Clay: All become clear.

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Background voice 2: Live, local, now. You’re listening to the Thrive Time show on Talk Radio 1170.

Clay: Hello Tulsa and Oklahomies. Welcome back to Tulsa’s only local business radio show. We are broadcasting live here from the left coast of the Arkansas river, from within the Dojo of Mojo which is carefully nestled in the thrive15.com world headquarters. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA entrepreneur of the year, but more importantly, I’m the father of five human kids. I’m always joined here with the co-host, with the most, a man who knows more– He’s learned and forgotten more about entrepreneurship than almost anybody would ever, ever hope to know. He is the wizard of entrepreneurship and every one of the words that I’m reading right now was written by him. I’m just kidding, it’s Dr. Robert Zoellner. Sir, how are you?

Robert: No, I didn’t write the part about forgetting. I didn’t write that. Clay, it’s always a pleasure to be here. It’s hump day and we’re so honored that all of our listeners out there in radioland and internetland via the thriveshow.com are listening to us and enjoying the show. You know what? We’re here for you. Keep those e-mails coming in, keep those questions coming in because, you know what? We do mail back and we want to get to them and we want to answer you in specific ways to help you start or grow your business.

Clay: Today, the topic we’re talking about is the seven steps to developing long term relationships with customers. You see, there’s a lot of people listening to this show right now and I’m thinking of some people right now. I’m thinking of two people. It’s three people, but I’m thinking of two in particular.

Robert: It’s bipolar?

Clay: It’s a family business with three people, but I’m thinking of the two people in particular, come to my mind. They live up in Minnesota and their business, bless their heart, will not grow. I’ve talked to them numerous times. They call me and they go, “Clay, your businesses are taking off. How are they doing it?” I say, “Advertise, advertise, advertise. Make it a no-brainer, over deliver and referrals will happen.” Again, advertise, advertise. Make it a no-brainer, make it an easy offer where someone can’t say no, and then over deliver, try to exceed the expectations of every customer and then it will grow, like a harvest. It will happen, so the seeds in it– They go, “We’re having a problem through with getting our guys to deliver.” We’re a little bit late, we’re a little bit over– They’re re-modelers and they’re constantly screwing up. I think of these guys and I hope they’re listening because I want to help them here. We talked about step number one, deliver on what you promise. You’ve brought up the idea of farm logic. You want to shear the sheep over and over, you don’t want to eat the sheep.

Robert: Right. Well, you can, but you only get to do it once. The idea there is that if a customer comes in and you put it to them, in other words, you don’t treat them well, you overcharge them, you get them, you sucker them into something that they really don’t want to do and they leave and then go. You feel like, “Yes, I had a good sale. Man, I sold them every option I could,” and they left unhappy. You ate the sheep that day and guess what? That customer is not coming back. That’s what we’re here today to talk about, it’s building a loyalty amongst the customers, that also not only come back but they’ll do what, Clay? The magic dingle-do.

Clay: Bring friends. Tell their friends, e-mail their friends, text their friends, call their friends. All of a sudden your business is growing and they’re going to spend money with you over and over and over.

Robert: That creates profit, is that it? I don’t know about that,but go on-

Clay: What I was talking about before was I had to go onto this timeshare in las Vegas, my wife and I were there, they separate us, okay Z? By the way, we have a very special guest, Miss Katie Worley or Royal Landscapes in the house. Ma’am, how are you?

Katie: Fantastic, thank you.

Clay: I was just sharing the story with Z and Katie and you the listener here. I’m in Vegas, they separate us. Then, what they do is they pre-qualify us. They find out that we have a pretty decent credit score and we have some money saved. So, this guy, he could have sold us maybe like a package where you come once a year for maybe a week or something. No, he’s trying to sell us the grand [unintelligible 00:17:23] and he ends up trying every move. He tries the takeaway move, the move of, “We might not have any availabilities if we don’t do it now.” He tries the high pressure more. Then he flips it and goes health. That was his final move when we were together. He was like, “You know people who vacation together live longer. Do you want to live longer?” That whole thing, so finally–

Robert: [laughter] Where’s my checkbook. I want to level on, you got me.

Clay: No, I’m serious. He really pushed it. Anyway, long story short, my wife and I did not buy. She got very upset. I got very upset. It just didn’t work, but the thing is she was trying to just kill the sheep rather than shear the sheep. He’s trying to do it.

Robert: Yes. He just went too much. Like you said, you might have done something but on a smaller scale, that shearing the sheep and then they work you up and from there you’re like, “We’re having fun this week.” One week out of the year or one weekend out of the year.

Clay: I’m going to ask Katie a situation. Somebody calls you guys– What website, where can they find out more about Royal Landscaping?

Katie: We are on the world wide web. We are royaloklahoma.com

Clay: royaloklahoma.com, so you go to royaloklahoma.com

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Clay: Maybe I saw an ad or a special and you guys come out there and mow the lawn. Now, let’s say that I’m happy with the experience. What other kinds of services do you guys offer beyond just basic lawn mowing?

Katie: We do lots of things. We actually have a team that asks our customers for their feedback. That’s something I think people are afraid to ask, so we do put that back into play. We’re constantly getting better. We have have a customer experience specialist, so to speak, instead of just sales people looking for the dollar. We do that and then we like to offer a discounted membership so it’s consistent. We’re just looking for ways to make the, you know, “What is my lawn guy not doing?” To solve that problem for our people.

Clay: Long story short, over time, I guess, potentially how much does it– You guys do tree planting, you do big decorative rocks, do you guys do those outdoor man-kitchen areas? Do you do that or is that somebody else?

Katie: If it is outside, we do it.

Clay: Okay. You’re doing big projects, but the thing is, is it like if you took every single person who called to get a basic mow and try to high-pressure them into installing an outdoor kitchen, you’d probably not have any people who’d want the outdoor kitchens, right?

Katie: That’s right.

Clay: I’ve seen some of the work you’ve done online, there’s massive– Thrivers if you get a chance, go check out their portfolio. Some of the who’s who of Tulsa businesses, they work with these companies doing just massive landscaping projects, but it all starts with this very simple step one, deliver on what you promise. Now step number two is you want to create a linear workflow.

Now, I know I just said a word that had multiple syllables. It’s freaking some people out. Li-ne-ar, that’s three. But to create a linear workflow service profit chain designed to deliver. If you watch on our Facebook Live, I’m going to hold it up here. But it’s a — workflow is basically a timeline from left to right that documents the steps in your process. And so we’re going to fly virtually now, kind of a figuratively — mentally we’re flying over to Z’s auction — the Z66 Auction. We’re over there now. We’re over there now, Z. And walk me through just some of the steps that happened. I mean, first, how do you get customers over there at Z66? What’s your move to make that phone ring? How do you get actual customers?

Robert: A couple of things. One, we actually have physical sales guys that go out there and it’s — there’s about thousand of people that could be our customers. So, we’re more business-to-business. We’re not a general public sale, we’re a dealers-only sales. We get about a thousand car dealers in our area that we target. And so we get out there door-to-door. We knock on doors. It’s kind of funny. We hired a guy to do that who didn’t have any experience. He owned a fencing company before. And he said, “What do we do?” I said, “Well, number one, you show up.”

Clay: You show up.

Robert: “Number two, you go knock on the door. Number three, you find out something about the guys and something they want or they need, or they like.” In other words, if they like donuts, take them donuts. You know, if the guy likes to smoke cigarettes, take him a pack of cigarettes.

Clay: I don’t think you make that sound for cigarettes. Maybe I –

Robert: Okay. Maybe I digressed. But the point is then you build relationship with them.

Clay: Relationships.

Robert: And through that relationships you get what I call the golden look.

Clay: The golden look.

Robert: Now, the golden look is not the business. It’s the opportunity for the business. And when we come back I’m going to kind of deep dive into that just a little bit more.

Clay: The golden look.

Robert: The golden look. It’s not like that you have the golden goose, you have the golden look, you’ve got the golden —

Clay: I’m going to brag on you real quick. Heading on to the break here. Thrivers, this man has had success on multiple industries. And if you’re in a struggle to grow your business, you want to stay tuned. Thrive Time Show.

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Background voice 2: You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170.

Clay: Hello, Thrivers. Welcome back to the Thrive Time Show during your drive time home. This has been an exciting place to be on your radio dial, through the inspiration station, the place you can come to from five o’clock to seven o’clock every single day on your way home. The Thrive Time Show. My name is Clay Clark. I’m a former S.B.A. Entrepreneur of the Year. And I’m joined here with a man today who he started Dr. Zoellner & Associates, the optometry clinic. He started the Z66 Auto Auction. He started A to Z Medical. He has started a Rockin’ Z Ranch. He started a ZZZ’s Sleep Center. And he worked with Al Gore to invent the internet, allegedly. It’s Dr. Robert Zoellner. Sir, how are you?

Robert: Well, Al took all the credit. But, you know, not a lot of people know that.

Clay: But the whole project was off. You could verify everything else that I’ve said. That’s the one thing that you couldn’t verify –

Robert: You’ve got to dig deep, very deep to verify that one. That’s all that I’m going to say.

Clay: Into the deep dark web.

Robert: In the deep –

[laughter]

Robert: The dark side of the web.

Clay: And we have a very special guest today, Ms. Katie Worley here with Royal Landscapes. How are you?

Katie Worley: Good. Hey.

Clay: Hey. Now we’re talking –

Robert: You know what, Katie checks both boxes.

Clay: What are the boxes?

Robert: Well, she’s a female entrepreneur.

Clay: True.

Robert: And we love highlighting female entrepreneurs.

Clay: That is true.

Robert: Because if you watch on our Facebook Live you get tired just looking at us two dudes.

Clay: Well, I’ll tell you this. According to — there’s research out there, Forbes has named Tulsa, Oklahoma as consistently one of the top five places — one of the top five cities for entrepreneurs. It’s consistent.

Robert: And one of the top of female entrepreneurs too.

Clay: Yes. This just in for female entrepreneurs, Tulsa is the hotspot.

Robert: And the second box you check is that she’s a successful business lady. And so we’d like to highlight successful business stories here in Oklahoma. And we’d like to get them on and for you and for your listening pleasure, and for your listening information. We’d like to pick up their brain.

Clay: Yes. We call these people mompreneurs.

Robert: Mompreneurs.

Clay: Mompreneurs.

Katie: There’s a lot of us.

Clay: There’s a lot of you.

Robert: It’s a growing army of mompreneurs.

Clay: There are just as so much estrogen that we’re trying to harness to bring on to the show to be fair and balanced.

Robert: Yes. They watch soccer all day and their competitive juices get flowing, and they’re just like, “What soccer ball? Do something,” you know.

Katie: We just want to make some money, right? We’re just going to make some money.

Robert: Yes. Make some money.

Clay: And so we’re talking about the seven steps to developing long-term relationships with customers. And step one was deliver on what you promise. But step number two was create a linear workflow service profit chain designed to deliver. And we were talking before the break there, Z, about your auction. You go out there and you try to get that business. And you had a little kind of a golden move you’re going to unveil for us. So, go for it my friend.

Robert: Well, they’ve got to understand in business, whenever you get the opportunity to meet some of the customers, everybody understands, people think when they walked in my door, they’re now my customer. But that’s not the case. That is your opportunity to try to make them a lifelong customer, because that’s what it’s all about. You know, we don’t want one like we said earlier, you don’t want to kill the sheep and eat it. You want to shear it every year. It’s much more profitable at the end of the 20-year, 10-year cycle.

Clay: Okay. I’m going to get into the nitty-gritty. The nitty-gritty.

Robert: Here we go.

Clay: Now this what I did in the DJ business. I’ve got a list of all the brides who were engaged — by the way, if you registered Bed, Bath & Beyond, or David’s Bridal, or Target, or your local bridal store, I was trying to get that list, you know, for the wedding.

Robert: Is that ethical?

Clay: I don’t know whether it was ethical. Here is my move. You’ve got the wedding show. I’ve committed that I was going to call you, I was going to mail you, I was going to e-mail you. I didn’t text because it was pre-text.

Robert: Pre-text.

Clay: But I was going to call you. We’re going to reach out to these people until they will cry, buy, or die.

Robert: Cry, buy, or die.

Clay: Yes. So we reached out to all the brides and say, “Hey, we’re not interested.” But in mind that’s a die. We’re not interested. Cry is like, “Stop calling me. You’ve called me eight times.” I would not relentlessly not stop calling until we reached you. And then I would do the mailer. That kind of thing, right? And then buy is we’ve set that appointment. And so many entrepreneurs, usually there’s a thousand — there’s a list of roughly a thousand used car dealers in our target.

Robert: Yes. In our region.

Clay: And you’re going to show up. You’re going to knock on doors.

Robert: Knock on doors.

Clay: Do you ever worry about, like, when you hire a new rep, do you ever worry about, “Have he gone to this person before?” Or, “What if we’ve already gone to them,” “What if they’ve already told us no last year?” What would you say for someone who’s just, “I just don’t know how to do it. When do I start? What do I do.”

Robert: Well, our move is we’ve got three sales guys. So if one gets a no, repeatedly no and can’t get a business, you know what I do? I send in the next sales guy.

[laughter]

Clay: So you just keep doing it?

Robert: I just keep doing it. Of course. And then eventually, sometimes I’ve got to show up. I mean, that’s had to happen. I show up and then I find out like there was a car dealer in town that they were like the big tuna. They were number one on my wishlist.

Clay: The big tuna.

Robert: The big tuna. You know, you’re out there fishing for the big tuna. You get them on, you get off. You’re not sure until one day I send all my guys, I send all my people, and then I finally said to myself, “Okay. It’s time for big puppy.” And so I found out what the guy that was going to make the decision, what he liked, and I went and I purchased it, and I walked in unannounced, and I just gave it to him as a surprise gift. I just said, “Hey, I’m going to give you these and no strings attached.” And he looked at me, and one of his eyes kind of welled up a little bit. Little tears were forming on the corner. And he said, “But I don’t do business with you.” And I said, “I know. I just wanted to give you this.”

Clay: No strings attached.

Robert: No strings attached.

Clay: I just want all your business.

[laughter]

Robert: I did the Jedi buy trick, you know, “You will send me your cars.”

Clay: “I will send you my cars.”

Robert: “You will come in and buy cars.”

Clay: “These are not the droids.”

Robert: “No strings attached. There’s no strings.”

Clay: “There’s no strings.”

Robert: “You don’t see those strings because they’re not attached, yet they are.”

[laughter]

Clay: So, Katie, I want to ask you. How do you guys at Royal go out there and get business? What’s your move? How do you go out there and try to get new business? Walk us through what you’re doing over there.

Katie: Well, as you probably know, we do a lot of commercial stuff. A lot of commercial accounts since we do residential. But like Dr. Z is talking about, we do have to build those relationships also. So we give, you know, gifts, and cookies and things like that. But we also — here’s one that people may not know about, we call for no reason. Like we just call and make friends out of people.

Clay: You do?

Katie: Yes — that we’re serving. And we’re actually get to know them, and we get personal with them. We call it the royal family.

Clay: The royal family.

Robert: The royal family.

Clay: So, you guys are being happy and calling people for no reason. You’re just saying, “Hey, Z, what’s up?”

Katie: That’s right.

Clay: How are you doing?

Robert: How are you doing?

Clay: It’s a Wednesday.

Robert: Be happy.

Clay: We survived the election.

Robert: You’re part of the royal family.

Clay: We survived the certain nuclear holocaust called the election, we’re all here, we’re so happy.

Robert: [laughs]

Clay: Stay tuned. Thrive Time Show.

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Background voice 1: You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170.

Clay: All right Thrive nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show during your drive time home on this beautiful, glorious, sanctimonious, wonderful, magical hump day. You are now listening to broadcast excellence, where we talk about how to start and grow businesses because that’s what I’ve done my entire life, and that’s what Dr. Zoellner has done his entire life. And so, the whole game out there in this wonderful country, regardless of how you feel about yesterdays election, the whole game in this country is, we are one of the few countries that has the freedom to get out there and to turn our dreams into reality. And Z, you’ve seen numerous presidents, you’ve seen democrats, you’ve seen republicans, you’ve seen them all, and you’ve gone through all the different administrations but yet you’ve continued to succeed year after year. In fact for 25 years, is that right, with your optometry clinic?

Robert: Two days and counting, at 11/11 we celebrate 25 years of being open.

Clay: Have you had success in the years where we had a democrat president?

Robert: Yes.

Clay: Have you had success when we’ve had a republican president?

Robert: Yes.

Clay: Have you spent just a whole lot of time in the office everyday going, “Now that there’s a democrat in office we have to change everything, more than with the republican”? Do you even worry about that or do you just put blinders on and get out there and grow the business?

Robert: Well, for anybody out there that thinks that the set of rules that apply today for your business, if you think that they don’t change, like optometry, the way we practice optometry is vastly different in 25 years. Rules change, governments change rules, industry patterns change rules, and so you have to be adaptive in your business. Just tell me the set of rules and I’m going to adapt my business to fit into those, and to be as profitable–

Clay: Profitable? Profitable? What is that?

Robert: –to be as profitable as possible by playing by the rules.

Clay: In fact, when you started your business initially, with Abraham Lincoln and Moses, some of those early partners of yours in the optometry, 25 years ago–

Robert: Early partners, yes, yes. Abraham’s a fine man by the way, very tall guy.

Clay: Yeah. The technology was different back then, people didn’t have phones when you opened your business, right?

Robert: Back in the day we–

Clay: [laughs]

Robert: –we delivered the glasses on a pony. Yeah, it was way back when.

Clay: Z personally carved each lens, using some sort of lens carving device.

Robert: Yes, out of oak and pine.

Clay: [laughs]

Katie Worley: Did you do Ben Franklin’s spectacle?

Robert: Yes, I did. And like I’ve said before, he was the original mullet. That dude, [laughs] he was a lot of business upfront but–

Clay: Party in that back.

[chuckles]

Robert: –he was a lot of party in the back.

Clay: Now Z, we have a very special guest today, we have Miss Katie Worley of Royal Landscapes. Miss Katie, how are you doing?

Katie: Great thanks.

Clay: By the way, for people listening to her going, “Royal Landscapes, my lawn is getting out of control. My business is having some landscaping blowouts”. We’ve all hired a landscaper by the way, who says, “I’ll be there on Thursday” and then like four Thursdays later your lawn’s looking like the Amazon. You’ve started to have like a–

Robert: Ooh ah, ooh ooh, ooh ooh, ooh. [laughs]

Clay: You have a monkey that’s decided to take up residence in your lawn. People are going, “Hey Z, are you doing a Amazon rec– turning your lawn into an Amazon reclamation?”.

Robert: Are you going to be au naturel?

Clay: Are you turning it into a prairie?

Robert: Is tall grass prairie playing designation?

Clay: We’ve all got to that point, Oklahoma grass grows fast. So, if someone wants to get a hold of you guys, what’s the website, what’s the phone number, what’s the move?

Katie: We are at royaloklahoma.com and the phone number is 918-516-8443, and we actually call you back.

Clay: Whoa.

Robert: Whoa, that’s crazy.

Clay: Oh man.

Robert: I love your tagline though, “We take the hassle out of landscaping your castle”. Boom. Boom. Boom Shaka Shaka.

Clay: Now, we’re talking about the seven steps to developing long term relationships with customers. Step number one, deliver on what you promise. Step number two, create a linear workflow service profit chain, designed to deliver. And the third, when you have problems, look at your workflow and determine what link in the service profit chain was broken. Work with me. When something doesn’t go right, I see it all the time in small business and I used to do it back in the day, we just get emotional and we go, “Man, I screwed up”, the customer’s mad at you, you’re frustrated and so you put all your emotional energy into just dealing with the immediate urgency of the problem.

Back in the day, when I was running thedjconnection.com, we would go entertain for a wedding. And let me tell you what, the most awkward moment of my DJ career, there were many, but the most awkward moment that comes to my mind was the bride, she says, “I want to make sure that you play What a Wonderful–” no, no, it was The Way You Look Tonight, it was The way You Look Tonight. And I said, “Okay. Okay, I’ll get it” and she goes, “My dad and I are practicing”, so I said, “The Way You Look Tonight”. Now, anybody who’s listening to this right now, there’s two The Way You Look Tonight. One is the Elton John version, the Elton John, okay? And the other one is the Frank Sinatra version, okay? So, the Elton John is, something about the way you look tonight, it takes my breath away, it’s that version, okay? And then The Way You Look Tonight is, just the way you look tonight, so it’s two different beats, two different meanings.

Robert: Yes.

Clay: Okay. So imagine you’re the father and you’ve been practicing with your daughter–

Robert: And being the father of the bride, you’re the one that stroked the cheque.

Clay: Stroked the cheque. Her father in particular did not want to dance very much. So, here we are at The Summit Club, beautiful place, it’s like a country club in the sky, for people who haven’t been there.

Robert: [chuckles]

Clay: It’s downtown in Tulsa, it’s the Bank of America tower, everyone’s there, dressed nice, everyone’s ready to go and she said to me– this was back before I clarified what artist sang the song. See, now I made a system but back in the day I just go, “Okay, so you want to play The Way You Look Tonight, you and your dad have been practicing for months, I know he’s nervous, I’ll nail it”. So, I get up there, and again, they’ve been practicing to the Elton John version.

Robert: Oh no.

Clay: So I get up there and I’m like–

Robert: You had a 50/50 shot.

Clay: And this is back in the day when we had CD’s, okay? Compact disks. No internet, no iPod, no downloading, no YouTube, if you didn’t have the music, you didn’t have the music.

Robert: You were out of luck.

Clay: So I get up there, “All right ladies and gentlemen, esteemed guests, we are here gathered at The Summit Club for this wonderful celebration. Our beautiful bride, she has been practicing, her dad, who we know is not a dancer, he’s sacrificed, he’s been going to dance lessons folks, for three months”. At this point people are starting to gather, people are starting to stand, they start cheering.

Robert: Oh no. Oh no.

Clay: I’m like, “So here we go, ladies and gentlemen, let’s hear it now for the father and daughter, as they do, the always important, very special important, the father/daughter dance”, and I hit play. Oh, and I hit play and it’s, just the way you look, and it was like lasers of hate, he looked at me and you could just sense in his eyes “I hate you”, because he can’t dance anyway. So, she’s trying now to dance with her dad to a new beat, kinda upbeat, and this guy has never really danced, he needs rhythm therapy. And so what I attempted to do was just to hide behind that booth, Z, where you lower yourself. And I’m just telling you, I was so emotional because he was so mad, didn’t want to pay for the wedding, people were upset, I’m pretty sure that we had to pull a few people of the ledge and say, “Don’t jump. Don’t jump. We’ll make it through this”.

Robert: It’s high up there too.

Clay: You get emotional, so, I got super emotional. I come home, my wife says, “What happened at the wedding?” and I go, “I don’t want to talk about it”. And so, what you do as an entrepreneur, you just deal with the emotion of giving them the refund, dealing with the problem, but you don’t take the time to look at your workflow.

Robert: Yeah. And then what you do is, you figure out how did that happen, like you said, it’s emotional and you’re upset and all that but then you go in and then you change, you tweak your workflow.

Clay: Quick confession. I didn’t fix my workflow until this scenario happened, probably a dozen times.

Robert: Well, thank goodness you were good at everything else and you were able to survive that, because some people make the same mistake over and over and over, and you know what?

Clay: What happens?

Robert: I don’t want to say this because I don’t want to dishearten anybody, and we’re changing this number, we vow to change this number, 80% of businesses fail.

Clay: According to Forbes.

Robert: And that’s exactly some of the reasons why, because they have a mistake in their chain.

They have a mistake and it leads to a problem and it leads to unhappy customers. You don’t get loyal customers. You run out of advertising dollars because that’s how you’re getting new people instead of word of mouth also kind of pumping you up that you —

Clay: Word of mouth, absolutely almost like you’ve gone to a testosterone clinic. It has to pump you up. You had to be pumped by that.

Robert: If you don’t wow people, you’re in trouble. I’m going to give you a notable quotable from Jack Welch. He says, “Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.” So, Katie, I want to ask you this. I’ll let you marinate on this for a second. In a world of landscaping, there’s got to be some problems that would happen over and over if you haven’t made a system like a customer service data base or some way to keep track of customers. What are some of the problems that could happen over and over if you guys didn’t have a data base or some way to organize your customers’ information?

Katie: Being late. Not showing up as you talked about the other guys do. Having the office schedule the wrong service. We’re in irrigation pretty heavily also. So timers have to be set and things like that. Nobody can memorize all of those things. They’re not all in the same schedule. We have to follow a system.

Clay: If I was running your landscaping company back in the day, I probably would have put the irrigation system in the wrong guy’s lawn or just done these repetitive mistakes. Luckily, like you mentioned, Z, you were trying to over deliver in every area, so we would screw up. It wasn’t like the end of the world and the business didn’t just completely go out of business. Somebody listening right now, you’re in the medical business.

I have a very good friend of mine who’s in the medical business. He’s on the East Coast. His average waiting time, the average time that people wait in his office, was getting over an hour. Over an hour. No one’s perfect, no one’s exactly on time, but when you start to get known as the place where you have an hour and a half to two hour wait because no one’s even checking customers in, it’s hard. As a business owner, you have to look at your work flow and figure out what is the problem. Now here’s step number four. When we come back, let’s talk about step number four, and this is the tough one.

This is the one that’s going to rock your world. This is the one that many entrepreneurs are not comfortable with doing. You’re playing the song and haunting me. You’re bringing back these — we’re going to talk about the super move when we come back.

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Clay: All right Thrive Nation. Welcome back to that motivation station. The place that you go for that daily persuasion that you need to get motivated, to get activated, to learn how to identify those things that are stopping you from building that dream business. Because, as always, I’m joined here with Dr. Robert Zoellner. Sir, how are you?

Robert: I am fantastic on this hump day. You know there’s plenty of shows out there to learn gardening tips. There’s plenty of shows out there to get your political feel.

Clay: I have not gotten enough political feel.

Robert: Plenty of psychoanalysis shows out there.

Clay: Paranormal shows?

Robert: I mean paranormal and there’s even UFO shows and all those.

Clay: Sports show.

Robert: And tons of sports shows. But this is Tulsa’s only only local business show. What we’re going to do here today, folks, we’re going to coach you up because we’re going to take that 80% fail rate of new businesses, and our goal is to get it to what, Clay?

Clay: Seriously, the clients that we coach because I coach clients one on one. That’s why we built the online school because it wasn’t scalable. You can’t coach limitless numbers of people.

Robert: There’s only 24 hours in a day.

Clay: That’s right, and so what we did is we packed it in where we had 47 clients I was working with. My wife’s like, “Hey, maybe you should scale that” and I’m going, “I don’t know.” So anyway, you and I teamed up. We built this online school called Thrive15.com. I will tell you I don’t know everyone I talk to, but I can tell you of at least several dozen entrepreneurials from around the world, Australia, Canada, New York, who’s businesses were failing. Ukraine. They learned tips on Thrive that have allowed them to not only stay in business but to move beyond surviving; hence, the name Thrive.

They’re actually thriving, and to me, thriving is having an abundance of time, a time freedom and financial freedom. So what we’re doing is we like to showcase on this show local Tulsa entrepreneurials. We also like to teach these proven best practice tips. So today, we have a very special guest, Ms. Katie Worley of Royal Landscapes. Ms. Katie, how are you doing on this wonderful Wednesday?

Katie: Thank you for having me.

Clay: Now, we’re talking about this next move which, before the break, I was mentioning you were going through the seven steps here guys, the seven steps to developing long-term relationships. What happens with step number three is when you have problems, you want to look at your work flow and determine what the link in the service profit chain is. You want to find where’s the broken link in my profit chain? Where is that limiting membrane? Here is the part that’s tough.

Robert: Now we’re getting to the tough stuff. Can we just go with the fun stuff?

Clay: I’m going to give you the Jack Welch quote. He says again, “Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.” This a guy who looked at GE. He took over as the CEO. He looks at it and says, “Our production in Louisville, Kentucky of the appliances we’re making there is not what it needs to be. In fact, I’m going to make a list of all the divisions of the company that aren’t performing well, and if we can’t be the first or second best provider of that particular product in the world, I’m shutting down the factory, and I’m going to move our team reconfigured factories assign people, move them.”

Imagine you’re a guy who’s made refrigerators your whole life and all of a sudden Jack Welch comes in, shuts down your plant, retools the plant and says, “Hey, we are now going to make jet engines. We are now going to make medical equipment. We are now going to actually buy NBC and we’re going” He went in there and he cleaned up the line-up. When he bought RCA, you know they owned a major network, and so he looked at their stagnant line up of shows, and he said, “If that show’s not good, we’re cutting it.” That’s where Seinfeld came out. Seinfeld is a result of him cutting a show that wasn’t working. All these great products. Now GE is known for medical equipment. They’re known for jet engines, airport security stuff. They’re known for their financial division. All of that is because Jack Welch could face reality as it is and not as people wished it to be. So here we go.

As an entrepreneur, I’m going to look at my work flow, and I realized my phone was being answered slowly. People would say, “I called you and no one answered.” I’m sure that’s never happened for an entrepreneur.

Robert: Well, it drives me crazy.

Clay: People tell me all the time they say, “Clay, I called your office. I called multiple times, and I’m calling your cell phone because no one’s answering.” Over time, I started to realize step number four, I have to remove the biggest limiting membrane, aka a human. I kept being told week after week in our meeting, “I’m so sorry I was so busy.” I realize this person they had a desire to not answer the phone. They had a desire to push away inbound business and to focus on things that don’t matter. I had to make that move.

Z, I’ve had to make that move a lot in business where I’ve had to fire or replace people that just refuse to do the job properly. That’s a tough thing for a lot of entrepreneurs. I guess what tips would you have for someone who’s listening who goes, “I know I probably need to remove Billy, but I just don’t want to do it.”

Robert: Well, here’s the deal. I’m going to try to make as many landscaping references as I can today. Since we have Queen Katie on of Royal Landscapes.

Clay: royaloklahoma.com, right?

Katie: That’s right.

Robert: So, I’m telling you if you look at your business as if it was a fruit-bearing plant-

Clay: A fruit-bearing plant.

Robert: Studies show, and this is science. I’m going to give you a little science, science.com. If you prune it appropriately, in other words, you cut living, you cut branches, you cut branches off of it.

Clay: I don’t want to cut any branches at all. I don’t want to hurt them.

Robert: It’s my favorite bush, I don’t want to — if you do that, guess what, it will be more productive. So if we use that same mentality in our business, in other words, you’ve got Billy over there who not only will not answer the phone and follow his work flow chart that you’ve given him in the scripts. You’ve given him to say – he’s actually in a detriment. So, shame on you for not letting Billy go and pruning that bush because guess what you get somebody else in there who is aggressive and outgoing and want to get those phones to get the stuff done. Your plant is going to have a lot more fruit on it.

Clay: I feel like somebody has asked this question. They’re saying you just set her fast. You said, “Shame on you for not letting Billy go”. I know somebody who’s stuck right there. They’re going, “I can’t let Billy go. You just don’t understand like how hard it was to find the Billy. It’s so hard to find-

Robert: Okay. All right. All right. I’m okay. Okay. I’m going to walk you through this. Pay attention now.

Clay: Here we go.

Background Voice 1: You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show on talk radio 1170.

Robert: You drive at home, in your car right now, you may be in traffic, maybe you’re merging, maybe you’ve just merged, maybe getting in the left lane. I want to take that visor and I want you to lower it down.

Clay: Lower it down.

Robert: And flip up the mirror. Okay.

Clay: Okay.

Robert: And then I want you to look up – just glance up in there and say, ‘Shame on me”.

Clay: Shame on me.

Robert: I need to let Billy go.

Clay: I need to let Billy go.

Robert: In fact, I’m going to let Billy go.

Clay: We going to let Billy go.

Robert: This week.

Clay: Let him go. Laser show of letting Billy go. I’m letting Billy go.

Robert: Bye bye Billy.

Clay: I am going to let Billy go. I go it.

Robert: Just keep saying it. Bye bye Billy. Bye bye Billy. Bye bye Billy.

Clay: Bye Billy.

Robert: Billy got to go.

Clay: Billy go to go.

Robert: Billy got to go.

Clay: He’s got to go.

Robert: Bye and bye.

Clay: And Billy and bye. [Laughter].

Robert: Prune that tree.

Clay: Okay.

Robert: Prune that tree.

Clay: That’s the end of that. That’s what we have to do, right?

Robert: That’s what you going to do. You just have to pump yourself up and if you not gear for that and a lot of people listen. I know it’s hard the first, especially the first few times you have in your business, but trust me. Trust me. Not only would it help you refocus the rest of your team and everybody – I’ve often head on a swivel. You let somebody go and everybody else in the office is like, oh, oh, i guess we are serious now. We are serious. We’re actually going to enforce the workflow. We’re going to enforce what we’re supposed to do, oh, oh. Am I next? I better work hard. It’ll change the whole atmosphere of a business.

Clay: Now here is something that I’m going to give to you the entrepreneurs out there who really want to break it down. They want to get deep. There’s a word called empathy. Okay empathic. Okay, so work on them as Sam Walton. Step one, I want you think what this. Sam Walton says the customer is the boss. That was the guy who started Wal-Mart. He said the customer can fire everyone from the –

Robert: CEO.

Clay: – On down.

Robert: On down, to be general.

Clay: Because the customer is the boss. So step one, this is step one for you. I want you to right now, thrivers I want you to write this down.

Robert: I’m writing.

Clay: The customer is the boss. Okay, that step one. Step two. We have empathy for the customer.

Robert: Yes, we do.

Clay: We want to listen to them. We want to emotionalize them. We want to hear their concerns. We’re going to have empathy for the boss.

Robert: We want to build a long-term relationship with them. That’s what this show is all about.

Clay: And step three, this is the part that’s going to almost like just sound brutal. You want to have almost a sociopathic lack of empathy for non-performers in your business.

Robert: [Laughter].

Clay: Because look at this. The word sociopath means a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior. Basically, Bill Belichick.

Robert: Bill Belichick.

Clay: So he’s my guy.

Robert: Next step, you don’t care.

Clay: And so he literally, this week, the Patriots – it’s like in the past, like 10 days here. The Patriots, they’re winning. They have a bi-week. They’re winning. The guys think things are going well and it’s announced that he’s cutting or trading for almost nothing their best defensive player. Yet again, he does this all the time. So, Jason Collins is like their number one linebacker. He just like, well let’s trade him for basically nothing and there’s a story of blind behind that as to why it happened, but the point is he is totally empathetic to patriot fan. Seriously. He like wants to win. They’re the boss and if he doesn’t win, he loses his job. Bob Kraft is his boss. That’s the owner of the team and if they don’t win, he loses his job.

Robert: Boom.

Clay: So he’s totally obsessed with Bob Kraft. What you do want sir? Sir? Sir? How can I help you sir? Sir? Sir? Fans, how can we win? Win. Win. Win. But then when it comes to the players, he’s like, if you don’t perform or you’re not fitting within the contractual restraints – they have a salary-cap, I’m moving on and I think there’s somebody listening right now who started the business because you’re empathetic to your customers. They love your cakes.

Robert: Oh, yes. They let groom their dog.

Clay: They love the way that you mow their lawn. They love it.

Robert: They love it.

Clay: And so now you people say, you should open a business. So you’ll open up a business. Everyone you got that?

Robert: You got that.

Clay: So step two, you start to say okay I’m going to get this game going on. I’m going to hold my team accountable and then all of a sudden they won’t do what you want them to do.

Robert: Yes at least with the fraction of the enthusiasm that you have about it. You’re like you’re growing that poodle, you mowing that yard. You’re doing all that stuff and you have great enthusiasm. You do it with such care and such precision and then you bring somebody on your team and you kind of look at them going, “Why Billy is not –Why does Billy don’t seem like he cares?

Clay: Oh, Billy. But you know what you’re going to have to do thrivers? Again, he taught us what to do but it doesn’t do you any good unless you actually do it. So, I’m going to repeat it. You want to tell yourself right now. i am going to let Billy go. You got to do it. You got to hold him accountable.

Robert: You do. And if you don’t then your business will suffer. I mean when your business suffers, you suffer and you didn’t get into this. You – as much difficult as it is to build a thriving business as hard as it is, don’t make it any harder by not making the tough decisions and when you have a Billy, i.e. a guy in your organization that’s not doing what he supposed to be doing, let him go.

Clay: Thrive Time Show.

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Background Voice 1: You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show on talk radio 1170.

Clay: All right thrive nation. Welcome back to the inspiration station with your business coach. The show where you go – this is like your audio dojo on your drive time home. You see running a business can be tough. Thinking about running a business can be overwhelming, but when you’re listening to people who know what they’re doing. We know the path. We’ve gone down the path. We’ve – unfortunately I wish I could tell you that Z and I ran through the path and didn’t step on some land mines, but i will tell you we have had issues. We’ve made mistakes, but we’ve learned and now you can decide right now. Are you going to learn from mentors or mistakes? If you want to learn from mistakes it is totally cool. You just a lot of –

Robert: You change your channel.

Clay: Yes. There a lot of explosions.

Robert: Yes. You just change the channel and don’t listen to us. We’ve made the mistakes and we’re here to share them with you humbly and openly so that you don’t have to make them, because we want the success rate of businesses opening up to be greater than 20% success rate. 8% of them are failing. And that’s just I have zero tolerance for that.

Clay: Now here’s the thing. We talked about it before we left. We talked about it before we left for the break there that you, as an entrepreneur, if you have extreme empathy for the customer, because they’re the boss.

Robert: They’re the boss.

Clay: Then you have to be almost a sociopath when it comes to the people. You have no feelings if people don’t perform. You got to let them go.

Robert: Wait. Wait. Wait. They’re my friends.

Clay: Well that. Okay,

Robert: We do Bunco. I do Bunco.

Clay: Here’s what I’ll tell you.

Robert: I do Bunco every Wednesday with them.

Clay: i have hired and fired many people who used to be my friends. Now here’s the thing.

Robert: Did you play Bunco with them?

Clay: Z, I’m going say this.

Robert: You understand the bonding that happens with the Bunco.

Clay: I mean this. When you hire somebody, you’re going get to see their core values and even there might have been a dominant Bunco player, when you hire them you get to see their true – don’t you see. I mean when you partner someone don’t need to see their true character.

Robert: Yes.

Clay: Business brings it out.

Robert: It does. It really does. Whenever you’re – you know in business is, use the word of war.

Clay: War?

Robert: You know you want – listen if you’re going to go to war and you’re digging your little box hole, and you’re picking a guy out of the group. You like, okay. They can be coming from this side to attack us or this side. So you, back to back. You face that way and I will face this way. You want to make sure your picking dude.

Clay: What side is I supposed to be facing?

Robert: You picking dude that’s painted digit. He got your back, got your six, got your back.

Clay: i was looking on my smartphone and I’m totally wasn’t looking the other way there for a few minutes.

Robert: I know they came right on up those North Koreans and saying Kim Jong-un came up and got me.

Clay: So the thing is – we’re getting at those. Once you – once you begin to become comfortable with having extreme empathy for your customers and hold them accountable and pruning the tree, cutting the deadwood, getting people off the squad who don’t belong there. What happen is people who are loyal to success and loyal to winning they will stick around a long time which segue from loyal into royal landscaping.

We have a very special guest here, Miss Katie Worley of Royal Landscapes. How are you?

Katie: Good. Hey Thrive.

Clay: Now, hey you have people who’ve worked with your landscaping business for years.

Katie: Absolutely.

Clay: How long is many of your teammates been with you guys?

Katie: We have four men that have been there over 10, 15 years.

Clay: And so, do you ever fire people over there though? Have you ever fired anybody over there?

Katie: Unfortunately yes.

Clay: So, I guess once you fire

the wrong people than the good people want to stick around, does that the theme?

Katie: Absolutely. We actually have two generations that work for us.

Clay: I have seen this thing maybe just in my businesses, but I found that great people love to work with other great people. They’re almost worn out by even just by the physical presence of non-performers. Have you noticed this in your businesses?

Robert: I’ll tell you what. If you’ve got a guy or a girl, you’ve got a person that’s underperforming and doing everything wrong, everybody in the business knows it. They all know it, and they all look at your and they say to themselves, “Why don’t you do anything about it? Why aren’t you not doing– I’m busting my buns to help build your business and you’re not pruning the dead wood out of there. What do you think it is? Is this a really a long term play for me?” Then you actually start to affect the enthusiasm of the other coworkers, because they see you putting up with– and I love your book that you wrote on jackassery.

They start to see you put up with it from other employees and impose them to say, “Well, if you let Billy come in late, you know what I think I’m going to start coming in late. Apparently it’s okay.”

Clay: If you’re listening right now, I want you to take the challenge for me thrivers. Here’s the challenge I’m going to give you, okay. If you’re listening and you’re a first time customer, you’ve never been in to Elephant in the Room before, that’s our men’s grooming business.

Ad: You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170.

Clay: If you’re a dude, there are certainly no restrictions if you’re a dude. It’s a guy’s men’s only. You go in there, we have three locations. We have one at 1610 Boston. One in 91st in Yale. One over there in Broken Arrow by Louie’s off Len Lanes 65th area. Your first haircut is a dollar. Now, when your first haircut is a dollar, I want you to think about this for a second. The first time you walk in it’s a dollar, but how much does it cost me to offer you a free haircut? When you come in right now and you get that one dollar haircut it’s almost free, but how much does it cost me?

Robert: Let me guess. May I?

Clay: Yes, sure.

Robert: I’m going to guess 25 bucks.

Clay: Yes, approximately.

Robert: Really.

Clay: Yes.

Robert: I think I heard that on a different show.

Clay: People say how does it happen? One is that we have to do ads to get in front of you. Two, we have to have someone who answers the phone. Someone who greets people at the front desk. We offer you a free beverage. We do paraffin hand dip, hot towel treatment. We have the person we have to pay to cut your hair. All those things happen. If we don’t wow you, then you’re not coming back.

We have a membership plan, a membership option which allows you to get your haircut more often at a discounted rate. Z, this month, we set a record downtown. You want to know what the record was?

Robert: On Boston?

Clay: We have 78% of people who came in for the one dollar haircut signed up for a membership on the first they came in.

Katie: Nice.

Robert: Here we had just another Oklahoma success story.

Clay: 78% and I will tell you, that number was as low at one point as 18% when we first started. Did you know why it was at 18% Z when we first started?

Robert: Because you had [unintelligible 01:02:49] phone assistant. Either had a bad system, you had a bad workflow that didn’t work, or somebody wasn’t following it.

Clay: Check it out.

Robert: Imagine that.

Clay: Check it out. The system I built was stupid at first. It was a bad system. I thought it was good, but I tested it and then quickly got information, got feedback and fixed it.

Robert: Wait a second. Are you telling me– let me get this straight. You opened up a business and your system wasn’t perfect, and you survived?

Clay: There’s a book called The Lean Startup method. Lean startup, and I want everyone– if you’re listening to this right now, I want you to buy this book. Own it. It’s written by a guy named Eric Ries. He is the head, he’s one of the top advisers for Kleiner Perkins. People say, “What’s Kleiner Perkins?” That is one of the biggest venture capital funds on the planet. These homies have funded check it out Square, Uber, Google. I’ve never used Google.

Robert: I’m going to Google Google to figure out what Google is.

Clay: I bet you have people listening to this today, well and either use Square, Google, or Uber. I bet at least half the audience, maybe three quarters of the audience will use one of those things today. the people who’ve launched those companies and other, Kleiner Perkins have developed a system called the The Lean Startup Method. Here’s the four parts, here we go, four parts. One, is you define what you think is going to work. Two, you act. Three, you measure results. Four, you refine.

Robert: That’s how you went from opening the business to building your system, to measuring that you had 18% conversion rate, to fixing it to 78%.

Clay: That’s how it works.

Robert: That’s a beautiful thing.

Clay: It’s a beautiful thing. We want to help you do that there thrivers. If you’re listening right now, look for the biggest limiting factor in your business. There’s tons of limiting factors. Look for the biggest, the most, the big, the most big, look for the biggest limiting factor and remove it this week. It’s Wednesday. You still have time to do it by Friday.

Robert: Absolutely, it gives you two days, and then 11-11, my 25th anniversary which is also Veterans Day. Shout out this week, we should maybe get a veteran on Friday. A veteran, a successful entrepreneur that’s a veteran.

Clay: You’re putting a lot of pressure on me at this point. A lot of pressure on your co-host.

Robert: You know what pressure makes don’t you?

Clay: Diamonds?

Robert: Diamonds.

Clay: Fossil fuels?

Robert: [laughs]

Clay: Gray hair to presidents.

Robert: This is true. Pressure makes all these.

Clay: Thrivers, when we come back, we’re talking to you about step number five.

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Background Voice 2 : Live, local, now. You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170.

Clay: Hello Tulsa, and welcome back to the Thrive Time Show during your drive time home. Many of you are finding this show for the first time and you’re saying, “What is this? Who are you? What are we talking about? Should I listen?” We have about 10 seconds to convince you whether you should listen or not. I’m going to tell you this, my name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year. That’s the Small Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year. I’ve started numerous successful businesses. Years ago, I had an opportunity to meet a wonderful man and a mentor. A guy by the name of Dr. Z. Z, how are you doing my friend?

Robert: I’m doing fantastic. Happy hump day world out there.

Clay: Dr. Z is a man who started off. I want you just to follow his career path. He started off washing dishes. Where were you washing dishes at?

Robert: It’s called Chiquita Brands. In fact, I found a treasure it’s a little T-shirt that I used to wear at Chiquita Brands. It was 41st in Garnet. Actually, little right on the corner. It’s a Mexican Restaurant, my first job. I was 13 years old, daytime dishwasher. I owned that.

Clay: Was it an automatic where you pull the thing down and it go [inaudible 01:07:59] with the washer, or you had to hand wash all those things?

Robert: It was automatic, but you had to– bring his Mexicans. He had to get a lot of the big stuff off.

Clay: Cheese and beans.

Robert: Cheese and beans baby. I pride myself to clean my– Dick Slater, the owner of Chiquita Brands told me, “A clean station is a happy station.” I remember that to this day. I kept mine as high and tight and clean, and I wash those dished with pride. I took pride to having to clean dishes.

Clay: From there, you went to NSU, right? Where you studied some Math?

Robert: Yes, Mathematics, and then I went to the Optometry school there. I came back to the wonderful city of Tulsa and started my Optometry clinic 25 years ago in a couple of days.

Clay: And then you went from there to open up a-

Robert: Sleep center, auto auction, horse ranch, DME company.

Clay: It all make sense. It all just– the reason why I mentioned this thrivers is because he and I have had success in different industries. You know what, almost every business is the same. They’re almost all the same.

Robert: I know you break them down, it’s the same core things. That’s why whenever you do your business coaching, which had led us down this whole path, which is why we’re on the air.

Clay: Which is why we’re on the air.

Robert: Years ago, you started business coaching and you found out there was a same formula for every single business.

Clay: It just works.

Robert: It just works. Then you said, “How can I scale this? How can I get to where I can do more than one person per hour?” That’s what led us in our journey to thrive15.com, our online business entrepreneur school if you will. That led us to this radio show that you are now enjoying on your drive home.

Clay: And just so you know this, radio show it’s owned by the EW Scripts families who produces this show. These are the guys who produce HGTV, they produce all these fun reality shows. There’s just tons of possibilities that are perculating about this show. It’s growing all over the world. People are listening to the Thrive Time Show all over the world right now, so thrivetimeshow.com, go up there and share the podcasts. All the radio shows are archived there. You can see them.

Robert: Right, because today we’re going over the seven steps to making loyal customers for life.

Really gaining the customer’s loyalty for their lifetime and their business bind. You may say, “Oh, I just turned in I missed the first four steps.” Don’t worry. Don’t worry. It’s okay. Don’t wreck. Keep driving straight.

Clay: Keep going straight.

Robert: Keep between the lines. When you go home you can go to Thrivetimeshow.com and listen to the podcast as many times as you want.

Clay: Absolutely. Now, we’re on step number five is get the emotion out of the way and make the best business decision based upon the facts. Now, again, based upon the facts. Here’s a little I’ll give. Everyone I encourage you to write this down, memorize this. This is how I do. Get the facts then act. That’s my move. Get the facts then act. That’s the move. Okay. I’m going to give you a notebook audible to help marinate on that. This from Napoleon Hill, the best selling author who I named my son after. My son’s name is Aubrey Napoleon Hill Clerk. He says, “Put your foot upon the neck of the fear of criticism by reaching a decision not to worry about what other people think, do or say.” Again, get the facts and act. In between there is not worry about what people say. Katie over there, Loyal Landscaping. By the way, we have a special guest here, Katie Worley with Loyal Landscaping. How are you, ma’am?

Katie: Great.

Clay: With your business over there, when you guys fail to hit the mark let’s say or let’s say that you discover certain advertisement is it working or you discover that a track needs to be fixed, how fast do you guys like to act over there or do you guys like to sit around, have meetings, form committees? How fast do you guys try to act over there?

Katie: We are in a time sensitive industry so we have not a lot of time to sit around. We get it done within seven a problem should be faced based on the sides obviously the problem-

Clay: So you guys have a hustle?

Katie: We do.

Clay: You got to have a hustle. This time of the year, in fact, and your business is seasonal. Different seasons have different needs.

Katie: Yeah.

Clay: This time of the year, if I’m listening, what are some of the services what you’re offering to your customers right now with a big sense of urgency? What are some of those things you’re offering to customers in green country right now?

Katie: Right now it is time for fall color. People have family coming so they want the flowers to look good. We take care of that. I don’t know a lot of people are experts on their own irrigation system. You know like, how do I turn this thing off or on. We handle that very well for a lot of people in Tulsa. Fall time is time to plant a tree, that tree you’ve always wanted.

Robert: This is the time?

Katie: It is, fall time.

Clay: Is this the best time to do it?

Katie: It is.

Robert: If someone wants to get a hold of you, what do they need to do?

Katie: We are on the web at LoyalOklahoma.com. You can fill out a easy form there and we’ll contact you.

Clay: Okay.

Katie: That’s two minutes out of your time. Also you can us Go Old school at 918-516-8443.

Clay: People still call people?

Katie: They do.

Clay: What phone number can they call again?

Katie: 918-516-8443.

Clay: Now, Z, this is something I want to know. This is a service, I don’t know if she offers this, this is a service I want to know. Do you do plank landscaping? Can I hire you guys to destroy–

Robert: Like fox of jug or toilet papers [unintelligible 01:13:02]?

Clay: Is that something you do?

Katie: Unfortunately, that market seems to be saturated.

Clay: Now, Z, I have a story. We come back I want to share with the Thrivers but it involves Bray Valves, The Minnesota Vikings-

Robert: Oh, Minnesota skin.

Clay: – and destroying somebody’s lawn in such an epic display that it almost led to me getting in some trouble on high school. It’s Bray Valve–

Robert: You know what? I can hardly wait because knowing you the way I know you this is going to be a story that nobody out there wants to miss so please stay tuned.

Clay: All out and if —

Robert: I don’t know the story but I know it’s going to be good.

Clay: Stay tuned. Thrive Time Show.

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Background Voice 2:You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170.

Clay: Thrive Nation. Welcome back here to the Thrive Time Show during your Thrive Time Home. You are listening right now to Tulsa’s only local business radio show on Talk Radio 1170. On talk radio 1170 what we’d like to do is we’d like to give you some of those politics in the morning. Get that political news.

Robert: Get those juices flowing.

Clay: Then we come back with some business in the afternoon, come back with some politics, come back with some business, come back with some politics. We’ve got a variety.

Robert: Variety pack.

Clay: It’s unbelievable variety pack and it has people coming back week after week. In case you missed it, in case you missed the earlier part of the show, we’re talking about seven steps to developing long term relationships with customers. My name is business coach, Clay Clark. I’m the former SPA entrepreneur of the year. Across from me I’m joined with the co-host with the most, Dr. Robert Zoellner. How are you?

Robert: I am fantastic. Happy Wednesday to the world.

Clay: We have a special guest with us to my left here. It’s Ms. Katie Worley of Loyal Landscaping.

Robert: Queen Katie. Queen Katie.

Katie: Great. Thank you. Doing fantastic.

Clay: Now, real quick, Z was asking off airline this audio magic cannot be missed. You were asking here, Z, what’s what’s the —

Robert: Well, she was saying that one of the things they do, one of the moves right now on landscaping, is doing fall color. Fall color. I was going, oh, fall color. Okay. I think that means flowers. I’m a dude. I think that’s what that means, right?

Clay: It basically means flowers.

Robert: Right? Is that what that — Okay. You’re going to come in my flowerbed. I said what is the most likely flower you’re going to plant in my flower for fall color? You said–

Katie: It is like a Pansy Pelusa. We have pansies everywhere.

Robert: Pansies. I know. I was just giggling because I thought-

Clay: Pansy Pelusa.

Robert: – here we are we plant the flower, it’s going to survive the harshest time of the year, the winter, the cold and it’s named a Pansy.

Clay: When you said pansies as a die-hard patriot’s fan what I was thinking of was the New York Giants. When you said pansies I thought —

Robert: The giants are accepted.

Clay: I wasn’t sure if you’re planting New York Giants themed flowers.

Robert: Yeah, green and white or something.

Clay: The toughest flower is the Pansy.

Robert: Yeah and they’re crazy. It’s funny. It actually is funny.

Clay: I was going to marinate on that for a minute. I was just going to marinate. Before we left I was telling you I was going to tell you a story because landscaping, talking about landscaping here with Haven Katie on the show and just the whole Loyal Landscaping theme. One landscaping story that must be told is I was in high school, and when you’re in high school it’s always the juniors versus the seniors.

Robert: Oh, yeah.

Clay: I’m a senior. I’ve got a lot of time on my hands. Minnesota is I graduated early. In Minnesota you can take as many classes as you want. I guarantee you to do something like this if it was available for you. I’m basically like a sophomore high school and I’m done with school. I don’t have to go anymore. My junior year I took College courses, and then my senior year I thought I’m going to take nothing of any value at all because I can’t leave. I thought about just dropping out and seriously I’m almost done. My dad is like, No you should — I played high school football for the first time of my life. I went as a senior for the team. I didn’t tell my parents. I just signed up.

Robert: You just signed up.

Clay: I basically spent a lot of time. I had taken some college courses and then just doing crazy things that only people a lot of downtime do.

Robert: Do tell.

Clay: Here is what I did-

Robert: Because you said you tease us. You gave us a teaser, Bray Valve,of Minnesota.

Clay: Here’s what I did, we had a junior, a high school who– we hated the juniors. They’re Dassel Cokato High School. You hate those juniors.

Robert: Hate them.

Clay: This junior, he had the audacity to like Packers. We’re in Minnesota. You can’t like the Parker.

Robert: Oh, my. You like the Packers.

Clay: [Unintelligible 01:18:21] wasn’t on our team. He hadn’t defected yet. We’re going, you can’t like the Packers. These are some of the Packers and Bay Valve.

Robert: They were [unintelligible 01:18:27].

Clay: Always. That kind of stuff. I said, You know what we’re going to do? He’s on vacation this week. His parents are out of town. I now thought about the parents and what good people the Ganzers were. I just talked to Mr-

Robert: Fine people I’m sure.

Clay: He called me and referenced the story. I waited until they were on vacation zero empathy for him. I don’t know what was wrong with me. I got a group of guys together. We had very detailed system plans. We got that mower on the lowest setting and we wrote “Farve sucks” on a huge lawn, a massive lawn facing the whole community. You’re driving the town you see Farve sucks. Then we took the paint, like it’s a football field, we painted the entire field where it looked like a Farve sucks. Then I got down there with the weed eater and I cut it down to like dirt so it was permanently in there. We just decorated. Not just toilet paper but we just covered every —

Robert: Landscaping nightmare. So you were a landscaper?

Clay: I just destroyed that lawn there. He could have used Loyal Landscaping to go undo the travesties and the abominations that I had done. Again, Katie, if people want to get a hold of you, what’s your website?

Katie: We’re LoyalOklahoma.com.

Clay: Awesome. We’re talking about step number six, systematically and set a wow moment into your workflow. A wow moment is this, at starbucks they say, “What’s your name?” And they write your name on the cup. That’s a wow. Wow.

Robert: Really?

Clay: Another example, build a bear, you can build the bear with your kids. wow. Whole foods, there is a guy who is obsessed with the Angus. Hey bro, what kind of Angus are you looking ? oh, this is a fresh Angus,it just came in. Hey bro, do you want to see our Kale ? We just got this new kale and it’s awesome. Whole Foods, they’re obsessed with the quality. It’s your auction Z. What’s a wow moment? Every week you serve that incredible.

Robert: We give a free lunch. Everybody comes in and goes, “Wow. Free lunch and beverages.” and it’s great. We cook it right there or we’ll have it delivered in. It’s nice.

Clay: Your optometry clinic, consistently every time you and it feels like a mall. It feels like major retail.

Robert: It’s just like it should be like in New York City or maybe LA.

Clay: You know why you did that because it creates the three Rs. It’s retention, repeat sales and referrals.

Robert: Those are the three Rs you build your business on.

Clay: So many people are listening right now. They go, “I wow people myself. Every time I talk to people I treat them well.” You can do that but if it’s you doing it it’s not a system. It’s just you. You want to put a system in the place here. That’s step number six. Now step number seven. This is the final step. Get to know your customers and enter what you’re learning into a database.

Robert: That apical.

Clay: No. It’s apical.

Robert: Can I do that? That sounds a little creepy.

Clay: You’ve got to do it.

Robert: Is it creepy?

Clay: These are the areas you have to enter in in a minimum. It’s called The Four.

Robert: The Four.

Clay: Family.

Robert: Family.

Clay: Occupation.

Robert: Occupation.

Clay: Recreation.

Robert: Recreation.

Clay: Enjoyment. What are the thing your customers are into? Some people will say, “Enjoyment sounds like recreation.” The point of it, the concept is like that would be their hobby. Something they’re into. For every customer, you’d want to enter into the database at some point something about their family, how many kids do they have, where are they from, occupation, recreation, enjoyment.

Robert: There was a restaurant here in town that shut down now. It’s called the Duck Club.

Clay: The Duck Club.

Robert: There was a waiter there by name of Hamid. Hamid if you’re out there and you’re listening to this, hello by the way but that guy had to have a little card system in the back. He had to.

Clay: He had to.

Robert: There’s no way I could go in two months after a dinner, two months.

Clay: Two months.

Robert: And Hamid come out to the table, of course it’s all reservation so they know you’re coming. Right?

Clay: Yes.

Robert: I know he had a database back there. He would come out there, name by children by name, how they’re doing, know their ages. I’m just there looking at him going. “Wow. You either got a photographic memory of an army of elephant or you’re writing this stuff down dude.”

Clay: He works for WikiLinks. [laughter] He’s just gathering information.

Robert: The point is I was so wowed. I was so impressed. I was so blown away by that that I would just be like, number one, every time I went he was going to be my waiter and number two I always tipped him more than, I’m way over tipping because it was just so impressive. I just felt like well this guy took the time to know those things about me and then talk about them as if he just remember them from a couple of months ago.

Clay: Well you know if you read the Service Profit Chain that case study by Harvard they have a notable quotable in there and what they say, “Companies often overlook what can be the most important of the three Rs of loyalty. Referrals”, and this just in from our home office of the left coast of the Arkansas River. Nobody’s going to refer your business unless you wow them. You have to wow customers or they’re not going to refer you. Ms. Katie, you guys over there at Royal Landscaping have built a business based off of building long term relationships. What advice would you have for somebody listening out there who’s struggling to build long term relationships with their customers.

Katie: Any sales I think is based on trust. You read an ad and you trust that they’re going to give you that. I think building this relationships also builds trust. Even if there is a mistake in the future like you guys are talking about, they’re willing to repair that with you and it maintain loyalty with your business. Staying on top of that thing and connection and getting to know people.

Clay: I will tell you this, if you’re listening right now and you’re struggling to build a database. Don’t stress. Check it out. We have Thrive15.com workshops where you can come to this and we can teach you how to setup an infusion soft or there’s a lot of other programs out there but don’t get overwhelmed. Don’t make a super nerdy program just get a tool that is basic and it’s going to help you sort that customer information. For anybody who’s listening and they’re just go, “I love what I learned today but I want to see people make actual workflows. I want to see specific. I want to go deeper. I want more. I want an access to thousands of videos. I just want to access the world’s best business school. Where can they go my friend?

Robert: You are fortunate indeed because the business coach sitting across of me, Clay Clark in his usual business suit, if you’re watching on Facebook live you can see his uniform for the day. We have spent millions-

Clay: Millions.

Robert: and lots of hours in designing a website for you that you can go to and for a measly.

Clay: Measly.

Robert: Measly.

Clay: Measly.

Robert: $19 a month you can learn all we’re talking about today and so much more. We have thousands of videos and you know what the best part about it is Clay?

Clay: What’s that?

Robert: It’s not me and you. We’ve got some really smart dudes on there like Lee Cockerell who run little thing called Disney World, 40,000 people.

Clay: Check this out. Disney World. You’re talking about customer service. Disney World sees over [music] $52 million-

Robert: Million.

Clay: per year. They have over 40,000 employees and the guy who manage them is Lee Cockerell.

Robert: One of our mentor.

Clay: He’s one of our partners. He’s on our teaching management. It’s the world’s best business school and it can all be yours for $19 a month to see.

Robert: That’s Thrive15.com T H R I V E one five .com. Get on and see about a business coach. Check it out and enjoy it and it’s always three, two, one. Boom.

Clay: Boom.

[01:25:35] [END OF AUDIO]