Jack Welch’s Public Hangings, Introducing Merit-Based Pay and How to Gather Objective Reviews – Ask Clay Anything

Audio Transcription

Three, two, one, boom. You are now entering the Dojo of Mojo and the thrive time show, thrive time. Show on the microphone. What is this? Top of the charts in the category of business written down on business topics like we are a dentist provided you with over the past that you might get motion sick pad to the lab that’s in this. Some is three, two, one. Here come the business. Thrive nation. Welcome back to the first nation. It is the thrive time show on your radio and we as we get closer into football season, I could not be anymore excited then to watch the New England patriots achieve yet another successful season as they have a bunch of random players. They’ve assimilated from other teams guys, they’ve undrafted people that signed people that were cut by other teams. Guys they’ve drafted every year. Bill bellacheck builds a successful team. When he was the coach with the giants under bill parcells, they were successful. He’s successful with the Patriots. Why is it? Because he’s a genius probably, but it’s because he has the systems in place that we as the systems, the proven systems, and that’s why the Patriots win year after year. It’ll league a parody where stars come and go all the time. People leave the Patriots all the time. They continue to win year after year. When Tom Brady didn’t play last year, they went three and three out of four.

They went three for four coming in with Tom Brady. When their backup quarterback played, they want, when he got hurt, the backup’s backup played and they want. It’s because it’s a system. So if you’re out there and you say, gosh, I want to grow a successful company, listen, this is the show for you because we teach you the proven path that my partner Dr Robert Zellner and I’ve used to build 13 multi million dollar businesses and you can too. And occasionally we like to, uh, open it up where the business coaches or some of the listeners can ask us any question they want. And so on this edition of ask me anything, ask clay anything. We have Sean, one of our business coaches on the show to ask me. I believe we have three, three questions, three questions for you. It’s a double blind study. I have not seen these questions. I don’t know the questions are so any further ado. Sean, what questions do you have?

Okay, let’s start. This one comes from a client who asked me a question this week. We didn’t have enough time to get into it in the meeting. I asked about it briefly on the coach’s meeting, but he’s a big listener. So, uh, this one goes out for you, andy, when you’re moving to implement merit based pay, you know, what, what kind of cultural groundwork should employers take with, with their teams to minimize the employees being completely shocked or not getting the right ideas. You move to kind of put what they’re doing on a strict schedule and pay them based on how well they do at it.

Step one is, tell your team that you plan on expanding. Tell your team that you plan on expanding. Can you, uh, could you speculate as to why you’d want to do that? Yeah, he wants a he, he’s looking for tighter management. He’s just hired a new lead guy for his team and he wants to make sure everyone’s doing their job if he’s stepping out, but why would you want to tell your team that you’re expanding? Oh, you would want to tell your team that [inaudible] then it’s a. That seems like that’s a good reason for why you would be implementing the strategy. Hey, we’re going to grow. It means we got to get real tight and management. Makes Sense. So step one, tell your team you’re expanding. Yeah, because that’s what you want to do. Step to launch the group interview process. I just talked to a man the other day who unfortunately one of his key people just resigned last minute and he’d been very resistant to the group interview and I think now he’s an immediate believer.

So one is you tell your team you’re expanding, which is true. Then launch the group interview process. Never stopped job posting, never stop recruiting, never stopped job posting, never stop recruiting. Step three, launched the shadowing process, so want to make sure that people are shadowing you all the time, always have good people shadowing you all the time so you can decide whether they’re a good fit. Then introduce the carrots to the team. Tell the team, if you do your job well, here are the bonuses that you shall receive as a result of doing a great job. Then introduce the sticks and the kicks to the team. That’s where you say, now if you don’t do this, then this bad thing will happen and I’d recommend you introduce week one, tell your team whether you’re expanding to launch the group interview process. Week three, the shadows begin week for introduced the carrots and the sticks and the kicks and that’s how you do it.

That’s how you introduced a merit based program. Sean, to the answer your questions. Yeah. Yeah. I think that’ll be really helpful for them. Okay. What’s your next question? My friend? Okay, so the next question. Um, so with many clients in the beginning there seemed to be a lot of confusion about like the how behind getting google reviews. So one of the things that I see getting in the way is the idea that every single google review that they get needs to be some paragraph long, just go glowing Google review, which I get, those are important to collect, but just for the sake of getting to 100 google reviews as soon as possible, it seems to be like a sticking point. So my question, our reviews about the business owner’s character, their friendship, their skill as a leader skill, as an owner, past accomplishments, their personality, their positive influence on someone’s life or impact in their community are all these valuable to pursue as well.

Okay. Um, alright. Um, one is, uh, to get a google review, which one do you want to ask everybody? That’s step one. Everybody. Everybody? Yeah. Because if you don’t ask, you have not because you ask not. You got to ask everybody. So as an example, like for elephant in the room, I think last week we picked up like 120 reviews at one store. You no other store like 40 or 40. So you just got to ask everybody if you don’t ask everybody, I mean, you’re not going to get reviews. You have to ask everybody. That’s that step one. I don’t think a lot of people are doing that. Step two is it’s what do I say, man? You know, what do I say if I’m asking, what do I say? Okay. You want to appeal to people’s hearts and their self interest, right? Because if you ask somebody to leave you a review, they’re not going to do it unless you appeal to their hearts and their self interest. So here’s how I would get a review for elephant room today. Okay, great. Okay. Pretend you’re a customer, right? All right. You just got your haircut. Will show him. How was your hair cut today? Man? It was great. This is my first time in. I love the experience. Did you really? Have you had a good time? Yeah, definitely. There was a lot more than just a haircut going on.

Well, here’s the deal. Um, my boss is obsessed with quality, you know, making sure we do a good job for you. Okay. And if you leave me a google review, I might get promoted. I mean that’s our whole business is based upon, you know, doing a good job or not. It would mean the world to me. If you could leave me a review. Do you know how to do it? Uh, I think so. Yeah. I think I’ve left a review before. So you have to. But one is you have to ask everybody right to, you got to appeal to their self interest. They want to help you out too because you might get, you know, yeah, a promotion or something which is true, but we promote people based upon the quality. And then third is you want to teach people how you want to say, do you know how to do it because no one knows how to do it, which is why you can’t text people asking them to leave you a review and have that substitute. The human interaction. People don’t know how to do it. They just don’t know how to get reviews. And if you don’t get to 100 reviews, you’ll never be top in google and you have to be top in google. It’s a virtuous cycle though. Once you get to be the top of your top in Google. So you get more clients, get more clients, get more reviews, you get more reviews, you get more clients.

I’m making lots of money. That’s how it works. But you’ve got to start by asking everybody. That’s the foundation. Then appeal to people’s hearts and their self interest. And then three, teach people have. Now, if you want to know, how do I get to the top of Google? That’s a longer show, but there’s four simple rules. One, your site must be googled. Canonical compliant, mean you must follow Google’s proven rules to you must have the most reviews, the most reviews. Three, you must have the most content. Whoever has the most content gets to be top. And for whoever has the most reviews, most content, most reviews must google canonical compliance and most mobile compliance. That’s how you get to the top of the Google shot. Good stuff. What’s your next question?

Okay, so this one’s, this one’s about firing, so that’s an intense one, but I have never personally seen a public hanging. So this quote a stands as a strong statement in my mind, Jack Welsh, the CEO, former CEO of General Electric, he grew the company 4,000 percent during his tenure from 1981 to 2001 pretty big guy, arguably one of the best ceos of all time. He says, public hangings are teaching moments. Every CEO has to do it. A teaching moment is worth a thousand ceo speeches, ceos talk and Blab about culture each day, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It’s just cultural. People just don’t want to do it. So my question would be for those who have never publicly hung and employee, but actually have the guts to do it, what are some of the things that you’ve seen employees do that when merit it went okay? And again this would be like very rare going to do this very much, but if you have to, you have to. So I’ll just tell you my most recent public hanging. Andrew, were you there when I publicly fired that person for Elf in the room? Did you see that? Where I really lost it on him. I don’t know if you saw that one. I don’t think you were. Okay. So anyway, I was at a meeting and one of our managers was teaching our all staff.

It was an all staff meeting and our managers doing some teaching and as he’s teaching a young lady goes, whatever, just whatever just keeps rolling her eyes and being difficult. She also showed up for our 8:00 AM meeting, looking like she had just finished drinking alcohol at 7:56. Actually been up all night, you know, it’s looking terrible. Showing up late, being sarcastic. So I pulled her aside privately and I said, hey was me and one other person. I always, whenever, if I’ve ever had to have talked to a woman, I try to every single time it’s like me and one other person. So I said, hey, I need you to understand that you being late today is an issue and you ruin your eyes. And being sarcastic, that’s not a good thing. So I need you to understand that. Do you understand? Are we on the same page?

Are you aware that I’m aware? Can we stop that? She’s like whatever. So I said, everybody gather around, everybody gather around gap quick, quick. Everybody gather around her. But again it’s like 50 people. Wow. And 40 people on it. And I said, hey, hey everybody, this person here is in a whole, you know, but I didn’t use the word a whole. I, I use the full word, the full, the full descriptive narrative. The full, which stands for a whole person, a whole person. Not a partial person, but a whole purse. No, I say this person here isn’t a hole and you’re being fired for being an asshole. Get out of here and you can talk to me. I’m going to file all day, file all day and go online. I want you to go online. Here’s your final act to get your final check. Go online until everybody.

You know what a jerk I am, because anybody who knows you is an idiot to get out of here. That was my last one I did, it’s like a and so she went on social media and just ripped me and ripped the and I loved it because everyone that she ripped were like idiots to. She’s an idiot because idiots love hanging out with idiots. That’s what I’m more of a civil one. I did recently. We had a guy about three years ago that kept a downloading adult content during the workday and soliciting prostitutes during the work day. He was a coder, so that was a fun one because I talked to him and talked to him and talk to him about not doing it, you know, and, and, and like he was stealing stuff and he was trying to actually spread gossip and rumor about me and I heard, I knew he was doing so I was kind of like, here’s the coder.

So I had to get all the passwords and get it all. And I, I talked to him. I had written him up numerous times and so the final day he came to work. This was before Andrew came back, this is a good one. And I said, hey everybody. Hey everybody, I want everybody to know that this person’s being fired for watching porn at work. Oh, and so I thought we would do is just go through his files real quick and watch them all together. What do you think? And everyone’s like, oh my God. I’m like, I dunno. There’s so much of it. How should we start? Should we watch? What’s your favorite videos? I don’t know. I mean, how do you organize? There’s so much here, like your hard drive is so full of it. Or why don’t we go look at your recent prostitute purchases on Craig’s list?

Let’s do that first and then we’ll watch the movie. This will be a fun. He just walks out like, dude, dude, dude, you don’t know what you’re doing here. I’m like, no, I know what it’s. Who’s your guy you buy your weed from? Because I do like is fun when you bought that stuff. I can you can we, can we. Can you show me real quick? I’m not sure if the password. No, no, I forgot I and he says he’s walking out. I’m like, I forgot. Hey, you can’t just leave. Take this porn box, take it with you. It’s filled with all your stuff. I want you to have it. Come on, following falling out and be like, take it with you. Seriously. Seriously. What are their employees laughing? John was there. I did it. Yeah, you can ask John. I’m like, take it with you.

Take it with you. Bring your porn. I don’t want you to forget it. You’ve worked so hard to gather so much of it. Take it it. Take it, take it tell. Anyway, that’s the last two I’ve had. That was a good one. Wow. But what happens is it’s about once every year and a half, but it’s when you had this person who works in her office is spreading gossip all the time. They’re like, yeah, you know, clay skimming my check. He’s not paying me. He’s not paying me very well, and he just. That’s what you do, you, you, you build a discontentment. You destroy a company from within. So you start telling the employees during lunch, you start to go, he’s skimming my check. He screwed me over. This guy’s making number 2000 a week. He’s scamming my check, he’s just taken advantage of me. But meanwhile you’re the one who’s downloading the poor and you’re the one who’s getting the prostitute.

You’re the one who’s been written up for pot smoke in the office and the bathroom. True Story. Walked in there. I could smell it, you know, so I mean I, I’ve, I’ve taken the high road, tried everything possible, but yet you’re doing that to me. You know what I mean? So when I found out was happening, I was out of town, I saw a video camera, what’s going on with this guy’s going down because I see him telling the other employees, trying to convince them, other employees to leave with him, you know. So I, I mean I do that, you know, about once a year. I haven’t done it a long time to have a really good team right now. We have a very good team right now so I haven’t done it. It’s probably, I feel like it’s been about a year since I’ve done it.

We probably do. I probably do. I mean we probably any moment we should probably do it. I don’t have anybody right now who deserves to be publicly hung. I mean, I tried to fire people privately every time, but if somebody is going to try to destroy the cultural fabric, I’m going to make it so awkward. They’re just, it’s like you’re for me or against me. That’s the purpose of a public hanging. So people know either there for you or against you. You can’t be half half it, you know? Yeah. That’s really good. Uh, I guess we’re about 18 months ago maybe there’s a young lady who was doing a lot of gossipy things, what she was doing as she was starting her own business to directly compete with another business I have while still working for me and she would call my current clients and that particular business and try to get them to join her new company.

And so, you know, what I did is I just called everybody that she was working with and said, hey, I want you to know that this person’s going to call you. And when they do, they actually work for me, but they’re going to be calling you while they still work for me and are going to try to convince you to switch to their new company. And when that happens, if you think that’s ethical and you’re done with it, then you can go with them. But it’s easier for me or against me. But that’s it. By the way, here’s a little audio file. I have a little video link of her meeting where she was meeting with clients and here’s the video of her doing this. So watch this video to blast the blast. So I, I tend to do that. I mean, I tend to be pretty intense about public firings.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that helpful? I think many listeners will have enjoyed those stories. Those are. I mean they’re, I mean they just happen a lot. I mean, is this, you know, if you don’t own a business, I mean I don’t, I don’t know. I mean it’s just like a bill bellacheck the superbowl last year he did a public hanging. Do you remember that? You did. You. Did you see that story? Did you hear that story? No. No. Malcolm Butler, a plate for the Patriots and Bill Bellacheck won’t even talk about what he did, but he’s there starting defensive back in the superbowl, the best. Their best player on defense, arguably or one of their top players. So He lets everybody get dressed up for the super bowl. They’re singing the national anthem, you know, and the parts and the. It was an and the rockets. Red Glare, the bombs bursting in air.

Gave proof through the night. That was too the bop bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. And a happy new year. You know, the point is. So anyway, it’s this whole, the national anthem is going on and meanwhile this guy’s like, I’m going to play. I’m going to be out there. It’s the superbowl. My family’s here. He walks over the guy and says, hey, you’re not playing today. And he’s in his uniform. So the entire super bowl, he had to stand there in his uniform and not play the starting player. His whole family was gathered national TV. The cameras went to them and like the second quarter they’re like such and such, hasn’t played it all of the days. He heard what’s going on and they flipped to the camera of him and he’s just on the sideline crying like a baby, but he’s an adult man who violated the team’s policy yet again.

So I am a huge fan of public hangings. Let me tell you what that message did. It just moves, sent a message to the whole team that like, you might be an all pro player and you might think you’re awesome, but we just watched you cry on the superbowl. Everyone in America just watched you stand there on the sidelines crying. So guess who’s in charge here? Public hangings do provide great teaching moments. They do it, really do so. But you don’t do them very often, but you can sometimes have to do it. Um, the Bible’s filled with public hangings to, you know, the Pharaoh. Hey, Pharaoh, let my people go. Moses says, let him go. He said, Nah, I don’t want to let them go. It’s all right. You know, locusts plagues. I mean, there’s all these things that these are teaching moments. People are like, Hey, if you mess with God, you’re going to get locusts teaching moments and then this other don’t get caught up in the semantics.

Just sometimes you have to publicly show people what it means to screw with the wrong person. Sometimes you have to do that, so on a happy note, thrive nation. If you’re out there and you’re saying to yourself, hey, I want to grow a business and I want to learn how to manage people effectively, I would encourage you to book your tickets to our next in person. Thrive time show workshop where we teach you marketing, sales, branding, photography, videography, how to make it all work for you. The graphic design, the search engine optimization to sales systems, the PR. It’s all there in a two day 15 hour workshop format. You can learn more and get your tickets today by going to thrive time show.com. It’s thrive time show.com and if you want to get two free tickets and I know you do two free tickets and I know you do all you gotta.

Do is buy the workbooks. All you gotta do is go to thrive time show.com. Click on the little itunes link, find the thrive time, show on Itunes, find the thrive time, show on Itunes, leave us and objective review about what you’re learning and email us proof that you did it to info at thrive time. Show.com. Again, you subscribe on Itunes, leave us a review. Sin As proof, he did it to influence thrive time show.com, and we’re going to give you two free tickets to the world’s best and most highly reviewed business workshop. Now mind you, it’s real business. It’s not business with the BS. It’s is real business. It’s business without the BS, so it’s a little bit more raw, a lot more effective than what you’re used to. So if you’re looking for a charlatan, talking about how do you feel, you’re not going to like it. But if you’re looking for real talk from real entrepreneurs out there, I’m just like you who’ve had success. You’re going to love our in person workshops. Get your tickets [email protected], and now that any further I do three, two, one, boom.