What Are the Common Mindsets of Super Successful People? – Ask Clay Anything

Audio Transcription

Do you have questions? America’s number one business coach has answers. It’s your brought up from Minnesota. Here’s another edition of ask clay. Anything on the thrive time business coach radio show?

I’m super excited to be joined here today with you and a rendezvous with my friend Mr Derrick. He works for a major college and he helps. Uh, what do you, what are you doing to help the college do a, I hope to find kids to come to our university. Okay. So you. And by the way, you just got to eat that microphone like it’s like a corn dog, like it says, like it’s like a spiritual engagement with the microphone there. And so you help find kids to go to college? I do. And uh, you, you’re coming into town today. You came into the riverwalk office and you shadowed at one of the elephant in the room stores, I think the 91st in a Lin 91st and Yale store. It was. Yes. And then you shat on the call center? Yes. And now you’ve shadowed here in the actual recording of the show.

Uh, what has been your experience, what is your experience been like so far? It’s been a great experience to be able to see the knowledge that’s been based out of all of this is phenomenal and well this just so you kinda know behind me there is a bookshelf and anyone on the bookshelf, all the books that I’ve read, but all the books that have a green sticker on it, that means that we’ve interviewed that author. Wow. So the goal is to interview all of. Now some of them are dirt authors are dead, so it’s harder, but we’re not going to stop. We’re going to keep marketing, you know, call them all until they cry, buy or die again, that’s my motto. Call them all to the cry, buy or die, comma. Again, it’s kind of a chuck norris resilience to it. But as promised, you can ask me any question you want.

There are no out of bounds. Questions, any question you want to ask on this edition of ask me anything? So what do you got? Well, I actually, I hear your story a lot as far as you not growing up with money. Yep. Neither did I. So my question is, I see your life and where you’re at now, how do you actually create a mindset for success? Okay. Well I’m Andrew. Please put this on the show notes and I’ll kind of go through my top five. Okay. So Andrew, what I’ll do is I’ll go through the five real quick and then I’ll have you repeat them back to me just so I make sure we get them on the show notes. So mindset number one is delaying gratification. And I, I just don’t think that’s a cultural thing that people are okay with. And I think part of it is because at a certain point most people want to become an entrepreneur once they’ve got to the end of what they can achieve financially or the or the box of their dreams.

Canola make, they can’t fund the achievement of their dreams. So they’re kind of confined in a box and I’d call that box personal finances. And so they’re kind of exchanging hours for compensation. Some people call it the wage cage and they go, okay, I want to start my own business, but then they’re not willing to go backwards financially for a while, so they’re not willing to exchange. Good for great. So living below your means is a huge deal and I’ll add more all add more detail to that in a minute. Okay. The second principle is that, again, this is just kind of along the same idea, but people are not willing to work six days a week. Right? And I actually think it’s unethical to work less than six days a week. I actually think it’s a biblical thing. I’m not, I’m not even kidding.

I do think it’s a. So I have. I’ve worked with a lot of pastors who are biblical scholars and Andrew, you’ve probably heard a few of them on the show and all of them agree that the Bible is teaching us to work six days a week. In exodus it talks about on the sixth day you’ll reap the bigger harvest. God created the earth in six days. Right? So I. I’m very, from a religious perspective, I do agree that one should work six days and rested on the seventh. Okay. Third idea. The Bible does not talk about retirement and most Americans are obsessed with this idea called retirement. So if the goal is to earn a bunch of money and then to be able to piece out mentally at age 60, I think that’s a wrong goal. My pinon. Sure. I think if you want to be semi retired at all times, so work six days a week until you will need to work one day a week and then just work one day a week your whole life as opposed to always.

You know what I mean? Some people are just like, I just got to get a million dollars in the bank and then I’m gonna retire. Right. And so what happens is people are then exchanging an entire career that sucks for payoff and a lot of people don’t have their health when they’re in their sixties and seventies. Right? So it’s weird, but at the time you have the most money, you have the least health. So that’s a, that’s a thing for his essential trick. People always are the ones at the top in the centric. People are always the ones not at the top. So it’s if 90 percent of businesses fail, then you could say that the centric business owner fails. The vast majority of business owners fail. If a Washington Post reports that 72 percent and we put that on the show notes before, we’ll do it again.

Oh yeah. Seventy two percent of women surveyed admit to cheating on their spouse. Seventy two percent. That means the centric thing to do, the average is to cheat on your wife. But the essential thing to do is have the rule that I have. And Andrew, you’ve seen this. I never am alone with women. It’s true ever. Yep. I said, but it’s not culturally normal. It’s east centric, right? Um, another example would be, um, you know, living below your means that’s so ecentric like my wife and I having three jobs, applebee’s, target and direct TV, and then getting to a place where we had the money to buy a huge house and to not do it. Think about this for a second based off of my businesses that I’m involved in here. I could pay myself right now. I could. I not gonna I don’t, but just an example like elephant the room.

I pay myself $8,000 a month. Ninety $6,000 a year. I could take about $60,000 a month right now. Then come if I wanted to know and not impact the businesses at all, but I don’t. I mean, Andrew, why did we, why are we in a big office hosting conferences? Why are we spending, you know, eight grand a month optimizing a website. I mean, why are we, what? Wha what? What’s going on with explaining it? Why do you think I do that? Why do you think that instead of just taking income of 50 grand a month or 80 grand a month or 90 grand a month, why do I just keep putting it all back into optimized? We’re almost top in the world now for the phrase business conferences, right? Why do I do that? Because in the long run it’s all in the long run.

It’s in the long play. So when you’re focusing on growing the business as opposed to having gratification right now, you’re going to have, you’re going to live a uh, Aaron and has told me this the other day, he said, you, you, you have to live like no one else now. So you can live like no one else later. Right is a great quote. It’s 100 percent true. And so I, I think in terms of five year we, I won’t do any business idea at all unless I talked to the guy across from me and I said, hey, are you committed to do that to doing this without making a profit for five years? And if they say, well, I try and I said, are you willing to sell your house and move into the actual building to make it work? And so I’m just, I’m not.

Can I put a lot of Asian clients I’ve worked with who’ve done very, very well. And if you said how, how’d you make your nail salon work? They stay. I literally sold my house and I live at the nail salon right now. And like, you live there, doctors and dentists, I mean people from India, like how did you afford this clinic? Because I live upstairs all the time, but that’s like not something a Caucasian client almost ever says. It’s just, it’s just, it’s crazy. But it’s like, unless you’re willing to be all in, then you shouldn’t try it because it doesn’t mean it takes. I mean, with the elephant that a membership model as an example, I mean, if you cut someone’s hair for a dollar, how much money are we bringing into Andrew? Uh, per hair cut. If we charged a dollar for the haircut, how much are we bringing in for a haircut?

Bringing in a dollar? Yeah. So if we did a thousand haircuts your first month of business, how much money is coming in a $1,000? So, I mean, you think about that, um, it’s going to take at least 60 days to get half of those people signed up for memberships. And so our model with elephant in the room is we want to get to 1200 square foot facility and we want to get to 500 members as soon as possible and I would say it takes somebody about a year to do that. So it’s about a year to get to a break even point. But after that you’re busy forever, you know. So it’s just that mindset. So Andrew, let’s review the principles and Derek, if you have any questions because I’m a bad teacher then you can or you know, because I don’t think we have any bad listeners out there that we have a bad teacher, a named Clay Clark on occasion.

Solid. Make sure that everybody gets this. So principle number one was what Andrew, uh, the mindset of successful people. Principle number one is delaying gratification. Do you have any questions about that? Specifically? Action steps for that? Not at all. I just think that’s like, I don’t know that people grasp how much. I mean, I, I have always worn the same thing everyday. Just it’s a different thing every year. So I wore a suit, a suit with white shirt and red tie and if you go to the bathroom you can see all my white shirts. Yeah. But I wore that like I had five of them and that’s all I wore. Never shop for new clothes ever. Same thing everyday. I don’t know whether people are spending on clothing, but I wasn’t spending anything. I literally went to a Joseph, a banks dropped a grand on five suits, never bought anything new all year.

And every year I would just bend a thousand. I mean a never wanted, never had cable, don’t do cable, you know, uh, never went out to eat those first few years of marriage. Never went on a trip. Never we went mean with, we had family one time that offered to take us on a family trip, but we never, we just live below the means and now we can just do whatever we want to. So next principle work six days per week. That idea really freaks people out. I don’t know if you have any questions about that, but that is one that almost nobody agrees with me on. I feel like I’m alone sometimes with,

but all of the multimillionaires that I’m friends with,

all of us have worked six days per week in route to our success. So. Okay. Every one of them. It’s crazy. They, everyone else thinks we’re nuts. But any questions about that? You feel good about that? No, it makes complete sense. Another example, I do start my work day at 3:00 AM and most people aren’t up until seven, so before our headstart everyday. And I go to bed at nine because I don’t watch tv so I get six hours of sleep so I have an unfair for our advantage every day. So what do you do when you actually get up at 3:00 AM? What’s your, what’s your process like? Oh, this is a good question. Good question. Um, so right now it’s different. Different seasons of my life during my routine, but my routine right now is I get up at three and I finished editing the show that we’re going to export for the podcast.

That takes me about 30 minutes after I’ve already spent the hours editing tomorrow though. I had to wake up at two because I got to do some editing, but the point is it’s normally three. Okay. I always sleep six hours, so right now I’m editing the podcast because it requires uninterrupted thought. It takes me about 30 to 45 minutes to finish it. A sit in the show notes over. Then I go to the office and work out with John at four. We’re going to four, finished working out at 4:45. Uh, four, 45. I work on my to do list and I have the to do list here. I can show you. This is my to do list for today. Everything is my list. I type it up everyday. And then what’s red is done. What’s yellow needs to be done in my quiet time planning time, which is I do on the weekends.

Um, and then I a print off my to do list, cross off the Adams from yesterday. And then our staff meeting starts at our coaching meeting. Andrew first meeting starts at 6:00 AM, 6:00 AM. And we have a four work week at thrive for our employees. They work Monday through Thursday and then they get off Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and we have a coaches meeting when I coached the coaches every single morning at six. Um, and then it’s every hour of my day is blocked out. And then today, what time did we leave to record today? To two. To 32? Yeah. Yeah. So my work day quote unquote done it too. And then I’ve already worked though from three to two, you know, working out, maybe it doesn’t count. So I’ve worked from four to two, so I’ve already put in 10 hours. And then if we have a guest on the show, I’ll interview a guest.

If we don’t, I’ll record a show and then I’m done usually at four or five every day. So are you creating that list every morning or is that a list that you’re creating at the beginning of the week? Uh, this list is as I get things done on the list, I cross it off but also add new things. Ah, Gotcha. So like today I’ve got, I’m burning fires, so whenever I wrap up, I’m recording. So today I know I have to have an uncomfortable conversation as soon as we wrap up today and we’ll just have a person on our team who, uh, um, is really, really doing a good job and they are not hearing they’re doing a good job enough I think and I feel like it would be bad for me not to, I just heard they were kind of moping around a little bit so I’m going to call them and just make sure they understand how much they’re valued.

But it could be uncomfortable because when you’re calling someone who’s openly voicing frustration, it might have already past the point of epicness or you might have, you know what I mean? You just don’t know. So that’s not a comfortable thing and I like to do that at the end of my day. That way the worst emotional aspect is done at the end for me and it’s easier for me to have a productive day, but I don’t like to start with that kind of thing. Gotcha. You know? But any difficult mentally grueling work, I do that in the morning, but like emotional stuff at the end of the day, for me, somebody out there listening, I want to do the opposite of that. That’s my routine every day, man. And then every hour of the day is blocked out. So I think today, let me read it off today. So today, 6:00 AM. We had the first meeting, seven.

I met with a veterinarian recruiter who’s the top in the country at her job, Ms Dot Stacy purcell. Eight o’clock and met with pastor Brian Gibson, a river city church. Nine o’clock commit with master machine. Ten o’clock. Uh, Roy with RC auto specialist who I partner with and grow our seo specialist.com. And by the way, if you have a Ford Automobile, get over there right now. Take advantage of our everyday. Great prices are Seattle specialist for 80 years of experience. Then at 11:00 I called Michael Levine, the former PR consultant for Nike, Prince Michael Jackson. And now my pr consultant that I met with Erin antice, the head of the largest home building company in Oklahoma. We just celebrated hitting $52,000,000 of sales for the year up from 48 the year before, or I think we’re from 49. We’re going to end at 53 million for the year I think, and then after that I came over here and then I interviewed a Dr Rick Hanson.

Nice. And this is what I do every single day. It’s the same routine just everyday, everyday. Homina Homina, next principal, Andrew. Next one is east centric. People are at the top in centric. People are at the bottom. Does that make sense? To Go ahead and expand on that. What most people care about what everybody thinks and all successful people, that’s the only thing they don’t care about. Okay. I don’t care at all. It wasn’t even a good example. The other day. This was probably Andrew. I’m old enough where the other day, it could be a year ago, so the other day, like when I was 37. You’re right, I remember we were talking to him during the Christmas. We said I’ll leave. That went all, all went out and saw like rocky or something and we get back, you know, everyone’s like, I paid for the tickets by the way, so it’s expensive.

There’s a lot of people, family, friends, you know, and my whole thing is I like to, you know, treat people to these kinds of things so we get back to the house and I’m like, well guys, what’d you think about the movie will ride away? Here comes the doom cloud and I see it coming a mile away, but one family member goes, that movie was good. I didn’t expect to be that good. It is so good. Wow, that’s a good movie. It really revived the series, you know? And then the other person who the entire movie was like, what’s going on? What’s happening to the person who’s unable to follow the plot? The talker, talker, the talk, they say, I thought it was a waste of time. Honestly. It was like every movie is the same. Well, I, if that would have been said to me, I would have said if they would’ve said, well, what do you think about the fact that I don’t agree with your opinion?

I would say, I don’t value your opinion, but that’s not western culture. Right? But I watched these people passively aggressively fighting during the rest of the night. They’re like, you really liked that movie. I thought you were into better movies. You didn’t like that movie, are you not? Can you follow it? And I’m just watching this argument and successful people really don’t really argue about opinions. Then I watched it evolve. I remember this was like, I’m like, this is never going to end. Then there was a family member who starts talking to another family member about predestination. Oh, nice. You’re like, well, it’s Christmas and you know, do you think that Judas honestly was actually probably the most important character in the Bible? And after a person says, what do you mean? They go, well, their job was to turn over Jesus and to get him killed, and if he didn’t do that in all of us would be burning in hell.

So I’m thankful for Judas and I’m like, here we go again. It’s opinions and successful people just don’t get into discussions about opinions. They just don’t. It’s very. So as an example, I am a fan of the Patriots because they are a superior organization and they win all the time. It is not an opinion. They win all the time. Now Soon I believe the browns will do very well because of Baker Mayfield, but the. But the truth statement for awhile in the nineties was the cowboys are the best team. It’s a fact, but you’ll see people arguing about Oklahoma State and oh you and who’s better and who’s not? And they get into these opinion if you see that, as I’m sure you see to your job, successful people never argue opinions. They just don’t, which is a very east centric idea. So essentially people just don’t.

They say like, I dress like I’m like a, a high score from 1999 and we were like, you, you literally are now wearing. And one short. How much are those? There are $6 or $6. I bought them online. I got like 10 of them. Like you bought 10 pairs of the same shorts. Well, yeah, there’s $6 apiece. Wow. Really? And what are you aware of? It said what? We’re a baseball jersey. And they said, well why? I don’t know. I just liked the way it looks like you were a boom hat everyday. Don’t you ever dress up? Nope. It’s true. And I don’t ever think it’s weird. In fact, I think it’s weird that other people don’t self actualize when they dress up, you know? So I don’t know. And at work I think we should wear a suit. So I wore a suit until I didn’t need to wear a suit, but now that I don’t need to wear a suit in order to sit anymore, but it’s such an eccentric thing.

People like you, they’ll ask my wife, do you let him go out like that? And she’s like, yeah, no matter what restaurant we’re going to, he will literally wear a baseball Jersey and soccer shorts or basketball shorts and it’s just weird for people, but it’s not weird for me. Right. So I don’t know, I just essentially people, if you look at major successful people like Rockefeller took a nap every day at noon and would never eat more than a fist size portion of food ever. Wow. Ever. He also logged every single expense. Wow. You know, tim ferriss logged has logged every single workout of his entire life. The four hour workweek guy. Crazy. Yeah. I mean there’s so many weird example, but people are just a, a Kanye West will spend uninterrupted 24 hours working on a song. I mean there’s just, I can go on and on about the extreme essential qualities of successful people, but they all have them and they just don’t really care what conventional wisdom wisdom says.

So it’s a lot of thoughts there. I’m going to hit this button real quick here. Just. Alright, Andrew, next principle. The next one. Uh, that was all the principles, but we have a few more. Getting up early, you have to get up early, you have to get up early, get up early. I just want to make sure people are getting this. You need about six hours of sleep. Uh, some studies say seven. You don’t need nine. And every we talk about, look, he’s an alcoholic, he’s a gamble. A hall. Like, look at that guy. It’s a gamble. A hall. He’s a workaholic. And we, we demonize people for being gambled. Holics, workaholics, alcoholics, whatever. What about sleep holics? Listen, Hey, if you’re waking up like an 11 wearing sweatpants on a Saturday, that’s a problem. You know, you’ve got to get up, man. I’m gonna to be dead soon.

You can sleep all you want when you’re dead, but I mean, you really only need about six hours of sleep a day, seven hours of sleep to maintain optimal, you know, uh, energy. So a lot of people are just set the alarm for nine and get up at three man. And you say, well, I just got tired in. Let me tell you, you’ll be tired when you start waking up at three. I feel like when I get like 8:50, I’m like, this is the longest I just collapsed everyday. So is there any other question that you have at all about elephant in the room about business, about the idiosyncrasies of the man cave at all? Actually, I do have. I have one more question. Oh yes. When it comes to time management. Yes. What do you do with your time as far as time management? Besides keeping the list? All right. How do you come up with the stuff that you know, what you need to do? Well, I, I’m always asking myself what is my biggest limiting factor? So that’s what I do. And then I have principles that I live by that again, gosh, these are so offensive. Andrew. Pretty offensive. Okay. Here we go. So like one is if somebody texts me and you’re not paying me so you’re not paying me or I’m not paying you, I will not ever return the call during the day ever.

So if you’re a good friend of mine, I will not respond to you until I’m done with work. So like right now, and I turned my phone on every record, I will call back friends, but I never ever, ever, ever take a personal call during the day ever. And I also never make work calls at home so it ever blurred, so I’m not going to like, be at home doing sales calls. Sure. So that’s, that’s a, that’s a big thing also. I never ever look at my email at all. After 6:00 AM, I get my inbox down to zero every morning and I’m done.

Nice. So I’d never have distractions on email, but if you emailed me like a tenant am, I’ll respond to you by the next morning. It’s always within 24 hours. I just, I don’t ever check my email during the day. And never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever checked social media ever. Never. I refuse. And it’s written in the bathroom. So you’ve seen this Andrea. I will not talk about religion or politics or feelings during the work day. It’s true. So ever. So if you’re like, I don’t feel good. I’m like, I gotTa have I shown you my rash? I always asked that question. You’re like, what? And I just cleaned out. I have a ton of time because I’m never debating religion or politics. I’ve never responding to personal calls, you know? I just don’t. I mean it’s, it’s, it’s a. don’t you talk to your wife? No, I don’t.

I don’t talk to my wife during the day she works in the office. I talked about business, but at home I don’t talk to her about business. Okay. I like these principles I live by. They’re pretty intense, but they helped me. They work, they do and it’s very effective. So also if I’m in a meeting I cannot be interrupted. I cannot be interrupted if I’m in a meeting. So I’m in a meeting with you. Right. And so you’re here. Let’s say you to have a meeting and we’re supposed to meet today about you buying a franchise. Let’s say we’re meeting and we have blocked off an hour to sign agreements. I don’t care who’s coming in that room. I’m not going to let them interrupt me. It will not happen. So I just, I’m just very focused. Um, I never eat lunch. I drink my lunch. You’re an alcoholic.

No, I’m like, always have like a protein shake. I’m John a lot of times likes to make meat or something, but I’ll just eat, like if a client cancels or is running behind, I’ll eat it. But I don’t ever leave ever the office ever to eat lunch. Huh? Um, I also don’t ever do anything that’s not my highest and best use at home. So I don’t ever clothes, I don’t ever mow a lawn and I haven’t done these things and I was like 18, 19. I never washed clothes. Ever. Never folded laundry. Ever did ever. I don’t ever mow a lawn because like my, my cleaning lady, Alma is awesome and I, when I was 19, 20 years old, I, I’m like going, this is not my highest and best use. I pay an employee or pay someone to do because it just saves you time, you know?

But I, it’s. So anyway, I just, I don’t ever do anything that’s not my highest and best use. So I would never like help you move. So if you said you want me to move, I’d say I will give you a $500 check and you can pay the people to help you, but I will not because not my highest and best yet. Yeah. So these are just, I think they’re all things I don’t ever network. Um, uh, and the way people network network today, we networked with Dr Hansen. That was great. And with a phone call we connected, you know, but I’m not going to like go to a chamber event and shake hands because it’s not a highest and best use of my time. So these are all things I don’t do. I don’t protest a church I used to go to. They used to protest a lot.

You don’t walk to the city. They’re placed at these protests. They would prep, the church would protest a lot of things and I’d say, Hey, I’ll, I’ll pay other people to protest. I’m not sure what they make per hour, but if they make 30 an hour I’ll just pay him 90 bucks to go protest for three hours, but I’m not going to go protest. Not a good use of my time, I’ll pay someone else to protest for me. Yeah. So that’s kind of the mindset there. And, and uh, um, and then just one big, big ribbon on it. I always want to overdeliver. So if you are paying me, I always want to do better service than I promised so that you always want to come back and tell your friends and it’s like a psychological problem. If I said I’ll get it to you by 9:00 AM, I’ll get it to you by eight, 8:00 AM.

If I said I’ll get it to you by five, we’ll get to buy two. I’m always just trying to exceed expectations. If I said I’ll get, I’ll charge you 1500. I try to build a 1400. You see on your bill, dude, you didn’t charge me full price. I’m like, yeah, I just wanted to over deliver. I always, I’ve just very much that way. So any other questions that isn’t helpful? Oh, absolutely. Of Times. I don’t know if that helps. I feel like, Gosh, I don’t know if I’m a good communicator, Andrew. And then I go look in my mirror, Andrew, you know what I do? I’ll look at my, I, I, this is audio of me last night after our last podcast, but a great guy like Derek on the show and I thought I don’t know if the show went well. So I go into the bathroom and you without my permission Mike to me yet again you did. And this is audio of what I was saying to the mirror. So I don’t want to have that moment again. So Derrick, we appreciate you being on the show. Thank you very much. Andrew. You’re doing a great job as always. Who Shit. And let’s end the show with the boom. So here we go. Three, two, one. Boom.

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