Stick to Your Guns. But If You’re Out of Bullets…Run – A Knowledge Bomb

Audio Transcription

Grabbed the duck tape and mentally prepare yourself for yet another mind-expanding knowledge bomb from America’s number one business coach, Clay Clark.

Oh, thrive nation. Welcome back to another exciting edition of the thrive time show on your radio and podcast download. And on today’s show I’m excited because inside the studio today we have Tulsa’s number one, chiropractor Dr. Breck in the house. Dr Greg, how are you, sir? Doing Great. How are you doing, Glen? I have doing extremely, extremely well and I’m excited to talk about today’s subject. Stick to your guns, but if you’re out of bullets run, but before we get into that, I want to ask you as a, as a Chiropractor, as an entrepreneur, what are your Saturdays look like? What did you do this past Saturday? Well, this Saturday I was actually at a poem and dance competition with my daughter. Oh really? Yeah. Was that fun? Was that. No, that was an oakland city. Okay. Have a palm in dance competition. How old is she? She’s 13.

13. Okay. Did she do well? She did well. They took second place in the state. Okay. Second place will. Big shout out to her. What’s her name? Claire. Claire. Big Mega point. Big shout out to Claire. Great job, Clara. Really Thrive nation. If you’re out there in your car, just kind of start clapping for Claire. Let’s clap for glare. Okay. Now we’re talking today about sticking to your guns, but if you’re out of bullets, run. Well let me just tee up some scenarios real quick. Alright. Snare down. Number one, let’s say you’re a business owner and you have the principle that you’re going to fire people who are underperforming negative people. You’re not going to put up with it. No, no, no. You are going to hold people accountable. You’re going to have a happy office, but you can’t fire the person and you’ve already written them up and warned them and you’ve talked to them and you’ve had as bad as many meetings as you could possibly have.

Dr. Breck, what typically happens if you do fire someone and you don’t have a backup plan. Oh, and you don’t have a backup plan if you don’t have a bag of urine, a lot of trouble. Have you ever been to implement in a place as a entrepreneur when it was just when you had a, maybe you and maybe just to, to other employees and one of them ghosts and all of a sudden you’re in a bad spot? I was in a position where I had one employee, one employee, one employee, and I had let her go. It was not a good situation. Um, but I, my backup plan wasn’t going any better. It really wasn’t any better. So, uh, yeah, I was in a tough spot, no doubt about it. Well, I’m going to read this notable quotable from Jack Welch. This is the CEO of Ge who grew the company by 4,000 percent during his tenure at 4,000 percent on believable.

He says, the final relationship that cannot be ignored is with disruptors. They’re individuals who cause trouble for sport and citing opposition to management for a variety of reasons. Most of them petty. Usually these people have good performance and that that’s their cover. And so they’re endured or a piece, a company that manages people well, takes on disrupters head on. Okay. So let’s, let’s, let’s unpack few things here. He’s saying there’s a personality type that is difficult to work with, argumentative, uh, can take chorus, but yet they hide behind the fact that they’re good at their job. Right? So I just know for me, I will not keep you in my office if you’re a contentious person, even if you deliver great results, if I have a backup plan. Sure. Cancer, I mean you, you kind of got to weed that out. So talk to the listeners out there Dr.

Breck about the importance of your weekly recruitment and the group interview and how that’s helped you to be able to now always have a plan b. So initially I was very resistant to the group interview. We don’t have a lot of high turnover. We’re not a big office and so it was kind of a challenge for me to buy onto this, this concept initially. Um, but I found a, we’ve got two parts to our office and that’s a massage therapy as well as the chiropractic kind of we work together and um, there there’s some challenges when you work with massage therapist. I love them, but um, but that’s a group that you need to kind of have a good backup plan all the time because they, they, they’re kind of a gypsy spirit, if you will, with gypsy spirit. They like to go here and then they don’t want to be here and they want to be free to move and shift as life transitions and massage therapists have kind of a gypsy spirit.

Okay. Now I want to, I want to ask is this, is this, this is a curious the gypsy spirit. This is an interesting idea. So I have managed before with my company’s personal trainers. Yeah, a hairstylist. I’ve never managed massage therapist. Maybe somewhat similar to Tom hairstylist. Talk to me about the kinds are, are these are the typical net net, your massage therapist, but other massage therapists? Of course. Are they typically contractors or employees? Ours are contractors. And so they, they. Do they typically provide services for multiple businesses or just one location or are they, do they go to multiple offices or how do they work? For us, for the most part it’s been in our office or buy for themselves. Got It. Okay. Now when you, the personality type that, did they get to set their own hours? Do they like to say that’s part of being a contractor?

Is that, that’s part of the rules is you got to allow them the opportunity to set their own hours and schedule. How come you guys haven’t decided to make them employees at this point? What, what’s, what’s been kind of the thought behind it? Um, some of that’s the taxes involved in that, but then also giving them some of that freedom and they still want to be self employed, right? They still wanna be self employed. Well, I’m not, you’re asking for my advice, but I will tell you this, um, with our, uh, elephant in the room, men’s grooming lounge, we have three or four locations actually open. Um, we are an industry where most people in the hair industry, our booth rent, and for people out there who aren’t familiar with that, what will happen is you have a license to cut hair. So let’s just say that Dr.

Breck you own a hair salon and I’m a stylist. I’d come to you and I’d say, Hey, I’d like to bring my clients and a basic, I’m just bringing them to your physical building and then you get a portion of all the revenue that I bring in. Sure. And, uh, can I come work for you? And you go, yeah, okay. And I pay you a fee every month to rescue rent your space, right, to rent your booth. Well, the problem with that business model for the hair industry is that they’re always going to be looking for a better cheaper booth, Trent, right? But at the elephant in the room, everybody that we have as an employee, which blows the minds of a lot of people who’ve never worked in an employee relationship before, but the benefits for hairstylist, my hairstylist loved working for us so much.

They never have a slow day, right? Because we do all the marketing for them. Sure. If we are slow, we never send them home. They get, they make a flat hourly rate every single day. Right? And we have a membership model, so they have to a consistency of revenue. They never have to handle their scheduling. They never have to handle their marketing. They never have to see. I mean it’s just, it’s a really a great scenario, but people who are not familiar with what it means to be an employee who have kind of gypsy spirit, it’s tough to manage those people. Well, yeah, I you. It’s kind of some framework that they’re not used to. They’re uncomfortable and a little bit. They do not like the structure, but the point, the scenario number one I want to make sure I’m teeing up here is that if you do not fire underperformers, you’re going to be in a bad spot, but if you do fire underperformers and you don’t have a backup, that’s not very smart.

So I encourage everybody out there to embrace this idea. You want to stick to your guns. You do. You want to stick to your. We all want to stick to our guns, but if you don’t have any bullets, run his head for the hills, but don’t you see a lot of entrepreneurs? I’m sure that you did this early on. I know I did where you have like a principal, like I had a principal back in the day when I was first starting Dj connection that if you were a Dj and you work for me and you were late, right, I’m going to fire you. Okay. That wasn’t, that were. Well I’m not, I’m not kidding either. Policy. I was like, if you guys are late again, I’m going to fire you. And this was like 2000, maybe two and it was new year’s Eve and we had probably 20 guys coming back in from there, from that week.

Uh, they did from, from their show they did. They deejayed New Year’s eve show and I would call the client to make sure our guys were there on time and we probably had Dr Bragg, probably 10 of the 20 guys that were late to their show. Right? Like they got set up on time but they were late. We require them to get there two hours early to set up. And then. So if the party started at 8:00 PM, they to get there at 6:00 PM to set up. And I found out that about 10 of the 20 guys were late. Yeah. And knowing that we’re going to be fired if they were late. Right. That was my new policy. I rolled it out like a, it was, I rolled it out like the week of Christmas and I was going to stick to my guns because I told Vanessa, you know, the slowest time of the year is January.

So, um, I wasn’t going to be upset if I had to fire half the team able to weather it. And Dude, when the guys on loaded, I fired like fire, like 10 people in a row. It was crazy. They’re load in their gear and I’m like, Hey, you got to your show late, you’re fired and you’re fired. And it was like annuity drop where at the end of it it happened. And it was so funny because the people in my office were saying, dude, you just. Because they’re watching it happen, our workforce by you just fired tin of archives. Oh, but that was a time where I could stick to my guns, but if I can’t today, today, I would never do that kind of thing because I wouldn’t want, I don’t need to fire that many people to. We have a steady pipeline of new people so when people know they can be replaced because there’s always a new recruit coming in, they typically don’t play those games right now.

So you have a good backup plan that we do. Now, scenario number two, Dr Breck is you never want to say you have. Let’s say you have this policy. I don’t give refunds to dishonest customers. Let’s just say you have the policy. I am not going to give you your money back if you’re being dishonest. Okay, well that’s a great policy. That’s it. Let’s say that’s a great policy to have, but if you, uh, have a terrorist customer, have you ever had a terrorist patient before? Let’s go at least five years or more back. Okay. Okay. So it’s done nothing to nobody current way back in the day. Can you tell me the worst case scenario? I, I like the hell patient. The patient where you thought, how in the world did this person become my patient?

Yeah. Unfortunately I was kind of at a point where I couldn’t fire anybody patient wise or otherwise I needed every patient that would come through the door, but I would get these sob stories, scenarios have, you know, I’ve got this particular situation and this other third party is responsible so they’re going to pay and I’m going to take full advantage of all of your services. Yet, you know, when the information that’s necessary to get paid on a, it comes to light. It’s kind of not there. It’s smoking mirrors.

So you’re saying that this is a patient that doesn’t have insurance, they don’t have insurance and they’re also not paying you, so you’re never going to get paid. I’m never getting Nana coming in. Okay. What other, what are other kinds of. And it’s so, I mean, you only let it go so far before you have to have that conversation.

Uh, that one, I think we got about six visits in because they kind of had some reasonable sounding explanation each time. So the first two is kind of okay, and then it started to creep up more and more, but you do have to definitely have a cutoff point at some point. Are you just going for the ride?

Oh, okay. I’ll give you a Harris Harris Story. Yeah. We have a guy who used to come into our downtown elephant in the room location in every time he get that haircut. And he was like, oh, I want to get up a fade and I want a little cutting edge that up. Can I get his hair? He would. He was the most particular person ever. He was a fabulous man. We’ll just leave it at that. He’s a fabulous man. And then he would go, oh, I forgot my wallet. Oh, I have it. What? I will do. What? I will do. This one stanza movement, I, I. is that as George because dance move. I think so. Okay. Then he would say, he would say, Oh, here’s the deal. I’m going to go. I’m going to go home and I’ll come right back. All right, now I’ll come right back.

You. I’m good for Lydia. Would ever come back, right? Well then he would go to our South Tulsa store. Yep. Four weeks later. Book an appointment under his middle name. Okay. But same last name and he had like a cell phone in his office number, but his is a part of the plant comes in again and it gets his hair cut. Very difficult. Takes instead of a half hour, it takes like an hour. And then he goes, I have for. Oh my. I have forgotten my wallet. Just rushed out. This dude went to all three stores before we finally had to boot him. Right. We have another lady of Fabulous Lady. This will be about four years ago. Our elephant in the room, our South Tulsa location. It clearly states we will not cut your hair if you’re under the age of 12. Okay. And there’s a boy. Do you have any boys that down?

I have three wonderful girls. So your daughter’s 13? Thirteen, nine and seven slash 13. Nine and seven of the 13 year old. Her name again as Claire. Claire. Okay. Then who’s, who’s the nine year old? Laila. Laila, and then originally. Originally. Originally. Okay, so um, this lady though drops off of boys who are clearly like six, seven, eight and nine, definitely not 12. Right? And so the, she drops them off, which again, parents have to be with the kids if they are 12, sure. Drops them off like a, like a, a tribe of these young people. And the front desk person asked the kid, how old are you? He was nine, 12 coached at all. You know, he was told by his parents to freaking line, it’s a dollar for your first haircut because integrity, what’s that word? And this lady was dropping off for kids to get all boys their haircut for a dollar.

These are scenarios now, when we were first opening the elephant in the room downtown, let me tell you what, we would never enforce the policy that if you’re a p, w, if you have, if you had a in the past basically done a hit and run hair cut where you get your hair cut, you never paid us. We had a policy that you couldn’t come back. And let me tell you how many times we enforced that. Never, never. Because we needed every customer we were starting, but I think a lot of people get hung up on what are other areas where you see entrepreneurially need a customer when they’re not paying you. That doesn’t. I know I had the same mentality. Well let me ask this. What are other scenarios where you see entrepreneurs, maybe colleagues, people you know, or maybe even yourself where you have got stuck on a principal.

You’re like, I’m sticking to my guns. I’m sticking to my guns and ended up killing you because you had no bullets. You have a scenario where you think about your career to go. But what would be an example? I mean, so many patients don’t understand their own insurance. And so that’s a challenge for us all the time. Uh, we have to explain their insurance to them and then they feel like, you know, maybe we’re trying to pull the wool over their eyes or we’re trying to, uh, who does insurance work for Chiropractic care roughly? Well, walk us through is, it really works the same way as medical, but people just don’t understand it. So help us understand the situation. Is that you have a deductible at the beginning of the year and let’s assume that I’m new to the, explain what the

word deductible. So the insurance is, is a group of people that are going to pay your bills because you pay them every month. Got and with that they have a deductible. And what that is, is a certain amount of money that you have to pay before they start kicking in their portion. Got It. Okay. And so that used to be kind of low. Now it seems to be a lot higher. It keeps, it keeps going up a little bit. Um, thank you. Uh, past presidents. So the deductibles going up? Yeah. How much does someone typically need to pay right now? Deductible when they, when they go to see a chiropractor like yourself, like a good insurance policy used to be like a $500 deductible and now we’re talking more like 1500, 2000. Okay. So the patients have more money out of pocket today. They have a little more on the line now.

Okay. Let me, let me, I have a little sound effect real quick on behalf of all the listeners out there who have seen their deductibles go up. Right. Okay. So I’m with you. I’m so you’re explaining, but sometimes the patients get frustrated cause they feel like it’s, you’re, you’re trying to pull a fast one. So we’re trying to do what we can to help them meet that deductible or, or, you know, work with their insurance and we’re in network with certain insurances out of network with others and uh, but we always want to make the situation the best financially and personally for our patient. Got It. And so within what we’re allowed to do, we want to do that. Got It. But they don’t understand how that works. So there’s a copay or there is a coinsurance amount and uh, and they don’t, they’re not grasping onto how all these little things work together.

Got It. And so then we have to build them for something. They’re like, well, I thought you were going to bill my insurance. And I’m like, well we are, but this is your portion. Like I don’t understand, my last chiropractor, just he, he would do it for $10 in and that was it, or he just accepted my insurance. And so because chiropractors don’t accept it, shut off everything else. So some, some chiropractors don’t take insurance, just all cash. And then some chiropractors do take a insurance. Do you take insurance? I do. You do? Um, but, but some of your colleagues don’t. Right? Okay. Could you explain why some chiropractors, for the listeners out there that don’t know why some chiropractors, um, are taking insurance and some don’t? Well, what I found, because I was not taking insurance for a short period of time and I found that patients who have insurance want to use it, they are paying a premium every month.

And that makes sense. I get it. Got It. Um, but, uh, there are other chiropractors who don’t take insurance, uh, for the most part because it’s a headache. I mean, it’s, it’s, they might be able to, uh, have less staff cut their own cost if you’re paying just across the counter with your credit card or check or cash. And it’s a simple transaction. It’s, it’s, you’re here, your service and you’re done. And so, uh, you know that that’s clean and neat and it doesn’t take a lot of, uh, extra hours after I’d like to tell you a recent story about sticking to my guns. I’m going to pull it up on the screen so you can scan, you see the screen when you’re out there. If you need to switch to the other mic to you can, you can still the chip. Mike, if you want to, if that’s more convenient. Are you there? Okay, let me see. Oh, there’s a passive aggressive move. Let me, are you there now? Are you there? I’m here. Okay. So, um, if you type in my name, Clay Clark, there

it is. Yeah. So to the right you’re going to see my Wikipedia listing, right? And I’m not sure if you’re aware of how this works, but Wikipedia is a third party resource that verifies that, uh, the information that somebody is putting on the Internet is, is true. And my birth name is Clayton Thomas Clark, stronger, but yet my wikipedia listing says Clay Thomas Clark. Now I want to make sure we’re getting this principal at sticking to your guns. I have sent information back. They’re called Wikipedia. Next they go and verify information. Right? I have told this person, these people, these, this group. Have you ever met a wikipedia? I haven’t. They’re liking. They’re like a yelper. Okay. And they work for free to help police the Internet. Right? I have told them, look, my name is Clayton Thomas Clark. Many times, right. And no matter how many times I have told them that, my name is Clayton Thomas Clark, it continues to say Clay Thomas Clark.

Right. But I’m not going to stick to my guns because I have no bullets. Right? I’ve got nothing. It’s either you get a Wikipedia listing or don’t have a wikipedia listing. So recently you see they added here, born Clayton Thomas Clark. So I guess I’ve changed my name now, but again as Clay Thomas Clark, but I, I’m not going to sit there and fight with Wikipedia, but for a younger entrepreneur I would have fought with wikipedia. Right? I would’ve been like, no, I don’t want my listing up unless it’s right and then move on, or my book covers another example. You can find my books. I’ve written I think a 11 books and with my books that I write a lot of times, um, the book cover, the, the, the wikipedia, and Google just pulls your cover from your Amazon listing. Will I have one book I wrote? Have you ever read my book and make your life epic?

It’s kind of an incident occur. It’s kind of a dark, um, book there. There’s, there, there’s the cover there. It’s kind of a, a, a darker story cause it’s really raw and it’s my journey from the dorm room to the boardroom. Okay. And, um, I think it’s, I’m so raw that I think it’s uncomfortable for a lot of people because it’s like I, I’m very specific about all the things that happen, both good and bad. Look at my cover of the book. It’s on Amazon. That’s not the cover. No, but somehow Amazon has pulled the wrong cover of the book. So somehow I have a cover that’s not my cover on Amazon and again, sticking to my guns, I could either be selling, make your life epic on Amazon or not, but I don’t think there’s a need to sit there and get in a battle with Amazon over a book cover that.

That sounds like a losing battle. So if you’re out there today, I’m asking you what is a gun that you’re sticking to? That is the right? Yeah. You don’t need. You don’t have any bullets. What is something that you are sticking to a principal, a idea that is clearly not working and you have no bullets because you want to stick to your guns. But if you don’t have any bullets, you want to run a scenario. Number three saying, I’m not going to discount my products. I’m not going to discount my products unless you have to. So let’s talk about that. So when now your business is thriving, right? Dr Breck Dot Com. Where? Where’s it located, by the way? Fifty four. Oh, one South Sheridan also Oklahoma. Fifty four. Oh, one South Sheridan. Are you in the process of buying a building by the way? I’m looking into one.

Yeah. I’m really. What part of town are you looking at? Staying right there and mid Tulsa south also. We’re not midtown, but we’re middle of Tulsa. You’re not coming out farther south. No, you’re not coming to Ba. No. I mean we have patients from everywhere and we don’t, we don’t want to get too far away from where people know us and love us. And so have you narrowed it down to maybe four or five buildings? Five or six, but have you found a few buildings that are kind of. I’ve been looking for about a year. I mean the writing was on the wall that we’re going to need more space, which is a great growing problem. Um, but uh, you have not a lot out there. Do you have a broker? I do. Okay. So He’s helping. If you’re doing a great job. Okay. So you’re, you’re, you’re doing your research and you’ll get a walkthrough with a reconstruction company, um, on Friday and an architectural designer and just make sure it makes sense and that it can work for what we want to do a because the building’s a little bigger than what I need.

And so, uh, I’m changing from, from being a renter to be in the landlord. How, how, how, how much does space will the building? Half A. it’s about 20,000 square foot building. Wow. Currently in 1500 square feet. This is a big shift from 1500 to 20,000. Yeah. Well not all for me, but yes. Um, I’m actually gonna occupy about 3000 square feet. You’re going to like the Cairo king and are you going to have tenants at least from you? Right. Killings fully, fully rented out right now. So you’re a guy though who you are. You’re a guy who now you have more people wanting to see you as their more patients want to see you. People are chasing you. Yeah. The market is chasing you. They call this the tipping point. More people are coming after you. Then you’re chasing back in the day, I’m sure you had to, when you first started, you’re passing out a card to everyone at every grocery store.

Yes. You’re shamelessly networking, right? Is. But now people are chasing you. Instill you were in trouble because I was probably adjusting you. So, so now though. So now, um, you don’t need to discount your services, you know, you, you don’t need like, you know, your, your first, uh, visit is, is free, right? The first exam, first adjustments free. But then after that you don’t have to be the cheapest chiropractor in Tulsa. Right. When did you get to that point where you realized that, you know what, I don’t have to sit there and be the discount king. That was probably about a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago. And so it was a long progression. It took me to make that little switch. How long did it take you to get to that level where you realize you didn’t have to be the cheapest chiropractor to when I’ve been practicing for 15 years.

So, you know, we’re really talking about 13 years. That, uh, I was, I felt like I needed to try to undercut and be the be the bottom dollar guy. Let me tell you a fun story. About Friday we had six people reach out to us on Friday who wanted to become clients and we had one availability and that is what we’re talking about here. But back in the day, which with my consulting company make your life epic. It’s a little different because at that company never really had a startup phase. I sold DJ connection.com and then the market was chasing me. Everyone was calling me going, can you help me grow my business? Could you help me grow my business? Could that company I never really had to discount. But with the DJ company, a Dj connection, I would charge. We were, we were the first DJ service in Tulsa.

Did unlimited time. Do you guys use a Dj for your wedding by the way? You know, that’s one of my wife’s biggest regrets. We did not really know who we got married here in Tulsa. We’re not from Tulsa. How many years have you been married? We’re at 17 and a half now. And where are you guys from? Originally? From Stigler. Really? Southeast Oklahoma. Small town. Yeah. That’s crazy. You and I are about the same age. Our kids are about the same age. We’ve been married about the same length of time. I’ve married 18 years. Okay. So. But yeah, with the DJ company, this is what would happen is I was the first company to offer unlimited time. I was the first company that would say we’ve come out to the wedding reception hall to see it before the wedding was the first one to offer complimentary event planning.

The first Dj to say we’ll get any song that you want and we will change. We will. We were willing to change your oil, your playlist for your wedding right up until the night before the wedding. Okay. Because a lot of times brides would call me the day before the wedding going, I want to change our first dance to this song. I want to change it. Oh, I wanted. The father would call me, can I change this song? And I did that because I had to. Sure. But eventually I put it a policy that said, if you do not tell me the songs that you want to play for your wedding, your final playlist by the Monday before the wedding, you can’t make any changes. Right? So when you’re booking your wedding six months in advance. But if you have to choose your sweet call you a week before your wedding and ask you what songs you wanted, but if you hadn’t decided what songs you wanted, we had to make a decision because the Monday of the wedding, we’re not making any more changes.

It’s set because we had to go buy the CDS. Okay. Yeah. This is old school dj to go buy the CDS. Um, and I had that policy and you would have thought it was like a, a Nazi policy. You would have thought this was like the worst policy you would have thought this was a Polish. People thought this. So people would call me on Wednesday. I just want to tell you, I’m going to change my first dance song. I want to go from. Oh, the way you look tonight by Frank Sinatra. I don’t like that one. I want to change to a Louis Armstrong. What a wonderful world. I’m like, okay, great. I’ll change it. They call back the next day. I just want to see if I could change. I’m realizing my policy, even though I have a policy, I’ve clearly communicated it. People are walking all over that thing, so I decided to enforce the policy, stick to my guns saying so people would call it.

Is there any way I could change my son up? We can’t do it because our policy is to be done. Changing songs has a Monday and if you want to buy the cds and bring them to the wedding yourself, how you can, but we’re when it can make any changes because we’re doing 80 weddings a weekend and we cannot make last minute changes. Right? Oh the hate you. It was unbelievable how many people would freak out at me. They’d go, I’m just going to switch to a different DJ company. And I’m like, I remember the first time I said reading. Good luck. Yeah, and this is. I remember the first time saying, if that’s what you want to do, you can, but I’m not getting the music. So. So how did that feel for you when like the first time you had to like stand stand behind that and actually like I’ve got the gun and I’m going, I’ve got a bullet, maybe not a full load, but I got a bullet here at the beginning of time.

Freedom for me. Yeah, because up until then as a DJ, every single Friday night or Thursday night or any night, I had a last minute panic had to go to best buy or to Sam. Goody was Sam goody St. Ready to go. Sam goody. I had to go to the mall. I had to go to all these vintage stock places. Surface trying to. Because there was, it wasn’t Amazon prime, there wasn’t overnight shipping. There wasn’t digital downloads, but I had to. When I finally enforced that policy I remember was like a Thursday night. So you’re like holding your breath. Like when you gave them like, no, we can’t do it. Yeah, I remember. I remember telling him like, we’re not going to make the change like, well, why? I’m like, because that’s our policy so you don’t have any time to go do it. And I’m like Nu, uh, and I just remember just how like empowering that was for me, but how it really did upset about one percent, maybe five percent of our customers, but again, that was an example where I could stick to my guns or previously I couldn’t.

Another scenario. Scenario number four, you don’t have to tolerate difficult people in your life unless you have to. Again, you don’t have to tolerate difficult people in your life unless you have to. So I want everyone to think about a person in your life right now who you definitely don’t like. Think about it and come out. Okay? That was pretty quick. You thought of them. Okay, now that you’ve thought about them, I asked you the question, are you related to this person or what is making you have this relationship? What causes you to have this relationship? Now I am not advocating for everybody out there listening to the today show to do what I do, but I will tell you what I do. I up until the time of my dad’s funeral because I promised my dad I would do so. My Dad said, is there any way you could please talk to person a, B, and c?

Would you pleased my dad had lou gehrig’s disease, so he was dying slowly and he said, up until my funeral, can you please continue communications with the North Koreans essentially, could you? Because these are people that would just make my life miserable. And I said, okay, what do you mean? He goes, I mean, if they call you, will you call him back? Will you be nice? We’ll be polite, be nice. No good. I am never Dr Brett calling these people and antagonizing them right? Objectively, I don’t wake up calling people to harass them. I’m not on facebook arguing with people, but they’re arguing with me. They’re tagging me on facebook with tankless things. They’re calling me being dipped, their difficulties costing. So I made a list. I’m like, after my dad passes, these are the people that I will continue to have a relationship with and these are the people that I want.

Right. And let me tell you, there are much less family members in my life now, but my joy factor has gone up dramatically. Right? So I would ask you, have you ever had a person in your life, and I’m gonna ask you to name the person or the person in your life where they just made your existence difficult name. Have you ever got to a place where you were, you punted that person from your life? Sure. What, what, how did you handle it? What would you say? Do you call them up and say, Hey, we’re done digital ecosystem. Did you block the number? What did you do? A warrior moves over. I mean, a couple of different scenarios. I mean, one just kind of ghosted, um, which I don’t. I don’t like to be that passive aggressive kind of person. Would you rather handle something more directly?

But once you’ve communicated to stop and they won’t stop, you just kind of have to block them. Yeah. Well, and yeah, it was just kind of a fade out, you know, like uh, like, like you were saying, I didn’t return phone calls or text. It was kind of just a, Hey, I’m busy, I’m, I’m tied up and let it kind of let it die. Yeah, just let it float out into the ocean somewhere. I have done this where I punted negative people for my life probably hundreds of times, but I have one scenario that’s one story for you that I think you will appreciate. I think the thrivers will find this to be funny. We had a guy who is about seven or eight years ago who was our best sales guy and whenever he had a great sales week he would get impossibly drunk on Sunday.

Right. Like just drunk, like Oh, just ease, just like kind of a Chris Farley time. Okay. And then on Monday he wouldn’t come to work. Now he was our top sales guy that week before the Monday. He just would not show up. No call, no show. Nothing from Tuesday on Tuesday shows up. Hey man, try to play it off. Like, hey man, hey, hey, what’s going on boss? I’m like, dude, where were you yesterday? A man. I just got caught up at some things my phone died. Could not reach you. And I’m like, did you leave live within five miles? Could you have walked to the office? We’ll dude, here’s the deal. I’m going through some stuff and just. And this happened, right? So I only had a, you know, I was hard for me to staff the company cause we only have like seven or eight sales guys and if your top guys gone, am I represent a larger percentage of.

Can we have accounts that are trying to close and deals that were trying to book. And so I contact person. I wrote that guy. I don’t know, I feel like I wrote the Bible, I wrote that guy up so much. It was like a big document. All the write ups to superficial. Unbelievable. Then I set them down. One time I sat him down, I said, hey, well here’s the deal. I’ve written you up. I don’t know how many times and it’s time for me to fire you. Right? So it’s been good knowing you, you serve the team well, you’ve been here two, three years. We need to move on. Yeah. So if you will take this week and find another job, I will give the new potential employer who calls and says, would you rehire this person? I will say this person was by far my top salesperson and I will leave out the fact that you are an impossible self-destructed person twice a month, right?

If you will just go get a job this week and I’m even going to pay you for the next two weeks. You still have money coming in to go get a job. Right. So this guy goes out there, probably applied for four or five jobs. I don’t know what he did. Then he goes to Raymond and I guess it rainbow. They had a conference where you, uh, you know, you cast out demons and you, you, you, you, you’re thankful for things and you begin to make a huge life change and you accept Christ and you make the change. And I’m a Christian. So I thought, okay, you know, I get it. It doesn’t work for me anymore. Right. I don’t know. He’s going to this day. He wears glasses by the way. He shows up at work, the place where he shows up at my job, the place where I fired him.

He shows up at my office two weeks after I fired him and he’s not wearing glasses. And I said, what do you, what are you doing? He goes, I’m ready to get my job back. And I have claimed it. I have claimed it. I’ve prayed for it, I’ve claimed it. I know this is meant to happen. Uh, I’m no longer drinking and I’ve also accepted that God has healed my eyes. I go, has he healed your eyes? He’s like, squinting like a mole. And he’s like, no, no, not yet. But I know it’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen. But I was told that I am supposed to get this job back so I’m going to come back here and work for you for free for two weeks to prove that I have changed. I mean, that’s bold. And I said, here’s the deal. Did you cannot come back here?

And he says, what do you make? Because he’s done this stuff for years as he played this out in his mind and went totally differently. Yeah. And I said, you can’t come back. He goes, come on, man. He’s crying, bawling, weeping, cohmad plays. Not Kidding. I pulled out, had about three or $400 of cash on me. I said, I’m going to pay you $400 right now, but I want you to promise that you will never call me again. He goes, you’re paying me $400 to never talk to you again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s up here. I mean like if we see each other at a grocery store, I don’t want eye contact with. I’m saying you gotta run. I got to know because this was such a contentious relationship and it wouldn’t end. Right. And I actually had to pay somebody to go, oh, this is great. Go ahead at that bad. Yeah. So again, best I’ve,

I’d say from a direct standpoint like that would be um, I don’t know where I first learned this. I think it was one of my earlier mentors, but, uh, he just, you know, you sit down, you kinda sit knee to knee and heart to heart and uh, you know, I just, I was able to tell this employee, I said, uh, you’re a wonderful person, but this isn’t the right fit. I, I wanna, I don’t wanna hold you back from what is the right fit for you. So you know, we want to wish you well and, and help you on your journey. We just know this chapter is closed, you know, so

I would encourage you, if you’re out there today, again, think about what are the guns you want to stick to? What are the policies you want to stick to? What are the, the, uh, what are your principles, what are your rules, what are your values, what are your boundaries? And I want you to think about scenarios right now where you can’t stick to your guns because you’re out of bullets. Think about, think about that. Now, here’s one more final scenario. The trade topical, very timely. I’m right now the United States federal government is involved in a shutdown now for you out there who don’t know what to shut down is a shut down is where the government basically is no longer going to operate what they considered to be non essential aspects of the government, which to me is fairly hysterical because a non essential is, is, is the wording used?

Are there any non essential employees who work at your chiropractic facility? No. Okay. Just a thought. So anyway, so this is. And we run a balanced budget. So here is what the Donald President trump is looking for right now. Donald President trump has decided that he is going to get that wall. Now the wall is a five point $7,000,000,000 wall that will span 2000 some odd miles from San Diego all the way to mean it’s gonna be huge wall and he wants that. He wants that wall to be built once that wall to be built and he needs five point $7,000,000,000 to make it happen. So according to the New York Times article that came out this morning, uh, this is a fabulous, fabulous read. This is from the New York Times and it reads, president trump threatened on Friday to keep the federal government partly closed for months or even years. Wow. If he did not get the five point 6 billion for his wall at the southern border, and he warned that he was considering declaring a national emergency to build it without congressional approval.

Now, this is not a political show, but I will tell you through the executive branch of the government, through being the president of United States, I believe he is going to probably declare a state of emergency to get that wall built. I wouldn’t doubt that he does that in based upon how many people are coming across the border illegally. I bet you he’ll get it done or he’ll keep the government shut down for five or six months. But the point is, whoever has the most options always win. So think about this. He’s sticking to his guns. His guns are, Hey, I want to build that wall and that’s his gun. And he has a bullet in his bullet. Is this, look, I’m going to keep the government shut down forever if I need to, I don’t care. I’m going to get that wall built it because whoever has the most options wins.

So think about the era of your life right now where you don’t have any bullets. Let’s say you want to fire somebody, but you can’t. You need to spend your effort on what you can do. You want to focus on what you can control. Don’t let the things that you can’t do keep you from doing what you can do. As an example, if you’re frustrated you can’t fire somebody. Take that frustration and energy and spend it on recruiting people, right? Spend your. If you’re frustrated, you want to do. If you can’t, if you don’t have any bullets, don’t get stuck there. Change the scenario. So trump is a billionaire who doesn’t need the money and he doesn’t care whether the government’s shut down. I know we have listeners out there who worked for the government and listeners out there who don’t, but I thought I would break down how a government shut down actually will impact our listeners today.

Right? So this is how it impacts you. If you are owed a tax refund, you’re probably not going to get it on time. The last time we had a government shutdown that was this long was under the Obama administration and it was a two point $2,000,000,000 delay in a tax refund. So two point $2,000,000,000 of tax refunds were delayed. Also, if you’re trying to buy a home right now and you’re trying to get proof of income from the Internal Revenue Service service, you’re probably not going to get that loan closed anytime soon because the irs is running on a half staffed organization at this service. So again, buying a home will slow down right now, tax refunds aren’t going to happen. Now, if you work for the national park a little more than half of you don’t have a job this week. Now you’re, you’re still are there. You see, they call it being furloughed, but basically you have an unpaid leave of absence.

So national park people, half of you, uh, they decided to go ahead and close one third of the national parks. Supposedly the less, the least stressful job out there, but not this week, not this week. Now, the government museums. Now, how often do you go to government museums? Dr Breck, uh, are any of our local museums, government? I just have a question for me. The crazy. I know what you’re trying to do here. You’re trying to dodge the question. How often do you go to government museums? I mean, I’ve been to DC and I’ve been to some of the Smithsonian and the national institutes. Yeah, I mean the library of Congress. To be fair to say that or twice a year. Twice in my lifetime. To what? And how old are you? Right now? I’m 39. So every 15 years. Every, every 20 years. You go to a government museum?

I think so are all private. So I, I, I just throw this out there. If you were wanting to go to the William Howard taft national historic site today in Ohio, you can because it’s closed and I was just thinking about going, so government museums, cultural sites and buildings and presidential homes, those are all closed now. The irs also has decided to stop doing all audits right now. So social security benefit. Okay. About that one. A social security benefits are still going to be paid out. So if you’re on social security, you’re still going to get your money. Also the United States postal service, it will still be delivering the mail. Those last two are important. So again, the government shut down. How long will it go down? I believe that Donald Trump, this is my take on this analogy. We were talking about sticking to your guns, but if you’re out of bullets run.

I think that president trump has all of the bullets in the Chamber of an Uzi and I think that he is not going to stop until he gets that wall. That’s quite the word picture. I mean that’s really take in. I don’t think he’s going to stop until he gets that. Well, I really don’t own either, I think being in his, his historic hat on this wall. So if you’re out there and when you, you want a wall or you don’t want a wall, either way, the person with the most options winds and I really do think you have a billionaire president who doesn’t care about any. He’s hell bent on getting that wall built, right? So if I had to predict, I believe that our government will be shut down for the foreseeable future or until that wall gets approved, I think it’s going to happen because whoever has the most leverage winds so we can.

What can you do with the knowledge today? Just ask yourself, what areas of your life are you sticking to guns when you don’t have any bullets, and then what are areas in your life right now where you can stick to your guns because you have bullets. If you’ve got a negative person in your life and you don’t want them in there and anymore puntum. If you’ve got a bad client and you don’t want that client anymore and you can afford to not have them punch them. If you don’t like somebody a comments or, or political, uh, hoo ha on facebook, you can defriend them today. You can do that, but maybe you don’t want to defend your boss on facebook today. Maybe you want to fire your only customer. These are things. These are thoughts we’re thinking. My name is Clay Clark. That’s Dr. Breck and Dr Bragg.

For anybody out there who’s thinking about going to your chiropractic center for an adjustment today, tell them where we’re, we’re, where you’re located. Again, tell them your website and let them know about the offer you have for first time customers. And you can go to Dr. Breck Dot Com, d, R, b r e c k.com. There’s a link there, the schedule an appointment and that will give you a free consultation. Exam x Ray and first treatment all at no cost. There’s no obligation. I’m just, uh, interviewing with you to see if I can be your chiropractor. And we’re physically located at 54. Oh, one South Sheridan, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Just south of the farm shopping center. I had one more, one more example of sticking to the guns that I wanted to share with the listeners out there. I’m Clayton Christianson. It’s a Clayton Christensen. He is the world’s a harvard is known as the world’s best business school, right.

And Clayton Christensen is the number one most sought after professor at Harvard. He actually was on the cover of Forbes and, uh, his team corresponded with us and agreed to allow us to interview him. Now I only do interviews with celebrities and big name people during certain time slots of my day. Right. However, when it, Clayton Christensen called and said, hey, I want to do an interview. You know what I did? I moved everything or everything got shifted because I have a principal I want to stick to about. This is when I record and I have a very rigid schedule every single day from 12 to two. We do this show. However, when he decided, when he decided he wanted to be on our show, I was honored to have this guy made the world’s best business schools, Harvard and the number one professor at that school. He wants to be on our show.

I’m going to move stuff around. Now. Somebody might say flexible. Sometimes somebody might say, well, why aren’t you? I thought you principals were to not record it in a different time except for your 12 to two. Well, that’s my principal. That’s my ideal, but I, I’m, I’m not foolish anymore about sticking to principles when I don’t need to and if you need to serve you, right. I mean that wouldn’t have served you at all, but you know, there’s somebody out there though who’s wrestling with this right now. In their mind they’re going, oh, I always do my group interview every Wednesday at five. I never interviewed candidates one-on-one. However, I’ve got a twice bonafide friend referral who wants to start working tomorrow? Do you make them wait for the group interview where they can they skip all that and shadow you? You know, you might have a policy, I’m not going to hire family, but then you have a member of your family who is awesome and has a 20 year history of success doing something else and you can hire him. Don’t let these certain principles that don’t matter, get in the way of the practical solution. Otherwise you become like a human bureaucracy. My name is Clay Clark. You listening to the thrive time show on your radio and podcast download. We like to end each and every show with a boom, and now without any further ado, three, two, one, boom.