How Often Do You Get Screwed? – Ask Clay Anything

Audio Transcription

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.

Okay. Yes, yes, yes and yes. Thrive nation. Welcome back to another exciting edition of ask me anything. And on today’s show we are joined by none other than my brother from another mother, Mr Josh, the founder of living water irrigation. Mr Josh, welcome onto the show, my friend. How are you? Hi, I’m awesome, clay, how are you sir? Well, I’m excited for the listeners to get to know more about you. Could you share the name of your company a little bit more about what you guys do at living water irrigation, where the name comes from?

Absolutely, positively. So a living water irrigation. The most important part of that to me is John Seven 38 so then it’s mentioned in the Gospel a number of times where the living water, but our specific scripture that we drew our name from his John Seven 38 it says, whoever believes in me rivers of living water will flow through him. We have a very distinct vision as a company on who we are and what we want to do. And I believe that I was put here to go make some money to give it away.

So, and I, I’m, I’m not going to ask you, uh, for the specific details of your career and how you started the business up as far as a linear timeline, but how long has this particular business been around? I live in around just two years or two years. And you guys are, we first met, how did we first meet?

Uh, I came in and at Y’all started business coaching me over the thrive time or three 15.

And uh, what you remember when that was approximately and then how you first heard about us? So it would have been

October or November of 17.

October or November of, of of 17. Yes sir. And in terms of your growth as a company, how have you, how much have you grown this year? Uh, so this year we’re up 450% year over year. Well, you asked me a question, I’m off air and I wanted to make sure we could answer the question on air with some thoughtfulness and in some tact you asked me, you said, hey, how often do you get screwed? I think that was the question. Did you sit and where artfully am I misquoting it in some capacity? I think that’s dead on. I’m going to give you a ratio and you can jot it down. I want you to think about this because if you’re not willing to think about it this way, the listener out there, if you like, if you can’t think about it this way, your life’s going to be bad.

All right, so here we go. For every million dollars of revenue you make, you will have one customer Lik legal issue, litigious issue, or one employee issue per million dollars of gross revenue for per year. So if you had $20 million of gross revenue, you will have 20 employee issues at the same time. That is for 20 customer problems, usually not 20 and 20 but 20 total between and employee issues that are no fault of your own. No matter how high of a quality standards you have. So John, I’m going to tee up some scenarios and you can go true false and supply some details. Okay? And I’m going to share examples that aren’t too soon to get me in trouble. Have you heard of the story of the employee at a elephant in the room who had the ear slice incident? Did He, have you heard that story?

The ear slice where the, you didn’t hear that one? Okay. I don’t think so. Are you familiar with the finger sliced story? Yes. Okay. And with the finger sliced story, uh, was it a, was it a scary thing? Did you get photos of the finger sliced? Yeah, I got photos. And that’s not a high, that’s not a good thing. As an owner, you’re not excited when a member of your team chops part of their finger off. Yeah, that’s really not, you know, where you go. Good deal. I mean, it’s not a, it’s not a good deal. So, um, that’s a burning fire. That’s not a good thing. Um, John, were you aware of the employee that could not come to work in one of our companies? Could not. I think we hired this person and I think during their first maybe 25 days, I think, do we not have like 15 instances of being late or over 10?

Was it over 10? Yeah. Over tens safe. Think about this employee gets a job and their first 25 days is late over 10 times for sure. Is that, is that number correct? Yes. And then at the end of the day that I’m not gonna say what company it is or the person’s gender, any background other than this person. Eventually John, we had to move on. Right. Do you remember the conversation with this person, whoever they may be, whatever company it may be, with the letting them go part, how’d that go? Well, I mean if you can’t be on time, uh, especially all of the time, you can’t be on time and say it’s time to do. You said you just said, hey, if you can’t be on time, it’s time to move on. Yeah. I think I said something very cryptic like that. No, seriously, that was that what you said though, whatever the issue was or you know, in general, uh, when employees are doing something that are, you know, it goes against your company values, you just tell them, hey, this is why we’re moving on and you just tell them straight forward.

Okay. And then so what happens is then that employee, I think just said a curse word, right? And walked out. And my Mike, am I getting that wrong? Nope, that’s right. And then we get a magical letter in the mail from a magical, you know, legal group sang, this person wants to come after me for discrimination, right? For, uh, I think we’re discriminating against, uh, it was some sort of medical issue, but then when there could be no medical issue that was proven that this person had and they moved on to a four the way we did it, or for an environment where we didn’t listen to their concerns or whatever it was. And then they come after you for money and people don’t realize I’m always dealing with one of those at all times. I’m never not doing with one of us. So if you’d said, well, clay, how big do you want to grow an elephant in the room or, or thrive or make your life epic?

I don’t, my entire reason for, I don’t, my entire reason for them to grow honestly is so that John can hit his goals and then to sell franchises so that the people like Andrew who aren’t great folks, um, who worked here to help us build small partial portions of, of a big thing. It takes a lot of people building small parts. John doesn’t it to build a brand. I mean it takes a lot of things, a lot of print pieces, a lot of business cards. And so I want the members of our team visa vie those franchises for a dollar a piece. He what’s cool about franchising, Josh, Josh, please tell me when they have $1 million of gross revenue, they’re going to have an employee or a legal issue and it’s not mine. And then I get, you know, a small fee, like it’s usually 6% of the gross revenue, uh, as, as profit for using the systems, business coach them on the systems and making sure they’re successful.

And then you get the joy of five years from now going, ha ha. I told you what happened. No, it’s almost funny though, when you meet a bunch of Franchisees, you might meet three or 400 people at one time and you’re like, how’s it going in New York? And they go, man, I got this huge lawsuit. And you’re like, wow. But you, it’s interesting when it’s someone else’s problem, like when you watch a comedy, he gives her, watched a comedy where somebody falls down or maybe in real life where you see somebody fall into a ditch while jogging and it’s kind of hilarious to you, but you shouldn’t laugh. Now this is an example. Um, I was driving to work over here one day and we live, we live in broken Arrow and there’s a, there’s a ditch in front of the school and this guy is just jogging with like the ear buds and not the new apple ones, but the ones with the little cord, you know, and they plug in to some iPod device.

And I don’t know what happened, but he just like misses a step and it just rolls down into this ravine and it’s about five feet deep. But it’s, it’s more of a hill. It’s not like a cliff. And I just couldn’t find myself. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing, you know, and I thought, God, it’s funny. But then I thought it’s a funny, somebody who fell on ditch, I should go back. So I turned around and the high school parking lot, I turned back around and I see the guy trying to play it off like he didn’t fall and he’s trying to run off like that moon. Oh, I did a role right, and I just thought that was funny. He was just practicing tumbling, refill. I just, I thought my, I remember driving to work going, that is hilarious. Now that I know he’s okay, but he’s still in, right?

Well, it’s, pride is probably hurts a lot of times you meet people, you know, when they’re going through a tough situation in life, it’s like, man, it’s, it’s terrible. You’re getting sued. What’d you get sued for? And you’re like, ah. Somebody slipped and fell. Uh, John, do you remember the person diversity shared the video of the person who has, who intentionally slipped and fell? I was just about to bring that up. Well, we had somebody like looked around like they’re standing still, right? First they asked in a team meeting, unsolicited to go, do we have, why do we have cameras up? Do you have cameras? I think cameras are those real, all of these uppers of fake cameras. That’s it. No, no, there’s are up. And I said okay. My boyfriend dropped me off the other day behind the building. I noticed the cameras and I, I feel so much safer.

Thank you. So it’s like five days later, boyfriend drops off, girlfriend from work. She comes in the back of the building, looks around to left to the right and then fake falls. Right. Just like it was a slow fall was just like an Uzi. Then they’d come limping in like Ah, ah, make it all the grimacing noises. Ah, AH, what happened? I fell, it was hard. Hard fall. And you look at the camera, I’m not king. Was it the worst acting of all time? Oh, there was no Oscar nomination. It was brutal. It was like a forward fall. And then they know, then they start to try to like fall back as was weird. And they started, they tried saying that the floor was wet and there was no like signs it, there’s no signs that warned people that the floor was wet. Yeah. And that, so then you have to go through that situation that when I settled, knock that out.

Now my favorite one, this is probably my favorite one of all times, is it does this one, this one was, it really took me to the next level of, of joy and I won because the people who were investigating it were, they knew I wasn’t lying cause they’re like, hey, such and such a filed a wrongful termination suit against you for discrimination because he is a homosexual. And I said, okay, um, I don’t know this person’s name. And they had no, no, no, he, he worked for you for two days and I honestly have never met the person, Josh not in a group interview, not in a shadow. I guess he showed up at one of the stores, came in, got, you know, an application of some kind. I asked if he could shadow and you’re like 20, 30 minutes later he pieces out but says that he was hired.

So he never filled out an application. We don’t have anything, but he went for it. And that is in my bathroom. I’ve framed my bathroom. She can see it. But that took like months and buddies of mine are like, dude, are you still, are you still dealing with that situation? And I’m like, yes I am. They go, it is just unfortunate the way you treat people who don’t work for you. And they thought it was the most hilarious real jerk. And I was like, I didn’t even know this person was. So that’s the kind of stuff. So I have to answer your question. Per million dollars of gross revenue, you typically have one problem and to quote notorious pig, Aka Christopher Wallace, mo money, Mo problems. Now my friend because you hear are here on the show on one of their questions. Do you have this week any, any, any business question at all? As you’re growing living water irrigation, I know this week you implemented a great no brainer, which by the way, that is a great no brainer. If you’re there listening today and you’re thinking about installing a sprinkler system and you live in the Tulsa Oklahoma area, uh, taught Tulsa, Oklahoma area. Tell us about that. No brainer you’ve implemented this week.

Yes. Our, our no brainer right now is $1 service call for all new customers. Yes. So typically that charge is $75 what a service call is. And that includes the arrival in the first half hour of labor. So when we’re coming out to do a repair on your system or a diagnostic or anything that could be wrong with your sprinkler system or outdoor lighting or drainage, it’s only a $1. So you save $74.

So you’re saying if I go to living water irrigation, if I to your website, living water irrigation, OK. Dot Com I go there cause I need sprinkler repair, sprinkler installation and irrigation system put in that it’s a dollar a. Is there a catch? Is it a thing where like it’s a dollar and then you send me a huge bill or do you tell me what it’s gonna cost before we decide to move forward?

It is just $1 for the service call and then everything after that we’re going to sit down and we’re going to talk about it, give you the options. I’ll show you what can be done in China. And then give you a estimate from there. Genesis is a hot deal. Well, it’s cool actually because they’re using sprinklers.

Oh, I hate John. You, you get to make a point, man. So they’re, they’re implementing this, this, uh, program. You’re getting more calls, right? And you get more calls. Absolutely. Sales are going up. You’re gathering reviews from your real customers, adding content to the website, adding a gallery of work, adding testimonial videos. A lot of things are going on there. As you’re growing. Do you have any questions about right now where you’re at in the business where you feel kind of maybe stuck or you have some?

So I’m going to actually take a minute and make you really uncomfortable ice. So, cause I know how humble you are and I know that you don’t want to hear this kind of stuff. It’s only my paleness that keeps me humble. So when we started with y’all, it was awesome. We had a little company, just me and one dude and one little vein. Yeah. And a 17 was great. I ate more than ramen noodles, but not much more. Um, 18 was really good. We started to implement the systems, got start here, got the boom book, went to a couple of business conferences and said, okay, I’m going to buy in, I’m going to sell out. We went to the coaching, got business coached by Marshall in Victoria and started to implement as opposed to just listen, to actually be doers. It’s in James, it says, don’t just be hearers of the word, be be doers as well.

And so we implemented scripts. We have women in systems, we implemented checklist. We implemented, um, a pro forma for quoting and all these things that you talk about. Yeah. And so just as a real person, and I’m real, I promise you, there’s a bunch of Josh Wilson’s out there. Like I’m a famous baseball player and football player. Oh Wow. And a gospel singer. Oh Wow. But this Josh Wilson, yeah. Just digs ditches for a living. But I just want to say thank you standing here for all the systems. I encourage everybody out there. Go pick up, start here, go pick up the boom book. The stuff you hear on this show, it actually sincerely works. It’s not just some nonsensical guy sitting in an awesome man cave who’s bored. So he wants to record a show. Um, and then from there, here’s another super duper move for you. Schedule your day.

Oh, can wait, wait, wait, wait. Say that. That right there is a hot tip. Schedule your day.

So I was listening just a few months ago and I was running all over the Tulsa Metro area from Glenpool till also to broken Arrow back to Lhasa to jinx timid town. And I’m like, man, why am I getting nothing done?

Why am I getting nothing done? Well, your issue is that you’re running places, you’ve got to draw.

Well, obviously I wouldn’t have his belly if I was running Jonathan. Okay. So my wife says to me, hey, how was your day honey? Oh, I worked all day, I did all these things and I’m like, wait, I have nothing to show that I did anything. So super move. Number one, you’ve said it’s 17,000 times, whatever gets scheduled gets done. So now my day is scheduled. Come on now. So if it’s not on my schedule,

Yup. Nope, doesn’t happen. I just, I don’t know, John, why this concept is so offensive to people. So I’m going to try to maybe guess it three ways that this concept of saying no to things that aren’t on your schedule as offensive or scheduling time for things. So I think like for us right now, we’re doing the show. Yup. We’re recording the show. Uh, and we’re recording the show. I’m not taking phone calls right now. Right now I’m not even taking notifications. I’m not taking any APP. I don’t have a any push notifications right now. If we go up here to Facebook, which I encourage everybody to not do. But if you go to Facebook, I look up here and I’ve got, um, you know, notifications right here that these five little Belding things. John’s, what are these five building things? What are these, uh, these are communication to you in some capacity.

Yeah. And then when you see those little reg, it’s Dosha. Andrew’s pokes is poking you. When you see those red dots. Are these friend requests, don’t you feel kind of like how I want to make it go away? Yeah. And I think everybody does. If you go into Linkedin, you want to get rid of it. So I would say step one is turn off the push notifications. That’s a big thing to turn off the obligations. Think about that. Turn off the push notifications, John, then turn off the obligation. Let’s talk about push notifications. Why does that help to turn that off, John? Well, if you know, in every area of your life, people are pulling at you. You know, like I always talk about like if you’re going to do anything at all, just be excellent in that area, right? And so you can’t be excellent in all areas.

So you have to really pick and choose the areas that you’re going to just put your 100% focus in. So if you’re getting notifications, and I don’t remember the stat, uh, where it’s, you know, each, each person’s kissing x amount of notifications according to psychology today, and Andrew, I’ll put it on the show notes. There’s an article called, is your smartphone making you dumb? And clinical researchers discovered that right now the average American, uh, depending upon which particular study you you want to look at and trust, we’ll put a link to the article and your smartphone making you dumb. The average American is getting between 80 and 95 interruptions per day on their smartphone in addition to what’s happening right in front of them. Yeah. And so how can you even focus on anything if you’re getting interrupted 80 to 90 times every single day with just social media.

That’s not your employees. That’s not your spouse, that’s not your family, that’s just no notifications on your social media. How are you getting anything done? So you want to say no to those push notifications. Now this is, this is the next part that, uh, I think, think it’s going to bother somebody, but I want to, I want to help you. The whole point of this is to help you saying no to obligations. Now get this, this is going to really, this, this part here. It makes people mad, but like, you know, [inaudible] I started this thing called the Tulsa wedding association. Okay. The Tulsa Bridal Association. The Tulsa wedding show was part of it. The big wedding show. We had it the renaissance. Now when you put on a big show and you invite vendors to buy booth booth at your show, why is that a good move for me to start my own wedding show into cell booth too?

I was white at the time. Was it a good move? Well, you’re a around the same business, right? And so in theory, you know, other people will bring their leads and you’re bringing yours and then everybody’s making profit off of each others. So what we do is we sell 80 booths to a show, Andrew for approximately approximately about 600 to $700 per booth and all that money, 48 grand is deployed to advertising on channel eight Katie, well, big advertisement. Okay then now you’ve got to pay for the room. The room’s about 15,000 so you charged brides, five, $10 a head that goes to pay for the room. Long story short, all the brides plan your day in to day in one wedding show. That’s the place. And that was a cool deal because it allowed me to get in front all the brides at one time and my competition and my colleagues are helping pay for the traffic.

We had so many brides in that trade show was awesome. But the moment that I sold the DJ business, I no longer needed to return the calls of wedding vendors. Right? So I tactfully told them like, thank you for calling my cell phone. This is clay. And they go, hey, you know, hey the wedding show man, uh, couldn’t get in, talk to the new owner, you know, a new person. I just want to see what you could do. I said, well, here’s the deal. I can do nothing cause I sold it. I appreciate you so much. I’m out of the wedding business. So if you need something, you know about weddings, just just call them. And I think you’re great. And you know, had John try to be tactful about it, right? But it’s been an hour now and in an I phone keeps ringing. So I just switched my number.

So I used to be five (948) 469-1851 nine four eight four six. I just switched my number for the whole world and then no one could call it and it was awesome. I’m so many people are like, man, I tried to reach you for years bro. For years I changed my address to, well even we had Guy Kawasaki on the show the other day and uh, he said that he changes his email address every like, I don’t remember what the third year, 60 days, just shuts it down and starts a new one. So you’ve got to say no to push notifications, obligations. And the final thing you have to say no to in order to implement like Josh has done with living water irrigation is you’ve got to say no to unnecessary longwinded communications. There are certain people that talk in long form as an example, they’ll go, John, did I tell you about this, this, this guy I met back in fourth grade?

No, it was eighth. It was me. Now he’s walking into this, he’s walking in. Well actually he was a stroll. He and he and her were walking in, right. And it was like on October and I’m going now it’s price timber. And we still haven’t gotten into the meat of the conversation. At no point is there a plan? And then we work our way into the con to the meat of it were like, and so here’s what, here’s what had happened. John, here’s what had happened. Right. And then it’s like 30 to 45 minutes later used your, you, you, you just don’t, you look at your phone, if that phone rings and you answer it, it’s going to be a good 48 minutes. Every time there’s this certain people you’ve got to say nope. And then you got to call them and say, hey, dear friend, dear longwinded person, dear whoever that says, in order for me to get things done because I’m self employed, I’d love to, Oh, have you over every Saturday I do.

Let’s get to here and have beers. Let’s go golf, let’s go watch movies. But I cannot during the day have you call me? Yeah, you can get sucked into that man. Well, I think it goes back to Josh’s point is just scheduling everything, literally everything, not just for your work life but your home life as well. Right. And so if you know that you have, let’s say relatives that are just going on, you know, Longwood in conversation. So let’s pick on grandparents. Oh like this is, this is their move. Like they were like, Hey, I have a question for you and I’m going to ask it for an hour. You know, and so that, that’s just the move. And so you know that that’s happening. So you plan time. And so my family I’ll pick on me knows that like if they try to reach me after a certain time at night, like there’s no way that they’re ever getting a response cause I’m in bed, you’re in bed going to bed, I’ll go to bed at nine every single day, 9:00 PM not 9:00 AM for those.

But you know, they like tried to call me afterwards. They’re, they’re not getting a response. And you know on on the flip side, I’m not going to try to call him at three o’clock in the morning when I’m going to work, you know. So there’s, there’s different times scheduled for different things. You just have to make sure that you say no if it’s outside of that schedule. Other things I say no to a lot. I don’t watch TV. According to Nielsen, the average person watches 5.2 hours a day of TV. I don’t do that. Don’t do social media.

Ah.

Can I ask you this Mr Listener, Mrs Listener, what part of your life do you need to start saying no to? Is it push notifications? Is it obligations? Is it unnecessary conversations? What do you need to say no to? Because we can’t say no to the things that are holding you back from what you need to do. You’re going to end up living in a van down by the river, which is cool cause we are, we have a river walk office. Right? So we could see you, we can wave at, you’d be a great time for us. Just a walk office at this point because at the rivers, you know, comes and goes. So, and we’d like to end each and every show with a living water, irrigation boom. Cause he’s on our show sponsors. I wove that in right there. That’s amazing living. We don’t probably guess it. Living water irrigation, you don’t want to boom. That’d mean like the sprinklers. That’s a bad thing. Well maybe you want the booms for other people so that he can come fix it. Yeah. Is another service. We hope that there was a show where they’re living. But anyway, tell, have any further ado. Three, two, one, boom.

Okay.