The DJ Connection Story | How I Started the Multi-Million Dollar Wedding Entertainment Business

Audio Transcription

 

This book is dedicated to my incredible wife, Vanessa Clark, who’s been with me from the very beginning. We started dating while we were still in college at Oral Roberts University and it was her belief and commitment to DJ Connection that allowed me to have the time needed to grow this business. Sure, I worked full time at Applebee’s, Target and Direct TV, but Vanessa also worked full time at Office Depot and Oral Roberts University in order to fund the starting of what is now known as djconnection.com. My wife is an incredible woman and incredible mother of five kids. Vanessa, without you, nothing that I’ve achieved in my career, I believe would be possible. You’ve always filled in and helped me with doing the things that normal humans do so that I can focus on the growing up a company and the starting of a company and during today’s audio book or this week’s audio book, however you decide to digest the audio book, during this audio book, I would encourage you to accept and understand that the reason why I’m putting together the the DJ Connection story and sharing for the first time and an audio book, how I built it is so that you will have the encouragement needed to believe that you too can build something great.

During this audio, you’re going to hear a lot about a lot of the mistakes that I made in a lot of the successes that I achieved, but you’re going to hear it all. It’s all raw. It’s all in audio. It’s, it’s me sharing with you specifically how I went from the dorm room to the boardroom and now if any further ado, let’s get into the DJ Connection story.

I’m often asked by people, young entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs, will say, “How did you build DJConnection.com,” “How did you build what many considered to be the largest wedding entertainment company on the planet?” “How did you start?” “What was the starting point?” “How did you get the money?” “How’d you get the capital?” “How did you know what to do?” Well, my friend DJConnection.com was my magnificent obsession and just like, um, your own child. I just thought about it. I cared about it and I obsessed on growing the business each and every day and to quote Andrew Carnegie, one of America’s richest men who earned tremendous amounts of wealth and then methodically gave it all away, “I put all of my eggs in one basket and I watched that basket.” The dust finally settled and after spinning two frantic, nonstop days moving all of my belongings out of my dorm room, the reality finally occurred to me.

I was no longer in college. I was no longer really employed by anybody other than my internship with an accounting software company called Tax and Accounting Software. I had no structure. I had no commitments, no customers, I had no money. Oh yes, it’s finally hit me. And if you’re reading this book and you’re ever ambitious, crazy enough to start a business from scratch, this feeling will hit you at some point as well. Being your own boss is great. You get to choose whatever 80 hours per week you want to work. Think about that for a second. Being your boss. I mean it is great, right? I mean, you can choose your own hours, just whatever, 80 hours a week you want to work because whenever you are sick and you don’t show up, the business, doesn’t show up either because you are the business.

In fact, you’re not really, uh, you’re, you’re not. You don’t, you don’t own a business. You, when you start a company and you just own a job and you own a job that nobody else wants because it’s tough. You get to choose those 80 hours. You get to work per week because you have to do all the jobs, you have to wear all the hats and when the going gets rough, you get to lay yourself off. And so alone, except for the help of with help from my wife, Vanessa, my wife, to be Vanessa, my magnificent obsession as Napoleon Hill calls. It began. Basically everything I did during this time revolved around DJConnection.com. I stayed up late at night creating invoices, customer lead sheets, using the incredibly sophisticated Microsoft Windows accessory program now known as Paint. Yep. I used Microsoft Paint to database my customers.

Why? Because I didn’t have any way to help me. I couldn’t afford it. A new database. I couldn’t afford and edit. No. Anybody who knew what to do, I even if I did know them, I couldn’t pay them. So I went to Kinko’s, have my very own business cards made, and I carried them around in the backpack that I wore in college so that I could always be ready to pass out my cards to anyone who came within a foot or more of me, because I was only getting three to five calls per month from my yellow page advertisement. I was really hustling. I mean when you’re spending $2,500 a month on a yellow page ad and you don’t even make $2,500 a month or barely make $2,500 a month, trust me, I was hustling. Well, how’d I do it? I had a job working at Target.

I had a job working at Applebee’s and I had a job working at DirecTV all at the same time. So you might say, “Well it takes a team to make the dream.” People say it takes teamwork to make the dream work. Well, if that was true, my team consisted of me, myself and I, and maybe you’re out there listening and maybe you have a team that can help you achieve your dream. But I’m going to, I’m going to say this to you, maybe you’re alone, maybe you’re alone and you have to recognize that you are alone just like I was alone and that no one is going to come and help you. So I bought that yellow page ad from Sally Lewis and I was hustling to grow DJ Connection.com and I don’t know if I’m quite conveying with the words, so the amount of hustling that I was doing, so I’ll give you an analogy. Every day a gazelle wakes up in Africa knowing that if it does not outrun and escape the hunting attempts of the lion, it will die and be eaten at a painful death every day in Africa. The lion wakes up and knows that if it does not catch the gazelle, it will starve to death every day. My friend, I woke up every day, my friend I woke up and in my one bedroom fountain crest apartment complex and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Knowing that if I didn’t get a booking that day for DJ Connection.com, I couldn’t afford to make my yellow page payment from DJ Connection.com. My storage payment from DJ Connection.com or my rent payment from DJ Connection.com. So my friends, when I say I was hustling, I was hustling and who was there to help me?

Nobody. Nobody helped me. Just like as I grew DJ Connection, some people came, some people left, but I did it all by myself. Oh, people showed up once DJ Connection grew and they wanted to ride my coattails and talk about the sacrifice they put into it, but at the end of the day, I was the catalyst. I started my company just like you’re going to have to start your company all by yourself. And as I was hustling with previously unseen speed, passion, and hidden desperation, I was meeting all types of people and working all types of jobs to pay the bills. Like I said, I worked at Target in the electronics section where I was reprimanded daily by my rather large boss who always was on me about working at an unrealisticly fast pace. I’ll never forget being laid off from that Target at 71st street and Memorial in Tulsa after being a seasonal worker and for anyone planning a vacation to visit this tourist attraction, that Target has moved and is now occupied by some other large retail store, I believe a furniture store.

Sorry to disappoint you, my friend. I was actually pumped up then. I got laid off, it set me free, but I did not get laid off before I ran into a guy by the name of Todd Starkey. You see, Todd came into Target to buy a video camera for his wife. Her name was Alison, and when he came up to the counter, he had this look on his face and still he was overwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong, Todd is a wonderful guy, but he did not look very excited about being at Target. Thus, I made my move. I said, “Hello sir, how are you doing? Is there anything that I can do to help you?” Target replied, almost shocked that an employee and Electronics Section actually greeted a bewildered customer with enthusiasm. He said, yeah. Um, I’m, I’m looking for a video camera for my wife. Do you know anything about these things? Well, I did because I had read all the instruction manuals because I was trying to get promoted out of target, of trying to take my life to the next level. I was mentally participating in that job at the time. I was trying to be the best I could possibly be at that particular moment.

I started at Target. I honestly, ate most of the pretzels during my shift, I wasn’t mentally alert, but somehow some way I, I stumbled upon a book called The New Imperialist. An incredible book that explained how Steve Jobs and how he made his empire, explained how these, these huge silicone valley tycoons started their businesses and in grew them into massive organizations, to explain the Cisco Story and I was fired up. I was getting to stumble onto the Napoleon Hill content and I just decided I was going to overdeliver. And so this was just to kind of open ended question that I was waiting. So I proceeded to build report with Todd by asking him what he was looking for in a camera, what features he needed and what he was not looking for. After talking with Todd, I determined that he needed a high quality camera that was about 30% less than the one he was originally planning on buying to meet his needs.

Todd was sincerely appreciative that I had saved them some money and so he asked, so Clay, what do you do here? My name was on my name tag. I responded with even more passion. “Basically I work here in the electronic section, however, it is my job to make sure that all of the ladies underwear, deodorant, batteries, car accessories, and assorted whatnots don’t migrate into the Electronics Section. I go to Oru and I hadn’t been officially enrolled yet. What do you do, Todd?” I asked, well, Todd went on and explained to me how he worked at a place called Tax and Accounting Software Company, a company that specialized in selling and servicing tax and accounting software. Oddly enough for accountants and professional bookkeepers throughout the country. He told me that the guy who started Tax and Accounting Corporation was an ORU graduate and that they were currently hiring interns if my schedule would allow for it.

He said that I should come on by for an interview, so I asked for his card. I put his card in my wallet and I was overwhelmed with joy to know that I would be getting the heck out of Target. As soon as my interview with Tax and Accounting Software was done, I knew that I was going to get that job if I could just get the interview and I did get that interview and I rolled up to Tax and Accounting Software looking at smelling like a million bucks in my 19 year old way, I drove my Mazda hand painted Dj van. I’d say, well, that van was sweet. I hand painted that van myself. When I bought that van, that van had hundreds of thousands of miles on it, but it was the only van that I could afford and I bought that van myself because nobody was there to help me.

I parked my car over there at the City Plex Towers located at 81st and Lewis and Tulsa, and I thought to myself, I’m going to get this job. I am going to get this job. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m going to get this job and wore some tan, super sexy corduroy dress pants, a blue shirt and a yellow tie. The same kind of blue shirt that I wore every single day as I grew DJ connection.com I was feeling good about life when they finally called me from the lobby to the interview room and I was interviewed by Steve Heck, a former professional baseball player and San Francisco Giant. He put for the San Francisco Giants, my favorite team growing up and another lady with dark hair and and beautiful yet trusting and interrogate of eyes. Her job was to break me down. I think she would have probably used like a waterboarding technique if it was available.

I mean she, this lady was intense, but she was an attractive lady, but it was something about she was intense. You get attractive. If she freaked me out, I’m not really even sure how to describe it. I’ll, I’ll move on and she asked me all these tough character revealing questions. The interview started out? Well they, they threw me some softball questions like, well, tell me about yourself. And so what was the most difficult situation that you’ve been in and how did you overcome this situation to get the job done? And I could answer questions like that all day. Then they started asking me tough questions. So, so clay, how long have you been attending? Oh, are you, uh, when do you plan on graduating? They kept going after him. He was stuff like, so what made you interested in or use accounting internship program? And I knew that I had to totally bs each and every answer or I was going to be screwed with a passion.

Like your average screw would be by bug veal after he just got himself some new Sears power tools. Oh man, I was screwed. So I had to go for it. And you might have to go for it. You got to fake it until you make it. You know you do. You, you know you do. You know that you have a product and you know right now that there’s like 10 people in the world buying that product and you know that you got to fake it until you make it. You’ve got to take that sort of approach to branding that Elon Musk would take. You might be saying to yourself, what could an approach to branding what Elon Musk take? You know Elon Musk, the guy behind PayPal, I’m the guy behind Tesla, the guy behind Neuro Link, the guy behind Solar City, the guy behind Space X. I mean, come on, Elon Musk.

This is what Elon Musk says. Elan Musk says, “Brand is just a perception and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead. Other times it will be behind, but brand is simply a collective impression  some have about a product.” My friend I started DJ connection. I had nothing. I mean brand is just a perception. People perceived that I had nothing because it was just me and a hand painted van and so people wouldn’t pay me, so I had to buy the biggest yellow page ad that I could afford. So that way people would perceive and maybe believe that I was in fact the real deal. Do you know how hard it is? Do you know how hard it is to hire a 40 year old man to come work for you when you’re 19 years old? Think about that. Now, Elon Musk said, sometimes it will be ahead.

Other times it will be behind. Well, at that time my branding was way behind me. I was a very, I was becoming a very good DJ, but I had to book the Dj shows for very low rates because my branding was so terrible. But Brandon, my friend, is simply a collective impression. Some have about a product, so I would ask you this today. On a scale of one to 10 how highly would you rank your branding? Is your branding holding you back? Are you, are you like me where I had a horrible hand painted van, a nonexistent website business cards that look terrible, or are you somebody who’s over branding? Maybe we need to take the product quality up to the next level. So as I was being interrogated, I, I said something to the effect of, you know, I actually met Todd Starkey when he was shopping at target where I head up the electronics department and honestly, I don’t really see myself wanting to work with target the rest of my life.

The more I talked with Todd, the more your company’s sounded like a great place to work at after college. And I’m just really looking for a company that will, we appreciate an employee who an ultra hard worker and he was ultra passionate about getting things done. I have a small mobile entertainment business that I’ve been using to pay my way through college. And I think that this internship opportunity would look better on my resume than having to say that I interned for myself, you know, and they’re like, oh, kind of makes sense. Ah, I had hit a home run, but I kept going because, you know, the one lady, she was kind of hard to convince, but the other guy, he was into it, you know, and uh, Steve was into it. And so I kept going on and that’s when Steve, uh, that’s when I said, so Steve, I understand that you played baseball for the San Francisco giants.

Uh, did you ever play with, with will Clark or Matt Williams? I mean, that must have been great. And then Steve responded with, uh, uh, a few baseball stories and I just had to keep playing that card heart, man. That’s awesome. So what brought you to a tax and accounting software? What did you most like about it here? Uh, what, what are you most like about it here, Steve? Tell me more about it. The thing is, if you want to win friends and influence people, you have to become interested in people. You see people are most interested in themselves. People’s favorite topic is themselves. And so I had to get Steve Engaged in the topic of Steve Because Steve is a great guy, but Steve Likes to talk about Steve. So I had to ask Steve About Steve. So if you’re out there today thinking about doing a sales presentation or selling a product or a service, you’ve got to take an interest in.

The other person that even works went on dates my friends. So it was going to be awesome. My strategy of interviewing the interviewer was working and as the interview is winding down, I gave them my resume knowing that if they called or you to verify that I was actively enrolled there as a student, I was screwed because I had just been kicked out of oral Roberts University. But I just gave it to them with confidence knowing that they were hiring many interns and that most people do not call references. So true. He’s you see when you dress up nice. I found that most businesses do not call references, but if you get referred to somebody for a job, you’re almost good to go. And so getting laid off from target was incredible. And I was honestly happy to get the news when Tara, that the big boss, actually a very small lady, but the big boss and manager had to let me go.

Now shortly after beginning work at tax and accounting software for awhile, rumors started flying in that tax and accounting software corporation was going to be purchased by intuit. Being that I did not know why that mattered. I did not see this as a bad thing. I was just fired up to be making $10 per hour. I was, I was fired up that they serve subway sandwiches every day. I was fired up to be working in an office and I love that scan card, key chain, you know the one they gave me to get into the building life was sweet baby by the way. They also brought pizzas on a consistent basis and I did enjoy those pizzas. Then unexpectedly, one day I got called into the office by a guy named Randy who said that we needed to talk and I don’t care if your mom says it, your wife says it, your principal says it, or anyone says the the phrase we need to talk, it’s never good.

And so I got nervous, but I knew that I was working hard and, and was doing a good job at this point on, on the phones. And so I knew that that it could not have been work related and I knew that I couldn’t really get fired up for, I couldn’t really get fired, you know, for, for personal related stuff outside of work. And thus I felt nervous but, but good. I mean they couldn’t kick me out for getting kicked out of Oral Roberts University, could they? Well, when I sat down and Randy’s office, the dark haired lady again from the initial interview, that beautiful lady with those interrogating distrusting eyes was there. There too. And she’s looking at me and Oh crap, I knew it. She called Oru, didn’t cheat the rat. How could she, he proceeded to tell me in a serious talk that they’d heard I was being kicked out of, or you for recording the infamous, the infamous Oru Slim shady song.

And they were both or you alumni. So they wanted to know what was going on and if in fact I was the one who wrote the song or produced the song, they wanted to know if it was true where that rumor is true. I told him the story with conviction and passion and I explained to them how Adam and I spent at Adam Bagwell and I spent 12 hours recording the song to vent our personal frustrations with the school’s hypocrisy. I explained how our friends had put in, had put it online without our permission. I explained to them how I got kicked out. I then I, and then they kind of cracked a smile that couldn’t believe it. They had to know more. Uh, when I left that meeting, something had changed the dynamic I had shared with them and, and the rest of my coworkers, coworkers was no different.

Everyone loved me. Belinda, the Hispanic lady started talking to me. Todd, the white guy would say, what’s up Dj in the hall? Other employees started telling their personal, oh, or you stories of former or you basketball player told me, how are you paid for his SUV to get him to attend college there? Everyone at work started telling me more and more dirt on Oru. I felt like I ended up info inside scoop on the squirly Richard Roberts to write 10 songs, but I did not because I’m classy or at least I like to tell people I’m classy. I think I’m more humble than I am. Classy. Okay. I’m both super humble. I’m probably the world’s most humble and classy man moving on. I don’t remember the exact series of events at this point, but I do. I do remember, I do recall that that Todd gave me the number of this even jealous to even Gel Evangelical Evangelical.

It was, it was an outreach with oru connections. It was a a media outreach. It was a evangelistic. There we go. And evangelistic outreach designed to reach churches all across the nation with OER. You connections that he had heard was hiring a, I lasted about two weeks. I’m working at a different fast food restaurant because the environment there just wasn’t for me and I really needed another opportunity and I’ve always been of the belief that, that we know whether you want the job or not. If you need a job, you have to take that job right. Don’t you have to take that job, don’t you? I mean, if, whether you want the job or not, if you need to pay the bills, you kind of have to take job. Now, there was a lot, I know there’s, there’s a lot of people, I’ve met a lot of people, a lot of college graduates who will tell me, you know, I’m holding out for management.

 

And I’m like, okay, well what do you do now? Well, I live with my parents. You see, I couldn’t, I, I can, I can’t handle the idea. I couldn’t handle the concept of living with my parents ever or asking for money ever. I’m not that kind of guy. I’d rather, uh, you know, live in the van and take showers at the gym, all American than to go live with my parents or to live on the couch of somebody else. I want to be an independent person. And so for a time, not, not a big period of time, but for a week or so, I, I did that. I, I lived in a van, I took showers at it, all American and fitness, and that’s what I did. But the end of the day, Dj connection was always in my mind. Dj Connection was my magnificent obsession, Dj connection. Dotcom was what I dreamed about.

I knew that I could grow it into something that could create time and financial freedom for me. And I didn’t give up on it because I emotionally connected to my dream and I emotionally disconnected from all of the frustrations, the tribulations, all of the manifestations of negativity that was in my way, all the setbacks. I viewed them as set ups for my future success. I viewed failure as a prerequisite to success because I was reading Napoleon Hill over and over and over again. So I went to work at a company called faith highway. At the time it was called impact ministries. And uh, just for simplicity, I’m going to refer to it as impact ministries from this point forward. Um, I did a moderate amount of, of preinterview interrogations of people who knew people who had allegedly work there so I can get a vibe for the company I am.

Through doing this, I learned that impact was actually a ministry and not actually a company built to produce profits. The owners of impact sincerely believed that they were doing an outreach to the lost by producing TV commercials that can be aired and local markets all across the country and they weren’t really striving to make a profit to do so. What they were doing was they were trying to share the gospel on cable television. Now the problem for me was I was not a Christian at the time and before I applied at impact, I had discovered that the ministry itself actually came as a result of a ministry called the toy makers dream. And the twin maker’s dream was this traveling of angels and production that’s successfully helped to win an estimated 10,000 plus to peep plus people to Christ. And as the twin maker’s dream performance has started winding down, the idea was tossed out that they could use the infrastructure use to promote and market and grow the toy makers dream that could use that to promote the message of the Gospel through producing television commercials.

And the average church, uh, and America essentially couldn’t afford to make high quality commercials. And so they thought, what if we use the infrastructure, the cameras, the systems we have? What if we used that to produce high quality commercials? And then people would like to commercial so much, we could call up local pastors and see if they would like to lease the rights to air the commercials and they’re designated market areas. So it was a picture of this way. Um, you’re a pastor of a local small church and you want to run commercials in your local city, maybe on ESPN or Fox or CNN or whatever. You want to reach people to advertise the church but you don’t have the money to, to produce awesome commercials. And so we get it. You get a cold call from us and then we mail you demo videos and if you like them, you could license the commercials from us.

And at the bottom of the commercials we would put a tagline or a message would say, come join us this Sunday at first Baptist Church and we put the phone number of your church and the website and that kind of thing. And that’s what we did. So my job was to cold call churches. Now these, these, these commercials were produced on very high quality 35 millimeter film and the pastor’s church churches in the, in the viewers loved them. And at one point they even won the prestigious addy award for their quality work and creativity. What we, what we didn’t impact sold all day was the exclusive rights for the local church to get to use that. The got Jesus commercial or the, what if it were true commercial series and their designated market area. And my job was to cold call. I’m talking about cold calling churches that I’ve never spoken to before.

Churches that I’ve never talked to, churches I don’t even want to call because remember I wasn’t a Christian at this time, so I would literally call alphabetically through a list of churches and I would just call them all and there’s a whole call center of people calling them all, call them all until they cry, buy or die. This company wasn’t an oddly my friend and impact ministry is the only thing I could liken it to. Um, would be like a the boiler room movie. Maybe you’ve seen a movie called the room. Um, it just was this high energy atmosphere. Everyone was on the phone and through the creative vision of, of Shane Harwell are super intense and highly motivational sales manager and our vision, our visionary founder, Tom Newman and the sales guru and marketing guru at t Kyle Thompson impact successfully sold the crap out of these commercials in nearly every designated market area in the United States.

Eventually the company sold such a high volume of commercials do. We had to create our own media buying department to assist pastors with more purchasing so they get a better deal. They could buy in bulk. We were buying on behalf of hundreds of churches throughout the country so we could buy the airtime in book. Essentially just like anything, the more you buy, the better of a deal you get. Typically when you, when you negotiate. We were selling commercials to the small individual churches and we were selling commercials to huge churches and we were selling thousands of them because the scripts were so good. I wasn’t even a Christian at the time, but yet I was able to pick up the phone and to cold call a pastor and to convince him that these commercials were so good. They were so good that they should run them in their and their market and these pastors would, would do it.

It was crazy. I’m going, I had to learn how to cold call. I had to learn that making a hundred outbound calls a day and setting three appointments a day was considered to be a success. I had never thought about that before, but that’s, that’s how it was. I, I called and I called and I called and I eventually began to generate commission that they weren’t great commissions, where they were enough commissions to do, you know, to make 3000 a month to make 4,000 a month. And what I would do is I’d make calls all day and then at the end of the day, or at lunch, typically at lunch, and at the end of the day, I would go out to my car and I would check those voicemails from the DJ connection.com voicemail and I would get the voicemail and I would call the person back. But the problem was I had a singular voice mail system of singular phone, a singular wireless phone.

That meant I had limited minutes. So what I had to do was I had to cold call, I guess not cold call, warm call. I had to call back the bride. And so I’d call boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, hey, is this the amazing Amanda? And she’d say, yeah, it is it Amanda. This is a clay with DJ connection. How are you great. Hey, what day are you looking at at getting married? And she’d say, well, June 7th as, that’s an incredible, could you tell me more about that day? And then I would hang up on her. I would hang up on her. Well, why would I hang up on her? Think about it. I had limited minutes.

Think about it.

Walt’s, because if they called me back right then I wasn’t charged. You’re only charged for the outbound minutes. And so that’s how I would do it. That’s how I could afford my call time. And so I, that’s how I did it. And I would book my weddings during lunch. I’d booked my weddings, I’m on the way home. I’d book them in the car and I had a big list of things that I needed to buy, turn DJ connection into a full time business. Because at the time I was working part time for a guy named rob begins and his company was called all access mobile music in the deal was for, for rob, I had to book my own gigs and then I got to use his equipment. So I book a Gig for $300. I’d run his gear for like one 50, you know, $150. And then I got to keep the profit, you know, um, and that’s how I did it.

Well at the time, uh, I couldn’t afford it my own equipment. I couldn’t do it. And so, uh, I tried working. I literally applied for every single DJ company in Tulsa. I applied for infinity, I applied for powerhouse, I applied for all those companies and everybody rejected me. And so I had to go work for rob. And after I’d worked for rob for a while, I realized, man, I am not probably ever going to get ahead working for rob. And so I talked to Robin, I asked rob if, if it was okay, if I could, uh, you know, start my own business in the future and if, if I’m just going to tell him that was my goal. And Rob said, yeah, absolutely. That’s, that’s totally, that’s totally fine. And the only thing is he said, please don’t call my current customers. Just promise me you won’t call my current customers and we’ll, we’ll be fine.

And so I said, sure, that’s, that’s what we’ll do. And so I saved up all the money that I made working at faith highway and apple bees and target and direct TV. I saved all that money. And the summer before I got the internship working at tax and accounting software, I saved up all that money too. I say to a lot of money, work in concrete. I worked construction, no exaggeration guys. I was working at least every single day, 15 hours a day, every day, seven days a week I had a job. And you know why? Because nobody was going to help me and no one’s going to come and help you. It’s not going to happen if you’re waiting for the reinforcements to come and it’s not going to happen. And I think that the acceptance of that, that no one is going to help, uh, that that is, that it’s so powerful once you get to a place where you can, except that once you can get to a place where you can realize that nobody is going to, to come and pick you up and, and no one’s going to come and give you direction on a daily basis, once you realize that that mentor you’ve been looking for isn’t going to find you, but you’re going to have to find them, that’s a great place to be.

And I want to quote Robert Greene, the bestselling author of the book mastery here. He wants said, no one is really going to help you or give you direction. In fact, the odds are against you, but no matter what job that you’re working at, I encourage you to learn something from that job we’re going to target. I learned the importance of organizing everything. That store would have been chaos if Tara, my boss, wasn’t fastidious about making sure that all of the products and services we’re aligned in the proper location, that the labels were facing out, that everything was cleaned in the right place and brought that skill into building DJ connection. When I was organizing the warehouse on the equipment, that’s how I did it, and I realized the, the, the resourcefulness needed when I was at faith highway, realizing that it faith highway, they didn’t have anybody calling them.

No one was calling faith highway to buy those commercials, so we had to call them. I learned the power of, of making a call script from faith highway, a call scripts. So good. I remember thinking that man, they have a script. It’s so good at impact ministries and faith highway that they can have a heathen like me booking commercials, selling commercials to pastors. That right there is repeatability. Wow. That’s a system. While it’s a process, I mean, here I am, a 1920 year old guy. I know nothing. I know nothing about taxes and I’m answering the phone and I’m answering accounting questions from certified public accountants while working at tax and accounting software. That’s some good, that’s some good systems right there. If you can get a 19 year old with no accounting background to answer the phone and then to be able to answer the questions of account of accountants, that’s an incredible, that’s an incredible system.

Tim Redmond, uh, who I work with today, Tim Redmond, Redmond growth. He and Tim Clearer built this unbelievable system up there at tax and accounting software. Do you know before they sold tax and accounting software, they had 450 employees up there. Crazy. And how crazy was that? A 19 year old like me could hop into the business and run it. That was powerful for me. I remember writing that stuff down on my journal going, Gosh, I’ve got to build systems that, that are so easy that an idiot could run them. I have to build these kinds of systems that are so easy that an idiot could run them. Because at the time I was an idiot and I didn’t even know. I wasn’t even aware of the Warren buffet quote where he said, I try to invest in businesses so wonderful that an idiot can run them because sooner or later one will, and that is so true.

Think about that again. He says, I try to invest in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them because sooner or later one will. That right there is powerful, powerful, so important that we embrace that idea. I took me a little bit longer than I would have hoped to learn these concepts, but we’re working at faith highway. I polished my at my sales skills, will work in there at faith highway in impact ministries. Everyday I begin honing my sales skills and I began to get to a place where I recognized that I needed to make a certain number of phone calls per day. I needed, I needed to get a certain number of rejections per day in order to get a certain number of yeses. So I realized if I made a hundred outbound calls a day, I would get probably three people to call me back.

And of those three I could probably book too. And I decided I wanted to recreate this atmosphere at Dj connection because I love that atmosphere. The magic, the magic, the energy of a buzzing call center. Nothing’s more sad than a quiet sales room. Working in a small business where it’s so quiet and the phone never rings. It’s sad. So on the sales floor at impact ministries and the call center, at any given time there were 20 plus reps selling, pleading and encouraging pastors to buy these tools to reach the lost. And it was here amidst the hysteria and the frantic pace of this highly competitive sales room. And I realized what it meant to sell something versus just to take an order like I’d always done at my previous jobs here we were breaking the sales process down to five scientific and choreographed steps. We would step one, establish and build rapport.

Step two we would find the needs of the pastors. Step three we would deliver benefits supported by facts. Think about that. Wow. Step four, we would shamelessly namedrop and step five we would call the pastors to action in case I messed that up. Here I repeat. Step one we’ve establish and build rapport. Step two we would discover the passengers needs. Step three we would deliver the benefits and the solution supported by facts. And step four we would shamelessly namedrop other churches that we were working with. And step five we would do the call to action. It was at this job that I learned about the deal wheel. The process of taking a hard no and turning it into a yes by playing the wounded dog trick and acting as though I was emotionally scarred before sheepishly acting, asking what their main need was before I once again pounced right back on the benefits and solutions.

Then backup track to the next step, the shameless name drop. And finally the call to action. I learned how to drop the EOL, the estimation of loss. Essentially letting the buyer know that if they did not act today, the commercials might not be available tomorrow. I learned about matching expectations to the actual product and the dangers of buyer’s remorse. I learned about the dangers of thinking about that. The dangers of buyer’s remorse. You don’t want to sell something to somebody unless they are thoroughly convinced and they have bought in. So if you ever have somebody that’s on the verge and you’re Kinda like, well, I could probably push them to buy something. I don’t do that to this day. I don’t do that to this day. When I deliver benefits, I support them by fax. To this day, I don’t push people to buy things that they can’t afford to buy because of what I wonder.

I feel bad too. You’re not getting any testimonials or references from people who are upset. Three, there’s this buyer’s remorse. It’s when somebody wants to buy, but they’re not thoroughly convinced that they should buy. They they emotionally want to, but they haven’t resolved in their mind that what you’re saying is in is in fact supported by facts. They emotionally like you but they don’t necessarily believe or buy into you. That’s a bad place to be. You always want your ideal and likely buyers to buy as a result of you building rapport with them, finding their needs, delivering benefits supported by facts and then calling them to action, but then it did. Oh, Oh yes, my friend. I learned about buying emotion. Now we’re in the buying emotion is the number one reason people buy or don’t buy. I learned the importance of not ever ruining a relationship with a customer over a small dollar amount so as to not crap on your own camp ground.

As my boss, Shane would put it in this office. I learned how to, how to sell with benefits supported by facts. I learned the importance of finding everyone’s hot button. I learned the ancient art of the name drop and had to bring passion to the phone. I learned that most purchases are motivated by emotion and not price. And I learned in the absence of value, price is the only consideration. I learned how to become emotionally numb to rejection when making sales calls my friend. I learned that failure is a prerequisite to success@thisjobandilearnedtosucceedandibroughtallofthatintothefoundingofdjconnection.com. You ask yourself, what are the scripts come from? A customer call me their day and said, I think they’re still using the same scripts that you built. Probably. Uh, somebody called me their day and said, hey, I think you’re on hold. Music is the same and they haven’t changed. And I said, probably the logo you, you built to still be unused.

Absolutely. They said, well, how come you don’t go back there anymore? Well the thing is whenever you sell a company, it’s kind of like breaking up with a girlfriend almost. You know, I mean, maybe you had a great relationship with a girl and maybe at one point you were in love with that girl and you want it to be with that girl. You could picture yourself being with that girl for the foreseeable future, but now you’ve broken up. There’s, it’s really, there’s, there’s, there’s nothing left because now your girl is dating some other dude. And I suppose you could go hang out with your girlfriend and some other dude, maybe they’re married now, but they would get weird real fast. Right, right. Just the thought of, it’s even weird. So, you know, even just checking on Dj connection, they do things differently now. The guy has sold the company to a, Jason Bailey is a good man and, uh, he does things differently from the way that I would, I would do it.

Uh, he does things, uh, many things, probably better than I would have done it or differently than I would have done it, but I can’t go back because there’s too much pain. Uh, do I regret selling the business? No. Um, but, uh, you know, lost a part of me there, lost a relationship and I sold that company. Uh, am I glad I moved on other things? Yes, but why don’t I check on it and it’s because it’s really not mine anymore. It’s, it’s, it’s somebody else’s. It’s, it’s, it’s, I, I sold that car and, uh, uh, you know, broke up from that girl and now she’s dating somebody else. My friend, when I worked at it at faith highway, um, when I started working at faith highway, I thought you’d go to your job and make calls on the days where I felt good, but at faith highway, I learned that in a largely commissioned based job.

If you don’t make calls in the days you’re feeling sick or you have the sniffles or you probably need some more dayquil, then you really won’t do well. I also learned at faith highway, uh, about jackass. Hurry my work to impact ministries. I learned about Jack Ansary too. I remember working on the sales floor next to a man who would, would pray all the time and he’d praise it. Well, Lord Jesus, help me close deals. Just help me to close deals and no exaggeration guys, this is real, real. This is real talk. He’d make like 40 outbound calls a day, 44 zero. Then I met another guy who he confided in me were, we were working out one day at this local gym and he says, I want you to know I’m actually not a Christian either. And uh, uh, yeah, I think we can kind of get fired if we’re not Christians because it’s, uh, you know, Christian business, Christian ministry.

But, uh, here’s how I, here’s how I make all my money. Once you got to do, and you gotta make 200 outbound calls a day, and when you’re on the phone, you have to understand that it’s an act, right? It’s showtime. It’s an act. It’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a game. When you’re on the phone, that character, that personality, it needs to be a person who is enthusiastic, who’s excited, who’s tenacious, who cares? It’s like the best of all virtues. When you’re on the phone. It’s, it’s a showtime thing. It you, you can’t, uh, you can be happy, right? You can, you can be funny, but you can’t be sad. You can be honest and funny, but you can’t be honest and sad. You can have a highlight of the week, but you can’t have a lo of the week, my friend. You are just, it’s all about ups.

You got to bring the motion up and the sales will go up. So, uh, meanwhile why homey next to you is, is praying all the time. Watch his numbers because the, his numbers aren’t good and I’m sure that God could help him. But, uh, for whatever reason, God’s choosing not to. Meanwhile, I’m going to show you my Jedi sales techniques. And so day by day, week after week, he began showing me the importance of reading the freaking script. His Jedi move was following the script, except instead of making the, the, the, the, the minimum required a hundred calls a day. This guy was focused on making 200 calls a day and he said, I’m going to call all my leads for, I’m an open my book. Turn to the pages left to right. We called it a book, it’s a book of sales leads. And he said, I’m gonna call my leads from left to right.

And then I finish. I’m going to call my leads from right to left, but I’m never going to be off the phone unless I’m going to the restroom. And I thought, wow, that right there is a thought process that, that that’s a move. And to this day, that’s what I do. I never take a lunch break. I haven’t taken a lunch break in a long time. I don’t do it. Why? I don’t understand why I would want to come to work and then take a lunch break. I don’t, I don’t get why I would want to be away from my family sitting there eating my meal. I’d rather just keep working, you know, maybe just slam a protein shake or something. But bottom line, I learned so many things at impact ministries and faith highway and all of that DNA, all that culture, all those experiences went the building of DJ connection.

And yet over time I lost my zeal for selling those evangelism commercials because I wasn’t a Christian. And I actually believed opposite of what I was selling. It was, it’s called cognitive dissonance. It’s when your values don’t align to your actions. And so over time I, I quickly discovered that I didn’t like working with pastors and their boards and that I’m a firm believer in, uh, Ge is a former CEO Jack Welch’s philosophy that committees are not effective. I found it very hard to deal with reality that most of these churches have 120 or less. People couldn’t make a decision in 60 days or less. Uh, I just didn’t understand about the idea that a man would pray about advertising. I mean, every company in America advertises if they’re going to be successful and I’d have somebody praying about whether they should advertise or not. I just, I didn’t get it.

And so looking back on it, it was just frustrating. Um, everybody around me to stick around. And so I ultimately asked my boss, Jeremy Thorn if I could move on to do something else. And that’s something else was full time Dj connection. Why? Because I decided in my mind that I was going to be going to eventually quit and do DJ connection fulltime as soon as I could book for weddings a week for four weeks in a row. So let me explain this to you. I would get, usually every time I a lead came in from the yellow pages, I would pretty much book two out of three leads, maybe three out of four leads. If I had four leads a week that came in from the yellow page advertisement, I’d usually book two or three of those four. Then when I went out and Dj at a wedding, typically a two to three people at the wedding would come up and ask me, uh, if I, if they could get a card because they wanted me to Dj their wedding.

And, and eventually it occurred to me that everyone, I passed out a card to never actually followed up and called me. And so I started saying to people at the show, they would come up to me and say, Hey, can I get a card? And I’d say, yeah, are you guys getting married? And they’d say yes. And I’d say, well, if you give me your phone number, I can check my availability to see if I’m open. And then magically I started booking all those shows. And so I started booking all those shows, started getting referrals, started with doing the yellow page ads. And then on the weekends I’d set up shop at these local bridal shops. There’s these local bridal stores where brides go in to find the perfect cow and the perfect dress. And I would set up my equipment are there and I would do a drawing for a chance to win a free um, Dj for your wedding.

And a bride’s would would register and I’d call all the leads and give every bride a 15% discount if they registered. And a one week I booked for weddings. I thought three weeks from now, baby, I’m quitting this place. And the next week I can’t remember any bookings I had, but I like zero bookings or, or one or something. Within the next week I booked four and then the next weekend I would would look to zero. And this kept happening four and zero. And one four and three foreign four. I booked for weddings one week and then four weddings the next week and then one the next week and I kept that. I kept having to reset because I’d set myself this goal that I’m not going to quit until I can book for weddings every week for four weddings in a row, and that right there is a big teaching moment for somebody out there.

That’s some of the things you can learn from this official Dj connection history as told by the founder myself, is that you have to know when you’re jumping point is you have to know when is it, when, when are you going to take the jump and do get into self employment, and I recommended that jump is not an emotional decision. I recommend that when you make that jump, you’re making that jump because you have the money to do it. Imagine it’s like a pool right in the pool can be filled with money. You’d rather jump into a pool with money so that you have some cushion there. But if you’re just jumping off the diving board and on onto concrete, you’re going to die. I mean, cash is the lifeblood of your business. Uh, blood is the, um, it’s the life you know, your blood gives, gives you life, right?

The water. Sunshine provides life for plants. So you know, if you, if you starve a plan of, of light and water too long, it’s going to die. If you starve a person of their blood system, that would be gross and they would die. If you starve a business of cash, it dies. That’s what, that’s what bankruptcy is. That’s when you’re at a business. So I had made that decision that I’m not going to stop until I had four weddings booked four weeks in a row. And so each week I kept having to sit by this guy named Ron and any impact sales room, I had gotten to a place I was annoyed with being there. I didn’t want to sell commercials. They had, they had, they had required praise and worship. We had to go upstairs and sing praise and worship twice a week and there’d be a guy up there singing be to a hug God for ever her in a Hipaa won’t be too out her guide.

Ed [inaudible] and I was going, no, no, no, no. I didn’t believe in it. Uh, there was a song, our God is an awesome God. He reigns over home habit. Oh, I just didn’t want to, I could, I wasn’t feeling it. I didn’t want to be a part of it. I felt like I was a hypocrite because I was a hypocrite. So I thought, well at least if I’m stuck here until I can, but for weddings for weeks in a row, I’m going to at least try to soak up as much knowledge as possible. So I’m sitting next to this guy named Ron Hood now and you know, in the impact ministry sales room, this huge room filled, the sales representatives are, were all surrounding that. The perimeter of the room and Robin Hood worked in the corner and we all just called him hood and he worked at this momentum generating and procrastination killing pace that I now work at today all the time.

I had never worked like that before. Yeah, I skipped lunch. It’s by never worked like that before. This guy would pound out numbers on the phone and he would do everything with a sense urgency. He literally voicemails with a passion. He would write with a passion, he would take notes of the passion. He was pretty much set up. He would set the pace for the whole call center every single day and because he was so good, he often intimidated people and because he was 100% focused on his job, people often thought that he was not a nice guy, but the reality was the reality of the situation was that he just came to work to do the work and that was the only reason for being there for him. He did not come to work to have in depth conversations and political discussions with the employees and coworkers about the weather or the economy, the various collegiate sports teams or religious differences.

And I learned that from Ron. I learned that the key to becoming poor, to talk about religion, politics and divisive issues during your work day. If you want to slow down your work day and make your day ineffective, get into a debate with somebody about abortion or uh, get into a debate with somebody about building a wall. Should be build a wall to protect us from Mexico. Should we not get into a debate about one world currency? Talk to them about the weather. Tell him you like hot weather, see how they react. And this is the kind of crap I see today still and companies, I work with companies I own. People come to work to debate divisive issues and people come to work to do everything but to work. But Ron taught me to work. He taught me this verse, he said, and I wasn’t a Christian at the time, but I like, I kind of liked the verse.

I mean, do you have to be a Christian to like the verse? I mean, I dunno. Do you have to be a pagan to like peg and music? I don’t know. So, um, but he had his verse and the verse I thought, and then that burst. That verse is good. And, and I remember writing it down and thinking, I gotta I gotta I gotta I gotta do that. That’s cute. Is from Collagen’s three 23 from the Bible where it reads whatever you do, work at it with all your heart again. Colossians three 23 from the Bible it says, whatever you do, work at it with all of your heart as working for the Lord himself, not for human masters. Since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Jesus Christ you’re serving. Wow. That was powerful for me.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for human masters. Since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Jesus Christ you are serving. That helped me so much. Ron was always focused on on what he could control and he created his own daily momentum. He was a sales institution in and of himself. He simply outworked everyone in the, in the room at all times. He was on fire to him, cold calling. It was just a numbers game and he knew that the more people he called, the more deals he would make. Plain and simple. He did not care if that meant he’d be hung up on her. More often than not, he was a cold calling machine. He would work through the breaks, at least I don’t recall him ever taken a break.

I mean, so nowadays I don’t ever take lunch breaks either, just like Ron, but instead I just worked through them. I grind through them. I picked up those habits from working with Ron Hood. Those last few months. He was hungry like the wolf for sales, and I think he was also literally hungry. I mean, maybe it just because he hadn’t eaten anything. Maybe there’s no correlation between this physical hunger and this figurative hunger for deals, but it works for me and I operate best. Even today when I am hungry. Ron Thrived on competition. He was fueled by a passionate, fiery. It was this ardor and drive to succeed. He brought the Alacrity, this cheerful readiness to to the phone. This conviction behind the words was in kiss. His conviction behind his words and he was saying was incredible at impact. Not many people knew too much about hood because he never spoke with anyone other than pastors.

Literally, this guy would roll into work right on time and he would immediately fire up the phone. Yes, no, yes, no dial. Smile called them all until they cry, buy or die. Yes, no, yes, no dial and smile. Call them all until they cry, buy or die. He was not affected by the responses. He knew that we had an incredible product and he just wanted to find out who the buyers were. If you weren’t a buyer, he wanted you off of his phone. If you were a buyer, he wanted to find out your hot button. Some of that you are passionate about something that you were passionate about so he could quickly find the right commercial package to communicate the church’s message to the community. Run would bring the fire to every call. He would adapt this presentation over time to accommodate the unique dialects, personalities, and conversation styles of each customer.

Just listening to him speak fired me up. Just thinking about the passion behind his cold calls and the way he left compelling voicemails. It makes me want to go make some cold calls right now because of Ron. I now love cold calls and I sincerely do. I remember when I first tried speaking to Ron, you always acted as though I did not know what I was, that I was standing in his area was like, he was kind of confused as to why are you interrupting me? And so I, I I, you know, kept harassing him and kept asking him to meet. And finally he said, fine, I will meet you, but you will have to, you know, we’ll, we’ll meet it Grady’s. Cause I used to be a waiter there and you need to figure out what’s wrong with your stinking thinking. I remember him saying that to me.

He’s like, I will take you to greatest, but you have to figure it out. What’s wrong with your stinking thinking? And I just totally oblivious to the idea of what that meant. So I thought, okay, I’m kind of insulted but I suck at my job or I’m not as good as he is. I mean he had it, he was doing like 10 times as much commission as I was making. So I agreed to go. And uh, there he pointed out to me, he says, clay, you have earrings on. Why are you wearing pirate earrings? And I thought, oh I dunno cause I’m awesome. I wasn’t, I wasn’t sure. I mean I, I, I guess I was into rap culture and I had those re airings he said what I want when I see those earrings. Does that inspire credibility or does that, what does that do for you when people see your earrings?

Do they want to do business with you or not? My friend, you have to dress to impress. You have to dress to impress my friend. If you’re going to have success, you have to dress to impress and you can get a wipe that scowl on her face. You’ve got to sound happy on the phone. You gotta wipe that scowl off your face. And thus the phrase did, I said it, DJ connection everyday dial and smile was born. Dial and smile. Dialing and smiling. When you smile on the phone, it’s amazing how it impacts you. He said, clay, you have to work as unto the Lord with all of your heart as working for the Lord, not for human masters. Man. Since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. And so, uh, I said, well, what does that mean?

He said, listen, don’t worry. Don’t worry about your manager, man. They’re, they’re making a call quota for you have to renew. Having to make a hundred outbound calls a day, a minimum of a hundred calls a day. Why don’t you shoot for the maximum? Why don’t you try to set a record? Why don’t you try to beat me there, buddy? Why don’t you try to beat me and why don’t you make some goals, right? You write down some specific goals that you want to go after. And I started thinking, well, I have a goal. I want to start my own DJ company. He said, yeah, but what about all the equipment you need, man, don’t you need to write that down? And so here’s the list of what I wrote down. I wrote down, I need to buy a $35 a month phone service. That’s why I need to buy.

This is like an extra service where they would record your calls. I needed to pay an extra $40 a month for my cell phone service. I needed an extra hundred dollars a month for the car insurance I needed. I needed this extra DJ gear and I made a list of all the equipment I needed. And then I began to have this new passion knowing that I wasn’t working for my boss, I was working as unto the Lord. I was just working as unto the Lord and so passionately I began to change my mindset and I began to work as unto the Lord and over time I eventually booked for weddings for weeks in a row and I quit all my jobs. I took that money and I bought more advertisements, bigger yellow page yets. I bought a bigger yellowpage ad. This was before the Internet, before the sites, before all the search engine optimization, I bought a bigger phone book Ad.

Then I hired a guy, I hired a guy to help me work at more bridal stores so we have more people in the bridal store, so we are, we were, I was already in the bridal stores and it worked, but I, I had to, I had to have another guy do it too, so I would have more yellow page ads and more people working in the bridal stores and I increased at a two legged marketing stool. Two things working for me and then I committed that I was going to work as hard for myself as I ever did while working at faith highway. I would personally make 200 outbound calls a day and that was my three legged marketing stool. That was my system was that I was going to make tutored outbound calls a day. I’d be working all the bridal shows, all the, all the bridal stores.

I couldn’t get into bridal shows at this time. It was bridal stores and then I would do yellow page ads and that was my three ways I, I got the marketing going on and I wrote down a list of all the things I wanted to fix over time. I wanted to have a website that was respectable. I wanted to have a logo that I liked. I wanted to have name tags for the guys. I wanted to have better quality speakers and I wrote down that list of that equipment and day by day, week by week, I worked at it. My wife worked at office depot in Oral Roberts University and I was able to then focus on just one job and it was DJ connection and I worked at that job. I did it every wedding to the best of my ability, how he’s got there early.

I always stayed late. I decided to overdeliver after each and every wedding. I didn’t have to and it turns out it was illegal, but I did it. Um, I would send the bride’s, uh, a CD with all of the songs that we had played at their wedding to them in an outback gift certificate. And then I would write them a handwritten note thanking them for the opportunity to work with them. And a couple of weeks after the wedding, after they’d gotten back from there, after they’d returned from their honeymoon, um, I would send it to them and, uh, then I would call and follow up and I’d say, Hey, you know, it was just the amazing a bride. Yeah. Hey, how was the wedding? And they said, great. I said, well, Hey, what could I have done to improve? And they’d say, nothing. No clay, it was great.

It was great. And I said, no, but seriously, I’d like to know what could I do to make it better. You know? And I learned that at faith highway cause we run commercials for pastors and we’d ask them, what could we do to improve this experience? What can we do to improve these commercials here at impact ministries? And I started asking the brides, you know, what can I do to improve? And they’d always say on the first pass, oh, it was great. But on the second pass they’d say something like, well, I mean, um, you know, your presentation, the music was great, the announcements for great, but you talked a little too fast so maybe you could slow it down. But other than that, we were really appreciative and, and, um, what can we do to help? And I said, well, if you could refer me to a friend, it would, it would mean the world.

And I just kept doing that. And, uh, I grew the company. And in 2000, uh, the year 2002, I was named as the Tulsa Metro Chamber of Commerce, Young Entrepreneur of the year for DJ connection. And I just kept growing and kept hiring people. And the crazy thing about the hiring process was I would hire people, people that I believed in and I would train them up and I always thought that like it would be like this band where we’re like together for years. You don’t like you to one of the rare bands that have stayed together for a long time. I thought it’d be like you too, but I found that that running my company was, wasn’t like running you too. It was, it was more like, um, it, it was more like running new edition, the RNB group, it was like, ah, I Bobby Brown on my group, you know, in my group.

And Bobby wanted to go solo and Ralph Tresvant wanted to do, go and do his own thing and then one by one over the course of a decade, I noticed that all my former djs became my competitors and all of the people that I had hired that I knew from college had bailed out on a wedding on me or always did what was best for them. They never would honor their commitments. They would say, yeah, I’ll, I’ll DJ for that wedding on June 5th. But then, you know, the week of June 5th would come up and they’d say, you know, I want to go on a trip. I’m going to go rafting, or I’m going to go work in his church camp, or whatever. They had committed to me to do. They always build out. And I was always stuck, left holding the bag. I was left holding the responsibility and thankfully holding all the money, I over time, realized that over time, really nobody is going to stick around.

And I started reading more and more books. I read books about apple and you know, books about the founding of Microsoft. And I started realizing when I read books about Rockefeller that these people to very few of the people that, that, that they started their companies with, we’re with them over time, uh, stayed with them. And I started to realize that a business ultimately has to exist to serve me because no matter how much time and energy I poured into them, they would ultimately start their own business to compete directly with me every time. Unbelievable, and they’d always have their own justifications. I’d have people tell me, well, God told me to start my own business. That’s always a fun one. When someone says, God told you to start your own business to compete directly with your current boss, that that’s always fun. Um, there was always people that would say, well, Hey, I just want you to know I don’t, I don’t agree with your policies.

Um, there’s always someone had a harsh opinion or PR somebody who hated the, the structure. Someone who hated sticking within the playlist I made or sticking within the regulations or the systems we had created. There was always people that hated being on time. And so you’d have to create a system for what do you do? How do you handle a Dj who’s late? So I created a system where you have to find people who are late. It’s called merit based pay, uh, sticks and carrots. I’d read about this and Jack Welch’s book straight from the Gut and I realized if the DJ’s do a great job, we should survey the bride after the wedding. And if the bride, she asked the bride on a scale of one to 10, how happy were you with the Djs performance? And if the DJ, you know, scores like a nine or a 10, we should give the DJ a bonus. And if the DJ scores like, uh, I don’t know anything less than a seven, we should pay the DJ as low as possible. And that merit based pay system really was polarizing, pushed out the, the terrible disc jockeys. And it attracted people that were focused on results and the company grew some more. And then that wave of people left and started their own company. And it just kept

happening. And as each person who used to work for him, he started their own company one by one, they all failed because they weren’t working as unto the Lord. You see, those people only worked hard on the days where they felt like it. Those people were, uh, you know, you know, they only sowed seeds on the days where they felt healthy. And so I found that it didn’t even bother me if people, it was almost a good thing. Uh, for my Djs to leave and start their own company because every time they did it, their businesses would fail and it would further more prove the uh, the uh, for the proof of the marketplace that my company was the true market leader. My name is Clay Clark and that is how I started Dj connection chapter three, life after the jump. One definite chief aim. No office space, no budget, no problem.

Jason, think about the clients that you’re working with and the clients that you’ve, you’ve coached. How often do you find yourself talking to somebody who is running out of money, running out of time, running out of some resource? How often do you find that to be the case? Very often. And so this particular chapter is meant to one tell you, tell you the DJ connection story, share with you the story but also meant to, to help you. Because as my wife and I just decided to start the DJ business full time, I just shared with you in the previous Chapter I had to book, I made a commitment to myself. I’m not going to go full time starting Dj connection until I could book for weddings a week for four consecutive weeks. So Jason, why, why do you think that Vanessa and I had talked about that, that I had committed that even though I worked at at faith highway or it goes called impact ministries and even though she worked at office depot, Office depot in Oral Roberts University, why do you think that we committed as a couple that I’m not going to jump and quit my jobs, plural, to go full time until I can book for weddings each week, four weeks in a row.

To me it sounds like you guys found, okay, well if we’re going to go full time, you’re going to need x amount of jobs per week in order to sustain, and you guys weren’t there yet, so you decided you’re going to still work your butts off, save up, and then to the point where you had enough of your nest egg, let’s call it, to be able to transition without having the pain of, dear God, we’re running out of money and this took about two years. Just this process I’d like to ask you, um, how often have you found yourself talking to somebody? I don’t want to give me any, give any other details, but you’re talking to an entrepreneur who it’s abundantly clear that they quit their job and this is another full time Gig, but they don’t have any leads. Oh, at least a few.

And, and so I just want to make sure that if you’re out there today and that’s you, I hope you learn from this. And so my wife and I started from a very tiny condo, a condominium at 67th and Louis, which I once considered to be a luxury resort because it was, it was it because it was behind a gate. Jason, I didn’t know that it was behind a gate because that was not a safe part of town. But I thought it was a luxury resort because there was a gate and I owned it. And so I worked every holiday. I worked every thanksgiving. I worked every Christmas Eve, I worked every New Year’s eve. I worked every valentines and I even had to fly home from Thanksgiving to put out Dj fires on an annual basis from Houston. I trained all my djs from here. I brought a bottle of my equipment, I bought the equipment from Guitar Center, but then I would bring it upstairs.

And Jason did, you know we used to not have a guitar center in Tulsa. Um, I think it’s been around since as long as I can remember. But that does make sense. Yeah, Dude. So I had to drive down to Dallas to buy my DJ here, said, Bro, I buy the Dj gear, then I would bring the Dj gear upstairs, carry it all upstairs. And I would teach the djs how to become a great DJ within our living room. Wow. And do you know a what neighbors typically thought about this exercise of training the DJ’s on a microphone? How to become a DJ, uh, when I am in fact to their neighbor and a condominium complex. I bet they loved it. Nope. And so I ended up having to a rent a mini storage facility or I already, I already had one that was paying about 80 bucks a month for, but I expanded it up to about 500, $600 a month.

So this big old warehouse where it was no heat, no air conditioning. And I say big warehouse, it might be as big as this room. Yeah. And I kept all the Dj gear and that’s where I taught all the Djs. But for the listeners out there who are offering right now in your house, hey, you’re in good company, a Steve Jobs and Steve Wasniak started apple. They’re a, Hewlett Packard was started in a, in a little shed. Um, there’s so many businesses that are successes today that started in a shed or a trailer. Yahoo was started in a trailer. Well, ah, the Tony Shay was Zappos when he took over the company. He was officing out of his house for a while there. So you can make it happen. But it was during this time we’ll be at the condominium that we bought the DJ trailer. At that point in time, we really needed a trailer and for some reason I got caught up with this romantic in fairytale idea of buying a trailer while we were visiting Vanessa’s parents on our family vacation to Kentucky.

This idea soon mutated into a crazy plan to buy the trailer from this Amish aluminum trailer builder that lived in Nappanee, Indiana, which is located within a few hours of my wife’s parents. Looking back at it, I would never buy a new trailer unless it was for in foreclosure or something again, but I did it at the time, so I spent way too much money on this beautiful trailer that quickly got dented and banked. Then I overpaid for artists to paint one of the vehicles and these guys took forever and they could never really figure it out. I, I had him paint it. So could be, it’d become a rolling beautiful billboards. Let me start right there. Jason. Why would you not want to buy a new car ever or a new, uh, trailer ever like a brand new? How would you never, ever, ever as an entrepreneur, ever want to buy a new trailer and, or a new van or a new vehicle?

Vinnie, cut. Well, they’re super expensive for one. So how would you advise to do it? What would you, what do we need? What do you think I did? Um, you’re a smart man. I bet you went to either Indian all car dealerships around you or anybody who sold automotive vehicles and you knew the exact model of the vehicle you wanted. And you also probably know that a lot of commercial, um, businesses who have vehicles will often sell them to or anyone in the automotive industry so you can get it for much cheaper. And it’s the exact same vehicle. Nope. Nope. Didn’t do any of that. I was dumb. And so dumb means you just don’t have the education needed to win. So I went out there and paid brand new. I paid it. I paid seven grand for this trailer, Woo. And I spent like a ton of money on this newer band.

It was like as new as I could possibly afford, thinking it would be great. Well, I use that van, I want to say for like, uh, W I used the trailer for like one show and then it got dented and I’m like, oh man. So that fall, just pop the den out of it because, and then I got another show, another debt. Pretty soon I’m going this day he’s going to get dead it all the time. Right. Then this is where it gets even crazier. I paid those dudes to paint the billboard. I drew out what I wanted it to look like. There it is. I drew it out when I wanted it to look like nice. And I sketched it out. I paid somebody to do a three d rendering of it. And do you know how the painter guy by the way, who had showed me examples of what he could do because I was contemplating auto wrapping, did the trailer for like five grand or paying this dude to paint it auto rapping at the time was five grand. I couldn’t afford that. The due to the paint it for $1,000. Do you know what he ended up doing with the paint job? How, what his, what his overall strategy ended up being because he showed me pictures of his work where it was with brushes and stuff. Yeah. Guess what he did? Did you do airbrush? He painted it.

Well don’t say acrylic paint. I keep going. Spray paint? Yes. Oh Nice. He spray painted it so it looked like it was a moving ode to hip hop. It was a graffiti. People used to laugh all the time cause it looked like it was like I was part of a gang or something. That’s kind of awesome. It’s, it’s kind of a purple cow, uh, except for when you’re selling to mothers of brides who it’s true for their 50s and South Tulsa. So whoever, after having already paid them for the majority of the money up front, which I, by the way you shouldn’t do Jason, why should you not pay an artist upfront to paint your vehicle? Well, one, do you want to make sure that they’re going to get it done in time so deposits awesome, but if you give them all the money, then they’re just like, well look at it done whenever I want to.

So finally, these guys returned it to me two days after they’d promised what was supposed to be a white trailer with blue logo and blue text became a ghetto Rafiq trailer with a puke green. The base, the base car was puke green, dark colored mobile piece of urban halfassed graffiti that screamed figuratively, do not book me because I am homeless drug and a drug addicted Dj. This van and trailer Combo was not commercially viable in any, it was the worst possible marketing and PR that Dj connection.com could have. It was terrible. It was terrible. I would pull in to Panera bread and people look at me like deer. Good. Where did he get that vehicle? It was horrible. At best it was nauseating to say the least. That trailer looked artistically grows and commercially at a place man. And think about it. I spent seven grand on this trailer to buy it new and then I had it painted by this dude.

It looks like he threw up on my, on my van. It was gross and I really, really needed to get over that. Yeah, but I didn’t see, you know what I decided to do with this guy who painted my vehicle? What’d you do? Call Him all the time? Yeah. And harass him about coming back to paint it properly. What’d he say? He said, sure, I’ll call you back. Did I call you back? No, but I wouldn’t let it go. Right. Why didn’t I let it go? Because it was important to you is also important to the business. You wanted to, one, you wanted what you paid for, but it’s also good to be tenacious. But why did they, why did that behavior though also lead to my poverty? Do you think? What, what? Why did buying a brand new van and then obsessing about it staying a, buying a brand new trailer and obsessing about it, staying debt free and in paying someone to paint it hand painted.

Who I found out later what had some drug issues and I could have picked up on that. But then after they screwed it up, why? Why was it my bad to continue to follow up over and over to have them do it, make it right. What if it was my bed? While you’re spending time focusing on something other than the business, it was important to you, but at the same time, it’s not something that was going to be scalable like they were other fires you’re going to put out while trying to deal with the whole van situation, right? Oh no, but Jason, it gets better. Oh, because they’d screwed up my trailer. I thought, okay, I’ll let you guys make it. Right. My beautiful 1998 Astro van now the year was like 2000 bro. This is a hot van. Okay. Right. So I said, can you guys pants it?

Absolutely. I said, well, you stick with them. The designs, is it? Sure. Man. Those last time I think. I think last time bro, Bro, I think last time we were just a little bit off of what we do because of miscommunication, but this time Bruh, or we’re going to make it right. And these are the guys who never had gone back and painted the trailer properly yet. Yeah. I’m going, okay. I’ll give it a shot. I seriously, it was unbelievable. I paid these guys to paint the van. When I got this thing back. It looked crazy. Crazy. Awesome. No, no. The van was even worse. It was even more like aggressive graffiti. It made it made you not want to book me. Oh No. Yeah. But it was what? It was wall all that I had. And so there I was driving around with a vehicle that’s scared people away and a trailer that scared people away.

And a condo where I was deejaying and training people to Dj upstairs and was against the rules of the Hoa. And that’s how we started. But it’s from there that we broke the hundred thousand dollar sales mark. Nice. And it was during this incredible time of growth that I met every client at Panera bread, formerly known as Saint Louis Bread on 71st and Lewis through. Why do you think I had my wife dropped me off at Panera bread every day in the morning. And why? Why do think she picked me up every day at night? Did you guys only have vehicle? Yes. Mm. And I didn’t have office space. That’s true. So I would meet people at Panera bread. Now the rule was you had to buy somebody something or you are loitering. Now the manager at the time, her name was Shelley, and Shelley was the manager of this beautiful restaurant.

And for Reed, who sane was the Panera bread employee. That always went out of his way to make me feel appreciated. He was great to me. He always hop on the mic. He’d hop on the Panera. Mike when I’d walk in and go. But if the gentlemen to Jack Connection every single time I’d walk in or, but he’s a gentleman, he said anything. But he’s a gentleman, Tj, quite as at the house. And he would do that all the time. And so I’d walk in and customers are like, who’s this guy? I’d walk in there and had my shirt tucked in. I had a nice dress shirt, blue shirt, had a ty, had a khaki pants and he’d say, Quavis, what’s going on man? As the business, the whole Pinera staff went out of their way to treat me with respect and I seriously was there six out of seven nights per week for three years, Jason?

Three years. Six out of seven nights for three years. Do you understand how long that is? That’s a very long time, Joe. Crazy. That is when you go there every single day and it starts to become a thing where like everybody who goes to Panera once a week, we’ll see you. Everybody who goes to Panera every day for their coffee sees you. Every employee is like, this guy’s here more than us. Like most employees were there five days a week. You put in more hours than their manager. Right? All right. And I, I seriously was there six out of seven nights per week, every week for three years. And I always brought bought something so that my relationship would be mutually beneficial and I always had a good reason for for meeting customers there as opposed to meeting at my office because customers would say, hey, where’s your office? And I’d say, well, could you meet me halfway?

Where are you coming from? And they said, it didn’t matter Jason, where they were coming from. It can be like, well, I live at 71st and Lewis, which is where my condo was. And I would go, well, let’s meet halfway at Panera bread. Yeah. There they’d say, I am living in Sapulpa, what’s meet halfway 71st and Lewis Panera bread. I live in broken arrow. That’s, you know, well let’s go halfway. Let’s meet at 71st and Finnair right. And I had this move. They’d always ask, well, where’s your office? And I’d say, well, they have a temporary were officing out of a condo right now, Tipperary, because we’re in the process of building our new office. It’s kind of under wraps because it’s game changing. I used that line for three years and it works every time it did work because I had to, I had to make it happen.

Now here’s the deal for Reed who’s saying, um, I’m going to pass this note to you so you can read this real quick. Yeah. For Fareed Hussein was the manager at the time and I thought, I’m going to interview for read Hussain and ask him about, uh, these years, these times and a, and so what you had seen in front of you is actually the typed out testimonial from Fareed Hussein at the time, um, about his recollections of me working at Dj connection every single day for three consecutive years. Back to you Jason. Alright, so for it says, I was a dishwasher and we’d see the same guy come in every day around the same time and sit at the same spot. He always had the same suit on and he would get the same thing to eat every day. A cinnamon roll and chocolate milk. I mean, that sounds awesome.

I started to become friends with clay and would have his spot saved in his food ready. He would meet Putin quick, quick timeout. Yeah. He might have believed I had a cinnamon roll every day. I honestly, at that time I didn’t, I did have a, I did have a chocolate milk but not have a cinnamon roll. I think I would buy them for clients sometimes. Oh No. So I think that was, that was the day we continue. Okay. Okay. Um, let’s see here. He would meet potential clients who wanted to get married and he offered his Dj service. He drove his old white spray painted van. Oh, there it is. That’s true. Dj Connection on the side of it. You could see them coming a mile away with the spray painted van.

Then you would see as nice looking guy in a suit, jump out. Oxymoron. It did. I’d seriously, people would look at me dressed up in a suit and they’re like, what are you driving? Like it was the craziest thing. Every single time it would be like watching a man come out of the anus of a horse that like ace Ventura and the Rhino. Right. That’s what it’s like. He just didn’t make any sense. Awesome. Okay. Continue because they did not care what anyone thought. He was on a mission to become a successful Dj. Panera bread was the stomping ground for Clay Clark. Most of the staff likes clay, except for the, my manager Michelle hated me. She hated, she thought he was annoying and hated how I would have Clay’s a whole setup ready for him when he came in at night. Everybody has a Darth hater.

I have known claims since 2002. Uh, I saw someone who believed he could do anything and never let anyone tell him differently. Oh, see, that’s the, that’s the deal. Now here’s the, here’s where it gets crazy. Yeah. The real reason I didn’t want people to meet at my office was because I didn’t have one. So I was trying to save up the money to afford one, but I just went with the code. If, you know, we’re, we’re trying to, we’re building a new office. It’s going to be incredible in office space. And finally, when it was time during this time to hire my first Dj’s, um, I started interviewing people at Panera bread. So I’m interviewing employees, employees. At a Panera bread. Josh Smith, uh, Willy Cop. Now check this out. Dj Willie Cop had heard of me as a result of an article written by Debbie blossom for the Tulsa world.

And Josh heard about me through his friend Chris Manteca, who he, Josh was working at Gulf Usa and Willie was a, was an engineer and he was like in his forties and I’m like 22. And I just remember interviewing this guy and him looking at me going, why am I being interviewed by 22, I was probably 21 at the time, maybe. And so more than than any material, uh, gain that I was getting at the time, I was really learning how to be confident because when you have no office and you’ve got your officing at Panera bread and you’re 21, 22 years old, man, it requires a lot of faith. And again, I go back to his DJ connection.com was my magnificent obsession. It was where I learned to communicate effectively. I had to convince people that I was going somewhere and that they should join me.

I became emboldened, you know, I was like, I could do this. If I can recruit someone to work for me while working at Panera bread, I can do anything. Yeah. And I remember talking one time to Willie Willie says, here’s the deal. We are at Panera bread. This is after the whole interview. Here’s the deal. I love your passion, but we’re at Panera bread and I’ve met you twice and I still haven’t been to an office. Do we have an office? And I said, uh, we have a condominium, right? And he goes, when you say it’s under construction, does that mean you haven’t started and you don’t have the money? And I’m like, Yup, I’m in. Nice. So I know I’m getting this kind of crazy band of people. So Dj, uh, willy worked a part time, um, Josh worked part part time and I was working beyond full time because you know how I made my brochures at the time?

No. Uh, using Photoshop. Okay. Now do you know how Photoshop used to work back in the day? No idea. What you would do is you would bring an image and just like today and you’d render it. Okay. He’d put like a image, like a name or a text or a logo or a picture. It’s in layers and you can manipulate it and move it around. Well step one is I didn’t know how to use Photoshop. So that’s a problem. Right? So how do you think I learned Photoshop? Cause I dropped out of college at Oklahoma State University and oral Roberts University after studying there and I had classes on Photoshop and I actually got B’s and A’s on my classes. But how do you think I actually learned Photoshop will? It’s one of two options. Option one was you bought Photoshop for dummies or option two is you just sat down with it and doing it around.

He figured it out. So here’s her, I did, I bought Photoshop. You’re correct. But then I hired a guy who was awesome at it to sit there with me even better and just answer my questions real time. Okay, how do I do this? Okay, I’m doing this. How do I do that? Okay. And Photoshop back in the day when you’d move in an audio file or moving a picture file, it would go and it would just load forever. It was, it was a painful process, but that’s how I learned. That’s how I learned and so during this time, this is what I really started reading books and I’m going to read to you all the books that I read during that time that really were transformative for me. I read in the words of great business leaders by Julie Him Finster. I read again, I read in the words of great business leaders by Julie Him Fenster.

I read gorilla marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson. I read hip hop in America by Nelson George, which explains how Russell Simmons started hip hop. I read how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. I read made in America, Sam Walton made in America, Sam Walton with John Huey. I read the no spin zone by bill O’Reilly. I read Rich Dad poor dad by Robert Kiyosaki. I read the rich Dad’s guide to investing by Robert Kiyosaki. I read the greatest salesman in the world. A book about just ribbing, relentless on the phones, man, I read that book that was powerful and you say, well, clay, what’d you learn from these books? Well, when I read, when I read the no spin zone from pip for from bill O’Reilly, it was a political book, but I realized, man, politics, there’s a lot of spin there. There’s a lot of truthiness, there’s a of half truths and what employees call in and say they’re sick.

There’s a lot of truthiness there, there’s a lot of half truth there. Use it. They’re sick as a result of for life choices, right? But they are sick, right? So that reading that book somehow at this political book helped me. I’m rich Dad, poor dad. I learned about the cashflow quadrant and basically how you you, you become an employee, but before you can become self employed, you’ve got to save a ton of money. That’s why my mom, that’s why my wife and I didn’t have air conditioning on. Think about that. Did, how hot does it get in Tulsa in July? It gets wicked hot like a hundred degrees and then inside is also gets stuffy. So I’d say anywhere probably close. I remember when my ac unit went out, it was only about 90 degrees outside. It was like 96 in my apart. How unbearable is that?

It’s the worst, especially if you’ve got a dog. So for my early clients that booked with me, I don’t want you to visualize this, but I would sit around in my boxers and I had a fan on and I was just dripping sweat all day every day. I was literally working with just my boxers on, um, Rich Dad, poor dad was powerful for me. Hip Hop America taught me that I had nothing to lose. When Russell Simmons started, uh, def jam, he had nothing. He was a guy with a speech impediment trend to promote his brother’s rap group. Run DMC. He had nothing to lose. Do you know how hip hop by the way got played on the radio? Do you know hip hop? But there’s this uncle, these are the breaks, the first def jam song to hit the radio. Yeah. That song got on the radio. I have no idea.

This is true man. Russell Simmons in the book hip Hop America explains this. He had a bunch of people, he paid a bunch of people to call the radio stations and to request the song and no Djs had heard the song. Now once the DJ’s got enough calls from enough people over a consistent amount of time, what do you think they did? They probably started to consider playing the music and they played at one time and then he had even more people call and say, duty. I play that song again. And that’s how it happened. That’s how he created it. Like a army of about 50 people that would call all the time and ask for the same songs to be played. It’s like at the beginning of that Wu Tang Song, oh, you’re now your day or getting into my spiritual zone now. So if you’re out there today and you are saying, listen, I don’t know what to do, I put all these, I condensed all these books into a book that you can download for free right now called the start here book.

If you go to thrive time show.com you can download the start here book absolutely, positively for free. You can download the book for free and if you go to buy a physical copy, you can buy it on amazon.com today I read the greatest salesman in the world. I read the hundred thousand dollar club. Oh, I love that book. How to make $100,000 it’s a hundred thousand dollar club. How to make a six figure income by DA bitten dead book was huge. You know where that book was? Huge, Jason. I’ve never even heard of it. Oh my God, I should have. Well it, it was huge because the book is about getting to work early, staying to work late, stay at work late over delivering. Yep, and living below your means. I should read that book. It’s getting to work early, staying at work late over delivering and living below your means. It’s just so powerful because typically when you make a little bit of extra money, Jason, what what most people do when they bought land, make a little extra money. No, they spend a baby. Right? Then I read this book called the creature from Jekyll Island, a second look at the Federal Reserve by g Edward Griffin and that book, I don’t recommend anybody out there reads that book, but it explains to you that the Federal Reserve is not federal and there is no reserve. What explains that the Federal Reserve is not federal and there is no reserve?

And how did that had that helped me. What helped me? Because when I learned that banks actually don’t have any money, that was pretty cool, right? Because I was trying to get over the idea of growing my business. There’s this phrase I recommend that you believe, uh, that you buy into as an entrepreneur. It’s fake it until you make it. Oh yeah. Fake it until you make it. Let me read this. Elon Musk, quote tea again here. Elon Musk says, he says, brand is just a perception and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead. Other times it will be behind, but the brand is simply a collective impression. Some have about a product. Well Dude, my brandy could have been worse. The, the trailers were terrible. My first DJ connection.com trailers were terrible. My first van was terrible. So what kind of perception do you think people had of me?

Probably a low one, right? So I thought, man, I’m an idiot for to fake it till I make it driving the nastiest vehicle of all time. The one thing I had to get right, I wanted the thing to look like. It was a sweet commercial thing, like part of a fleet, like a Cox cable truck and it looked terrible. And so it really killed my confidence. But I read a book, uh, Jason, think about this for a second. When you deposit money at the bank, right? Do you ever deposit cash or deposit? Just checks. I have. Where’s the electronic? I do like all direct deposit. But before working previous jobs, I would always be paid to check and before I had like a big boy checking account set up, I would just go and Oprah had a direct deposit set up. I would just go and deposit the check.

I want to blow your mind for a second. Yeah. I think about this. When you go to the bank today, however much money is in your bank account, they don’t have that money. It’s so scary, isn’t it? It’s just a numbers. I look at it on my phone, I’m like, oh, that’s awesome. And I realize there’s an empty room somewhere, right? Right. And they put that little sign up that says, ensured by the FDI. See, back in the day, it was up to a hundred thousand now when the economy fell apart, the great recession, do you know how they fixed that problem? They did a stimulus. They had a bail out. You know, the Federal Reserve got involved. They changed the sign to say now insured up to $250,000 but it’s called the Federal Reserve. And it is not federal. It’s not owned by the federal government. I’m not sure people are aware of this.

It’s not federal and there is no reserve. Think about that for a second. I also read the laws of success in 16 lessons by Napoleon Hill, the millionaire next door by Thomas J. Stanley. Now, why do you think the millionaire nextdoor book was powerful? What, why do you think about that? That book shares that 88% of America’s millionaires are first generation millionaires, but in your mind, why do you think that was helpful for me? Um, honestly I don’t know, but given the title, come on, you know, thick, deep. Think deep. Why do you think that being poor is crap? Reading a book that explains about the average millionaire in America. Why was that powerful for me? Because you know, oh, I mean it, it gave you an understanding that you could do this. There we go. See I the 88% of Americans million at 88% listening out there, listen, 88% of Americans who are millionaires are first generation.

That’s a wicked awesome stacks and most current gets harder and most grew up poor. So I was thinking like, well, if you don’t play in the NBA or printing a rapper, you probably can’t do it. That was so powerful for me and it taught me about living below my means. Then I read thinking grow rich by Napoleon Hill, which I talk about constantly on this show. I named my son Aubrey Napoleon Hill after Napoleon Hill, and that book changed my life and through my superintendent self directed entrepreneurship course. Yes, I failed many, many, many times, but I’m still standing right? I’m still standing. But however, when I was going to this time when I’m reading all these things, I was reading all these books and it was, I felt like I was on this apprenticeship being taught all these skills, but all these greats, and according to Napoleon Hill, I was reading this quote from Napoleon Hill and he said that 95% of us, we’ll never find our life’s passion because we’re told at a young age to pursue the path of least resistance.

This path is filled with the lure of guaranteed benefits and a struggle free work environment. And if you take this path, you’ll end up with 95% of people end up. When you were a kid, you dreamed about being a singer, a fireman, a baseball player, and army guy, a a whatever. I mean, Jason, what did you, what did you want to be a Ninja? I want it to be a night, first and foremost and night, and then somehow that turned into meteorologist and I have done none of those things. But the thing about it though, you dream to be a night, right? Or a meteorologist. You see, very few of us grew up dreaming about, well, what I want to have as a job with security and benefits. Absolutely not. I want to fight dragons. Joust. Let me tell you what happened. How old are you right now?

26 see, you’re in this interesting time right now where you’re learning a lot and it’s, it’s coming too. Yeah. I call this the three phases. Okay. Learn, earn, return. Very wise. Jewish man taught me this. He said, clear the first 25 to 30 years of your life, you just want to focus on learning. Earning really doesn’t matter that much. You just need to learn. Soak it all up. Age 30 through 60 men. You need to be, um, you know, buying a franchise, licensing a business, buying a book. You need to like get into that. You need to go, but you can’t really do that until you’re a master of management, until you’re a master of sales, till you learn those things. Jason, what happens when you, oh, because you’re a very effective manager. Now what happens? Because if you own a business and you’re out there listening right now and you own a business and you can’t manage it, like you can know because you’ve learned that skill over the last couple of years.

Oh yeah. What happens if you can’t manage a personality types? Effectively? What’s going to happen? You’re going to have people that are volatile. You’re going to have people quit your brand. Your brand is going to fail because you don’t know how to effectively manage people’s emotions, but also work ethic. It’ll just be a bad look. How mind blowing is it for you, the emotional outbursts that you’ve had to deal with on a daily basis since you’ve become a manager now? Not so much fun. In the beginning I just thought, how is this every day, right? Because most people are controlled by their Amygdala, almonds, size part of their brain. That’s the emotional processing center and I never considered that. And when the Amygdala is on, this is, this is, this is hard neuroscience, this is not my opinion. When the Amygdala is being fired, they can’t think critically.

So let me just give an example. Yesterday Jason, I got a text message from somebody who I haven’t seen in years and I block people that I don’t want to talk to anymore. Good mood, but he’s sent it from a different phone number. And Jason, I got that text message at like four o’clock in the afternoon and I was totally happy, dude. I was happy. Yeah, I was taking the kids to Atwoods and I was just, it was, it was great. Actually. It was, it was five 30. I was going to Atwoods with my kids, taking them, taking them to Atwoods to get chicken feed. Atwood’s is kind of a outdoorsy farm store. I go there to get that a a chicken feet and I got that text message that came through for that person I haven’t seen in years. Right. And this person, by the way, who was, was terminated, uh, let go because they kept making light bad life choices, like showing up to work late, like sleeping with other people’s wives.

Like you know, if you show up to work late because you’re sleeping with somebody whose wives, uh, someone’s wife, that’s weird there. But when there isn’t, but when the employee works for you with the employee, when the person think about how weird this is, Jason, when the person who works for me is sleeping with another employee who they’re not married to, that gets weird. True. Because the husband and wife both work for me. That’s weird. And when I get a text message from somebody saying, hey, how come you don’t ever call me and talk to me? I, I worked with you for years. Could you please explain to me, Jason, why you might not want to stay in touch with anybody you fired? We’ll just have made, if I fired them, then they obviously I don’t need any communication with them. So it’s better to just cease all communication both previous and future.

What have you, did stay in touch with anybody you’ve ever fired or anybody who’s ever worked with you? Period. Think about it right now. If you stayed in daily contact or weekly contact with everyone you’ve ever managed, where everyone you’ve ever fired, how many people would that be? It would be a ton of people and I would lose, and it all goes back to that quote that I always hear around you as your, your network or your net worth is your net worth is your net work. And so if you’re surrounding yourself by people who have either stabbed you in the back or were horrible employees or just overall negative people, you are going to become that person. And that’s not what I want to do. Think about this out there. A lot of us are going to lose our dreams. No, you the listener, you’re not gonna lose your dream.

But a lot of people lose their dreams because they start to say, I just want a job with benefits. Imagine what it would be like if we went to a first grade school, Jason and the [inaudible] and the teacher turns to a young kid named Larry and they say, Larry, what do you want to be when you grow up? And Larry says, well, I, when I grow up, I want to make around the national average. I’d like to be able to make my car payment. I really like to be able to pay off my car before it dies. And I’d like to live in an average house. You know, I love, I like to have a job that I’m not passionate about that, but it has been a fit. And I, and then I really want to, I’m really excited about exchanging the majority of my waking hours, five, seven, so my week for a paycheck.

You know, cause I just think that sounds like the job for me. My friends resistance builds strength, resistance training, resistance training with weights, builds muscles, resistance training and business builds, tenacity, focus and great business plans. You must decide today that you will not pursue the path of least resistance. You must pursue your passions. Thank you Napoleon Hill for teaching me this. And from time to time, uh, I, I, I would, I would doubt occasionally, you know, for five minutes or 10 minutes to get doubted as long as maybe a half hour one day. But from the time I made the commitment to become self employed, it has been a wild roller coaster road. Um, I’ve learned a lot and I’ve earned a lot. Sure. I’ve had my share of upsets and near death and near financial death moments. Uh, enormous stress, frustration. But I’ve always felt that thrill of achievement from the very few for the very first days.

I remember going to bed thinking I wish the days were longer because I have so much I want to do. I’m excited about life and the unbelievable opportunities that our existence on earth and this and in this country, the United States presents with me. I mean presents me. I remember each morning that I woke up, I put on my blue shirt. Anyone who knows me knows that I always was wearing blue shirts at the time, my tie and some khaki pants and preparation to assume the dial and smile position. I would then spend the better part of my pre work day frantically updating training manuals, typing confirmations from the previous night’s bookings using the Microsoft paint program is my database of choice. Jason, why do you think I had to use the Microsoft paint programs you want Microsoft paint is, I used to love Microsoft paint.

It’s like a drawing program. Why do you think I had to use Microsoft paint as my database system? Cause you didn’t have a database system. Right? And it’s not about resources, it’s about resourcefulness, right? So I don’t want to hear if you’re out there listening today. I don’t want to hear. Well, what’s the best CRM that you interact hand, you know, if you’re not making your cold calls, we got to focus on making the cold calls. We got to focus on the dialing and smiling. I don’t want to hear that. You can’t, do you need a database when you can’t do your dream 100 every week, every week. The dream 100 Jason, can you preach to me the good preach. Preach to me. What is, what is the good news of the Jew? What does the dream 100 the dream 100 is basically your 100 dream clients that you would like to either work with or be referred by.

So, so influencers for your company. So I’m going to help myself. And then your fiances self. What places in Tulsa do most brides go to to have their wedding reception? What kinds of places? Think about it. Um, let’s see. They go to give me one of them. Come on now. Like by name a little bit. Yeah, you gotta give me one? Yeah, sure. A post oak lodge post oak lodge. It’s a nice event center. It’s like a retreat. That’s one place. Come on, give me either one, but I don’t have anything. And we’ve got the male, the male hotel yet you aren’t, you aren’t to makeup points. Can we it one more mega point? Gimme gimme one more. Let’s say a five oaks lodge. Good for me.

Hello.

Give me another one. Another venue. Another venue in Tulsa. No googling. Okay. Carving Arts. It’s an art gallery to a Robert had had his, it was awesome. Okay. Makeup for you. One deduction for me. I would not have thought of that. So the point is I made a list of the top hundred 100 venues and Tulsa. Yup. On a huge, huge cork board kind of thing. Yeah. What’s the thing? We’re for papers and reports in college when you’re high school and you’re presenting and you can fold it in three parts like Oh, a trifold board. Yeah, trifold board. There we go. Because you can fold it three parts. Wow. So I bought that and it said the road to a million it on it. I put the name of every venue in Tulsa. If you could imagine like a big spreadsheet. Yeah, I put all the venues across the left column.

Okay. The name of the venue. So that was all the, the, the first column, number one was all the venues. Now call him too was dropoff number one. Jason call number two was dropped off. Number two, call number three was dropped off. Number three. And you know what my rule was? What was your role? I would just like when I worked at impact ministries, I would call on the mall until they cry, buy or die. And in this case I meant actually showing up. So Jason, week number one, I show up at the venue. I knock on the door. Hi. How’s it going? They’re fine. What do you want? Uh, my name is Clay Clark and I am the founder of Dj connection.com. We know, well, I’m here to drop off some donuts for you on this glorious Monday. How are you? Great. Well, Hey, I appreciate you guys so much and if you ever need a bride that’s needing a Dj, we would up.

Really appreciate a referral. Yeah. You and every other Dj. Here’s the deal though. If you refer me, listen to this. Listen to this event planner. This is what I was saying. I said, listen to this. If you refer me to a bride, the first show you referred me to, I won’t even charge the bride. You’re going to be like the hero. I’m going to say we’re doing it for free. On behalf of my good friend over there, uh, at Linda used to manage Cedar Ridge. I said, Linda, on behalf of my good friend Linda, we’ll do your wedding for free. Think about that, Linda, you’re talking to a bride today about booking their wedding and you say, by the way, if you book with us, you get a free Dj. Come on Linda, use that card baby. She says, get out of my office. So I would go back over and over and over to all of them, Jason, to all of them, right?

Always dropping off donuts every week. Step one, I annoyed them all. Oh yes. Step two, I, they kind of started going disbelief. Kind of like, are you really still coming back? Wow. Week three, week four, they start to be curious, like, really? You always come here? What is your deal? What is your motive? Because people want to know, is it your mo? What? What’s your motive? People don’t want to know your motif. Oh, you’re motif is what? What’s your motive? What is the word Motif me is heart related. I should know this. It’s okay. It’s like a facade. It’s like a fake. It’s a veneer. Ah, it’s a, it’s a, but the, your motive is like, what’s your, your core, right? How many people do you know, I mean, think about this. How many people do we all know who become like an insurance salesman for like a month or a real estate agent for two months or a fitness nut for a month or a week?

A week. I mean, so people want to know what’s your real motive because they’ve never done that. They haven’t, if they have nothing to gain by referring me. So I was starting Dj connection.com I had to be tenacious and I kept going by every single day and I kept viewing it like the og Mandino book, the richest man. I mean we find the book title is not pronounced Oji Mandino og Mandino, but he could have been an Oji. Right. Og Mandino, the greatest salesman in the world, og Mandino, he talks about in the book you have to view the sales process. It’s like you’re hitting an oak tree with an ax and you’re an idiot. If you get super emotional that you’ve hit an oak tree with an ax once and it doesn’t fall down, you have to get your, your, you’re an idiot. If you hit it 10 times and it doesn’t fall down, you’re an idiot.

If you hit it 20 times and it doesn’t fall down and you get emotional if you’re getting emotional because it treat it and fall down. The problem he has with the dream 100 Jason as you can’t see it visually. Right. You don’t see the progress being made. Yep. And I just stayed consistent, stayed consistent. And then I landed the holiday and select and the Holiday Inn select used to refer me every single wedding. Nanette and [inaudible] referred me every single wedding. It was Nanette Juanita and Rochelle. Those three referred me every wedding every week. And then I got tarp chapel to refer me. And then I got the Renaissance Hotel and I got a lady by the name of Dawn, dawn Leete to refer me. I got Foshee Anjos, the bridal store to refer me. That was a tough egg to crack because she wouldn’t refer me. And so I said, here’s the deal.

I will DJ one party for you for free to show you how humble and awesome I am. And she said, okay. So I DJ at her husband’s 40th birthday party and that’s when I started getting those referrals. There you go. But that how the dream 100 works. You can’t stop until you get there. My friends, my friends, as I was saying, the resistance, the resistance builds strength. But each morning I’d wake up and I’d put on that blue shirt and kitten, that dial and smile position, I would cold call, I would type up my confirmations. You using Microsoft paint. I know it sounds disturbing, but it was effective. That’s all I had. And then precisely at 10:00 AM I would hop on the phone. Now in those days it was a little odd because hopping on the phone, calling people who had no reason to want to hear from me, I pretty much cold called as many people as I could everyday to pay the bills, frantically searching for my next paycheck.

Man, I loved it and I hated it. The stress and the thrill combined to make a fabulous blend like ordering a sugar free drink at Starbucks, then adding a creamy topping to it and chocolate syrup and chocolate chunks. By the way, that’s not a move. No, I see a lot of people ordering a sugar free beverage and then adding a sugary things to it. Um, I was excited about the business, but I was also scared cause I, if I didn’t sell anything I would, I would lose. And, and honestly during this time I would call everybody, my philosophy was it’s just a numbers game. I had a great service and I just needed to connect with the right person. Every no I received was just getting me one step closer to my yes. If there was a bridal trade show opportunity, I was in it.

If there was a company in the phone book, I called it, I actually called every single apartment complex in Tulsa because I knew that one of them was going to need some entertainment for their next resident appreciation event and sure enough, I landed a deal with the Wimbleton apartments to Dj for $225 and this came after I heard at least 50 no’s and I put Napoleon Hill’s philosophy of over delivery to the test every day. If you called me, you were in for an experience if making the Dj can, if Ma mythmaking the DJ connection. Viable meant making my voice hoarse in the process I did it. I would bring so much alacrity and power to the phone that many people couldn’t resist the booking me seriously. I was bringing the fire that was required, like a TD Jakes sermon on every single call. Every day. I stayed focused on staying active and making a hundred calls.

Over the years I have seen so many businesses fail because their owner was not willing to hit the phones. I’ve seen so many businesses fail because the owner was not willing to hit the phones, hit the pavement, hit the streets and get the word out. My friends, the cruel reality is that as a young entrepreneur, no one is going to help you. You have got to bring that kind of enthusiasm. So I brought this, this humor, this passion and this determination to the phone and I, we joked in the office, the first guy who hired me, he called it the passion of the clay. He was like, dude, it’s on fire. If I could just put that in a bottle, you’re amazing. Cause I would break it. It was like watching a kingdom. The King of comedy of the Kings of comedy tour. Yeah, I was in a zone.

You’re, you’ll you, you like comedy. I love comedy. I was in a zone. I was in a flow. I was in my flow state and then every time the phone would ring, the phone was called the money line. Yeah. Now do you know what we would do when the money, when the money line rang? What’d you do? I would say we would get the phone like on the first finger, second ring, and I had one the phones connected into like a system, by the way. I had one little phone I would call from. Yeah. And then I had the money line where the phones would ring too, was the number I would leave on the voicemail back when people left voicemails, I leave a voicemail to call me back at (918) 481-2010 where the fun begins. (918) 481-2010 where the fun begins. And if that phone rang, baby, I don’t care if I was in the bathroom, which I was, if I was eating, which I sometimes was, I don’t.

If I had food in my mouth, I’d spit it out. I was like, go get the phone and that’s it. If I had to book every, every single deal. Now, Jason, if I missed somebody, if they called me, I missed the call. Yeah. How many times do you think I would call that lead before I gave up? You would call them until the answered. Why? Because you’re, you’re calling them until they cry, buy or die. If you have a lead, you don’t want to let you lead, go dead. If you call it, you’re just like, oh, they didn’t answer. How much would it help your clients? If we could transmute that kind of enthusiasm and energy that I had a DJ connection.com to white, hot obsessively call the lead like cook, Cook, Cook, Cook. If you could bring that kind of machine gun attitude, so every one of your clients, how much would that help their businesses that they could be that passionate about calling your leads?

100% it would help their businesses, but by default most people are kind of casual, right? Or non combative like Ah, I called them once. They probably don’t want to see this number pop up. That doesn’t stop telemarketers. I get 800 numbers scam, likely phone calls every day. They don’t stop. They’re going to call me until I answer that right. There is a knowledge bomb. My friend had this time DJ connection offered three different packages and I named myself the solid gold package, the platinum package. There you go. And the devil platinum package, each package had a masculine name. Although I was selling my products to women, I gave my products a masculine name because I was not smart enough to market my products to my customers who are nearly all women. I was designing products that could be marketed to myself if I could have.

I probably, I mean, seriously, I thought about for awhile naming my first package, like the light saber, Ooh. Or like second package, like the dude, I’d buy both. And it’s so, uh, it just, it was ridiculous and it didn’t work. Um, but, but that’s why most disc jockeys lose is because they’re dressed like morons. They have tattoos on their necks that they’re showcasing and they, they’re oddly casual and the brightest considering trying to hire you for her wedding. And if you have a tattoo on your neck and you’re successful, that’s great. But think about that. Jason, if someone’s first impression of you is you getting out of a van that spray painted. Yup. And you’ve got a tattoo on your neck and your oddly casual. What is the broad thinking? Is this, does this scream trustworthiness? No. Unless you’re going to like all tattooed wedding.

There we go. So I ended up parking my, I told my wife, just drop me off, drop me off at Pinera like don’t park Trump and dropped me off like a block away because I don’t people to see me get into that or dropped me off early. Right? She dropped me off early so no one ever would just see that vehicle because when people saw that vehicle, it screamed, run away from me. I mean, think about it. Think about that. My friends, if you’re out there today and you’re trying to grow that business, um, there’s probably a fear you have, right? And fear stands for false evidence appearing real. You probably have a fear of making cold calls. Jason, why do you think somebody has a fear of making cold calls? Um, they’re afraid they don’t have enough time in the day. They afraid they’re not going to know what to say.

They’re afraid that they’re going to get rejected. So here’s what I came up with, and this is not a system that anyone should use, but this is my system. So I decided that I would start getting on the phones at 10:00 AM 7:00 AM I’d get up, do all the paperwork and 10:00 AM I get on the phone and I dreaded getting on that phone. Yeah. If I did it, but I had, I had to have a game, right? I think the listeners need to know I had a game and this was my game. Okay. And I had certain days of the week, they were cold calling days. So my wife would drop me off at Panera six days a week. Okay. But there were certain hours of the day where I had blocked off just for cold calling. Here’s what, here’s my game. My wife would leave and I would go down to the gas station, go to the gas station previously, and I would load up my fridge with a ton of beer.

Yeah. Okay. And my move was this, I would cold call and then every time I got a rejection, like a hard one, not like a, Oh, we’re not interested, but I got like a screw off buddy. Yeah. I slam a beer now. I haven’t eaten anything yet. Okay. So it’s like 10 in the morning, so I’m starting off like boop, boop. Hey, who’s in charge of this year’s holiday party? Oh, it’s Karen. Okay. Can I talk to Karen? Sure. Karen. Hey, this is clay Clark with Dj connection. How are you ma’am? Great. Clay, what do you mind? Oh, Karen, I was gonna ask you, on a scale of one to 10, how happy were you with last year’s Dj? Karen would reno nine. I’m like, well, Karen, what can I do to take that event to the next level? Uh, get off my phone and I’m like, ah, Karen, let me ask you this here.

If I were willing to Dj this year’s Party for free, would you be interested in at least talking to me for free or a dollar? I just love to meet you. I promise you we can chew. I’m not interested. Got My thought. And if I got that little extra like got my phone or screw off, I’m like, I’m going to pop myself a beer now after about three beers every morning. Yeah. Three beers before I had, you know, had lunch three beers before I’d had breakfast. Um, I, how was I feeling cheese. Did I have a lot of fear? You think? Probably, probably not. Why? Because you had already faced their objection and you had a slight buzz going and white weddings. Do you see guys always grab a beer before a a toast? They’re nervous, right? Yeah. And I don’t recommend that as a strategy, but we’re saying that’s what I did.

That’s what I did. That was my move. Don’t do that move. But here’s the reward I gave myself. So that was the panel. The pit of the penalty was like a beer for a rejection. Right? But what was the reward you think? I gave myself? Um, what, there was a show called the buzz on 1430 sports talk radio. You are listening to sports talk radio ever. Just like one time while driving. No, but one of the podcasts I listen to, they, they referenced that Mike Princesses Radio Show all the time. So I’m familiar with it. Okay. This is what happens is their sports talk local radio. Yeah. And Mark Waddell was a fine host, did a great job and uh, he would have a call in show. So you’d say, all right, we’re going through the sports. Last night, Lakers beat the uh, uh, bowls 89 to 87. The Celtics beat the Yada, Yada, get as much to this much.

The Mavericks beat the Yada Yada, but you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. And then we go and now we’re going to get into a hot take. Okay. Osu, Oklahoma State University, this Justin. And then they would have some, it always be some controversial things. They’ve recruited the best running back out of high school in the country. This kid, I’m telling this kid is a pedigree. This kid is going to be the next coming, he’s going to be the next Barry Sanders. When this kid gets on the field, it’s going to change the history of Oklahoma State University. I W I would say this guys, when, when this kid retires, when he goes on to the NFL, they’ll probably change the stadium to name it after this kid. That’s how good this kid is. He, you know, does that, people would say something like that and they’d say, well go ahead and we’re taking calls, calling, I want to get your take.

So this is how it goes. So we’re an Oklahoma and there’s Oklahoma State University and there’s a Oklahoma University. Right. And the people who go to Oklahoma state have a problem with the people who like Oklahoma state. Yup. Why do the two fan groups dislike each other so much? It is a rivalry that’s just been instilled because of the sport. I don’t really see, I don’t really get it. I don’t really get into it. So I, I, it makes no sense. So I thought what I’m gonna do is I’m going to call in whenever I book a deal and say something crazy. So dial is 44, six zero 1430, I boop, boop, boop, boop. Four, six, seven, 1430 the buzz, what’s your take? And there’s a, and there’s a call screener, the credit this, the Costco. And they would, they would screen the call and say, what’s your take?

And I’d say, well, I’ll tell you what I got inside information about this new recruitment clash. And I’m gonna tell you what, when this, when an usher news gets out, I’m, I’m telling you what man, I’m just the first of the whistle blowers. The whole program’s an ignite and I blow up. She’s like, well yeah, go ahead. And what do you get your information? I don’t want to divulge my sources. So I’d get through and now I’m on the radio live radio. Okay. And they’d say, well, go ahead and call her. What’s your take? And I’d say, now I’ll tell you what, uh, I’ve been here a Osu still water for long time, run a business out there in this area. And I’ll tell you they’re there. There are some dirt being dug it up right now. I know who some of the people you’re talking about.

Some of them it’s going to come out and we’re talking about a major, major scandal like the lack. She would never shame man you you talk about on ethical recruit and not tell you what he did. It holds the whole whole school is going down. It’s going to be burning down. I’ll tell you what you did. You’re lucky. You better talk about that. Osu All you won’t cause this is the last year it’s going to be around though after the penalties, the minute NCA penalty. It will be, you talk about sanctions and penalties and I will call her where where? Where’d you get your sources? You think I’m on divulge my sources. My, my, my life is at risk or even hopping on his shell. I mean I luckily have a Scottish my portion and no one knows who I am. Take you. That is all and I would leave.

That is awesome. And then people would start calling it like who the crap is that? God, you can’t just say that. And they would argue all day. Seriously. They would argue and these people would get crazy. And then like, you know, a week or two later they’d be debating like, uh, you know, drew Bledsoe and why the Patriots were so terrible at the time. They didn’t have bill Bellacheck yet and why there were so terrible and how they would never win. How the cowboys were awesome. And I would call in and Booboo, booboo four, six, zero, 1430, uh, go ahead, call her. Uh, what, what’s your take? And I would say something like, I swear I’m tired of you guys hidden needs it need just ripping on Patriot and I got a hot take. It is hot, hot, let me through. And they love when people call who are divisive because it leads to more listeners.

Right. And so they love it so that they liked the controversy. So yeah. And I was just a game for me and said, go ahead, call her. What’s your take? I’m like, when I, I tell you this, but Dallas cowboys, they have an unbelievably bad situation that’s about ready to be like a, it’s like a cinder blocks. It’s got to the scams in the scandals and I would just go off on this rant and then they would, and I do this often. I always had, I had different takes and talking about how the cowboys were scams and scandals and how the Patriots, they have a new philosophy like I had just a totally crazy things that were no point true. Perfect. The Patriots are embracing a new philosophy. It’s called teamwork makes the dream work. It’s going to be awesome. The t stands for, I can’t tell you kind of go.

They would like talk about and it would just stir up the audience and it was, it was a thing I did, but if you’re out there and I’m sure Jason, you’ve been coaching long enough to work with people that refuse to make cold calls. Yeah. If you refuse to make cold calls, what’s going to happen? You’re not going to get any leads. You’re going to wait for leads to come in as opposed to being proactive and then you’re going to resent yourself or anybody else because you don’t have any growth in your business. So my hope is this chapter won’t be more meaningless than most political debates. So I encourage you to write, write, write, write this down, write, write this down, write down are you afraid of, of of calling people? Are you afraid of rejection? And if so, why? Step two, I want you to write down what are the daily revenue producing activities that you need to be doing?

What are the daily revenue producing activities that you need to be doing? Three, what is the regimented schedule that you need to be sticking to? Write down your daily regimen and schedule. What does that schedule, what does it look like? What is the schedule that you need to be adhering to? And I’m going to say this to you because I care. When you start off as a self employed person, you’re going to be working alone and so you’ve got to be okay with that until you have enough money to hire a team. Then when you’re finally making a decent amount of money, you have to take a major pay cut to be able to afford to hire somebody who won’t know what they’re doing. So now you have to work more than ever because you have to take extra time out of your schedule. Jason, just on a practical level, think about that.

If you’re a very good plumber or an or an electrician and you finally get the business to a place where you’re bringing in $100,000 a year of labor charges and it’s just you, how much of that goes to you? I’m quite a bit now. What if you hire a guy? What just happened to your $100,000 of labor charges? It became smaller because you’re paying labor on somebody else doing the job and now you’ve got to teach that guy. Yep. How to do the job while also doing the job well. Also handling the accounting and the sales. Yup. And then you’ve got to go further backwards. You gotta take one step forward, start the business. Step two, you got used to those backwards. You said you take one step back. Think about this. You take one step forward to start the company, but then you take one giant step back to hire your first guy.

Yup. Another step back to hire your second guy because someone has to help you with your accounting and your phone calls or whatever. Oh yeah. Then you get to leap frog up six steps. If you do a good job of training those people. Yeah, but if not, you go backwards and that. My friend is chapter two of the Dj connection.com Story Chapter Three Montag the mentor, the Tulsa Bridal Association, and the power of the mastermind. Napoleon Hill, the best selling author of think and grow rich once wrote a quote, Jason, I want you to break down. He says, ally yourself with a group of as many people as you need for the creation of carrying out your plan or plans for the accumulation of money. What does that mean to you? To me, it sounds like you want to be associated with enough people, not too many, but enough people that are going to help you establish your goal, work towards your goal, and finally achieve your goal.

So I would ask you right now today, listening, who is more successful than you? Make a list of somebody who knows more than you do and try to find a way to get in the room, trying to find a way to learn from that person, because through Osmosis you’re going to pick up the skills, these traits. It’s going to happen, but don’t hang around idiots because just being clear, you’ll pick up on those habits too. And that was, and that was one of the dangers for me when I was growing DJ connection as I started hiring a lot of people on, many of which were idiots. And if you’re not careful, you start to think like them. They have a poverty mindset. I remember when the economy fell apart and so did, the guys were like, why don’t you got to it? I just said, I’m not going to participate in recession.

Let’s just go make more calls, make more sales calls. And we, we just, we did just fine. But people panic. People aren’t controlled by the news and the headlines. Well, I reached out to lady by the name of Laurie Montag and I don’t remember, uh, when I actually first met Laurie and I don’t even remember the approximate season. I just remember that when I was a young kid, I was probably first grade or second grade and I got a chance to, uh, spend the night at my friend’s house going to my friend’s house, uh, Chris tag and his mom was Laurie Montag and I found out that they owned a photography studio at 71st in Mingo at the time she’d worked for a lady by the name of Francine and she went on later to start her own business called Mont tax photography at 71st. And, and Lori had always been my mentor since that a is, you know, first second grade.

I mean, I remember just to ask her questions. Third Grade, fourth grade, fifth grade when I moved to Minnesota in sixth grade and I came back to attend college. When I came back, um, I had never really lost touch with Laurie because I would fly back in the summers when I’m, when my parents moved from Oklahoma to Minnesota, I would fly back to Oklahoma every single summer using my own money to stay at the [inaudible] house all summer. And I would stay there and I would pick her brain. And she had this photography studio called Montag photography at 71st in Mingo, kind of by the mall. And Lauren had always been my mentor since that, that summer that I had first moved to Minnesota. I’ve just happened to her knowledge every summer when I’d come back to Oklahoma and I just listened to her. I talk with her, I’d pick her brain.

I was always inspired by her because she always had her very detailed information about how to market to ladies. Yeah. Had to create a service that’s profitable, how to be memorable, how to be the best in town. So when I sat down to meet with Laurie, I informed her of my new full time status as the owner of DJ connection. And then I just started bombarding her with questions. Oh man, and I got the answers. Laurie explained to me the INS and outs of the wedding industry. She explained to me that I was not marketing to men. She told me 98% of the people booking their weddings are going to be women and for some reason that was like new information from them. Like what really I was trying to market demand Jason Witness Tom. I’m seriously, I was marketing to men aggressively. It didn’t work. Lori told me how to build rapport with clients before selling.

She brought the knowledge to me and I was listening. I honestly believe that this meeting with her was one of those turning points in my business career because before meeting with Lori, my packages sounded like the offerings of a wholesale precious metals dealer. I mean it’s not like I was selling wholesale metal, solid gold, the platinum double platinum, the double platinum. After meeting with her, my deejay packages sounded more like they were made for brides to be our first package package was called simple elegance or naked or next package was called true romance. Our third package was called cherished.

Our fourth package is called fairy Tillman. And our fifth package was called Cinderella’s. I have no idea why I remember that. What I did, I did. So I renamed all my packages. I also was only closing about 50% of my inbound leads. At this point. People would call and ask for the price. Ah, all the time people say, how much do you guys charge? And I used to tell him and then they would say thank you, I’ll call you back. They wouldn’t call it Laurie said, don’t know what you gotta do is you’ve got to script out your five rapport building questions. So when they call you and say, Boo boo, boop, boop, boop, thank you for calling DJ connection. How can I help you? And the bride says, how much do you charge? You’re going to say, well that’s a great question. And you know, we have um, a lot of different packages and let me ask you, what date are you looking at?

Write that down. Okay, great. What? And she’s at compliment them. So June. Wow, that’s awesome. And then she said, ask him how they first got engaged. So I’m like, well how’d you guys get him first? First get engaged. I’m always curious. How did you get engaged? Yeah. And the brides would talk about it and then she was an ask him what venue they chose. I was like, tell him the venue said so what? Venue? And they’d say the Renaissance Hotel. And Lori said, compliment whatever venue they have. Compliment, compliment. And then she’d say, and then she said, asked me how many guests are having, and no matter how many guests it is, say, wow, you’re kind of a big deal. So how many guests are you? So this is how the call went, Jason. We’ll role play. Okay, here we go. You, you’d be like the one Dj Dude.

Let’s pretend that you’re the groom to be and you’re actually calling me. Yeah. And this is how my script used to go. Okay. So you’re going to call me, you’re going to ask me about how much I charge and this is how I script used to be. Here we go. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Thank you for calling. Dj Connection. This is clay. How can I help you? Hey Clay, I was shopping around and I just wanted to know how much does your a DJ business charge for an event? Ah, well we start as low as $450. Mm. Okay. Uh, well thank you so much. And that was our call every time. Seriously. It was terrible. Um, now this is my new call. This is the new one. Okay, here we go. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Thank you for calling DJ connection. How can I make your day great?

Well you can start by telling me how much do you guys charge for like an event? Absolutely. My name is Clay Clark. What is your name sir? My name is Jason. Jason. Okay. Well let me ask you this. Um, we have all different packages to accommodate a variety of needs. Uh, what date are you, have you decided upon a August 31st wow. How did you guys choose that page? Well, it’s, um, it’s an ideal time because that time friends and family are all going to be either free or in the area. So it’s not going to be like a huge travel expense for anybody. Now you sound like a big deal. I mean, how many people are going to be attending this, this, this gathering us? 60 to 80 at the most. So you’re kind of a big deal. People know you. I mean it’s, it’s a gathering.

Let me, maybe, so, uh, they got the venue. The what venue have you chosen hope a place. Um, so it’s this place called the Zygote House. I’ve never been to the Ziagen House. What’s the Ziagen House? It’s like this big mansion like cabin. They got goats, lots of lands. Super Pretty. I’ve never had a goat. I’ve never had to go to either, but they’re fun. If you ever thought about getting to go, I have, but they’d be a nightmare indoors. Let me ask you this. How did you and your fiance first meet? Um, she was my photographer for my senior pictures. Ooh, hidden on male photographer. I’ve heard that move before. Now do you have a pen available Jason? I do. Okay, well I want to encourage you to just take brief notes here. Um, basically we have five different packages that we offer it DJ connection, but every single package that we offer includes these five variables.

Okay. Variable number one. We have unlimited time, which means that from the time that you reception starts, what, what time is your reception going to start? Uh, it’s looking like it’s going to start around seven maybe eight. Edge. You need sound for your, your ceremony too or just the reception? Uh, just the reception. Okay. So if your reception starts at what time again? Now? Uh, let’s go with seven. Seven. That means I’m going to be there at four 30 to set up our guy. Four 30. Okay. We’ll get there at four 30 and we stay until you leave. Okay. If grandma’s dance until three in the morning, we are going to stay until you leave. Move number two, brides love us. We will get you any song that you want. Now, by the way, back in the day you had to license music. Yeah. And it was very hard to get you to buy cds.

So this is a big thing for brides, but we’ll get you any song you want. Any music at all. Look, what Kinda music are you guys into? Oh Man. All sorts of basically anything but like deep country, so anything but deep country. Well, we’ll, we’re going to sit down with you and figure out what songs you like, what songs you don’t like. Because no matter how much money you spend on the ceremony and the reception, people don’t stick around. If the, uh, they did, they did. The people just don’t stick around if the DJ is not very good. Right. You know what I mean? So, uh, we’re going to help you on this. Okay. We’re going to, we’re going to work with you on this and we’re gonna help you create this unbelievable, um, uh, atmosphere and we’ll get you any music you want except for Michael Bolton just for ethical concerns were just worry, you know?

Gotcha. Now, now I might say our Kelly or something back in the day I said Michael Bolton, just cause everyone didn’t like Michael Bolton at the time. Now, the third is that our DJ would serve as the MC and the host to lead the event until the people know when the cutting of the cake is happening, when the first dance is happening, the grand exit, the grand intro, the toast, all that we’ve, we facilitate it. So it’s like having a quarterback at the wedding. Yeah. So let me ask you, on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being the most enthusiastic and one being the least, how interactive of a Dj are you looking for on a scale of one to 10 looking for nothing less than a nine. Nothing less than a nine oh yeah. Okay. So nothing less than a nine and a, okay.

So you went a lot of energy. Lot of energy for thing we do is we have customized sound systems based upon the size of venue. Oh, and because you’re having a hundred people or less, I would recommend a certain package for you. Okay. And then the fifth thing, we have lights. It’s like when the bride’s dancing for the first dance, you and the brighter dance and it’s kind of a slow romantic kind of a, you know, it’s just a beautiful white light there. And then during the, the parties really getting going, the lights dance to the beat, you know, as opposed to like one of my uncles who looks like he’s kind of swatting at bees as the music’s going on. We’ve got the whole thing for you. Now as far as packages go, um, I would recommend for you our first package or a second package.

Okay. Our first package is called the simple elegance package. Our second package is called the true romance package. Now our first package is simple elegance package is designed for people with a hundred guests or last great system. Nothing changes other than it’s smaller speakers. Gotcha. So you’re not gonna overwhelm people. Yeah. The second package is just bigger speakers. That’s it. No other difference there. Okay. Um, I would recommend, but we’ll probably the first or second. Um, and as far as pricing goes, our packages are normally $600 for the first package and it’s normally 700 for the second, and it can go up in increments of $100. Gotcha. But right now we have a special going, um, today being, uh, uh, March 30th we have a special going actually right now and it’s until next Saturday. So not until, not until tomorrow, but the next Saturday. So, and if you book between now and then you get $100 off.

Oh. And if you decide to book with us, we have a as $150 deposit you have pay. Okay. Um, towards the date. Yeah. But we don’t want you to decide anything until you’ve met us there. So I’m going to get an email you a ton of references. What email address obviously who give me a fake one it now, but what email address should I send the uh, uh, the, the, the references to, cause I’ve got the cell phone numbers and the names of like 150 brides we just deejayed for. Gotcha. What address should I send it to you? What do you know? Just a, if you will, for that to a big pimpin one at seven at Gmail. So I send it to you now, Jason, most people want to meet with a fiance and the DJ. Looking at your schedule, what would be the best time for you to, to meet with us at what we call the shire of inspire to 6,500 square foot facility at 89th and Lynn Lane. Yeah. Where we have all the djs where we work out of. It’s pretty awesome. If you guys have like a Monday around five. Can I put you on hold just for one second? I’m gonna check real quick. Yeah. And I would also want to make sure we have your date available. Gotcha. We might be booked out.

That’s what the person’s thinking. Because I’ve already gone through all this, right? Yeah. Then I come back. I’ll let you know. Hey, we have at least two availabilities open. Uh, let me go and book that time. Bada Bing, Bada boom. I sent them an email confirmation of the time to meet what we’re going to go over and that’s how I did it. Jason had done 4,000 times a year. That’s pretty nuts. Our team would just over and over and over, but I don’t think I ever, ever, ever would have unlocked how to book weddings. Yeah. Without having sat down with her or some kind of mentor who knew what they were doing. Right. Because I just have beaten my head against a wall quoting different prices. I, they’d say, how much do you charge? And a logical thing to do the logical thing to say when someone says, how much do you charge would be to do what?

And just tell him the amount. And then when you do that, what happens? They decide, oh, I could probably find that Cheever if it seems logical to quote the price. Right. But I would have just died on that hill forever. But Laurie helped me. She helped me so much and she explained to me how to build a sales books when you’re meeting with the bride that it looks sharp. Yeah. She taught me how to decorate my facility. So I had it like, uh, pictures of Harry Connick Jr and Sinatra. Yeah. And photos from Whitwell at the big poster from when Harry met Sally, that kind of thing. And brides loved there. Oh, it’s so romantic. And when you came in to meet with us about scheduling your wedding, the music playing overhead was designed to appeal to women. The smell of the room was designed to appeal to women.

And I went from like a 50% closing rate up to a 90% it was awesome. Nice. But I would encourage you that if you’re listening out there today and you’re stuck, ask yourself, who’s a mentor, who’s a coach that you could reach out to that can help you. And so I, I just, that would have never occurred to me if I hadn’t met Laurie. What happened is over time I kept meeting with Lori and meeting with Lori and picking her brain. And Laurie owns her own business. Jason, she owned her own company called Mantech photography. Right. So why did Laurie not want to meet me on a weekly basis? Do you think? Um, she was probably working right. So here’s kind of pro tip for you. Typically mentors don’t want to coach you so you have to be willing to pay. And so Laurie would give me these tips and notes and I was taking notes in my man book at a feverish pace, but I didn’t want to slow her down from her own business because she had her own business to run.

But I offered to pay, offered to pay her and anybody else who ever mentored me, I said, hey, I’ll be willing to pay a $500 for like an hour. And if you don’t value wisdom, you’re going to lose. I have found that the wisest people value wisdom and the dumbest people don’t true. I mean if you have a business and it stuck and you’re, if you have a DJ entertainment company and it’s stuck and there’s a photographer in town that’s killing it, wouldn’t it be wise to pay somebody 500 bucks to pick the rain? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Now here’s the deal. Lori refused to take payment because she’s just a super nice lady. Kind of more of almost like a mother figure to me at that time in my life. And she wrote this little narrative. I want you to read it, Jason, real quick here. This is what Lori said about the time I spent working with her and her picking her, allowing me to pick her brain at the time.

So it’s, it’s the text and the black, uh, taluks he’s working his way around the drum set. He’s going back to the mic. He’s putting back on the headphones. Can Jason do it? And we’re back here. Okay. All right. So Lori says, one of the things I tried to teach clay when he was starting out in the business is that every challenge creates an opportunity if you will only look for it. It was fun to watch them experience it firsthand. As a newcomer to the bridal industry, clay wanted to very much be in what was then the biggest bridal show in Oklahoma. He was told he could not participate because they were too many djs already in the show and that it can be years before one dropped out. He was quite upset and I told him, let’s just think of a way around it.

We decided to host our own wedding show and the Tulsa Bridal Association was basically created right there. At that moment, we worked so hard because we knew we were up against a longstanding show. We selected the beautiful new Renaissance Hotel and immediately started promoting the show like we were experts when it was all said and done, we had the largest attendance of any bridal show in Tulsa. True. They even had to call out the fire department because the crowd was so tremendous. I remember when the show was over that night. We both looked at one another and said, well, we did it. I’ve since seen that same lesson played out several times and Clay’s business, oh, if he always looks at every challenge that same way and always finds the hidden opportunity in it. That’s Lori Mon tag. Now, Lori, Mount Montag, if you Google search her name, she went on to launch.

Uh, Jason, you can keep that paper. She went on to launch zany bands. She launched, um, slap watch. She launched. That’s her. Yeah, that’s her. So here’s, so here’s what happened is we, I couldn’t, I couldn’t buy a booth at the bridal shop. The other, they’d be current bridal show wouldn’t sell me a booth in the bridal show. Now if you’re not playing with a bride show at a bridal show is a bridal show is like a trade show. Yeah, for right. And when you, why would you want a booth at a bridal show? First off? Well, if your DJ company, because you’re getting right in front of your target audience and you’re meeting with potential people that you could use for your dream 100. So there’s a commercial that would run in Tulsa. Plan your day and a day at the toss up

show. The tall man ain’t show

plan your day. Then all day at that tall. So wedding show, in my mind, I heard it like this freaking planet. Fricking day had to freaking day. You have to tall. So wedding shows much by Satan. I’m you’re picking day in a fricking day at the tall saw wedding show sponsored by Satan. A plenty of freaking day. And I was so pissed because I wanted to get in the show and I couldn’t get in the show because the other Djs were blacklisted me. They said, you can’t let DJ connection in because they’re there. They’re unethical. They’re better than us. Why do you think, why do you think that? They said, why did you all other Djs told the event the bloody who ran the show that I was unethical. She was a great lady by the way. Turns out the founder of that shows a great lady. Yeah, but why do they say I was unethical?

Why do you think I would assume? Because all of them, by the way, all the competitors teaming up, you are taking avenues that we’re one making you more successful. So you were a threat there. We go to, you had systems in place that they couldn’t duplicate. Well, one, it was personal, right? I mean these guys on chapter one, I talked about this, but I applied for a job at all of these places. Yeah. And all of them turned me down. One guy remember this clever guy, freaking idiot. This guy says to me, he goes, hey, you know what buddy? We don’t just hire Spartans that are right off the boat. You go back up there to Minnesota and you tell that to the Spartans. What? What can a 45 year old DJ? Well, first off, Michigan is home of the mascot. The Spartans, right. Okay.

Minnesota is the golden gophers, but the point is, I thought he was trying to make some like Greco Roman reference. I don’t think Spartans lift spartar real believable. I mean, I had one guy who said, if you work as a roadie for two years, you’ll learn the systems. It’s like making Sushi. This guy had hair like hulk Hogan who bleach blonde hair. Oh yeah. Hearings. All the everyone. He’s like, brother, if you shadow me for two years, I’ll teach you. The systems only had one guy in town. As I talked about on chapter one, rob begins who would allow me to work for him, and it was a deal where I had to rent my own gear. So I’m like, are you kidding me? So I talked it over with Laurie. I talked to her with Vanessa. I called it the Renaissance Hotel. I talked to my feet, my contact there, dawn Leete and Tulisa Samuels.

And I said, ladies, I want to rent the grand ballroom to have the biggest wedding show Tulsa has ever seen on the same day off the other person show she the same day, same day. She goes, well, we can’t that day because it’s already booked out. And I said, well, what about Sunday? She goes, we could do it. The day after. I said, okay, I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it. I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I’ll let’s do it the Sunday before their show, because they’re advertising on TV all the time. Right. Let’s do that. So we rented the Renaissance Hotel and dude, I don’t want to exaggerate the number cause I don’t, I don’t have in front of me. But it was something, something like 15 grand to rent the ballroom.

Right. And I sold every booth for, you know, somewhere between 500 and $600 by take anything. Yeah. So this was my pitch. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Hey, is this Jason? Yes, Jason. Man, I wanted to invite you to be in our new floor, our new bridal show. It’s going to be hosts the first annual Tulsa Bridal Association bridal show. And we know that your floral company is awesome. I wanted to see if you want it to be in it. Um, what’s it cost to rent a booth? Are you already in the other wedding show by the way? Um, the Tulsa wedding show. Cause that’s a big shots. Great show. Yeah, no, not, well, let me tell you what we’re going to do this show this, who the shows need. We’ve found that very few people work on Sundays. Not everybody, but there’s less people that work on Sundays and Saturdays.

Yeah. So more people can attend. It’s going to be at the newest hotel in Tulsa. Not The old convention center. No, no, not the old devil tree. This is the new Renaissance Hotel. Gotcha. And guess who we’ve got in the booth? Guess we’d gotten the show already. Who’s that? We’ve got Laurie Mantech, mantech photography, the largest photographer and Tulsa. Oh yeah, the nicest hotel in Tulsa. And we just booked DJ connection, the largest entertainment company in Tulsa. It sounds pretty impressive. And by the way, when I was coming in these calls, I was saying that I owned Dj Connection. Yeah. So they’d go, okay, well how much is it? I said, well, this is how we do our shows. Different. Yeah. We just require a $250 deposit. I know the other show seven 50 yeah, it’s two 50 deposit. And then on the day of the event we charge you the other two 50 you went to debit card or credit card adjacent.

I made so many calls, did I got so much rejection, but I sold out that show. Nice. Here’s what’s cool. Guess who else booked boosts at my show? People from the other show, the other djs. Oh, so those guys ended up paying for my marketing. Yes. That’s awesome. And you know, I put their booths at the back. Right? That’s us in a horrible spot. You know, I put my booth right upfront, primary listing, I give myself multiple booths. Oh yeah. Nice. And I crushed it. And the whole day they want got to watch me kill it. And I went from booking 20 weddings a weekend to like 40 weddings a weekend. That is nuts. And then I got that database of all the brides who registered because I was the founder of the Tulsa Bridal Association. Right. And do you know what I did to that list? Call them all.

I promised all the vendors, I will give you a list on Tuesday morning. Yeah. And you know what? I did you give him the list on Tuesday morning. Wow. You know what I did? What’d you do? I left every single bride on that list. A voicemail by Monday at noon. Ooh. And sit them on email. Nice. So I got the first at bat baby and I hit a home run. Yeah. And that show ended up surpassing the other show in size for awhile there. Later on we ended up merging the show. But that’s how I did it. Yeah. That’s what I did. And I started a wedding show because I was told no. So if you’re out there today, I would encourage you to not make this chapter as meaningless as you know, watching we are the world, the new, the, the, the video of Michael Jackson back in back in the day.

Yeah. Watching that all day and then going back to sleep. You know, I encourage you to make this actionable. So I encourage you to ask yourself today, who’s the guru that you know that you must ask these questions to? Who’s the guru? Who has the answers that you seek? Who is that guru? Question number two is when will you call this guru and what will you offer them in exchange for their time? Cause you can make more money but you can’t make more time. Right. You can make more money but you can’t make more time. And especially if you’re a rich person, that means you’ve sacrificed a lot of your time to make that money. So now you want to enjoy your time, right? So you need to offer, what am I going to offer this person to meet with that person to, to, to meet with me.

And then you’ve got to make a list of, you’ve got to make a list of my friend of the 10 mentors you want to meet because if you call 10, you’re pulling in again. Can I get you to yes. From one. I like to make a list of a hundred mentors. I want to make meat. You know, we’re going to have the, uh, the guy who founded be hands on the podcast in no. Yes. We’re going to have him on the show. Nice. This guy now is like very high up with Adobe. Oh yes. Okay. I W you know, we’re going to have a, a Ross Golan on the show. I’m super pumped for that. What are the top song writers of the past decade is going to be on the show? You know we’ve had a Ritz Carlton, the founder of Ritz Carlton, a Horst Schulze on the shelf. Right.

And you know why we’ve been able to have those big names wasn’t cause I’ve been rejected by everybody. There you go. I just got rejected by bill check again on Friday. Did you know about that? No, it’s, it’s coming. He’s like I invited and bill every year. I invite him and I got rejected just once a year. But you know what happened on Friday. We’ll have, I can’t use her name yet cause I don’t have a contract yet. The number one literary agent in the world. Oh said yes to take on my taking my book. Yes. And now it’s in my schedule every Friday I shall be talking to her as we build the book. That is awesome. Her books are currently, if you go to target and there’s a book that’s been selling really well with an orange cover for the past three years and there’s a book with a big yellow cal cover those books and other books like them.

That’s her. And she’s agreed to represent my newest book. And you know how I got that deal? Cheese. Well I bet you’re colder everyday for about, what was it, five years? Yeah. Well that every time. I didn’t call her for five years. Yes. Right. And did you see the drone video is center? Yeah, I was, I was the tip of the, uh, a in her name. See, I’m hoping we can fly to Tulsa so you guys can meet her. That, that would be awesome. She’s the Unicorn. Yeah. And we got that deal through persistence. If you’re out there today and you’re feeling like, God, Gosh, there’s no mentor coming to help me, there’s nobody coming to him. I just felt like alone, you are alone. You start, you signed up for this man, you decided to become self employed. That means you work for you, you want to sale.

So quit taking selfies and get out there and start that business it. If you need a mentor, reach out to someone who can help you. The only reason I started this coaching program was to provide somebody the ability to have access to a mentor who could actually help you. Right? Because a lot of times you meet with these mentors. I remember meeting with Lori and she said, clay, you need to make a list of all the products and services that brides want that are related to Dj and you can double the price of your, you can double your revenue per bride. And I’m like, what? She goes, yeah, like, I dunno. I think brides went to rent uplights don’t they want to rent it? Dance floors. Don’t they want to do a rent Margarita? Machines? Don’t they want to rent chocolate fountains? Why don’t you just ask them what they want, but they’re still looking for, ask them what still on your list when you meet the bride, after they’ve signed the contract, he say, what are you still looking for?

And then what they say, I’m looking for a photographer, a florist, a limo company, a, any of those. She goes, you refer them to other businesses, right? And then call him and tell him, say Mr Limo Company, Mr Galaxy Limo. I just referred you a bride. She’ll be calling you today. And he said, she said, you know what it, unless he’s a bad person, he’ll refer you back. And then you refer the top florist and when you refer that florist, you call them up. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Hey, is this the incredible florist? Yeah. Hey, I just referred you a deal. And her name is Brittany. His name is Tom. They’re calling you right now. Here’s her number. Well, Jason, when I started referring all these other vendor vendors, what started happening? Well, I would assume that they grew their business and then they refrigerate back. That’s right.

Law of reciprocity. Yep. That’s how it works. And then when I sat down with brides and I said, hey, what else are you still looking for? Do you still need a dance floor? Are you still looking for a Margarita machine? A chocolate fountain? Uplights what do you think? They said, well, absolutely, we need all that. And so we go to, did I know how to get the financing needed to buy the stuff that you did the, do you think that I knew how to do that? No. No. Was Lori gonna sit there and hold my hand through the process to do that? Nope. No. When Laurie pointed out, clear your website, looks like you made it yourself. And I said like, Ted, make it myself. Um, do you think that Laurie sat down and helped me develop it all day? Nope. Do you think when Lori said, hey, you need a better video for your website, do you think that she sat down and help me do it?

No. Right? Why? Why do you think she didn’t sit down and take all of her time to help me build my brand? Well, cause she had other things to focus on, but she was also impugning you with the knowledge of where to go. That’s right. So if you’re out there today wanting to get up to the top of success mountain, find a tour guide who’s already been up to the top and they’re willing to show you the path. But if you want somebody to guide you all the way up that path, right. For days, that’s a service. Yeah. That’s, uh, if you ever been hiking Jason, where you pay a guide to take you or maybe been down to a river white water rafting or something. I have gone on hikes but never with a guide. If you were to go white water rafting, I have not, I’ve always wanted it to you and your lady friend would love this.

But for white water rafting, you pay a guide. What do you pay a guide to take you down the rapids and why? Why does he not just do it for free? Well, it’s a dangerous, it’s also a job and you pay the guide because if not, you’re going to get turned over and one of those rapids and probably, you know, that’s what he’s doing. His Service is helping you navigate the, the rapids right now if you want to Ah, figure out where the rapids are, you can ask a townie. True. And they’ll point you, they’ll say debts that over there, those are the best rapids. That’s where you should go. That’s the name of the company that can take you down there. That’s where you go. Which is cool because back before Google, you know he didn’t know, so you’re driving around in the wilderness trying to find the rapids.

A townie, a local person from the town will show you where the rapids are, but they’re not going to guide you down there all day and serve you lunch. Nope, that’s a service, right? So if you feel stuck today, find a mentor, find a mentor and if you have a team big enough to help you execute, then do it right. If not, you just go to thrive time, show.com and schedule your free consultation because I believe, I know that you have the power to succeed chapter for building my Dream Team, one inexperienced DJ at a time. Learning to go from me to we. Around this time things were starting to get busy, maybe a little too busy. I was the salesman, the bookkeeper that the trainer, the maintenance guy, the marketing director that the song editor, the HR person, a husband and a business owner, everything revolved around me.

Napoleon hill once wrote in his book think and grow rich. He wrote, one of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness upon the leader to do more than he requires of his followers. You see the hall of fame, Basketball Player and successful entrepreneur, Magic Johnson has said that to ever truly become a leader or to build a great organization, you have to go from me to we. I agreed with them on that. However, I was just now bringing in $100,000 of gross revenue for the first time and after this wedding show I’ve started to bring in three and $400,000 of revenue and I just didn’t know what to do. I had no idea how to hire people, how to inspire people. I had no idea about the process. I didn’t know how to hire, inspire, train and retain people. Jason, I did not have any checklists in place so I’d like for you to explain it as, as we’re talking about the DJ connection.com story, I’d like for you to share about elephant in the room.

Yeah. And the importance of checklists and written down processes as it relates to managing the stores because you manage all three stores, right? What would happen if we did not have checklists and processes for everything? I would lose my mind because one store alone, there’s a lot that goes into it. How many customers do you think we saw yesterday on in front of, on a Friday, yesterday on a Friday even having a smaller workforce, we still saw about 75 clients and we were packed out. Oh yeah, like booked back to back, back to back. Craziness. And so if you didn’t have checklists, what would happen? Well, you’d have a bunch of angry customers. You’d have a bunch of angry employees. You’d be pulling your hair out because it’d be 10,000 fires and no structure on what to handle first. So this is what was happening.

I would find a guy, I would recruit a guy. Typically I find my, my employees at restaurants. Yeah. By the way, I couldn’t afford ads for now hiring, so I would find all my people at the mall or restaurants. Why do you think I went to the mall or restaurants to find potential employees? Will you wanted to find somebody who wanted a better opportunity and somebody who’s used to work in those hours. True. Because people, if you work at a restaurant, you have to work nights and weekends. Yup. And I didn’t want to debate with somebody about their, well, I want to, I want a white work life balance. I can’t stand talking to people that want to make a lot of money, who say, well, what about work life balance? There’s worklife trade tradeoffs, right? There’s no work life balance. You’re not balanced in all areas, don’t it?

To be balanced in every area. So here’s my problem. I didn’t understand the need for taking breaks ever other than to use the restroom. So during my time spent working construction, I learned not to stop, to take breaks until the job was done and being a that the job was never done. I never took breaks. Today I don’t take lunch breaks. I don’t take off time off for personal reasons. Jason, have you noticed that I don’t take time off for personal reasons. I’ve never even seen you get sick. Um, well I guess you price in the dayquil days. Yeah. But, but I’m sorry, I’ve never seen you call out. Have you noticed? I don’t call, I never take off for personal reasons. Right. Do you think it’s possible that I’ve ever irritated my wife? Do you think it’s ever possible? I would say it’s probably possible every 60 days because I’m a deeply flawed person and my wife is great.

And so sometimes she’ll have to point out to me that I need to improve in certain areas. Yeah. And my friends, I mean my, my best friend mark to Beatrice died. He was with the first guy who was working with me. He’s the, he’s my, uh, roommate in college. I was friends of his since I was like a little baby attending Christian chapel. His name was Mark [inaudible] Beatrice. And when mark died, I still had to DJ a wedding like the day after. Well, so since that time I’ve really viewed, life is fleeting. I mean, we only have so much time and I just, it was hard for me to take time away. I, I th this is flawed thinking, but I thought it’s hard to take time away from selling and from deejaying to train these people. Right. And what happens if you get stuck in that doom loop too long?

Jason will, um, he’s stuck in a doom loop of, sorry, rephrase the question. I found it hard to take time away from my schedule. Yep. T t I felt hard to stop making sales calls myself. Yeah. Or Dj myself and to take time to train people. Okay. I gotcha. So, um, if you get stuck there, then you’re going to have a team of either uninspired employees or let’s say something does happen and it is a catastrophic lack of a life of it. And you have to not be in the business. You’ve got nobody else who can do your job. You nailed it. I created a job and not a business.

So I finally determined that I could hire someone else on a commission only pay structure and I would pay them $50 per booking when they booked the show in 33% of the total package price when they deejayed plus the guys could keep their tips. I approached one of our disc jockeys by the name of Josh with this opportunity and he liked the idea, but he had questions. We set up a time to meet at his apartment located two miles away from my condominium at his condo near the Oru campus. Josh was a basketball player, oral Roberts University, and Kristin has life was was to however they decided to take a year off to get married and like many newlyweds, Josh was highly motivated to make some good money to support his new bride. Historically, I have almost always found that people who are working to support their families work at least 50% harder than those who have no dependence upon them.

There’s, there’s rare cases, but Jason, why do you, have you noticed, have you noticed that at all? If he noticed that people that have to provide for their family tend to work it with a little bit more grind than the person who is single and has no cares in the world. Oh, absolutely. Um, just like a quick example, my mom was single mom, three boys and her and her friend worked in the same department doing the exact same job of my mom would put in like 80 hour weeks, so twice as much as anybody there. And everyone’s like, well, you know, we’re all doing the same thing. She’s like, yeah, but I need to do it better because I’ve got stuff to provide for. So if you’re out there to doubt, encourage you, is a little hiring tip, I would encourage you to hire people that have something to lose.

Yeah. I worry about the man or woman who has nothing to lose. Uh, when I arrived at their apartment, I knocked on the door and I was quickly, Greta agreed by Kristin who was cooking some spaghetti and she was rocking some Oru basketball shorts. Josh came in a second later and invited me to sit down. I discussed with him and laid out the pay arrangements. My concept was that I would set up the appointments and Josh would meet the clients so I would have more time to set up more appointments. When the customer paid the deposit, he would be paid. If the customer did not pay the deposit, he would not get paid and for every show that he worked as a DJ, he would make 33% of an average of a $525 event. After discussing the numbers for a while, eventually we agreed that Josh would get paid 10% of the total sales price for each package.

Thus, if he booked bigger packages, he might make more money. Josh came up with the idea and I felt it was right, so he shook hands and the business started booming almost immediately by at least 15 to 20% because Josh and I were both driven and motivated to succeed. Josh was one of those odd people who actually believed that he could book every deal and he was driven by his inner motivation to succeed at an employer and at a level that is that most employers can’t teach. He was a division one basketball player. He played it or you and a, I mean this guy was very competitive and it was just, it was just great. And so every day I would, you know, rarely leave my condo because I’d be out there making calls. I would just leave to work out. That was a bit much.

I would leave my condo to work out and I was, and I was within walking distance of all American fitness. Yes, I’d leave to work out, but other than that, I would just be there all day. Now Josh was at Panera bread while I was dialing, dialing and smiling. Josh was at Panera bread meeting all the brides as fast as I could book. And Josh would fill up his schedule. I’d fill up Josh’s schedule, he’d booked him. I’d fill if his schedule, he’d booked them, I’d set the appointments, he’d booked him, he’d bring back to deposits, right? I’d set the appointments. He booked him, he’d bring back to deposit. It was awesome and things are flowing very, very smoothly now in terms of hiring the disc jockeys, this was a different story because I wanted to build a great team of Djs. My, my search first took me to the local radio stations where I figured that the quality of the talent that I could find it by, by hiring on air personalities will be much greater than if I were to train people who knew nothing about Dj.

So nearly every one of my first djs was an FM disc jockey. I met them, I interviewed them, I trained them. I thought the hit and I thought that these guys, well, if these guys were FMD, Jay’s surely these guys would be God’s gift to my audience. And these guys actually believe that they were like an underpaid celebrity and they would go out to the show and the bride would request for them to play their songs and get it. What do you think that those djs would do? Those FMD chase. When a bride had a playlist we’d clearly agreed upon and we had a timeline that we clearly agreed upon, what do you think that the DJ would do? The FM personality, I’m betting they went off book and played their own set, right? These, these c level celebrities who are making $19,000 a year talking on a microphone and an empty box called a studio.

These guys, it was unbelievable. These guys thought that they knew better than the bride what songs would work and so one by one these djs just jacked up weddings. It was bad and thank the Lord. There wasn’t Google reviews back then, but I was tired of looking at their, at their, you know, odd oddities there. Weird behaviors, their idiosyncrasies, their Devenir, strange voice. They will use gentleman within the braid every time. They, all right ladies and gentlemen and welcome now to the first dance. We have a beautiful bride dancing with the grill. Well, I think everybody for being here. I’m a [inaudible]. I’m not, I normally work at k hits. You might recognize me from k hiss and everyone’s like, we don’t know who you are all the time. They would name drop all the time. Ladies and gentleman up next we’re going to get the dance party started, you know, two years ago in a flow rider was in town. I played this song and everyone was going crazy. Let’s see, we can reenact that today. You know, just stop. So the bride and the groom are cutting the cake. But the Djs like talking over these moments,

ladies and gentlemen, up next to the bride, the group, we’re going to be cutting the cake. Put your hair to the,

I’m going, oh my gosh. They’re actually saying, put your mother freaking hands in. The air serious has happened. It was like, no, we’re, the bride would put on the platelets do not play the Conga line. And the Djs like, well, I wonder what will happen if I do. I mean, it’s just that personality type. Those djs weren’t just a disaster. So over time I found that I was never going to find high quality experienced disc jockeys. So I remember reading this quote from John D Rockefeller or John d Rockefeller said, I’d rather hire a man with enthusiasm than a man who knows everything. Again, I repeat John D Rockefeller, the wealthiest man in the history of the world right now. Jeff Bezos is just now approaching the level of wealth that John D Rockefeller had during his lifetime. It’s crazy. John D Rockefeller said, I’d rather hire a man with enthusiasm than a man who knows everything.

Jason. Why is that? Well, because the person who knows quote unquote everything, you can’t teach them anything. But somebody who’s enthusiastic, you can still help them grow. So I needed, I needed to find people that were the kind of personality she can find it. Quick trip, the kind of people you could find it Chick-Filet high quality, hard working people. I needed to find people that had a great attitude and then train them the skill. And once I figured that out, it unlocked everything. Once I discovered that I was just after quality people, once I began to realize that I didn’t, I didn’t, I couldn’t change people. Jason before this I would try to hire people and train them. I try to hire people I knew who were going through life issues and trying to train them how to become better people. And you, you’ve been an elephant in the room long enough running that company.

Why is it true that people change? Seldom? Um, it’s one of the hardest practices to try to change somebody. Cause one I think we can get a general understanding of like who people are. But like, um, at their core you can’t change that because that’s something they’ve decided on. They have to decide for themselves and a lot of people don’t like you, they can improve on it. But I think at the end of the day, people change seldom because they’re already set in who they think they are. Right. Well at this, at this moment I just started seeing potential djs everywhere I started sincerely being be being begin becoming passionate that anybody out there who was an inspired person, I can hire them. So I ran around looking just for honest, hardworking people and, and so I would learn. I would, I would. I found out that once I, once I found it honest, hardworking person, I would say I didn’t, I didn’t ask him, Jason, do you want to become a DJ?

I said, hey, would you like the ability to build, to make $700 a week working only four days a week? And the people said yes. And I said, would you like to learn how to become a better public speaker and learn communication skills? And they say, yes. I’m like, well, show up for our first interview here at Dj Connection. I’d love to interview. And it was awesome because over time I started recruiting this army of enthusiastic people and when I was out to eat with Vanessa, I’d offer every great waiter a job. When I was making bank deposits, I’d offer the tellers a job, which I probably should not have done. That’s why the bank probably didn’t like me at this point. I was telling nearly everyone that had a pulse about the job. I was excited about the opportunity and I believe that many people were attracted to the business because of this, because of its excitement.

And enthusiasm that I had for it and for their lives. After a few months, new recruits just started pouring in. Everyone knew that I didn’t care if they knew anything about sound or music, so my new recruits, we’re not limited to those people who are obsessed with music. Basically, I was not just hiring guitar center staff. The new recruits knew that I was passionate about helping people to achieve their goals and they knew that I was passionate about my, about achieving my goals, and as I began recruiting more and more quality humans, I started to see some patterns emerging in those that turned into great djs and those that turned out to be bad, needy, whiny week, frequently late, and otherwise useless djs. You see the new guys who are, who, who turned out well? Yeah. They were always on time and they had big goals. If they were ever late, there was like, they felt bad about it.

Yeah, but the, the good djs always wanted to be on time and they had goals, but the guys that turned out to be bad djs, they’re always chronically late. There’ll be late to the interview late to the, to the sales meeting late to someone’s wedding. And they’re also the same kind of people that wouldn’t follow the playlist. Right? Can you talk to you about that personality type because you’ve seen it? Oh, there are certain people that want to get the checklist done and take joy in it and certain people that don’t want to get the checklist done and uh, give you push back. Talk to me with those two different personality types. You’ll see of the people who are Super Gung Ho about it, like, uh, the side case in point, we’ve got our hourly checklists. So we’ve got to clean the shampoo room. There is about 18 items on there to make sure that it’s completely sanitized.

You can do them all in a rhythmic fashion from the second you step in to the second step out, grab a broom, you’re done. But you’ll have the people that say, oh, Hey, two o’clock we have to get this done. I’m going to go ahead and jump on it at one 30, because I know that we don’t have any customers in there. So we’re not gonna get in their space and it will set us up that way. It come two o’clock and we have all these back to back appointments. We have this done, everything’s clean, and we can focus on the business. And then you have the people that you say, hey, we’re super slammed. Would you mind doing that checklist or you know, it’s time to do the checklist. Have those gotten done yet? Now I didn’t really feel like it or, I mean I kind of did it, but it did it my own way.

I didn’t sign off on it. Here’s how I did it. Every week I would try to recruit. Every time I was anywhere I was trying to recruit, but I would recruit everybody to two trainings a week and on my driveway there at 91st and Lynn Lane, I would set up the gear and we would have six different DJ system set up. I’d have six guys. They’re usually, yeah. I said, guys, what we’re going to do, we’re going to do today trading. Number one is we’re going to practice announcements because if you can’t make announcements, you can’t Dj. So I printed out the announcements that that, that they were supposed to read, like the cutting of the cake or the first dance or the grand intro, and they would practice guide number one go, boom, got up, or to go, boom, guy number three go, boom, Roger, go, Derek, go Josh, go Joelle, go Derek, go Josh, Cope, Roger Cope, Curtis scope, and they practiced the announcements over and over it too.

We can’t, couldn’t get ’em wrong, right? Then I’d say, now we’re going to focus on learning how to take down the system and set it up, take it down and set it up. So we practiced that and I would time it. Then I would say, no, I’m going to unplug one part of your system and you have to able to troubleshoot to fix it. Then I would say, okay, your amp just went out. How do you switch out an amplifier? What your amp just went out, it blew up. How do you trade out for the backup? And we’d practice these things. So it became automatic. It was almost like a military operation. Practicing, practicing, practicing to the people could not get it wrong. And over time I found Jason that whether you are black, white, Asian, rich or poor, the people that had the goals and the self control always turned out to be the best.

Yup. But the people that had no self discipline and who were chronically late always turned out to be disasters. And the more that I’ve been around people, the more it has become abundantly clear to me that people change seldom. And so a lot of the people that were c players that I coached up to be B players. Yeah. The C players in terms of character, they would just show up late to, couldn’t stay clean, couldn’t stay sober. Those people, when I trained those people up, you know what they always did? The C players, once I trained them how to become good at their job, you know, they always did the low, the low character people every time when they do start their own DJ company. So they’d be at a wedding and a bride would say, I love your company. You guys are great. How do I get ahold of you?

And they’d make their own business cards and pass them out. Now that they have the knowhow, right. And I think all of them except for one went out of business, but dozens of them. Now I have a notable quotable from a Dj who worked with me during the time. Okay. His name is Joey Odom and I’m gonna have you read this off now. Joey had never deejayed in his life. He knew nothing about dis deejaying. He was a college student, very, very funny person. Still very funny guy. He reminded me of Vince Vaughn, had that very quick wit, honest guy, hardworking guy. And I want you to read the notable quotable that he wrote for me about his experience [email protected] one time I asked Dj clay what separates him from his competition. And he gave me one of the greatest answers I’ve ever heard. He said the reason they can’t keep up with me is that they require sleep.

And I don’t Dj Clay’s work ethic always shine. Timeout. I say that still today. You do. You can’t compete if you need sleep. Yup. Back to you cause you’re going to fit a what time? Three. Hmm. A great example is from the very first wedding that I worked by myself. We had gone through the training and I was ready to go. As I was setting up all the equipment, I had a terrifying moment when I realized that somehow the previous DJ had not loaded the CD players with the rest of the equipment. So there I was totally by myself with an hour until the reception started without the ability to play music. I called clay who was all the way across town working at another wedding, one of 30 we had going on that night and he calmly said that he would take care of it no more than 30 minutes later.

Dj Clay walked in with two CD players that he had just purchased from Walmart. Uh, these were quite substandard to the kind of equipment that he typically used. But he set them up and walked me through how to use them. And how to adjust my approach that night after making sure I was ready to go, he went back to the wedding. He was coordinating three hours later I was finishing up at perfectly coordinated reception with a happy, bright and happy groom. That was typically, or that was typical resourceful, hardworking DJ clay. So I left a wedding that I was at before the bride and groom got there, drove as fast as possible to Walmart, bought the CD players, installed them, plugged them in, and I carried in my van. Yeah, a lot of guys didn’t know this, but I carried in my van, backup CD players, backup cords, cables, whatever.

So that way when I got called, I could usually put out the fires. Yeah, I wasn’t smart enough yet to understand the idea of having a floater, but I was close. But here are some questions I would encourage you to ask yourself today. If you’re stuck in this phase where you’re at me and you’re trying to grow, grow to wheat, are you prepared to go from me to we and your business? I mean, it’s now a good time to do it. Are you prepared to do that too? What kind of character traits are you looking for? Because if you want those kinds of character traits from your employees, you have to be those. So if you want your employees to be on time, you have to be on time. If you want your employees to care, you have to care. If you want your employees to bring passion, you have to bring passion, my friend.

You want to write down these character traits so that way it’s easy to look for them. Next is if you’re looking to recruit people and you’re not a a super wealthy yet, you really need to dress to impress. You need to dress to impress, you need to dress. I’m like, you are in charge. And the next step here for you is you want to work to become the best business owner you could possibly be because nothing’s worse than being an a player employee and working for a c plus boss. And we’ve all had that happen where you’re working for a panicky boss, a last minute boss. How always stressed out boss and boss who’s head’s gonna explode boss, a boss who clearly has not written anything down. Boss, a boss who’s frustrated boss, a boss who’s screaming all the time, boss, a boss who, you know, uh, I’m, we’re working at one job and had a boss who kept dating some of the guys that worked there.

And it’s just so weird when you have a boss and she’s dating the, the employees. It just to be a boss, you have to pay the costs. Okay? That’s what, that’s what, that’s what it means. You have to pay the costs to be the boss. You’d have to, uh, to hire people today you have to inspire them. Management is mentorship. It’s more than just hiring somebody for a job. People don’t come to work for a paycheck. They come to work for mentorship management. Today is mentorship and management. Back in the day was mentorship. But beware, when you mentor people, you will get screwed shelves held together using twine, mini rope, hope and a half gallon of whoop, pass, tenacity and love. Chapter Five, my friend. What I found was as I was growing DJ connection on a daily basis, I almost had to become macgyver. And if you don’t know who macgyver was a, our macgyver is, macgyver was a 1980s TV era TV star, who no matter what the problem was or how difficult it was, he always seemed to be able to solve the problem by being resourceful. The show is about this guy who was fighting against the bad guys, but you always find, found a way to hot wire a car or to make an engine run. And he seemed like he could do it with like a battery in duct tape and a pair of coconuts. He could just always seem to figure out the plausible way to get out of every situation. And this is running a

small businesses like until it’s big enough to where you can afford to hire people who have specialties. And so I was working out of my office at the time. It was a 91st and Lynn Lane, if you Google it to eight nine zero zero South Lynn Lane, that’s the, that’s the office there. And in that garage, I had all the DJ systems and I had to find a way to get the djs to load in faster and more efficiently because I needed to get the Djs to the load up every 15 minutes because we had so many shows. We are book and I had to, my first Dj, we’d put it in the schedule, he’s going to load out his gear. Um, Friday at noon, the next DJ at 1215, the next DJ at 1230, the next DJ at 1245, the next DJ at one, the next Gj at one 15.

And I was running out of time slots because Saturday with, you know, 30 disc jockeys going out to weddings or 40 djs going out. We just ran out of time during the day. We just did not have the time needed to load out the guys. And so I had to find a way to reorganize the garage to make it very efficient. Now I couldn’t afford to hire somebody to sit there and in, um, you know, come out and draw a, a, a plan for me. I couldn’t hire a, couldn’t afford to hire a contractor to build it out. And so I went out there and I, and I literally built my shelves using twine and many rope I bought from Walmart. So I bought the shelving system, uh, used from some guy I met on craigslist. And the system, if you could picture, it was like shelves that went up.

There’s three shelves on the first level. I put the, the equipment and it was off the ground in case there was ever flooding is off about four inches off the ground. And then the next level it was a where the DJ systems would go. Then the next level for the lighting would go. And I built these systems. There’s almost like a locker room for DJ’s. And even though the shelves didn’t look good, they worked and they never fell down. And practically speaking, I mean it was the best that I could do at the time because I couldn’t afford to hire a professional shelf builder. And I think that’s where a lot of people get stuck. I think we, I think we think, well, I can’t build my shelves because I can’t afford to hire a professional shelf builder. I built it myself. I literally got, uh, these shelves from Craig’s list.

And then when I used all of those, I bought myself a skil saw. I had never used a skilsaw, bought a skilsaw, bought an extension cord. Um, but one of those, uh, uh, horses where you put your, uh, or is it like an a frame where you put the is this just shows my lack of my lack of a skills with handyman work. But I set up the, the, uh, the, the saw horse and I began to saw the boards it with two by fours and I made my own shelves. Um, I used nails though I didn’t realize that screws were needed. And so when, once I found that out, I went back and added screws, but I did it myself. I didn’t wait for help from somebody else. And then when it came to loading in the DJ’s faster, I realized I was running at a time.

Mean we were meeting, I mean, when you DJ a wedding, you have to be there before the ceremony typically. So if the ceremony starts at noon, you got to get there to set up at 10:00 AM and so I would load up my first disc jockey at five in the morning and then Nick’s just disc jockey at five 30 and the next one it’s six and the next one at six 30 the next one at seven. And I was running out of time. I had to find a way to get the Djs to load up within 15 minutes or less. And so I made this thing called a checklist. Unbelievable. I don’t know why it took me so long to make a checklist. Why did it take me so long to make a checklist? An unbelievable, but I made a checklist of all the gear that the DJ is needed to bring.

The amplifiers, speakers, the all, all the gear they needed, the amplifiers, the speakers, the Mike stands. I made these lists and then when the djs would load up, I would go through the list and make sure they had it. And I should say I probably saved 10 minutes per load up by just making that checklist. Then I gave every disc jockey a numbered system and I don’t know why it took me so long to figure that out, but if you were, let’s say Josh, your DJ system was DJ system number two. No, I’m sorry, rich rich to Beatrice was number two. I think Josh was number three and I was number one, so I was number one. Josh was number three rituals, number three, rituals. Number two, I was number one, rituals, number two. Josh was number three and each deejay had their own numbered system and then they load it back in their gear.

I would go through the checklist to see if anything was broken or missing it. Just by adding that checklist in there, I found that a lot of my djs were stealing speakers. They would say stuff like, I forgot my speaker at the venue and I would tell them, okay, well if you forgot it and you can’t go get it, I’ll just charge you half of what it would cost me to go buy a new one. And I noticed that some people weren’t actually uh, bothered by this. They were like, okay, fine, fine. And I noticed that, well, why would somebody be okay with paying half of the price of a speaker that they’ll never touch touch again? Why would they do that? Well, over time I found it, a lot of the djs would steal gear from me, so then I’d be gone. It got to a place where if you don’t bring back the physical gear that is quote unquote broke or lost, I’m just going to charge you 100% the cost of replacing that gear and that really did cut down on a lot of theft, but I had to get a checklist first because I didn’t even know what I was missing.

Then I had to organize the garage after I’d built the garage and, and build the shelves, I realized it could be done more efficiently. So I created one part of the garage or I’d put all the mic stands and one part of the garage where all the speaker stands were in one part of the garage for all the patch cables. And I developed a system for maximum efficiency and I got it to a place where we could, uh, load out a Dj within 15 minutes. And I got to a place around the 25 minute mark where I was stuck. And so I didn’t know how to improve the speed of loading up the DJ’s. And so I started asking people who knew what they were talking about. And I had an uncle who worked for southwest airlines and his name was John Tune. And I asked John, I said, John, you’re a pilot for southwest.

How does southwest turn an airplane in 10 minutes? Think about that. Southwest Airlines at the time would actually have a, a seven 37 Boeing plane would land. And then they would totally repair it or refuel it and clean it, offload all the baggage and onload all the new baggage within 10 minutes. And John was saying, well, if you want to know how to do it, there’s a book called nuts that was written about bout southwest by Jackie Freiberg and Kevin Fryberg, who we’ve now had on the show. We’ve now had Jackie Freiberg and Kevin Fryberg on the show and he said, if you want to know how to improve your efficiency, read that book, nuts, southwest airlines, crazy recipe for business and personal success. So I read that book. It totally changed everything and introduced me to merit based pay where you pay people based upon their performance, not based upon what they say they’re going to do.

It taught me about checklists and systems and efficiencies and if you’re out there today, I would encourage you to check out that book. It’s called nuts, southwest airlines, the crazy recipe for business and personal success, but as a teaching moment for you today, I would encourage you to ask yourself, what part of your life or business are you a stuck because you’re out of resources, you know, maybe all you have is is twine, many rope hope and a half gallon can of whoop ass if that’s all you have. You got to get started, man. You’ve got to get started because nobody is going to come and help you. You have to do, I built those shells by myself. Nobody was in that garage with me. And people may say, Oh, I helped build it. They did not. There were people that came to work with me for a season for a job.

But no, no. I was the one at 3:00 AM getting up. I was the one building the systems. I was the one building the processes and uh, Josh Smith went on and it’s to start his own very successful company to team up with some guys to build a very successful settlement company. And many of the guys have gone on to build successful pinchers. But, uh, I think it’s important for you as the listener. I’m assuming that you’re an entrepreneur listening here. Don’t give up equity. Don’t give up equity to people on your team who have not proven themselves to be diligent. And if you do give up equity, if you do partner with people, if you do set up golden handcuffs, make sure you do it in a way where it’s easy and simple and clean to buy people out because people, they, they, they, they, they change over time.

That people, the guy who is your best employee today will become your worst employee tomorrow. And it’s because people are constantly changing around you. The world around you is constantly changing. People tend to, they tend to change based on the emotions of the day. You see, to quote Robert Greene, the bestselling author of mastery, people around you constantly under the poll of their emotions, change their ideas by the day or by the hour, depending upon their mood. You must never assume that what people say or do any particular moment is a statement of their permanent desires. I remember I was deejaying what time at the golf club of Oklahoma and I’m setting up there and as I normally did, I would DJ property, you know, 20 events a year there and a kitty Dishman who was the manager of the event facility at the time. She pulls me aside and says, clay, are you aware that, uh, this guy, uh, over here, uh, one of your Djs is, is working for me as a meat carver on the weekends?

And I said, no. She says, yeah, he works here every Friday. You know, it carbon meat for me. And I knew he worked for you on Saturdays. Um, and he was telling me that he started his own Dj Company and he’s been passing out cards. Are you aware of that? He said it’s cool. He said he, he has your blessing. He said that he said that you knew about it. You, you know about, is this, does that, is that cool? Do you know about this? And I didn’t know about that. I didn’t, there was a guy named Mirage. I remember Raj. Raj started his own company. Oh yes he did. And there’s a guy named Andy who started his own company and there’s all these people who started their own things, thrown video companies, their own DJ companies, their own photography companies. Oh yes, there was the Spencers and there was the, there Raj.

And there was the Jason’s, there’s always different people, personality types that, that came and go. And that came and winters the Joshes and there were different personalities. There was the [inaudible] and there was another Josh. And then there was another, uh, Jason and there were people that came in and they treated me like they were right. My, my friend friends, there was like a Tez and there was a, uh, Bobby, uh, yes, there was, there was a Bobby and there was a willy and there was a Carl and there were people that came in and said, I’m, I’m, I would never, I would never compete with you. And there was a j a guy by the name of Jay, there were all different people that came in. And then there was a Dan, oh, there were, there were multiple Dan’s that came in and out and they would, they would go on and they would start with me for a while.

They would, they’ve learned the systems. They had never deejayed in their life. They had worked at restaurants or maybe they were failed. Insurance salesmen are, they added a degree with no prospects, no hopes of earning income. And they would maybe we working in at a job at, at chick filet making $20,000 a year. And then they would learn the skills that I would teach them. And I would pay them, you know, 50,000 a year that to Dj, they made a lot of tips and never had to worry about their bookings. They never had to worry about anything. But rather than wanting to help me, no, no, no. They would not help me. They would work against me starting their own companies. There was the Keith’s, there were the bobbies, there were the Spencers. They all started their own businesses to directly with me. And am I bitter about it now?

Am I l l I bitter about it. Clay. He’s Kinda sound bitter about it. Am I bitter about it? Um, that’s, that’s a great question and one that I’d like to, um, a breakdown if we can, if we have some time, I think we have some time. So here we go. My friend, I’m going to read an excerpt to you from, Ah, the best selling author Robert Greene in his book mastery, which by the way, if you don’t own mastery by Robert Greene, you’re missing out that book. You got to buy that book and an audio book doesn’t do it justice. You’ve got to have the book, highlight the book, read the book. That book is a game changer, but Robert Greene says this, he says, in the course of your life, you will be continually, continually and countering fools. There are simply too many to avoid. There were the Keiths, the Spencers, the [inaudible], all these different personality types.

There were there that we had. We had a good Andy and a bad and a good Dan and a bad Dan. I’ve had a good, uh, Spencer and a bad Spencer. I’ve actually had, uh, a good Nathan in a, in a bad Nathan. For some reason I’ve had only bad bobbies. Um, we’ve had a good Billy in a bad Billy. I’ve had all different personality types, but again, in the course of your life, you and I will be continually encountering fools. There are simply too many to avoid. We can classify people as fools by the following rubric when it comes to practical life. What should matter is getting longterm results and getting the work done in as efficient and creative manner as possible. That should be the supreme value that guides people’s actions. But fools carry with them a different scale of values. They place more importance on short term matters, grabbing immediate money, a k competing with their boss, getting attention from the public or media and looking good on social media.

They are ruled by their ego and their insecurities. They tend to enjoy drama and political intrigue for their own sake. I’ve had some good Curtis’s that have worked for me, but I’ve had to Curtis’s that uh, went on to to compete with me while saying that they didn’t know it was a conflict of interest. Really. You didn’t? No, no, no. See, a fool wants to grab that immediate money to retreat on here. Robert Greene says they are ruled by their ego, their insecurities. They tend to enjoy drama and political intrigue for their own sake. When they criticize, they always emphasize matters. They’re irrelevant to the overall picture or argument. They’re more interested in their career and position. Then in the truth, you can distinguish them by how little they get done or by how hard they are to have, but by how hard they make it.

For others to get results. They lack a certain common sense. Getting worked up about little things that are really not important. Log, nearing the real problems that spell that will spell doom in the longterm. As an example, we had one guy who was always to our team meeting and two weddings and when I would bring it up to him, he’d freak out every time saying, are you kidding me? I worked for you for five years and you’re gonna call me out in front of my staff are pretty your staff for the team? Really? We had one employee, unbelievable guy, this guy, great DJ, but he would Dj. He would, he would literally drink alcohol while Dj all the time. I said, listen, you can’t do it. Okay man, you can’t. You’re lucky you haven’t fired you yet. If you do it again, you’re fired and again, are you kidding me?

Well, the guy goes out there and starts his own company and it fails. Of course it fails. They always do because they’re fools. They always start their own business. They always just download beck of the day. Before we had Dropbox, I had a server and they download all the files so proud of themselves. They’d go out there and start their own DJ company and they’d fail. Why? Well, because proverbs ten four a biblical principle is true whether they want to believe it or not. Proverbs ten four is true whether they want to believe it or not. What’s proverbs ten four proverbs ten four says, Lazy Hands Make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. Again, lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth and a lot of people they just struggle with that idea. They feel like because they have a great idea, they’re going to be successful, but that’s not how that works.

That’s this is not how it works. Proverbs goes on to explain proverbs 1915 or 25 go ahead and be lazy, sleep on, but you will go hungry. Keep God’s laws and you will live longer. If you ignore them, you will die when you give to the poor. It is like lending to the Lord and the Lord will pay you back. Discipline your children while they are young enough to learn. If you don’t, you are helping them destroy themselves. If someone has a hot temper, let him take the consequences. If you get him out of trouble once, you’ll have to do it again. If you listen to advice and are willing to learn one day you will be wise. It’s just there’s so much wisdom in proverbs, whether you are a Christian or not. There’s so much wisdom in proverbs now Robert Greene instructs us. He says, this is it.

This is how you deal with fools. He says, in dealing with fools, you must adopt the following philosophy. They are a sip there. They are simple, simply a part of life like rocks or furniture. All of us have foolish sides. Moments in which we lose our heads and think more of our ego or our short term goals. It is human nature. Seeing this foolishness within you, you can then accept it in others. This will allow you to smile at their antics, to tolerate their presence as you would a silly child and to avoid the madness of trying to change them. It is all part of the human comp comedy and it has nothing to get upset about or to lose sleep over

this attitude. Suffer fools gladly should be forged in your apprenticeship phase during with which you are almost certainly going to encounter this type if you are causing, if they are causing you trouble, you must neutralize the harm they do by keeping a steady I and your goals and what’s important and ignoring them if you can. And that’s what I did for a decade. Chapter six, moving quickly when purchasing real estate and other outstanding tips I’ve discovered firsthand to making prolifically terrible investment decisions. You see the home that Vanessa and I operated our business out of 8,900 South Lynn lane from the outside looked like a beautiful home and it was a beautiful home. It was, it was a great home. However, when you’d go inside a, upon a further, a deeper look, one would discover that our complete a septic system was a disaster. When we bought the house, we bought it and we went through the, uh, we had an appraiser come through and look at it.

We had an inspector look at it in a real it or look at it, we’ll, the inspector said the house was perfect. It was pristine. He hadn’t seen a home in this great of condition. I’m in a while. Wow. Great. Wow. The realtor said, wow, great. Wow. We found out later. And uh, we had to go to a legal process to prove it, that the person who inspected our house was actually related to the person who was selling the house and the person selling the house, the realtor was related to the actual person who owned the house. And so there was a lot of cover up going on and it was a bad deal. And so we bought that house. There was a lot of issues and we had this thing called the anaerobic system and it basically emits water into the lawn and kind of helps recycle your, uh, bathroom waste and somehow turns it into a lawn.

It’s into water use to water the lawn. It’s just gross. Uh, so we, we lived, we lived in the house probably, I dunno, maybe a month. And I noticed there was a crack behind this mirror. It was like a huge mirror. When we bought the house, the realtor gave us this huge mirror as a gift. We thought, wow, that’s so nice. And then one day I noticed this big crack that was coming up from behind the mirror and I obviously couldn’t see behind the mirror, but I could see it going above the mirror. So I moved the mirror a little bit and Pam behind this like eight foot mirror, there was a huge crack. And I noticed that some of the doors wouldn’t shut this door. It just won’t shut up, shut the door. So he had a guy come out there and he kind of shaved off part of the door to make it shut and then the other door wouldn’t shut. And then one day I opened up the safe room. It’s like an underground, it’ll basement room. And that thing was completely flooded with water. All of our, in times food supplies were ruined because they were floating in this room. And then it occurred to me then, holy crap, this house has a lot of issues. So I called the realtor and they said, no,

no, he could not possibly be that. This house has a lot of issues. This houses in pristine condition. I called the inspector and he says, no, no, it couldn’t possibly happen. Well, long story short, I sit down with somebody who’s called a forensic appraiser, or they might’ve been called a forensic inspector. Either way. They did this forensic, this deep dive into what was going on. Well, they found that the house was built, it was built by one person who lived in the house. The owner of the house built the house and there were a ton of issues in the house. Um, and they’d covered them up by, they put, say, simply put marble tile over a deeply cracked concrete slab. They actually put brick on top of the brick to cover exterior brick damages. They put a mirror over a big crack and they took the money.

We paid them and they moved to Ireland. And, uh, so even when I won the court case, um, I still couldn’t get my money back. And so that house, that whole process was a, a disaster. And the reason why I made that decision to live there and to buy that house was because I was going 90 miles an hour. I was moving, I was shaking, I was selling, I was bobbing, I was weaving, I was doing things, I’m selling things. And I wanted, uh, to make a decision quickly. And what I have found over time as an entrepreneur is that it’s okay to, um, move at a, at a fast pace, but you never want to rush. Um, because when you rush, you end up making bad decisions. It’s like, it’s like any decision that you make when you’re emotional almost entirely is a bad decision when you make a decision because you’re emotional.

It’s almost always a bad decision. So, uh, John Wooden, the best basketball coach of his generation, the NCAA multiple champion winning coach, John Wooden, this guy was ridiculous. He was so successful as a basketball coach. It is ridiculous. He said, be quick but don’t hurry. And I was hurting. I was rushing. I was, I was forcing the issue. I bought the house and I should have taken more time to look at it. And I should have had the conspiracy theory that I now have today. Back then, I mean, I had blind trust. I trusted everybody. I believed everybody. If somebody told me something, I believed the best in people. I wasn’t aware of how the world is. I thought the world was the way I wanted it to be. I thought everybody would treat people the way that they wanted to be treated. Uh, however, during this time, um, when I bought a house, um, quickly when I probably shouldn’t have, I might not probably, I definitely should not have bought that house until I had at least three inspectors look at.

And if you’re thinking about buying a house today, I would encourage you to have three inspectors look at the property because you don’t want to make a poor decision when buying real estate. But I want to give you kind of a look into my life at that time and into my mindset. So I’m gonna read a notable quotable that was sent to me by a guy by the name of Sean Reese and Sean Reese was a DJ connection Dj. And around the time we moved into the Lynn Lane office and he said, when I first started as a Dj, I went to a show with clay to observe before I could run my own show. It was an apartment complex in Tulsa that was hosting a holiday party for its tenants. It was in December, and while we were giving them the show of a lifetime, the weather outside took a turn for the worse and the rain turned to sleet and snow.

Not only did we have to load the equipment into the van with the parking lot, all slick and I stover, but we didn’t have a scraper for the DJ vans windows and the defrost wasn’t cutting it. Clay being the guy who never gives up, just rolled down the driver’s side window, hung his head out so we could see and drove us all the way back to the DJ headquarters. It was the funniest, craziest thing I’d seen him do and that’s saying a lot for this guy. I knew then that my time at DJ connection would be one of memories and inspiration. Thanks clay. You see my friend that that right there is the resourcefulness that you need to have to start a successful company. However, I really would encourage you to think about this for a second. You never, whenever you’re buying real estate, you never want to buy something under a sense of pressure that that’s not true.

You don’t want to make a false a deadline you want, you don’t have to feel this pressure to buy now because if you do that, you’re going to avoid observing the following rules that I’m going to teach you. So rule number one for not getting screwed when buying real estate. Don’t ever get an arm loan in our Malone is a adjustable rate mortgage. Uh, I’ve never done that kind of thing, but I know a lot of people have and because they want to buy the house right now and when you get an adjustable rate mortgage, that rate can and will go up and when it does go up, you’re going to find yourself in a very, very bad spot. Move number two to not absolutely getting killed when buying real estate. Don’t ever trust realtor’s trust, trustworthy people. Because I feel as though I’m pretty transparent with you.

I tend to expect all people to operate the same way, and thus I’m sometimes not always a good judge of character. Thus I have been royally screwed multiple times by realtors who are chasing that three to 6% commission telling me that the property is going to be great when it’s not. And so now I just, I had the, I don’t trust anybody. Only the paranoid survive. According to Andy Grove, the founder of Intel, and I agree with that, only the paranoid survive move number three for not getting screwed when buying real estate. Don’t trust anyone unless you are positive that they have your best interests at heart. There are so many people that are chasing down big deposits, big commissions, big greed, and they will tell you whatever they need to tell you to get to your wallet, to have access to your wallet. And if you’ve worked super hard to earn that lazy people began to crave what you have.

Oh yes. Lazy people begin to crave what you have. No, no, no, no, not, not. This is, this is very, very powerful for you to understand this. The lazy person will look upon what you have and the almost, um, lust after it that they want what you’ve, they’re, they’re, they’re being a sloth. They want what you have. In fact, proverbs 13 four reads a sluggards appetite is never filled, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied. So here I am, I’m being diligent. I’m getting up everyday, early. I as a, as of the time I’m recording this, uh, this would be a seven 45 in the morning on March 30th. I still wake up at three in the morning. I’m 38. I woke up at three in the morning. So the guy who wakes up at eight, eight, eight in the morning can’t possibly handle the fact that you’re more successful than he is because you wake up five hours earlier than him.

And so what he does is he, he craves what you have. He wants to take what you have. It’s what you have to do is you have to make sure that the person who’s representing you to real estate agent, who’s helping you truly has your best interests at heart. Move number four for not getting screwed when investing in real estate when it comes to investing, simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful. What am I saying? Buy a property when somebody is in a bind. If somebody is in a bind and they’re there wanting to get a divorce and they just want to sell the property right away because it brings up bad memories, that’s the property you want to buy, but you don’t want to buy a property at the peak value. Always look for an under valued distressed property.

Drive around neighborhoods looking for a property with with long grass. Just don’t ever get yourself into a bad situation where you’re buying a property at the peak price move. Number five, don’t get emotionally attached to any piece of property. My friend realtors or salespeople and once they sense that you are emotionally attached to a property, they start saying things like, wow, wow. I wouldn’t offer any less than 300,000 because anything less than that would be insulting to the buyer. You know, I would, I would just take that deal if, if I were you, what the heck does that mean? And who cares if your offer insults the buyer? I personally think that that I sleep just fine knowing that I offered a fair amount and it might have insulted a buyer offer a price that makes sense. Don’t offer an amount so you don’t insult the buyer.

I think so many people think about that. They think about, oh, my realtor said, my real inner suggested that I should just offer asking price. You understand that they make a commission based upon the total, the total price that is paid. I know realtors, I’ve met realtors that will hop on the phone with the other realtor and say, hey, you know, is your buyer willing to pay full price? You think? And they go, yeah, I think they are. I said, well, here’s the deal. Let’s just both advise our people to stay firm and are at the 50 full price asking price and we’ll team up together and let’s just make sure we sell this thing for as much as possible. I’ve seen this happen. I know realtors, I’ve talked to realtors who do this, who brag about doing this. My friend, don’t trust realtors unless you know they have your best interests at heart.

Move number six, don’t ever get a mortgage for any term longer than 15 years if possible. Why? Because you’re going to pay so much more an interest. It’s crazy and you’re gonna be paying on that house for 30 years. You know, a 15 year mortgage might only cost you like you know, a couple hundred dollars extra a month for most people, a couple hundred dollars extra a month and your house is paid off in 15 years versus 30 years. I would encourage everybody out there, do not get a 30 year mortgage if possible. Now to give you a even deeper look, an inside look into what it was like to be on the DJ team at that time. Um, I asked one of our Djs for the name of Curtis Graham to share his experiences with, uh, of working with me while at Dj connection. And this is what Curtis said. He said, I first heard about Dj connection during my last year of college at Oklahoma State University.

Josh Smith, a buddy of mine and a DJ connection. Dj was asked to help us throw a party for my fiance and he obliged. He came up early and walked me through the ropes, the equipment and how to the whole operation worked at Dj connection. Once I got back to Tulsa, I was chomping at the bit looking for the first opportunity to make a decent living and to make a start for my fiance and me. I hit up a few dead end jobs along the way until I ran into Josh. While out one night we hung out that night and he told me that I should come by and talk to the owner of Dj connection. Clay Clark. Josh said that they had just moved locations to a new house in broken arrow. My old stomping grounds. I took off early that day and went to talk to the man himself or should I say the young man himself.

I got to the interview only to find this David Letterman looking overzealous, red bull driven dude my age running a great company with about three offices in 11 Dj’s. Fast forward one year, it is the middle of the wedding season and we have a wedding show the next afternoon, 34 shows that night, 12 show Saturday seven on Sunday, a chocolate fountain company to run five yards, Timo and two weddings to videotape and that was just the start of it. Our lives were may him because clay had harnessed every opportunity to expose us as it company and grasp every investment opportunity that knocked on the door. At the time my fiance and I were skeptical and I was in and that was until I asked her to marry me at the time I was rolling in and it check averaging 1200 a week and they were looking pretty good.

Clay Clark had established quite a rapport with all the employees, including my wife and me. The long and short of the experiences that still today I think of clay and the whole DJC office. I hear all the time for my wife and I am and wife that I am a different person as a result of working with clay. If you ask her why, she will tell you that my drive, determination, ambition, communication and ability to succeed and conquer any situation is out of this world and you will never encounter a person who has graduated from Clay’s Djc, DJC university who does not blow your mind with enthusiasm and love for their career. I have since moved on to a career in fire protection design and installation, which is what I initially set out to do. I can say now with much conviction that I would never have had the courage to take on the world or to be so well set up financially had.

I had never taken the risk on the DJ business with clay and his wife Vanessa. Thanks Clay Clark for changing my outlook on business work and life in general. I will never stop until I succeed. Thank you for the experience. My friends. That’s why I built the DJ connection. I wanted to build a company that would allow me to achieve my goals while also helping other people to achieve their goals. That was my, that was my goal. My goal was to create a win, win, almost like a utopia where I could achieve my goals while helping my team to achieve their goals. Um, in, in a few cases that happened, guys like Curtis went on to have success. Guys like Josh went on to have success, but a lot of people screwed me a lot. Not, not some, not many, but most. Yeah. Most. And I want to read you a quote from Ben.

Ben Horowitz because Ben Horowitz was the guy who built a company that he sold to Hewlett Packard for over a billion dollars. The company was called Opsware. And um, he, he just has an incredible quote that when I read his book, the hard thing about hard things, it really resonated with me because the time I thought, gosh, what am I doing wrong? Everybody that I’m mentoring or most people, 90% of the people that I’m mentoring are screwing me. And that’s when I read this quote and it was very cathartic for me at the time. Very healing still is very helpful for me. Uh, that’s been Horowitz quote, he’s, he writes, every time I read a management or self help book, I find myself saying that’s fine. But that wasn’t really the hard thing about the situation. The hard thing isn’t setting a big hairy audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off. When you miss the goal, the hard thing isn’t hiring great people. The hard thing is when those great people develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding unreasonable things, the hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organizational chart that you just designed.

The hard thing isn’t dreaming pig. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns in to a nightmare. Ben Horowitz, thank you so much for that notable Korbel. And again, somebody out there says, what has been Horowitz? No, look him up. Just take the time to research. Ben Horowitz, this guy has had massive success, but he writes about it honestly in his book, the hard thing about hard things. But he did go through a lot of hard things in route to becoming one of the most successful venture capitalists of our generation. But he sold Opsware to Hewlett Packard for one point $6 billion. And if you read his book, I promise you, you’re going to find how life is not how life should be. Now, here’s another unbiased look into, uh, what life was like at that time in my life from a former Dj employee by the name of Nate Mosley, the former manager of DJ connection, the sales team, uh, who, uh, we, I’m a mess with him all the time because he used to look like Rod Stewart.

He looked just like Rod Stewart. And so I used to call him Rod and this is what he said. He said, every week brought a new type of drama, a new breakthrough, and a new lesson to be learned. Most companies struggle to figure out how to fill an hour of time every week with a meeting of recapping and goal setting, but I can’t think of a single week where that was the case. There are so many factors that go into an employee’s sense of value. I think the overall environment of DJ connection was to have as much fun as possible and to work harder than you ever have. This mentality gave us all a good sense of pride and everyone could share. I remember when we used to work out of the Lynn Lane location and we had around five cell phones for outbound calls and the one landline that we called the money line, Aka the money line for inbound calls.

The biggest issue we always ran into was we usually had seven people trying to sell with only five phones and that only did we share those five cell phones, but we only had one money line to share amongst seven type a personalities and we had to figure it out how to make money. Even when we didn’t have a phone call from, I specifically remember one Monday afternoon when it was surprisingly not that busy and someone came up with, came up with this brilliant idea to drink the old beer, I’m pretty sure, came with the house, we’d clay bought it and before I knew it, each person was hooked up with an expired beer and an afternoon of glorious selling. I have never, I have never drunk mud put the beer. It tasted like a combination of mud coupled with cashews and a hint of sour cream. Most of the people ended up taking a courtesy to give you a courtesy sips and then setting it aside. But for some reason, Erin and I thought it was cool to drink the liquid turret. So by the end of the day, we had polished up, polished off a few expired beers, which caused us to feel like we hit a raw calf, which surprisingly had a positive impact on our sales that day. I guess that was why that was an epic day for me because it was when I realized how cool it was to work for

a company that you could share such a stupid memory with. There were countless all nighters, usually because of last minute, some last minute change, but most of the the nights ended with crazy stories and new lessons to be learned. I would definitely have to say that the 10 most stressful moments in my life had to have all been derived from the few years I worked at DJ connection. I’m not going to go into detail about each event because my psychologist advise me that it might send me into seizures. Again. Just kidding. But seriously. Here’s another notable quotable from a guy who worked for me at the time and worked with me at the time. His name was Albert Martine, Albert Bertini. He was a, uh, uh, always the devil’s advocate for every conversation in Italian guy who I met at oral Roberts University. He said, it’s true. I was driving back after a late night event and suddenly a white toaster oven leapt out of the darkness at my vehicle.

Well, you might ask, why didn’t you stop and pick up the hitchhiking appliance? Well, the answer is deliriums begins to set in around 2:00 AM and I was already punchy enough for brunch. What does that mean? Not Dimension. I’d already passed up a refrigerator and a microwave and I just really wanted to get home. I finally got back and at an hour when even the living dead have been fast asleep for some time. You must imagine it. You have been driving alone to the darkness and you see the Dj officer’s of glow like a lighthouse or possibly a bug Zapper, and suddenly you find yourself swirling with a surge of energy from our returning Dj’s. It is in this oasis of light away from the ticking of time that many comrade building conversations issue. Granted, religion and politics will forever remain the centerpiece of conversations you may bring out when grandma comes to town, but after 4:00 AM these are the domains are the domains for the djs.

We’d already discussed politics, law, and religion. So he naturally moved onto our meaning of life conversations, add to the mix. A Dj who’s father had recently passed away another who’s who is struggling with post traumatic stress, having served in the military and a Michael Jackson concert of, of music in the background, providing the ambiance for the background on Clay’s behalf. I remember him listening and listening intently and studying what was being said and occasionally moderating with his own brand of humor. I recall this event because I think it highlights one of clay strengths and can quarterly code can coordinately one of the strengths in business. Clay listens carefully to others even if he disagrees. Vinny asks challenging questions to understand both parties in to see if he can learn from them. While clay embodies a passionate dewar for what he does, I see him learning insatiably and I believe this is why he sizes up challenges the way he does and what helps invigorate his confidence.

Well, the conversation that night didn’t wind down until nearly six or seven in the morning as we gather to watch the grand finale of the Michael Jackson concert. And we did come close to solving all of the world’s troubles. Albert Bertini. So my friend, I ask you this today as as as a learning opportunity for you, are you willing to fix your financial future by committing to not buying a house when you’re emotional? Can you, can you commit to that? Can you, I’m asking rhetorically, can you commit to not buying a house for emotional reasons to, can you commit to getting three opinions next time that you do buy a house, three appraisals, three maybe realtors that you talked to? Can you, can you commit to the rule of three talking to three options before you embrace one? And then the final move is, can you commit to buying only properties that are undervalued as opposed to buying properties at their peak value?

Because you are emotional. And if you do that, my friend, he will keep yourself. You’ll present, you will prevent yourself from making terrible investment decisions as I once did. Chapter Seven growth, the law of the lid and various other reasons. I found myself hurting cats a chump at this point. When I was growing DJ connection, what happened was I wasn’t aware that as a leader I needed to be a proactive person. Ah Yes. And so I would come to work every day and my, we had a team meeting Monday morning, I think, I think the morning meetings had to start at eight o’clock. Okay. And I would get to work at like, you know, six. But I never did, uh, prepare for the meeting until about 10 minutes before the meeting started. So as people were coming in, I was still working on my outline. Right.

What am I going to say? And could you explain maybe for our listeners out there why that is a bad move to be the kind of leader and I, and I’m talking about me. I was, I was doing this, um, I had started a business. The business had done well, uh, you know, get to work and there’s many, many people in the office. The meeting starts at eight and it like seven 56. I’m still trying to hack out a outline for the day and I don’t really have a um, uh, I’m not really prepared. What kind of wrong message does that send to the troops you think? Well, first of all, they can all tell, right? Like everyone can tell whenever you’re just pulling stuff out of wherever, right? And a second they will emulate that. So people will, we be, will begin to be reactive and not proactive in their day to day job that you’re paying them to do because that’s what they see you doing at the top.

And so I read John Maxwell’s book the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership and did, it occurred to me the law of the lid. This is my problem. The company can’t grow beyond a certain point because I’m not growing. At a certain point, the leader determines the growth of the business. Yes, I’ve got to get my stuff together. Well, once I figured out once I’m, once I got my stuff together and I figured out how to become a proactive person, we started growing at a rapid race and rapid pace. We started growing so quickly that, um, we started hiring people, bringing on more people on, on a daily basis. It was seemed like we were interviewing people every day, hiring somebody every week. We were just really growing, getting after it. And Chuck as where we were growing, I was not careful about what kind of people I hired. I tried to hire early on, just happy go lucky, positive, upbeat people. But as we grew, I started just hiring whoever’s, whoever was available now. What do you think the problem with that was?

Those people trick their way into the company by having a good interview and then they, as I’ve heard you say, they become a weed in your garden of Zen and begin to spread.

And when you start to have the wrong people on the team, uh, let me tell you how the Monday morning meetings started looking. It started being me coming into work, being very excited and enthusiastic and them not really wanting to be there. Right. And they would make that look on their face as though they didn’t want to be there and that it, and it became a thing where I actually didn’t want to come to my own workplace that I’ve been in. You’ve been there. Yeah. Were you there with your concrete company and where were you there? Yeah.

Yeah, right. With the concrete. It was the same way. Uh, didn’t know how to recruit, didn’t know how to retrain. It wasn’t as proactive as, you know, I thought I was being proactive but I wasn’t preparing myself to lead. I was just preparing myself to get through my day. And there’s a huge difference when you are a leader. You can’t just get through your day. You got to make sure everybody else can get through their day too.

So it was Kinda that, that dark period for me there for a while where we started hiring so many people and I just wasn’t as intense as I should have been about hiring the right people. And so first I was a, in my opinion, maybe a B level, maybe my price c level leader with a players. But over time it switched to where I became a um, a player boss with c level people and a chip. I’m sure you’ve seen this before, coaching with coaching clients before, but what happens if a business owner is an a level business owner and they have c players on the team?

Well, the c players began to interact with the clients because you know, as you scale, you can’t be the only point of contact for everybody and then that then becomes the perception of your business to everyone that interacts with.

But once we got a players and a player leadership on the same page at the same time, things began to really grow. Now Chuck, we’re going to read a little excerpt from my book, make your life epic where I describe this particular time and place in the growing of DJ connection.

Once we moved into our new place, life began to change immediately. Almost instantly. We started to notice a lot of respect being issued to us from peers in the wedding industry who had previously written our team off as a bunch of happy go lucky glass half full Dj jokesters, which we were right and in addition to the love fest that we were receiving in the way of congratulatory cards, encouraging emails and voicemails from our past clients, vendor friends and business associates. We also started to receive yet another round of animosity steered toward us from our Dj competition who competed with us in the way that the Kansas city royals compete within New York Yankees. It was hilarious. We would run into bitter at bridal shows and they would just look at us with hatred in their Dj eyes are djs would come back from shows saying such and such really hates us, man. What did we do to those guys? Or yeah, I ran into Dj So-and-so at church and that guy is really pissed at us. It seemed like virtually every disgruntled band member and struggling Dj service felt the need to blame us for their lack of success, which I was okay with. My theory was that as long as they blamed us, they would never fix their systems that were producing crappy results.

So let’s pause right there for a second. I just wanna make sure that everyone’s getting this idea. The other DJ companies, when we started DJ connection, there was like 20 companies in Tulsa. Uh, maybe more. I mean, it was the yellow pages were filled with our competition and uh, uh, Andrew, over time we started getting more and more bookings. Hmm. I started getting bigger and bigger yellow page ads. I started buying the entire page of the phone book right. Now, Andrew, do you think that that, that makes the competition happy when you’re getting that much growth? Not at all, because you’re taking business away from them. Most of these guys, I never even met these people and they were, I rate and I’m just telling you, if you’re out there running a business and you don’t think that the competition is going to hate you, you’re missing out on something.

This is the same thing doctor Zoellner went through, right? Yes. Started his optometry clinic. You’ve got himself out there. Got a good no brainer. Started marketing and all the other guys hated him.

Yes, and so now we go back to this excerpt from the book, Make Your Life epic with Eric Jeff doing the reading

and thus I sort of liked being viewed as the Yankees of the DJ industry because as long as the customers loved us, the world was well. Every once in a while I would run into a hotel director, a photographer, or a previous client who would comment something to the effect of, man, you all have really grown. I wish I would’ve gotten into deejaying. These kinds of comments and attitudes just kept rolling in a midst the praise from our peers and the hate from our competition. I started to notice that something else was changing dramatically as well. All of the relationships that Jerry Jones, Josh and I, and all of the DJ connection Dj’s had been developing over the years. We’re now growing to fruition almost as if the purchase of this Dj megaplex had stamped us with a big approval sticker that read. Yep. Folks. These guys are real bank of America, Bank of Commerce, Arkansas Valley Bank, Bammo tie grant bank nor damn broken Arrow, one of the largest high schools in the country, Bixby schools, Saint Pius, the vintage on Gail luxury apartments the whole day and select and quick trip. We’re all booking or rebooking us with conviction for all of their events.

We were also booking, I mean we booked Boeing, we booked a southwest airline, never heard of him, uh, Ibm. But it was crazy that I had, when I was at a home based business, I still did well, but once we move to the 91st and Lynn Lane, the 8,900 South Lynn Lane House, it was like people wanted to book with us. It was weird. I didn’t, I didn’t realize how much a piece of real estate can change people’s perception of you. People went from saying, you’re a crazy DJ. What’s your

plan? I mean people, people, people I went to college with would say, what do you do for a living now? Because I was like, you know, 24 now. And I’d say, well, I run DJ connection still. And they go, really? You’re, you’re a DJ? Well what do you, what are you gonna fall back on? I mean, what if it doesn’t work? And I think that’s a very valid question to ask any buddy who wants to become a Dj because most djs live with her mom and her obsessed with trying to beat match to write songs like that. They’re, the thing about like what song will beat matched perfectly with, with a shot shot, shot, shot, shot, shot low, and you’re going, Darryl, stop at your 47 can go, go to bed. I mean, it’s just, it’s a weird vibe. I mean, when you eat and Chub, you’ve made a lot of Dj’s, typically a guy who wants to be a disc jockey over the age of 40 is typically what kind of individual he likes to party may be like the part of the law similar with, right.

Great Guy, but finishers. But usually there’s not a lot of money there. Right. So anyway, back to your reading, Mr Chak. Okay. Josh and Jerry Jones, we’re now giving more confidence sales presentations. It seemed as though this positive pressure that we had created for ourselves by building a foundation based on a solid reputation was now it has now backed us many people in Tulsa. We’re finally starting to talk about Dj connection as if we were something nearing a legitimate real deal company. There we go. This recognition meant that we were now a company to be taken seriously. Dj Connection was no longer just a dream on a piece of paper and a statement of faith on my five year goal. It was a reality during this time. We received recognition in modern bride magazine is Tulsa’s number one disc jockey service. That helped a lot and from the American wedding association as Tulsa’s best wedding vendor.

Yeah. The point was being hammered home to our potential customers. Dj Connection was the real deal. Our hard work was finally paying off and more and more quality people were hearing about us and wanting to become part of our team or use us for their upcoming event. Finally, after five years of toiling in the never ending sea of mediocrity, we were rising to the top and we were now being pushed by our own momentum to quote the entertainment mogul and entrepreneur p Diddy, Sean Combs. We won’t stop because we can’t stop with momentum. A business can do anything except overcome a lack of quality leadership, which was my problem there for a while. As I said, I did not know. I just did not know how to lead a meeting. I did not know how to recruit good people. I didn’t know these things. I had to figure them out as as I was going and once I started reading the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership, I started to learn a lot about what I wasn’t doing.

I didn’t even know that there was things I was doing wrong. I just do it. The result wasn’t good and I didn’t know what was causing my results to be terrible. It’s easy to get in that cycle as an entrepreneur too, cause you know you’re working hard, right? It does not like you were just loafing off your various in it. You’re putting it all in, but when you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s hard to overcome it. Chuck, back to my old micro management philosophy of if you want something done right you have to do it yourself. Was now proving to be ineffective when tested against the might of 30 disorganized Dj’s up to this point in time, I would assign a list of tasks for to do on a daily basis and then I would relentlessly follow up on them to make sure that they were done.

Upon discovering that it had been done 80% of the way, I would then put the remaining 20% of their work on my plate and I would do it myself. For example, I would tell our guys to call through the entire bridal list by 5:00 PM on Tuesday and on Tuesday at 5:00 PM I would discover that it will only be 80% of the way through the list. Then I would begin making cold calls from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM by myself neglecting my wife and compensating for a lack of others’ performance with my own efforts. I would ask a certain Dj to take out the trash and he would take out 40% of it and then at night after I had finished making my cold calls until 9:00 PM I would then take out all of the office trash until 10:30 PM I would ask the Djs to arrive at 12:00 PM for their 1230 Sunday appointment and when I would return from church at 1230 to discover that no one had shown up to cover the appointment, I would do it myself and so on.

I pretty much did 20% of everyone’s job in addition to my own already overwhelming responsibilities while paying them as if they had actually completed 100% of the work on their own. Each week I was becoming more and more familiar with the employee code talk phrases and their translations such as, hey, I will probably be there right at 9:00 AM translation into employee. I will definitely not be there on time tomorrow, but I do not want to be confronted a confrontational, more honest by telling you in advance. Right next man. I had a family emergency come up so I can’t make it in today. Cough, cough into the phone, honey. I just talked to clay to let them know about the last minute birthday party we’ve been invited to. He said that it is okay if I have someone else DJ the wedding for me. Number three here, clevis.

I feel like I am just not working out in this position because it is too stressful that equals I really think that although I cannot manage myself personally, I feel as though I could do a good job working in a role of manager. Oh man, I heard that so much. So Amy and I can’t do my job but I think I could help them do their jobs. Right. I was completely unaware of the importance of creating a system that rewards positive behavior through quality PE and one that penalizes lack of performance by withholding pay. Thus, those first few months in our new place. We’re a little interesting and I convinced that the time we spent at the Lynn Lane House would have resulted in my premature stress induced death if it was not for the insight that I gained from reading and applying the principles found within the pages of John Maxwell’s the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership while on our second sea cruise in a secrets vacation.

The irony about, uh, my reading this book was that I would never, the irony about my reading this book was that I wouldn’t have never stopped to read a book on leadership, had my attempt to go on one week vacation, not so blatantly exposed. My lack of leadership skills. Havana was around one month old and Vanessa and I were in desperate need of some quality one on one time. I was working seven days a week. I literally was working until 9:00 PM every night and then I was going to bed at 10:30 PM and waking up to work at 4:00 AM or 5:00 AM each day. I had no time to work. I had to work out. Vanessa and I had no time to talk about anything. I was deejaying every Sunday so I wasn’t going to church, which didn’t bother me too much since at the time I wasn’t too sure how I felt about God.

Anyway, I never had downtime to see my daughter and I had no time to sit and plan our businesses future. So after I bought the tickets from Karen Wheelock, our Tulsa travel planner of choice, I found it to be nearly impossible to carve out the seven day window of time needed to even go on vacation. Thus, I was resorting to giving each member of our team a huge laundry list of things to do that I knew in the back of my mind they were not going to get done. I knew that they would show up to work every day at 10:00 AM or 11:00 AM while I was gone and I knew that they were not going to return voicemails promptly. I just knew that they were going to crash the DJ mothership into the side of bridal mountain while I was gone and thus I even booked our cruise during the smallest projected wedding weekend of the year to limit the potential for disaster.

As we finished packing our bags and loading Havana into her car seat for the long journey down to the port of Houston where our crews was set to depart, I was having a panic attack. Thus, I just kept calling the office guys telling them things like, hey, there’s one more thing that I need you to do. Or seriously, if you do not remember anything else, make sure you check the voice mails or Josh brother. I am trusting you with the Millennium Falcon here. Don’t wreck it baby. I trust you, but I don’t trust you. Please tell me you won’t crash the mothership. Josh, are you there? Meanwhile, my wife was coming to the conclusion that I was going to be running the office remotely via my cell phone during the entirety of our vacation. As we boarded the cruise ship, I am sure that she was delighted when I was informed by one of the crew members that it was only possible to contact land in case of an emergency via the ship’s satellite phone at an astronomical fee.

Thus my cheapness would prevent me from calling the office once the ship departed. Chuck, can you relate to that? Because you remember running a business? So as I was reading it, I was literally just playing it through my mind every time. Uh, you know, either my parents would take a trip or I would take a trip and I just knew the three weeks before the trip, we’re going to be hell weeks and the four weeks after the trip, we’re going to be even worse to make sure that I’d want to go, oh, makes you not even want to go, because is it worth it? Uh, and you know, ultimately I’m glad I did when we did, but yeah, that’s exactly right. Okay. Chuck, back to you. All right. And once the ship departed, I was forced to come to grips with the fact that I was not going to be able to call home again and thus I attempted to have a good time in a distracted, mentally non present, mentally not present kind of way.

For the first day or so. Somewhere around day three of our seven day cruise, I started to calm down a little to the point where I was no longer focused on what apocalyptic scenarios might be unfolding at the Dj Connection Office and then I allowed myself to have a good time. During the evenings after Vanessa and Havana had gone to bed, I would religiously go out on the deck and listen to the sound of the ocean to consume a large $8 raspberry flavored adult beverage and to take in the fresh smells of the sea. As I read John Maxwell’s Leadership Bible, as I read his book, I started seeing myself through the perspective of the various leadership examples which is book so richly provided. I started realizing his theory on the law of the lid directly applied to me is law states quote leadership ability is the lid that determines a person’s level of effectiveness.

The lower and individual’s ability to lead the lower the lid of his or her potential. The higher the leadership, the greater the effectiveness. To give you an example, if your leadership rate is at an eight then your effectiveness can never be greater than a seven if your leadership is only a four than your effectiveness, we’ll know we’ll be no higher than a three. Your leadership ability for better or worse always determines your effectiveness and the potential impact of your organization. To reach the highest level of effectiveness, you have to raise the lid of leadership ability. Essentially, John Maxwell’s leadership book called me out and said, hey clay, this, you have a leadership rating of three. You can inspire people but you can’t provide continued direction without having to micromanage them and you are only attracting people that like to be micromanaged because you are a micro manager.

Oh, this truth was tough to take from my lawn chair amidst the princess cruise boat, but because I was half drunk, I think I was able to take the harsh criticism that this moment of self analysis was forcing me to wonder and thus I encourage you to do the same thing right now. Ask yourself self how high is my leadership ability? Honestly, how would I rate myself? Would I enjoy working? For me? That’s a big question. What is my leadership number with 10 being Abraham Lincoln or Vince Lombardi and a one being that dude who can’t manage his own snow cone stand? Where do I stand? What is my leadership number? Long story short, our secrets vacation was everything. It was supposed to be in more. Our cruise director was awesome. The entertainment was great, the food was legendary. I learned leadership while out at sea. Thus I returned home reenergized to fired up and with a renewed focus on the next important step that Dj connection had to take if it was going to grow to the next level. This step involved a need for dramatically improved leadership from me listed below is a list of the leadership qualities that I determined to develop within myself and our team as a direct result of reading John Maxwell’s the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership and revisiting Napoleon Hill’s think and grow rich while on the cruise review this list of leadership qualities and then candidly grade yourself on how well your leadership style exemplifies these leadership qualities. One unwavering courage.

That right there. I want to make sure we break that down. Okay. Unwavering courage in is really, really hard to be courageous when you’re worried about being able to,

um, pay the bills right

now I got to myself to a place with the DJ business where I never worried about that anymore, but those first three or four years where I literally was working at Applebee’s target and direct TV. Um, and Andrew, you’ll, you’ll find this and Chubb, you’ll find this and you’ve, you’ve already seen this with your businesses that you’ve been a part of in the past. But Andrew, you’ll, you’ll see this when you grow a business and you have to pay, let’s say I have just two employees. And by the way, I’d never started a business with one employee because they get depressed and lonely, especially if the remote, seriously, if you guys open up a full package media, let’s say an Oklahoma City and you’ve got one remote guy, he’ll get depressed and quit and everyone will just keep getting depressed and quitting if you don’t have any leadership or entitled or yeah, but you’re going to pay him anyway, right?

So when you have a payroll of, let’s just say I have two full time people, so met at a minimum, you’re out $1,400 a week, let’s say after taxes and insurance and you have no money coming in. It’s really, really hard to be a courageous leader. And now when you have more money in the bank, it gives you more courage in my opinion. Yeah. So this is uh, uh, it’s easier done theoretically. Um, then just sets, I would just say my action step for you as a listener, if you want to become a more courageous person, live below your means. Have the courage to cut your expenses live below your means and save up some cushion. But what you have, you know, $50,000 in the bank. I promise you you’ll be less stressed out when bad things happen. Unbelievable difference. But there was a time in the business where I had almost no money in the bank account and it was very hard to be a courageous leader. Chuck, back to you.

Okay, so a self assessment letter grade from h to f, rate yourself on a letter grade from a to f and then answer the following question. What will you do today to begin practically improving your leadership abilities in this area? Number two, self control, self assessment. Grade a letter grade from a to f, rate yourself and then answer what will you do today to begin practically improving your leadership abilities in this area, right? Number three, a keen sense of justice. Again, rate yourself from a to F and answer the question, what will you do today to begin practically improving your leadership abilities in this area? Number four, definiteness of decision rate yourself from a to f answer. What will you do today to begin practically improving your leadership abilities in this area? Five definiteness of plans, let her grade from a to f. What will you do today to begin practically improving your leadership abilities in this area?

Chub, why do you think it’s important

that everyone takes a moment to reflect and actually give themselves a letter grade on how well they’re doing? It can be very easy to just go from day to day to day, four years without improving. If you don’t self reflect, it’s one of the most important things I think you can do as a leader is get better. And also it’s a perfect time to take stock in. Are you practicing what you’re preaching? Because if you’re not, nobody cares what you’re saying, right? If you’re telling people to do all of these things, you, you make the, the, uh, the link between like a fat personal trainer, right? Right. If you’re overweight, personal trainer, people probably aren’t going to pay you for very long. Uh, to personally train them.

It is so important that we all take a moment to self reflect. I say a moment, a daily moment. It’s called Metta time at a time. Every single day. I take an hour of power every day to think about my day and think about my life, how I’m where I’m going and am I happy with where my life is going. And if you don’t schedule time to reflect on a daily basis, I promise you’re going to drift and end up finding yourself in a place where you say, how did I get here? Where did I do with all of my time that you can’t get back to you.

Okay, for the next few again, we’re going to do a letter grade from a to f and then answer the question, what will you do today to begin practically improving your leadership abilities in the areas of number six, the habit of doing more than what’s paid for number seven, a pleasing personality. Rate yourself on a to f and what can you do to be begin improving that? Number eight sympathy and understanding. Number nine, this is big mastery of detail. My story of d, mastery of details. You begin to scale. This is just me, this isn’t on the page here but is no, this is you begin to scale and hire other people to do these jobs. If you don’t have those details mastered, guess what? The results are going to be different every single time.

Dude, I had to micromanage people. I did. I had to literally call Djs and say, ah, when they are loading up your gear, do you have a mic stand? Yup. Do you have two speakers? Yup. Do you have to speak on cables? Yep. Cause I didn’t have a checklist that was all in. Your hair’s all in or you did have one but he was just all in your head for years. I don’t even think it was in my, in my head, chuck. Because people would ask me and I’m like, and then they would say, is there anything else? So I’m driving to Kansas City. Is there any other gear I need to bring and I’m going, uh, yeah. Did you bring an amp? No, I didn’t know. And You bring your cds and you have the car. It’s an I’m serious. That kind of crap. What happened a lot. I didn’t have any checklists or systems and I didn’t have the intelligence to know what I didn’t know. I didn’t even have the curiosity to know what I didn’t know until somebody gave me the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. I read that book while on a cruise ship and realized that I don’t know what I’m doing. All right, back to you.

Number 10 willingness to assume full responsibility and number 11 cooperation. When I returned home, I discovered that non Dj Garret was now working in the office nearly 15 hours per day to compensate for the fact that several key people did virtually nothing while I was gone. 40% of the guys who were supposed to chip in to do the office work bailed out. I found out that Curtis was a workhorse and that Josh did a much better job than I thought he would do. I returned home to find a sort of organized chaos. Although Garrett was super mad because he felt that had been carrying DJ connection on his ill-equipped shoulders for the entire week while I was gone, which was true around this time. Jerry Jones was also discovering that he had ambition and dreams that did not parallel themselves with Dj connections anymore and thus he was looking to move on.

After I returned, my mind was still racing with the stories about how Winston Churchill had boldly stood up to the Nazi regime and a final stand for the free world against a brutal dictatorship. I was inspired from reading how coach John Wooden had turned UCLA into a legendary basketball powerhouse and with this new inspiration fueling my passion, I was determined to turn Dj connection into the most dominant wedding entertainment company in Tulsa. I was inspired like never before and I was determined to ride out this wave of inspiration while I was still feeling the positive passion Ci. As part of my new leadership initiative, I immediately set up a in required Monday morning meeting to build a sense of candor coherency in planning.

Now I want to make sure that everyone gets this. Okay, there’s, we’ve all worked for a boss or we’ve maybe been a boss who has new initiatives of the week. The key is you’ve got to follow through and you’ve got to follow up. Chuck, I’m sure you’ve had this happen to you or maybe you’ve even done it yourself, but as a leader, we can all, what we do is if you’re not careful, you say starting Monday, anybody, anybody who is late at all, we’ll be fine. And we’re going to take this company to the next level. And if a speaker ever has a nick on it, we’re going to paint it that night. And the CD cases will be organized. All the CDS will be in alphabetical order, hence forth. And then week two, it’s like a, what happened to the initiative? Don’t, don’t talk about it.

If anybody’s laid and then you were late the next day, that’s typically what happens. So again, it’s so important to that, uh, if you’re, if you’re listening to this, that you tried to ask yourself these questions and reflect on, Gosh, am I doing some of these, uh, dumb things? Am I doing it? The reason why I’m sharing the stories, I did so many things incorrectly in route to building something correctly. And if you had an idea of this is that you can learn at my expense as opposed you learned from a mentor instead of learning from my mistakes. Back to you, Mr Chubb,

I began writing and posting tangible, ambitious, yet attainable company goals everywhere that our employees worked. I was now working 90 hours per week, and I’m not exaggerating here, but we were becoming very profitable. Oh, this two year stretch at the Lynn Lane property was stressful, but it also came with moments of extreme joy, like a good epic movie. Only when only our movie never seem to end during the next two years. As we continued to relentlessly implement, John Maxwell has proven leadership principles. We started to realize unprecedented growth. And the secret was that we had successfully grown the organization from me to we as Magic Johnson, Magic Johnson was reported to say in Maxwell’s book, we were waging war on mediocrity, mediocrity, and we were beginning to see victory in our sites. During this time. We set records for overselling by booking 31 events and the same day and deejaying over 75 events on the same weekend.

Yes, we tripled the number of DJ systems we had from 11 to over 35. Oh yeah. All during this time period Dj Curtis came and went and Dj Jason Bailey successfully found us. We were assembling our Dream Team and I was beginning to realize that the only limit on our company’s growth potential and our speed of growth was our ability to find good quality humans who were looking to be part of the Dream Team. We deejayed for Aaron and Tina Smith’s wedding. And through the process, Aaron decided to join the team. Yeah, we DJ for Andy Simmons sister at the mysterious Scottish rite building and he was inspired to join the DJ nation after d, uh, after seeing Dj Jerry Jones perform. And entertain at the wedding and after his mom told him over the phone how fun our company’s sounded. There it is. We just kept finding more and more quality people and as we added new people, each individual added a new skill and a new passion to the company.

We were like a bunch of batteries that when connected to each other actually doubled each other’s combined output. This time of expansion was fun. However, at the same time, this exponential growth posed new problems with eight guys working out of our house. We were again finding ourselves surrounded by Djs who’s expansion was unintentionally encroaching upon our personal space with so many people to manage. I was finding that perpetual lateness was becoming the norm with eight type a personalities all working in close proximity. I was finding that NHL style fights were beginning to break out on occasion and I was also beginning to notice that everyone was starting to gang up with their combined dislike for Dj Achilles. Yes. Personally, I like to kill these in real quick. I’ve changed the name to Achilles and I’ve changed the name of Jerry Jones that way. I protect the identity of these people.

I thought you were, you’re deejaying with Achilles and Jerry Jones and says no, no. Continue. Uh, personally I like to kill these a lot. When he first came on board, he professed to attend Raymer Church and he was always wore a suit. He looked like a young Orlando Bloom and he was a quick learner and hard worker in the sales department. However, from the other guys’ perspectives, he was a lead hog lead hog. He was divisive and he was argumentative. He was unapproachable and above all he was insincere. He was superficially religious. He was a suck up and he was stealing commissions through his less than ethical sales techniques. Ooh. Because I had not yet read former Ge Ceo, Jack Welsh and Suzy Walsh’s management book called winning. I had no idea how to manage various personalities that could not coexist without extreme management skill. And so to fix the problems caused by the personality clashes as well as simple work related problems. I right or wrong did the following one, I implemented a $20 late fee. If you relate to work by one minute, I got your late fee overtime. This rule had to be further clarified with disclaimer stating that if you were not in the office on time, you were late. Dudes like to say that they were around the corner. Old Man

say they’re around the corner, around the corner meeting starts today to guy would call me at eight 10 stays around the corner when he was just leaving his house.

Right? Unbelievable. Later I had to again clarify with the disclaimer that if you are stopped by a cop or if you are sick, you are still late. It was unbelievable to, I implemented an inbound phone time sharing policy. Basically everyone got equal time on inbound sales calls so that no one could be accused of hogging the phone by making no outbound calls and always lingering around waiting for those easy inbound sales calls. Number three, I implemented the shut the hell up and get back to work. Policy was consistent to me, yelling, shut the hell up and get back to work numerous times per day. When I spotted djs interacting with each other via instant messaging and my space.com instead of working, I would simply yell, shut the hell up and get back to work.

That was a great policy I developed. It really didn’t work well. Like that policy maybe people should implement. I mean, seriously. I used to say that all the time. All right. You gotta reel. But it got to a point where, uh, I forgot how rough that statement was. a new employee would be at work and you know, they’d be on the phone and they would, all of a sudden they’d maybe take a coffee break. Yeah. And whoever their manager was would yell, Hey, shut the hell up and get back on the phone now. And I thought, you know, no big deal. But I looked over at the new employee and they were like crying in the corner.

Yeah. But that was what we set all the time. Yeah. So funny. All right. Back to you. I implemented the stop being weak sauce policy. This policy officially classified anyone who ever called in sick for any reason as weak sauce. Thus they were openly out of my favor. Number five I had our guys build dividers and cubicles everywhere so that people wouldn’t intrude on each other’s conversations. Number six I arranged for weekly one on one meetings with the guys. This was a horrible idea. I have since determined that everything must always be out in the open all the time. Number seven I implemented the no pot heads are allowed in the office policy. This resulted in the replacement of a few key people and took care of claims that I was only enforcing this policy on people that I wanted to get rid of. However, the truth be known.

I did not want to know who was smoking pot. I sincerely felt as though about 80% of our staff was smoking pot and I later found my suspicions to be correct. Number eight I implemented the no pellet guns in the office policy. I kid you not. The guys actually brought pellet guns to work. Number nine I am. I implemented the no personal emails policy at this point I was starting to feel like I was becoming yet another corporate America style business that I used to detest. And so with these new policies in place, we marched forward over the occasional background noise created by Eric Aaron, Jason and Andy Achilles, Nate Moseley, Garrett, Josh Smith, Jason Bailey and Raj Mahal Duking it out. Eventually the yelling on the bus got too loud and I had to replace multiple people for things ranging from theft to pot smoking to drinking on the job, to driving on a suspended license to using the DJ connection, business credit.

And by the way, all the, all the names we’ve mentioned, none of those people did those things. But there were people on the team that literally would do this kind of stuff. I didn’t real, I didn’t, I’m starting, I was trying to, trying to grow a DJ company. I didn’t realize that people would steal each other’s coats or would in the hallways are, I mean these things really did happen. I’m not kidding. A guy literally brought a pellet gun to work cause he was so mad at another guy and whenever the guy would say something to me, shoot with a pellet gun. And then the other guy brought a gun, the next day they’re start shooting each other. And I got hit one day cause I was like, it was like, uh, yeah, you’re a casualty right by standard innocent bystander. I’m just walking by. And it’s like, oh.

And then I realized they’re bringing these guns to work. I remember one guy one day, this is a crazy story, he got mad at one of our employees got mad at another employee. So what he did is he logged into his Facebook account and he wrote the following post and incredible post. By the way, this is the post he wrote. He wrote dear family and friends. Um, I think it’s time for you to know, um, something that I’ve been struggling with for years. Oh No. And I have a, I am a homosexual and I have relationship, you know, a decade with, and he mentions a guy’s name and tags him and this guy. Anyway, the guy who wrote it, he logged into a man’s account who was a married guy. Well, this guy’s wife saw it and literally thought that her husband was announcing on Facebook that he was gay and not only did not go over well and get a laugh.

It ended in like a really, really, really bad way. Um, another thing that happened, we had another employee at the time. True Story. We had some celebration. We were celebrating like it as chairman of thing. It was like the best year we’ve had or the most every year. We grew by 20 or 30%, but it was some we went to, I had big celebration event at the Holiday Inn select and uh, one of the employees had the hots for another employee’s wife. Oops. We literally follows her into the ladies restroom and tries to make a pass at her true story that happened. Uh, these kinds of things where like not abnormal. I remember one day, this is, this is this probably the grossest thing that happened, but it was true. One of our employees used to dip chew a scala. I have a Red Cup here on my desk is going and this guy would always spit into the Coffee Cup, you know?

And I didn’t know what he, I knew he chewed, but I, you know, I guess I didn’t observe it that much. And a, I always drink coffee in my cup here, my Red Solo Cup. And so I go to pick up my coffee and I take a swig and I drank all of his Smith who was the word no is terrible. And I’m gonna say, well I have to go. I can’t continue. These kinds of abominations would happen all the time. I remember we had one DJ who, uh, the phone rang and he was using the restroom. We had a restroom upstairs, so he booked the entire wedding while going to the bathroom. Nice. Well that’s impressive. Yeah. Bag. And then the customer was like, are you on the spot there? You got the pod or something. I mean, there’s so many abomination. So I had another employee check this out in other employee.

Uh, he checked into the Omni hotel. Yup. Using my name because we had a trade out with the hotel. I’d done a lot of work with them. And so they made a deal where we could stay there for really inexpensively. And one of the djs checked into the Omni hotel and he traveled for whatever reason, with loaded a sort of loaded assault rifles gotta be ready. And so he went to go to the pool or go get breakfast or whatever he did. And housekeeping comes in, Oh my God. And they see like ars on the bed. And that happened. Um, I had a DJ who let, we had big speakers called TRL two 2120 fives. There are basically a six foot tall speaker, not six foot, four foot tall speaker. And he had an open bed truck. Yeah. And he’s driving down the highway and he forgot to put the back of it up, the back of the truck up or something.

And the Tra and the, the speakers fell out off on the back on the highway. Now he’s driving like 70 miles an hour and weigh like a hundred, 120 pounds a year, probably 60 pounds, maybe 70 pounds. Yeah. But a woman had to uh, try to avoid it if they sieve maneuvers spun out on the highway, could have killed somebody. I mean, there was just so many abominations on a daily basis at this time. I cannot explain to you how much of humanity I saw that I didn’t want to see. I mean, I had a guy use my, my company credit card to go to night trips during the middle of the day. And this was the guy who was a youth pastor who deejayed person on the weekends, no way. And he asked if he could borrow my car to do something and he goes there. So now I don’t know.

I mean, as we were looking at the bill going, what? I mean there are so many abominations that happened on the daily, at this particular point. And it’s all because once I’d finally figured out how to become a good leader, I hadn’t yet figured out I knew how to lead myself. And I knew the procedures of running a meeting and an agenda and had to be prepared, but I didn’t know the importance of hiring a character. People I would just hire whoever was available. So we had guys like Jason who are great people, uh, but we had other people that were just complete disasters. I mean w w it was bad, very bad. It was like a a nuclear winter there on a daily basis. I got to a place where I really did hate that place duct to you. Chumps eventually

Keith, Dj Hugo Chavez and Dj Mike e were brought on to replace certain people and then more people were brought on to replace more people and the more serious I got about quality, the more people I had to replace. Essentially. I discovered firsthand that Sam Walton was correct when he wants, famously said there is only one boss, the customer and he can fire everyone from the CEO on down. I was learning that allowing mediocrity, medium, mediocre people to exist in my organization was demotivating our top performers, killing our profits and killing off our loyal customers. Thus on January 1st of 2005 I fired about 10 weeks sauce Djs as they’re happy new year’s gift I did all at the same time. I had started out wanting to fire about two of them, but once I got the firing flame thrower out, it just seemed appropriate to go ahead and kill the remaining discontented underperformers oh my gosh. It was beautiful. All the embers were still smoldering. Our top performers began rejoicing. Jason Bailey was scared out of his mind because he later said that he thought that I was going to fire everyone because I had that back to the future doc brown. Crazy look in my eyes.

I really did. I had determined that anybody who was late for their New Year’s eve show would be fired because you don’t need a lot of Djs in January anyway. Yeah. You know you need them for their wedding show, but you don’t need, you need them for bridal shows, trade shows, but you don’t need them to DJ on a daily basis cause there’s just not a whole lot of weddings in January. Right. Determined anyone who’s late, I’m going to fire him. I told the guys, if you’re late, I’m curious. Don’t be late. I’m so tired of you guys being like, do not be late because if you’re late, you’re, you’ll be fired. Then they all thought I was kidding and I fired so many people that day. I hadn’t been more than 10 too. I remember Jason was watching it happen and he was looking at me like, oh, ah, you know, and so, um, when you get a lot of money in the bank and you don’t really need to put up with stuff anymore, um, I think people start to get a little bit more scared about you.

I’m scared of you. And I think that’s the kind of healthy fear that you need to run a successful company. Absolutely. It doesn’t. The Bible refers to fear the Lord. Yeah. It’s not the are supposed to be running around going, I’m afraid that God’s going to end my life right now. It’s not that it’s a respect and the reverence it’s caught. I mean with your parents, aren’t you just wait, weren’t you chuck just a little bit afraid of your dad growing up? Yeah, it was more afraid of my mom. Your mom? Yeah. Yeah. What about you, Andrew? You’re afraid of your dad saying since modus Chesson yeah, you don’t want to, you don’t want to mess with those people. You ain’t my mom gets that crazy. Look in her eyes. Get Dad, look, dad beat me. I don’t remember those. A melon beatings are crazy.

You remember those metal flyswatters? Yeah, the handles are metal. My mom would turn him backwards and come after you. My cab,

mine is our heart wheels of what race tracks. Let me tell you about mom crazy. This is what, this is what makes mom crazy tough. Yeah, mom. Crazy. Mom’s like, hey kids, do you guys want to go out to Brahms? And you’re like, sure. And Mom could be driving and a kid in the back could go, quit touching me and mom will say stop. And they’ll say, quit touching me. And then mom might say, stop. And you never know cause mom’s had this great patience level. So mom could be like, hey guys, please stop. But then one day it, one moment, some a little that’s like a little switch and will occur and all of a sudden mom goes into beast mode. It’s like I will pull over right now. They pull over, you’re now on them, not you’re on the on the shoulder, but blah blah blah, blah, blah. You’re going into the shoulder of the highway there. You’re there and you can of, I kind of like in the the the ditch ravine area and all of a sudden mom’s getting to flush like gimme gimme a flyswatter she’s climbing swatter like what do we need a flyswatter for? Cause I’m going to give you an attitude adjustment. No,

I mean my mom, crazy moms, moms and unpredictable kind of crazy. You never know. Don’t want to mess with mom. That’s the kind of crazy you need to be an effective boss. Back to youtube. Eventually he came around to see that the removal of the negative people was freeing up more energy and resources to invest in our quality people. True. Next we have an unbiased voice of sanity. Jared Hogue is how he pronounced. Yeah, Jared hug. This is what I did is I interviewed guys who used to work with us and this is an actual transcript of what they said about their time working at Dj connection during this particular time. Nice. He says every week we had our Monday morning meetings. It would typically last about an hour or two. This one meeting was going a little rough, but we made it through. As soon as the meeting was over, we hopped on the phones.

However, we weren’t getting anywhere, making no progress. That coupled with the rough meeting made for a real crappy morning. Morale was low, so clay haulers and makes everyone get up out of their chairs to do a trust fall. All of us lined up almost like a soul train line and one at a time got up on a chair and fell backward into the arms of our peers. Morale shot up quickly. We hopped back on the phones and sales were quickly on the climb. Clay as a mover, which is a good thing. He gets things done. He doesn’t like to wait. He moves very quickly. It is a good thing and a bad thing all in one when he got excited about something, there was no stopping him. Even when it meant waking your employees up in the middle of the night to fill them in on a new idea that could have waited until morning.

To his credit, he didn’t build a DJ empire by doing nothing. I don’t remember at all. Uh, I don’t remember that at all. I don’t, I don’t recall the trust falls. I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t, it’s like I wasn’t there. Um, but that’s why I asked those guys because it was so much stuff was happening so quickly and I just found if you let the fire burn uncontrolled, chuck, what happens with the whole office? If you let one bad person personality, bad issue just fester. What happened? It just spreads. It spreads. Everybody becomes the motivated, demoralized. You know, why isn’t that person being held accountable? When I did this last year and I was up, boom, boom, and it just, it just snowballs. I’m just telling you that that time of my career, man, there was a fire every day because I, I made such poor hiring decisions.

I had so many psychos working for me at that time. I don’t know what was wrong with me. It was just a terrible, terrible time in my life back to youtube. During those two years, we had our struggles, but the attitude and culture of the office generally remained constant. It was always high energy, fast paced work with haste, dial and smile, Dj Phantasmagoria, after we experienced our new year’s firings free, everyone seemed to understand that I was serious about quality and I was serious about Dj connection. During this time of rapid expansion, we painted Dj vans and trailers. This was a horrible idea. When people see our company vehicles, they think, hey, I could sue these guys. We purchased six unlimited calling plan, cricket, trademark cell phones. We installed three landlines and we experienced Dj Derek’s to overheat and

destroy the engines, have to old school vans and a period of less than one month. Now again, I’ve changed the names in this, uh, the story in this audio book, so it’s not incriminate certain people. But we had a Dj on our team who I’m giving the code name Derek Right now, but this guy lit, I’m not kidding. He would take a, we had minivans that we used, I used to make the djs. The equipment. See today is a lot smaller. So it’s a lot easier to scale a business now than it was then because then the equipment was so bulky right now. I mean the tr two 20 fives were four foot long speakers. It’s like definitely couldn’t fit in your car you drove today. Oh No. So, uh, for good guys like you, I would have to get them a vehicle. So we had so many vans and they’re all enclosed van so the gear wouldn’t get wet.

Right. And this guy would leave late for shows and we’d drive over a hundred miles an hour down the highway. And on two consecutive weekends he blew up two vans. That’s crazy. He did like $15,000 of damage and two weeks craziness back to you chip. He drove him as though he was racing these hundred and 50,000 plus mile vans on the Nascar circuit. We turned the garage into Havana’s play room because the Djs had moved into our living room to accommodate our nonstop expansion. We throw a ridiculously large Superbowl party of epic proportions that my wife made sure she was conveniently out of town for and appreciation of our customers. This event led to numerous visits by the city of Broken Arrow who was appalled by my blatant disregard for the zoning laws governing our five acre Dj House. True Dj Hugo Chavez dumped trash into someone’s storage units that they thought were dumpsters.

Again, names have been changed to protect the people, but I mean this is a situation in higher Hugo Chavez. No, I didn’t hire actual who can go Chavez. But I’m telling you, there was an actual, a person who I asked them, is it possible, could you go dump the trash at the city dump? And they said sure. And they took it to a construction work site where there was a um, like a, like a container, like a shipping container filled with new carpet. There was going to be installed in somebody’s home and they dumped our trash on that. Wow. So pizza, skull spitters energy drinks, energy drinks. Yeah. Donuts. What of all being poured on this while the owners sitting there and watching like, are you freaking kidding me? She’s so, he follows the Dj back to my house cause he’s in a car that’s painted, but it says Dj connection right there.

Unfreaking believable. Unbeliev. Unbelievable. Back to you. This act of idiocy resulted in thousands of dollars of damage being done to the new carpet that had been stored in these units and was supposed to be installed in a local apartment complex. The carpet was apparently ruined by the skull brand chew spit that spewed out of the trash containers and unbiased voice of sanity. Eric Cooper, when you have eight men of nearly adulthoods semi living and working out of a residential area such as the Clark estate, you accumulate a lot of trash to dispose of forefoot bags of trash a day to four foot bag trash of day.

I’m going to do that again to dispose of four foot bags of trash a day. We had to load up a few of these bags in a company van and take them to the nearest dumpster. One spring day we had created about six trash bags full of red bull cans, soda cans, bottles full of skull residue and other whatnot. Normally, the lowest man on the totem pole would have to be the trash man until they made it up the ladder or a newer dude came into the company. Well, this fine day, a fellow Dj Hugo Chavez decided to combine the task of trash duty and lunch retrieval into one Dj Hugo made his way to a certain area and through the trash into a receptacle. Yes, a few hours later with no more trash and lunch in tow. Dj Hugo had. He had completed his task. I remember sitting next to the man, Keith Banks who fielded the call.

Apparently a construction owner at a hotel in the area was mad because he went into his quote unquote receptical to field what was not trashed, but brand new rolls of carpet and other equipment to finish his work. When he opened the storage container, he found bags of trash leaking soda and dip spit onto his very expensive roles of unused carpet to save. At least he was not happy when he opened the bag to investigate who had done this and found DJ connection cards envelopes sent to Djc and other DJC items. He called the company and was enraged at our stupidity. We sent Keith out to investigate the damage and he took footage of the unit, which not even Helen Keller could have mistaken for a dumpster believable to say the least. Clay paid nearly thousand dollars in damages. Fast forward two years into the future and while reminiscing about stories such as these clay became enraged when we unveiled the video of where Dj Hugo Chavez dumped the trash.

I would even say he was angry or when he saw the video than he was when it originally happened. True. We have witnessed countless crimes against humanity from Djs who have bailed out on shows one hour before someone’s wedding, which we were narrowly able to cover. I have fired more people than many shootings, squads due to the complete lack of decency that many American workers now seem to have. True. It has always amazed me that people get intense and nearly violently angry because you fire them for drinking on the job. They can’t seem to understand why they would be fired for smoking pot. They always say exciting things like, hey, that was never in the company manual to compensate for Djs, oversleeping and Dan for Djs for getting to write down their show dates. Andy, Jason, Josh, Eric, Keith, and Nate. All had to pull extensive all night is where they would literally Dj a wedding that went from 3:00 AM all it went until 3:00 AM only to discover when they arrive to unload the equipment they had to fill in for a DJ who called in sick

does happen all the time. I mean myself or Jason Bailey constantly would have to do two days in a row without sleep because somebody would call in and say they couldn’t do their shift. This was a constant thing back to you

and their show had a 6:00 AM set up schedule without red bull. I don’t think we would have made it true. Notable quotable knowledge without application is meaningless. Thomas Edison, please do not allow this chapter to be less meaningful and useful to your daily life than that incredibly expensive set of knives you bought. After watching some super compelling infomercial on how those stainless steel babies could cut through your shoes and a hammer bus. Ask yourself the following self exploring questions. One, how would I rate my overall leadership abilities on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the highest to what are my strengths and weaknesses? Three, what can I do to improve my weaknesses for can I deal with the reality that business growth, business growth will force me to become everyone’s boss and not everyone’s friend? Five, do I have it in me to fire people that will not perform according to the standards, promise to our customers even if they are my friends. And six, treat yourself to extra $1 million of lifetime income and go out and buy John Maxwell’s 21, the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership book applied the principles found in his book and watch your team grow.

And then Chubb, this is kind of where it comes full circle the sockets all cycle. We actually had John Maxwell on the podcasts just about a month ago. And so if you go to thrive time show.com today, you can search for John Maxwell and you can uh, hear my interview with John Maxwell. And a lot of these people that I’ve, I’ve talked about, we talked about in an earlier chapter about applying the principles from the book called nuts about southwest airlines. And I just interviewed the author of that book, the authors of that book, Jackie and uh, Kevin Fryberg. We just interviewed those two on the show. So again, um, if you’re out there today and you’re, you’re listening to this and you, and you’re saying, I’m in a place right now where I feel like the abominations that you just described in your book are happening in my business, I would encourage you to, uh, make the tough call, fire the idiots as soon as possible, but immediately start interviewing people, do a group interview every single week, every single week, every single week. Just don’t stop posting those, those ads for now hiring and you do the group interview in shop. Just give us kind of a quick overview of how to do a group interview. How does the group interview where,

okay, so the main thing about the group interview is to understand that you’re going to be holding one interview for all candidates for all positions at one time,

and we do it right now at our office. At what time? Every weekend

stays at 5:00 PM

so Wednesdays at five o’clock no matter who applies for a job, we reply via email. Correct. Your resume looks great. We’d like to interview you this Wednesday at five o’clock five o’clock okay, so we never read resumes no matter who applies, we always say, sounds great. We’ll see you this Wednesday at five o’clock at this location. Then at that interview, what percentage of the people that say they’re going to be there actually show up?

So if a hundred people sent in their application, maybe 50 people will reply there, Rsvp to our reply email, and then maybe 15 will show up

last week. Do you know how many people showed up for the group interview?

Yeah, we had probably 23 people show up. How many people said they were going to be there? Do you not believe? Marshall told me about 150 people said they were, they applied for the job

we had how many show up again? 20 years. Okay. Yep. So that lets you know that those 80 some odd people aren’t a good fit, right? Because they couldn’t show up immediately. And of those 23 that showed up, how many could show up on time? Uh, let’s see. We tried about 20 of them on time there. Okay. So now you got 20 out of a hundred that you’re hireable. And of that 20 out of a hundred, how many of them were hireable based on the fact that they were mentally present to two. And of those two, how many did you schedule the shadow last week? We’re going to schedule it, actually two of them to come in this week. Really? Yup. Okay. So uh, that was a pretty good week though. Yeah. No two candidates out of a hundred. That’s two persons. The people. Now imagine if we were interviewing people one on one, how long would that take?

Well, you would block out a minimum of what? 30 minutes per one for one. And that’s like 50 hours, the hours of your 50 hours, and get outta here. Now this is check it out. When I was growing the DJ business, I didn’t know these moves yet either. So I was interviewing people one on one and then once I found these people, I thought, well, it took a long time to find this idiot. It’s going to take me forever to find another idiot. Might as well keep this idiot. Yeah. Now they don’t have, man, I might as well stop looking. Right, right. So again, that is a, uh, what happens when you have them, when you’re being impacted by the law of the lid and you don’t know it when you hire people that are the wrong fit

and you find yourself hurting cats. Chapter Eight, meeting with Darth Brent and seeing his moron destroyer, the life lesson. The entrepreneur built an enterprise. The technician builds a job. Michael Gerber, the bestselling author of e myth revisited. And so yet again, I found myself having another nervous breakdown. Key employees were showing up late nearly every day. Achilles and Erin were on the verge of killing each other. Lloyd was running around Tulsa, ripping people off and telling them that I was working with them in order to get business while the tsar of the chew spitters kept living his red solo cups filled with his chew spit on my desk and yet again, I accidentally drank some of his chew spit mistaken yet for coffee. A young man nearly blew up one of my lawn mowers in the back yard when he decided to try to bevel off the side of the concrete patio while mowing and money was coming in and out of DJ connection at record levels and then something nonspecific and probably trivial happened that sent me into a nervous breakdown that left me literally lying alone in the dark with a pounding migraine headache and our walk in closet completely unable to deal with the pressures associated with running a medium size business without duplicatable processes in place.

I was going crazy. I was ready to quit. I was ready to sell DJ connection to the lowest bidder. I was willing to put my head in a blender if it had the potential to kill me. And all of a sudden, Saturday, I had never been suicidal. I never would commit suicide because I think it is weak sauce, but I felt like Michael Douglas’s character in the movie falling down. I felt as though at any moment I might just involuntarily haul off and punch the culprit of the biggest current abomination. The next guy who I found smoking weed was going to find a mic stand in his butt. I was going crazy. Anyway, after spitting literally 12 hours alone, our dark closet. Thank you, uh, for filling in for me. That day team I emerged, well rested. I was able to come to grips with the fact that something had to be done and so I scheduled an appointment with Brent Wallace, a highly successful entrepreneur who started a web development company called triad.

He was the one who also developed the nice website that the customers at the time knew and I determined that I was going to talk to Brent about selling my business to get his feedback on the whole thing. When I arrived at Brent’s office, I had no idea that I would leave with yet another book that would change my business life. I went to the meeting and the same way that Luke Skywalker went into his first encounter with Yoda, I was eager to meet the green little dude, but I was kind of freaked out by his Jedi power. I knew that Brent had the full use of the forest and I wanted to get some good nuggets from him. After Britain, I talked and after I unloaded my trail of tears on him, he surprisingly gave me the e myth revisited by Michael Gerber. The book seems simple and pretty readable because it was so small, so I was excited to treat it.

Later that night, and as I read the book, I immediately, immediately related to the main character. The main character in the book is that cake maker who makes great cakes and nuts. She feels as though she will also be able to make a great company, which is the Entrepreneur’s myth. Over time, she developed a loyal following, any business that controlled her. She merely created a job for herself that no one else would want. And the job was certainly not duplicatable and it wasn’t repeatable and she didn’t create time freedom or financial freedom. She just created herself a job and a job that nobody would want a job that required her to work 80 to 90 hours a week because she was the only one in the world who could make the product that everyone wanted. And people would come in and want to order more cakes. And then she would say yes and she kept saying yes to more and more cakes and the more and more cakes that only she could make.

And then she had all these obligations and she wanted to uphold her reputation. And so she struggled to ever say no when people asked for a custom cake and she struggled to ever teach anyone to do what she was doing and she didn’t have any systems or checklists or processes and her brain almost exploded. And because of her unique talents, she created this job that was 100% dependent upon her. The more her business grew, the more she began to break down mentally and physically due to the workload. She had employees, but no one else could help her because they did not know what to do. Michael Gerber’s book, The e myth goes on to talk about how he taught her how to make a standardized and duplicatable business so that she could grow exponentially while decreasing exponentially in the amount of hours that she was personally working in the business.

Throughout the book, Michael shows her how to tap into or knowledge base to create these systems. He shows her how to work on the systems down in her, within her business rather than actually working in her business, making cakes and delivering cakes. This book really freaked me out, fired me up, and sent me asset me straight reading that reading this book really questioned the way I thought about business. This book asks me why I had started the business to begin with this book book asking me about what my exit strategy was for the business. This book made me realize that the DJ connection business was just my vehicle to help me achieve my goals. It was not my life goal unless I wanted to die early and alone after my wife and kids left me. As you could imagine, reading a book like this produced quite a to do list for a type a personality such as myself and to help save you the time that you would normally spend reading this book and various other books about workflows.

I have put together a checklist and questionnaire that reading the book spawned in my mind at the time. If you take the time to sincerely answered the questions listed below, I know that your organization will greatly benefit from your application of the insights that you gain. Question number one, what is the purpose of your business? Question number two, is your business merely in business to make a lot of money? Question three, what is the purpose of accumulating large amounts of money? If you don’t have the time to spend it on the things that you want to. Question number four, why are you willing to exchange 40 to 60 hours per week, minimum during the best portions of your life? Why are you willing to invest the youth of your life into creating a business and the pursuit of money that you won’t be able to enjoy spending because it be working in a business?

Step five, question five with a precision focus and intensity right down the purpose of why you are earning money and make sure that your business never deviates from this purpose. Now here’s an example of what not to do. When I started Dj connection, I started it because I wanted to become a millionaire by age 30 with everything else. Uh, you know, aside, it was like I would be willing to do anything it took to become a millionaire before the age of 30. My goal was to become a millionaire before the age of 30 and to hire my dad, well, I did both of those things, but at what cost? At what trade off. If I could do it all over again, there’d be a lot of things I would do differently. And uh, hopefully throughout the course of this book you can kind of pick up on the things that I did.

I like I did well and the things that I definitely would be doing differently. Um, I was willing to exchange all my time, all my money, all my health, all my relationships and everything for the achievement of that goal. But after I thought about it, five years plus into the process, I determined that the reason why I wanted to earn $1 million is so that I would not be poor and so that I could enjoy living life to the fullest with my wife, my friends and my family. As Dj connection kept growing and growing, I kept realizing that I was having less and less free time to spend with my wife, my kids and the people that I cared about as the business grew and the rays and the results, uh, continued to cause more events to occur. It’s like when you do one great event than someone tells somebody else and then you have more referrals and more events.

And to keep up with the events and to not tell people, no, I started buying more equipment and then to not tell people, know Esther to buying more equipment and hiring more people. And then eventually I recognize that I never really wanted to grow a massive team like it is today. If I could have done it all over again, what I would’ve done is I would’ve grown DJ connection to a point where it would have been me and probably four dudes and that’s all I would’ve done is just growing the business because I could have hit all my financial freedom goals and uh, still kept deejaying and would have just kept it that size because, um, to me, the reason why I started the DJ businesses, cause I loved teaching and I wanted to create time freedom and financial freedom. And looking back on it, uh, I had already achieved that goal and I was like 22, but I couldn’t stop there.

I couldn’t, I felt bad about saying no to people who wanted me to book them, who wanted to a book us for their wedding. I felt bad when people would call about an event in June and I was booked out. I felt bad that I couldn’t do it and I felt bad like, God, that person’s wedding’s going to be crappy if we can’t Dj for him. Cause I’ve been to a lot of weddings and I’ve seen a lot of crappy djs. And so I kept just saying yes. Then I had to buy more equipment and train more guys and the cycle just kept happening and the more we were wowing customers to more, they would tell their friends. And it was this cycle of growth and I didn’t want, as the business grew and I kept winning awards and then more referrals came in, I began noticing that I didn’t have time to celebrate New Year’s Eve with my wife because I was deejaying somebody else’s New Year’s Eve party.

I began noticing that I hadn’t looked up and seen a full moon since 1999 until my three year old daughter Havana pointing up at the sky and told me that her imaginary friend Mooney was out tonight. It took me six years of super intense business operations to understand the purpose. My purpose for running a business was not to create 50 jobs for local Tulsa. It was not to enrich the community, it was not to create a culture. It was to create time and financial freedom for myself and I wish I would have figured that out sooner. My purpose for running that business was to enjoy a high standard of living with the people that I love so that I could afford to do things that I couldn’t do as a kid. The purpose of the business was for me to build a business that would create time, freedom and financial freedom for myself and somehow I was creating time, freedom and financial freedom for my employees, but not for myself.

Question number six, what does your business do? And a great way. If you can’t be the best at what your business is doing, I recommend not doing it. Nothing stinks. More than finishing fourth place at every basketball tournament in 18th place in your industry every year. Question number seven, where do your current customers and your target customers live? What? What town? What, what country? What city? If your customers live in a particular area of town, it does not make sense to buy advertisements that are targeted to the wrong area of town. You need to advertise to your ideal and likely buyers and the wedding business. It’s just brides grooms, never book weddings, fathers of the bride and every book, weddings. It’s just brides, brides and brides to be. That’s all you should be focusing on. If you’re running ads to promote your Dj company, all you need to do is run ads targeted at, you guessed it, brides and brides to be find out the age of the average bride and bride to be and run ads to them.

Find out where they live. Find out where the people with the income live, uh, who can, who need them. There’s a certain amount of income you need in order to afford to hire a DJ. You know, on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, hiring a Dj is not very foundational. It’s more of a want than a need and the kind of people that can afford to hire a DJ live in nicer homes. So only run ads in areas in parts of town, uh, two that are focused on women who live in the parts of town where the money is. Question number eight, what forms of literature do your customers read? If you’re marketing to an affluent crowd, who’s fond of reading only Wall Street Journal and investor’s business daily type literature, that all the advertising you’re spending on bottom tier local newspapers is wasted money. Thus, I would highly encourage you to only advertise in the forms of literature as your customers read the record, regardless of what propaganda and information the local magazine salesforce shows up until she, question number nine.

Number nine, what television programs do your customers watch? What youtube channels do they watch? Where do they spend their time? What social media are they on? Are they on Pinterest? Are they on Instagram? Are they on Facebook? Where are your ideal and likely buyers spending their time and advertise there? Question number 10 where do your customers shop? Think about that specifically. What stores do they go to? If you’re starting a wedding wedding business, it’s very important that you market to the bridal stores and the stores that sell engagement rings. Don’t, don’t market your business and your products and services to places where your ideal and likely buyers don’t shop. Question number 11 where do, where do your customers go to look for your products or services? Do they go to Google, youtube? Where do they go to search and make sure that you are there?

Question number 12 do you have a system in place for tracking where your business comes from and do you use it on every customer every time? Just to clarify here, if you only ask your customers how they heard about your 10% of the time, then you do not have a systematic approach in place or in your mind. You must ask every customer how he or she heard about your business every time. This gives you the power over your marketing dollars and it will allow you to increase your spending on the advertising that actually works. What cutting the advertising that drains money from you. Like that one guy at work who’s always trying to borrow a $5 bill, right? Question number 13 do you have a system in place for documenting how your employees are supposed to answer the business phone? My friend, I used to run DJ connection without sales scripts.

That was crazy. When I sold the company, the whole thing was scripted. I mean you could be an idiot and answer the phone and as long as you just follow the script, you could set appointments and that’s what kind of business you want to build. You want to build a business that’s so good that an idiot could run it cause eventually some day an idiot we’ll run it right and you want to record those calls. Currently, as of the time of this recording in 2019 I recommend clarity, voice, c. L. A. R. I. T. Y. Clarity. Voice clarity. Voice is an awesome program because it allows you to record the phone calls of your customers and engaging with your employees. That way you know whether your team is actually following the script or not. Question number 14 when someone calls you to ask you the proverbial, how much do you charge for your service?

Do you have a plan in place to deal with that question? Because people always ask you on the first call loop, they can go on DJ connection. How can I help you? They say, how much do you guys charge the loop? They give it go on DJ connection. How can I help you? I was just curious. How much do you guys charge [inaudible] you for calling Dj connection? How can I help make your day great? Uh, yeah. I was curious. How much do you guys charge? They ask it every single time. It’s, it’s almost every time it’s, it’s, it’s so you have to have a plan in place to deal with that question. Question Number 15 in honor of Tim Tebow, have you incorporated humor into the script, anecdotes, descriptions, humor and nuances to your sales presentation? Because if you don’t do that, you seem like a robot.

And that humor and those nuances and those pauses, those intentional stators, they make it seem like the other person on the phone is not reading. I’ve done it the wrong way and I’ve done it the right way. And I will tell you, if you’re going to make a systematic business, you’ve got to have scripts in place, but they also need to sound like you’re not reading a script. And Steve Martin’s a book. Steve Martin, by the way, the legendary comedian actor, a book writer, uh, the, the, the film writer Steve Martin, the comedian he writes and his legendary autobiography entitled stand born Standing Up. He writes in great detail about how he took the better part of a decade to create a comedy routine that was consistently funny each time he delivered it. He then goes on to explain how he would ad Lib little nuances to adjust to the unique crowd and the atmosphere of each venue.

But the point is, he never deviated from his core routine because he was disciplined enough to track people’s reactions to its delivery early on in his career. This build has confidence in the overall quality and the humor of his, of his routine was refined into to a place where became a masterpiece over time. My friends, the reality is that your people will never be more committed to your business than you are and thus you are going to deal with more rejections to your initial presentations then they ever will. So take the time out now to create a sales presentation that you’ve tested on your customers so that your sales people can deliver your presentation with faith and conviction knowing that it works every time because you’ve tested it. Question Number 16, how after you’ve revised your sales presentation again, add a call to action to the end of your sales presentation.

Because if you don’t add a call to action to the end of your sales presentation, people are going to end the call by saying, okay, um, I’ll, I’ll think about, I’ll call you back. So I’m asking you today on at the end of your sales presentation, at the end of your first call, do you have a call to action? You must always call the customer to action. You want to call them to set an appointment so you answer the phone, but it won’t pick it for calling DJ connection. How can I help you? And then you want to ask the customer five rapport building questions, right? Do you want to script that out? Didn’t script out five needs based questions. Then after you do that, you want to deliver the benefits and then after you do that you want to move in for the close or or the or the call to action my friend.

Once you have a sales script in place, it’s amazing how much you can grow your company. You’ve got to have sales systems in place. Of course, number 17 question number 17 have you created and implemented a quality on hold music recording? Most people hate being put on hold. You hate being put on hold. I hate being put on hold. So for the love of all that is holy. If you put someone on hold, at least get some high quality interesting sales generating, humorous, informative, and enjoyable on hold music to make the on hold time bearable. Question number 18 have you systematically creating a daily checklist that will ensure that your office smells good, looks good, feels good, sounds good, and creates the overall first impression that you want your customers to experience when they first encounter your business on the Internet via the fax, via your mailers, via your business cards, via email marketing, via anything you want to make sure that people, when they encounter your business, that the entire process has been thought through and regulated and that is truly turnkey and systematic.

My friend, a checklist ensures that anyone could obtain the results needed and not just you. And that is the beauty of building systems. I’ll never forget that moment in 2005 when I came back from a refreshing one week vacation with my wife, uh, bird, I call her bird and my daughter Havana, my daughter only to discover that one of our djs had spilled his spinner, which is code language for a plastic McDonald’s Mcdonald’s cup filled with chewing tobacco, spit on our super plush, Super Nice upstairs office carpeting. Oh, this made me mad. And thus I went to clean it up, which is a lot like trying to brush a grown man’s teeth while he’s currently chewing. As I proceeded to, uh, to go to the trash, to grab a trash bag and open the trash container, only to discover a swarm of fruit flies was waiting for me.

As soon as I opened the container, they came out with reckless abandon like a biblical plague of locusts. They were furiously buzzing everywhere. Oh, I was super mad. So I went down to the garage to get all this, all the cleaning supplies. I need it. And once I entered the garage, I found that the trash had not been taken out for an entire week. And then it was filled with fast food containers, chewing tobacco, half eaten fruit and man, I was irate. I would have killed one of those dirty trash creating djs if it were legal. But luckily I chose instead to use a new calming method, cursing and yelling at no one in particular to call myself down. After I finished the one hour process of cleaning up their funk, I hopped into the Dj van only to discover that the fan that the van was being used as a mobile trash container and it was literally filled with red bull cans of beer, uh, pans of everything.

Fast food containers, spinners, rappers, Napkins, and a small landfill of crap. Just writing. This is irritating me, but the point was everything was dirty all the time because I had never taken the time to write down a daily checklist of what my expectations were and who was supposed to make these expectations and reality. I just thought that out of a basic, basic sense of decency that they would take out the trash, uh, once during their entire week while I was gone. I just figured that with eight guys, one of them would tell you have the initiative to take out the trash, but when I asked him about it, everyone just says, oh, we weren’t sure who was supposed to do that, and although I was mad, I have since determined that most employees in good economic times, we’ll only do what they have to do. Thus, you cannot expect your people to do anything without putting it on a checklist that is followed up on on a daily basis.

You have to have a clear, a clear outline of what you expected to do, and then whoever their manager is has to inspect what he expects of. You expect somebody to do something, you have to inspect it. Whatever you inspect, you’re going to find that you can expect, but if you do not inspect it, if you don’t follow up, nothing gets done. Question number 19 how do you see, have you sat down and created the prewritten emails needed to deal with every conceivable customer service related sales scenario? Doing this will save your sales team, your business and your brain countless amounts of time and frustration. I’m telling you, you have to do this now, if not sooner, to improve the accuracy of the information that you’re sending out about your products or services and to save your salespeople countless hours of time. This must be a priority to you.

You should have prewritten emails to clarify the following and more directions to your office, a customer expectation list it customer service guarantee, a review of your products, benefits and unique qualities. A follow up email, a receipt email, a frequently asked questions, email. All of those things must be prewritten. Question 20 are you thinking like a Walgreens? My friend? You must think like Walgreen’s because Walgreen’s actually puts promotions and discounts on their receipts. Whenever you get a receipt from Walgreens, they’re giving you a coupon or a discount, or at least at the time of this recording they are. So when you get a receipt from all Greens on it, it says, Hey, come back tomorrow and save 10% off on towels or something. And what happens is when you have a receipt that now serves as a discount, as a, as a coupon, there’s an incentive to come back and want to do business with that business.

Again, ask yourself, what would Walgreens do? What would Victoria secret do here? What would bed, bath and beyond? Do these companies are geniuses with, with generating repeat customers and referral business mentally marinade on what you can do today to drive repeat business via the vehicle of sales receipts and contracts. Question number 21 have you created a database software that your salespeople and office staff use to keep track of every customer, every time? My friend, if you’re like most small business owners, you know all of your customers personally, you are the lord of your Sales Dominion and you take pride in knowing everything about every one of your customers. And this is not cool because if you get hit by a bus and find yourself in a coma, nobody who’s running the business will know what to do. No one will know the customer’s names. No one will know their phone numbers.

No one will know their email addresses. No one will know how they heard about you. Nobody’s going to know what they want and nobody’s going to know. And if you’re in, if you’re surviving spouse is having to run a company where there’s no data collected, it’s, it’s brutal. Or if a, let’s say you don’t get hit by a bus, let’s just say you have a sick day and you can’t come into work because you’re sick. Well no one’s gonna know what to do. Or let’s say do you have a new employee? And they get a call, a call from a customer and they say, thank you for calling DJ connection. And if you don’t have a a system or a database in place, you won’t be able to find the information to answer the question of your current customer. You’ve got to have a unified database now, don’t over spiritualize it.

I’ve had companies where I’ve just used spreadsheets at first. I’ve had companies where I’ve used Microsoft paint as I mentioned earlier, that’s the database I used. I, I just would save the file based upon the bride or groom’s name and that’s how we did it. Question number 22 do you have a product or service delivery checklist to ensure high quality every time? You basically have to create a checklist, the documents, everything that you expect your people to deliver to your customer every time and how it is to be done and delivered every time with specific detail every time. If you do not document your expectations for your product and service delivery, your people will only be able to hit this ambiguous and murky target occasionally and you will find yourself making previous customers disloyal through the randomness of your inconsistency. People on family vacations generally do not pull off on the interstate highway to experiment with their lunch dollars by spinning them at some odd, odd ball, shabby looking diner.

People look for brands they know brands that they can expect to be consistent, even if they’re consistently known for not being the best. As long as they’re consistent. Buyers prefer that. Think about it. People like to pull over on road trips to go to subway, Mcdonald’s, they go to brands that they recognize. People, you know would rather have a consistent B level hamburger, then a local diner that could be great or terrible people don’t want to dynamic range and the quality from great to terrible people want consistency. Question 23, do you have a merit based pay system in place? When I was building Dj connection, it took me about a year to determine that some of the best people in my life, the people I liked the most, Phil who interviewed the best, the people that had the most talent would occasionally mail it in. So we would DJ someone’s wedding and the disc jockey would not do his best job.

And so I had to out how can I make it so that every show is like opening night. [email protected] what I did was I created a, um, a merit based pay system and that system kind of went like this. Essentially if you deejayed is shown, I don’t know, I don’t remember these, these specific numbers because it’s been so long since I put this in play. But I’ll just give you an example. Let’s say that the show was $600. So if you deejayed from me, I promised you I’d pay you 25% 25% commission. So if the show is $600 you knew you could make at least $150 to DJ that show. However, if you did a great job, I would pay you 33% which meant that instead of making $600 on the show, you can, or instead of making $150 on a $600 show, instead of making $150 on a $600 show, you could make approximately $200 so it was merit based pay.

Now, if I found out that you did a bad job, and again, all of this was based on surveying the brides and grooms after the wedding, if I found out you had done a bad job, I would pay you the least amount possible. Um, I think it got down to as low as like $8 an hour was the least I would pay you if you did a bad job. So you could go from making $50 a night on the low end to a maximum of $200 on the high end. And over time I got a little less polarized with my merit based pay system. But uh, I looking back at it, I wish I would have kept it more punitive. I wish I would’ve kept it so that that way if you did a bad job, you’d only make eight bucks an hour. And if you did a great job, you’d make that full 33%.

I wish I would’ve done it that way, but I did not over time I listened to people who are working there at the time who said, man, that guy, he did a bad job, but now you can barely pay his bills. Well, for some reason I cared. Um, now with my current businesses, I don’t, and I have much more, more polarized merit based pay. I make sure that people make the least amount possible if they put forth the least effort possible. The least amount that is still legal but as low as possible. Question 24 do you have mechanisms, rewards, and penalties in place for every aspect of your job? In order for the system to work, you must mercilessly penalize lightness and religiously praise promptness. If people can’t be on time, they should not be in your organization. And anybody who’s listening to this right now who knows me, you know what I’m talking about.

If you are late for meetings, I don’t even just hate the act. I go as far as hating you because everybody has to wait on you and I get it. If we’re all late, be one time or one thing happens, I get it. Nobody’s perfect. But there are certain people that are chronically late. We had one gentleman that every single morning he would show up to the meeting 10 to 15 minutes late every morning, every morning. I’d have to find the guy. Every morning he would do it. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. It is truly unbelievable what happens when you put up with poor performers. You must celebrate quality like it’s the best thing in the world. And you have to make a big dramatic example out of the people who intentionally and consistently deliver poor performances. It’s called a public hanging as Jack Welch would call it, the former CEO of Ge telling people that they should try harder because it is the right thing to do is about as bogus is telling a sophomore in high school that they have to sit and their timeout chair if they don’t behave.

If you want your team to see what you value, reward and penalize all behaviors financially, I believe that one third, if not more of all pay should be merit based pay in any business. If your bookkeeper is saving your company thousands, show him appreciation by offering him a pay, a pay raise or a bonus, not another. I uh, it continual raise, not like you’re saying, hey, you did a good job this week. Now I’m raising your, your wages forever. No, but give him a bonus based on performance. If your HR guy’s phenomenal, give him a bonus every time he finds a new recruit. If you’re HR guys underperforming, penalize the crap out of him until he gets better. It quits. Pay everyone with merit based pay and your company will scale the right kind of culture. If you take away merit based pay, you start having some idiots on board and that’s some of the mistakes that I made.

You start having idiots. They’re people that are bottom feeders just showing up to work, doing the least amount possible. If you start gang guaranteeing everybody high wages, you’re going to find yourself yelling and pleading with long lifelong under performers who have no intention of changing. They just want to say they do to to look good in, in, in, in the meeting. Praise your top people and fire your bottom. People repeat as needed with a sense of urgency. Warning your bottom feeders will get mad, which is good. Question number 25 do you have an operations manual in place for every aspect of your business? If there is any aspect of your business that only you know how to do, you must make an operations manual to document how you do what you do and how others need to do this process as well. Build an entire operations manual detailing how to hire, how to fire, had a train, how to recruit, how to market, how to sell, how to deliver your product and how to do your favorite moves.

I’m telling you, if you don’t document your processes and systems, nobody will do them. Question number 26. Question Number 26, do you have a linear workflow chart that clearly shows from the beginning to end what you want your customers to be treated like and how the overall experience should be choreographed. Uh, it’s amazing how, uh, um, you know, there’s certain expectations that we have for our businesses but we don’t, we don’t document them. So let me explain to you how it should have worked at DJ connection. When I, when I was running it at 8,900 South Lynn Lane, the phone would ring and someone would answer the phone with enthusiasm and they would read the script and say, some of the effective, thank you for calling the amazing Dj connection. This is your super humble disc jockey. Clark, how can I make your day great? That’s what they should be saying when they answer the phone at Dj connection.

Then they would follow the script. Then they would set an appointment to meet with the potential bride to be and her mother. Typically within three days of that call, you want to meet somebody within 72 hours of that first call. Then as soon as we got off the phone, we would send them an email confirmation with the prewritten email with directions to our facility. So we just got off the phone. Then we just sent them emailed directions while also giving them verbal directions. Then we would put it in the calendar. Then on the day of the appointment, we would get ourselves ready. We wanted to have the office pristine and clean. It was a nice executive desk. Uh, it was nice ornate executive desk. It kind of looked like you were, um, it just was a, a fancy table, fancy desk. It was, um, that the 8,900 south landline, just go on Google and search 8,900 Southland lane.

You’ll see it. That property, the bride would pull up to the facility and there’s a sign that said, welcome to the DJ world headquarters. And when you pulled up, a member of my team should greet you at the door. Hey, how’s it going? Come on in. When they come on in, we offer them a coffee or a Cappuccino or some sort of a nice beverage and we’d have them be seated and they’d be seen in a nice ornate wood chairs and a nice desk will be there and there’ll be surrounded by images of, of weddings and brides in the 1955 chrome plated Elvis microphone with a great sales book and the ambience smelled Nice. There was a always a nice smell of coffee in the air. We had the music playing the Frank Sinatra, the Nat King Cole. That was, that was the atmosphere. Then when we’d meet with the bride, we’d go through our 100 point wedding planning checklist and we’d go through, you know, what time are your guests going to get there and what kind of music do you want and how interactive do you want us to be and when you’re doing your first dance, you’re father of the bride dance, the bouquet toss, the garter toss, all those things.

They’re all on a checklist. We’d go through all that. We’d go through systemically to figure out what kind of music they liked and didn’t like, how to pronounce their names. We get it all bundled up there and then we didn’t. We’d show them the packages clearly defined the pricing, go over that again, even though they’d already heard it on the phone and then we’d ask them which package they wanted to go with and then after they chose the package, we’ve charged them, I think it was $150 for a deposit to reserve the date and then we would email them a confirmation that following morning before nine in the morning. Then on the week of their wedding we would call him, we told the bride, we will call you on the Monday of your wedding and for some reason you don’t get a call, call us but we’re going to be for sure calling you.

And we would call them to confirm, uh, that their wedding was still happening and to go over all the songs that they wanted to have played at the wedding and to verify they were there. 100% crystal clear on what songs they want to play for their first dance, their father, bride dance, their k there, garter toss, those kinds of things and to see what updates had made to the [inaudible] had been made to the timeline. Then we would confirm the amount of money owed on the account and then we would assign it on the schedule so that the disc jockey was assigned to go out to the show here on the week of the wedding. We’d the DJ to confirm that he had the w the wedding on the books and he should have had it cause we already emailed him a confirmation on the day they booked the wedding six months ago we’d call them to confirm and any event they couldn’t do the event and they were out of town or they moved or no longer worked for us, we would schedule somebody else.

And then we would uh, gather all the songs, licensed all the songs for their wedding. And then we would assign the DJ or load out time, a specific time to load up and pick up the gear. So the DJ would be assigned, let’s say at six 15 in the morning on Saturday to load up the gear to specific time. And there was a very detailed checklist we use to load out the Djs to go to the show. And this is how it happened. I mean this is, there was systems for everything. There was systems for how to make announcements, there were systems for the scripts, there were systems for the email, there were systems for [inaudible] as a system for everything. And that is what I’m talking about. Step 27 do you have a linear chart called the workflow in your office? Do you have one?

Well if you don’t, you need to get one in. A workflow is nothing but a diagram of your company from left to right. Come like a timeline that shows how you generate leads, how you call those leads, how you deliver service to those leads, how you a follow up to make sure the quality control was good for those leads, how you recruit, how you do your accounting. It’s all on a workflow on a map and if you don’t have that in place you really need to get get one because once you have your workflow documented, you can look at your workflow and identify your biggest limiting factors, your biggest limiting factors and is absolutely so important that you identify your biggest limiting factors on a weekly basis to figure out what is the thing that’s holding us back right now? What’s, what’s keeping us stuck and when, when it’s out of your head and onto a linear workflow, you can have a educated non emotional conversations about figuring out what you need to do to blow up into fix those biggest limiting factors.

Question 28, do you have a system that is designed to hold everyone accountable for his or her daily action items and deeds for an incredible example of what not to do? We can look at the DJ connection of 2004 during this time, one of our sales guys, uh, racked up a ton of faith of fake commissions. Then I paid him on because there was a loophole in the system where the guy who was telling us the commissions to determine what we paid everybody each week was also the guy allowed to put in his own commission. So a guy would say he sold a lot of stuff that he didn’t actually sell and we would never catch him because there was no process in place. So I changed it to be where the person who booked the wet booked the wedding would turn in their commissions to accounting. And then accounting would verify that they were in fact correct and that stopped all of that jackass. Right, but before that, I mean people were used to abuse that all the time. Now question 29 do you have a hierarchy chart created that clearly outlines who is in charge of who and what their responsibilities are? For me, writing this hierarchy chart seemed a little tedious and ridiculous. At first we only had 50 djs at the, but I and I had to,

I had kept wondering what the point of building a management chart was in a small organization, but as I went through it, I noticed that there was no system in place and through default everyone felt as though they needed to directly report to me. And this was frustrating. But as I was making the chart, I started realizing that it would frustrate me if I worked for me without someone to report back to how were my people supposed to know if they were doing a good job or not. Question number 30 make a place for everything, including the scissors. In 2006 there was one day in particular when I felt a meltdown coming maintenance and not been finished on time fixing all the karaoke system from the previous week’s repair list. Invest. Four out of the eight of the Karaoke systems malfunctioned on the same freaking weekend. Customers were calling in to complain and to talk to the owner, which was not fun.

One by one. They were ripping me a new one and I knew it was 100% my fault because I was not being hard enough on our underperforming maintenance guy. After being chewed out and verbally, uh, assaulted by four consecutive customers who were right and finding out my email was not working properly either. As luck would have it, the last straw was I couldn’t find my scissors. I don’t remember why I needed the scissors, probably probably kill myself, but I do remember that I couldn’t find my freaking scissors and I was so mad. I started yelling. I wish I had a more descriptive vocabulary at the time, but I just started screaming, yelling things that holy s what the h is going on with those karaoke systems. And what the h is so freaking hard about repairing some Effient Karaoke system or those guys idiots and where the Fr my scissors and for some reason as soon as I went nuts about not being able to find my scissors that occurred to me that they weren’t, there was not a place for anything that night I stayed up all night.

We are organizing and labeling, labeling everything. I was riding a wave of anger and frustration and I did not want to miss out on this ambitious search. The next morning when everyone arrived at work they found a neatly organized office and a delirious yet oddly cheerfully centric boss waiting for them with the good news that everything is now organized. My friend, your time to label and organize everything is now go get some coffee and start tonight. Question 31 do you have a company culture checklist? You must have mechanisms in place to keep the continuity of your office culture in place. As you transition from one employee to the next. Over time. Your people will change the consistency of your product and service cannot. If you want to maintain viability in the [email protected] our number one export was and is humorous, enthusiasm, adaptability, and over deliverance. That is what we were known for and that is what people want. If Mr Somber shows up to your wedding and decides to mail it in, people aren’t gonna want to hire you. The company again, your people must know your company mission statement and they must live it every day. It doesn’t matter whether they know the slogan or not. It matters whether the, whether they live at or not. At Dj connection, our goal was to make every event something more than just ordinary. We

wanted to make every event extraordinary at your company. You must figure out what you are and you must relentlessly talk about it, celebrate it and encourage it every day in every way. If your current culture is falling apart or falling short of your, your mission statement and your ideals, you must work tirelessly to force your reality to conform to your ideal. Question 32 do you have a previous customer follow up system? I repeat. Do you have a previous customer follow up system? Although it might seem obvious for most people. Um, I didn’t have that in place for a while there. So it should happen is after we DJ your wedding, we should follow up and thank you for allowing us to entertain you and to survey you and to make sure you were happy. And I always did that. That part I always did. But then the next level was did I follow up with the customer in three months and tell him thank you for their business and to just touch base with him?

No. Did I have an email that I sent out to previous customers every three months to thank them or to give them an update or a newsletter of some kind? No. So what happened was I had to work very, very hard for bookings from people that were just clients last weekend. But then over time clients would forget about us because we did nothing to stay top of mind. Now what you want to do with your customer database according to the book called the, um, it’s called, it’s written by the Harvard Business Review and the book is called the service profit chain. It’s called the service profit chain. And according to that book, you need to break up all your customers and to five categories, five categories. Category Number One, and this is the highest category. The highest level of customer can reach is an apostle. An apostle is the kind of man that followed Jesus Christ around without compensation.

Think about that. What kind of sick freak would follow around somebody with no compensation for years, right? That’s an apostle. What kind of person would refer you to people just out of the goodness of their heart? No incentive. They just like referring you. That is an apostle. Now, the next level, the second level, this is all in the service profit chain book. By the way, the second level is the loyalist. No loyalist is somebody who is very loyal to the brand. They’ll use you over and over again, but they won’t refer you. And that should be about 80% of your customers. By the way. It’s just somebody who really likes you. But no matter what you do, they’re not going to recommend your company. They’re not going to recommend their kind of coffee, they’re not going to recommend their favorite movie. They just don’t recommend things.

They don’t go out of their way to put their neck out there to recommend a company. They just won’t do it. They’ve been burned too many times. They just don’t want to recommend people. All right, and the third category, this should be no more than about 5% of your customers, but it is a niche that would be people that are are mercenaries. These are people that are price focused. All they care about is who has the best deal. They’re going to use your company this week cause you have a lower deal and then the other guy’s company next week cause they have a lower deal and it’s somebody else’s company the next week cause they have a lower deal. They’re not loyal to anybody, they’re just focused on price. The next category, and again, these should not be more than about 5% okay? These, these final three categories, right?

You might say, well that’s 105% calm down. It’s gonna be different for every company. But the next category is what we would call a, you guessed it hostage. While hostage is somebody who has to do business with you, but they don’t want to, they feel like you’re the only game in town. You’re the only option they have. And even though, even though they don’t like you, they have to use you. And then the final category is a terrorist. And this is the kind of person that hates their husband, hates their wife, hates her kids, hates the economy, just hates. And they just hate you too. And they called to complain a lot. They go off on tangents a lot at businesses and unfortunately you have made the decision to provide them service and now it is going to be hell for you. So after you provide service for somebody, you should sort them in your database.

And those five categories and that way when they call in, you know what kind of person they are, what kind of service you’ve delivered to them in the past. You can know more about it. There’s no reason you should be inviting your terrorists to a VIP customer appreciation event. You should only invite your apostles and your loyalists to that event. See, but if you don’t know who loves you and who doesn’t, it’s hard to know who to invite and who not to invite. Now of question 33 do you have a marketing calendar based on the seasonal aspects of your business in, in, in, in, in place? Do you have that? You know, do you have a marketing calendar based on the American culture? I mean, do you, do you send people a, are you doing a promotion for Valentine’s Day? Are you doing a promotion for New Year’s Eve or you’re doing a promotion for Christmas?

Are you doing a promotion for Thanksgiving? Are you doing a spring special? Are you doing a summer special? Are you doing a St Patrick’s Day special? Most large companies do and most small companies don’t. I would encourage you to have a marketing calendar that makes sense and make sure that you stick with it after you take the time to actually create it. Now, idea number 34 question number 34 do you have an Armageddon checklist? If you get hit by a bus, who’s in charge? If they get hit by a bus, who’s in charge? If somebody gets hit by a bus bus, who’s going to, who’s going to run everything? I mean, how is your spouse going to handle things? I realize it’s not a fun topic, but I mean if you die, do you have life insurance? Do you have a plan or is everybody who’s surviving aft while you are resting in heavenly peace?

Do you have an Armageddon checklist? Of course. Number 35 do you have an employee review calendar? It’s so important that you meet your employees like once a month. I recommend them on my business is I pretty much meet everybody once a week. But if somebody has a problem, an emotional problem, which by the way, a lot of people do, according to the u s chamber of Commerce, a whopping 75% of employees according to the u s chamber of Commerce and CBS News now steal from the workplace and most do so repeatedly. I mean, according to ink magazine, over 80% of employees lie on their resumes. According to the Washington Post, 78% of men admit to cheating on their partner or spouse. My friend, I mean you, you got to have a weekly review. People make poor life decisions and you’ve got to bring them back in.

You got to be to pull the weeds from the garden every week. You gotta tend to that garden every week, every week you not having an employee follow up review checklist or an employee review time in your calendar would be like driving a car and not looking at the road. Occasionally, just any old gas pedal getting into a conversation and see how an SCR it works out. It’s not going to work for Ya. It Vic planting a garden and not pulling the weeds. It’s just not gonna work. Uh, question number 36, do you have a web optimization and web presence calendar? My friend. If you want to be top in Google, you have to have the most reviews and the most content, the most reviews from real clients. And the most content. There are four variables that will determine who gets to be top in Google. Therefore, there’s not 4,000.

There’s four main ideas. We cover this all in the book. A search engine for dummies that Bruce Clay wrote. You can, you can read that book. Uh, this is all covered. All the things we’re teaching here that’s all covered. Um, in the search engine for dummies. Get that book. Or you can get the book that I wrote called the start here book. It’s an Amazon bestseller. You can download it. And in that book there’s a chapter called the [inaudible] manifesto. And in the Seo Manifesto, it explains to you the four variables that control your Google search engine rank variable number one, is your website canonically compliant. When I owned DJ connection, it was, I don’t know if it is today because I’m not in charge, but it was too, is it mobile compliant? Is Your website compliant for mobile devices? Does it load quickly? Does it load properly? And again, the canonical rules are established by Google, not by me, and they’re documented in search engine for dummies, a nearly 600 page book.

Or you can download the start here book and read the about 20 page Seo, search engine optimization manifesto. So step number one is what your, your website has to be what? Google-Y googly, but has to be Google canonical compliant. It has to be canonically compliant for Google move number two, it has to have what? The most reviews. How do you get reviews? Do a good job. How do you get reviews? Then ask your happy clients for reviews. You’re going to get bad reviews by default, but you’ve got to ask for reviews. Three move number three, you gotta make sure your site is mobile compliant. And for whoever has the most content gets to rank to top, it gets to be ranked at the top of the Google search engine results. So I’d highly recommend that you take the time to produce content on a daily basis.

Um, so that your website ranks top in Google. Now for Google to index a page of content, you really need to have more than 350 words of content per page. That’s what Google declares. I recommend you have a thousand words of content per page because I do search engine optimization for all my companies and it really matters to me and I want to be top in Google and you should be top in Google too. So again, you’ve got to schedule time every day to get a review everyday to to, to write that content. How many words? 1,000 words of content. You’ve got to have a web optimization calender in place so that you do the things needed to make your company grow. Now move number 37 move number 37 course. Number 37 is do you have a company budget? You see individuals and businesses that operate on a budget, spend less bottom line, take the time to determine your annual company budget and cut as needed.

Unlike the federal government who is fond of simply printing more money whenever they exceed their budget constraints. Big shout outs, by the way, to all the members of the elected office who’ve made that possible. That’s a horrible idea, but I’m glad you guys, uh, uh, were able to balance the budget by printing money. How awesome. With head P, if you had a small business and every time you ran out of money, you can just print money and credible. And by the way, you can just print money if you’re in government and then your customers, Aka the taxpayers have to pay back the debt. That just makes it zero sense to me. But Day you will have to explain to, uh, you know, your spouse or yourself or a banker where all your money went and you got to have a budget. So make a set budget of your fixed costs.

That’s like your costs. Don’t change. Make sure you have your set budget for your fixed costs, right? Your, your rent, your phone bill, your fixed costs, and then you want to have a budget for your variable costs. Maybe that’s labor, maybe that’s your advertisement spend based on the time of the year and you want to make sure you stick within that budget on a consistent basis. It’s so important you do that. Now, question number 38 do you have a customer differentiation program in place? I talked about it earlier, but you just simply have to break down your customers into those five categories. When those five categories being what an apostle, that’s your top 10% right? Then you’ve got your loyalists. That should be about 80% of your customers. Then you’ve got those mercenaries who are focused on low prices. That’s all they want is low prices and then those what?

What? What? What? What it is the hostages. People that have to do business with you but they don’t want to. And then there’s one more category. What does it see if you can remember it. It is at it. Oh, terrorists. People that hate you and hate their spouse, hate America, and they want to make the world a switch over to this new green deal where we can’t drive cars or have airplanes and they are in favor of socialism. That is the kind of people that are terrorists in businesses. Avoid those people. Question 39 question 39 have you created a family time and family vacation calendar? As a small business owner, you often, often times find yourself working all the time, which is great for business, but bad for business time if your family ends up leaving you right, so you’ve got to schedule time for what matters.

If you don’t schedule time for what matters, then you’re not going to do it. I mean, you’re gonna skip your kids’ games. You’re not going to watch the movie with the kids. You’re not going to have a family night. Like today, I’m recording this today. All right, now I’m recording this, but we have family time scheduled tonight at six o’clock. Well, why is it scheduled? Because according to Lee Cockerel, the man who used to manage Walt Disney world resorts, what gets scheduled gets done. That’s right. What gets scheduled gets done. It is so important to keep that in your mind. What gets scheduled gets done. So I’m asking you what schedule in your calendar right now, are you scheduling time for your, your faith, your family, your finances, your fitness, your friendship, and your fun? Are you doing that? Are you scheduling time for your faith, your family, your finances, your fitness, your friendship, and your fun?

Cause if you don’t do it, I promise by default you will end up skipping something missing something. And that very well be could very well could be, um, the lives of your kids. I mean, you can, you could just skip. You could miss out on all of your kids’ childhood if you’re not careful as a business owner because there’s so many demands on you. There’s so many last minute burning fires, urgent requests. There’s so many things pulling at you. If you’re not intentional with your time, you will lose by default. Chapter Nine, the Monday morning meetings. Well, DJ connection. The one thing that I’ve heard, uh, most of our former employees, uh, praise me the most about or celebrate the most was our Monday morning meetings because these meetings happen every single Monday morning and they were a time where we would talk about the best things that happened that week and the worst things that happened that week.

So we’d start off with the good stuff. This is the part of the Monday morning meeting where we spend our time discussing the positive things that were happening at Dj connection at the time and what practical steps we needed to take to seize the opportunities at the time. As an example, Dj Josh would say this weekend I worked with Kitty Dishman over at golf club of Oklahoma and she told me that she loves us. She also told me that they are having a membership appreciation party in the spring and we really need to jump on this thing like a patchy. And so then we would put it on the tooth on the to do list and we would call her and book the event for the low, low price of free. Thus cementing our relationship with Kitty Dishman, Andy Golf Club of Oklahoma. The second thing we covered on the agenda was the the words, the abominations. We would cover the abominations. Now the abominations, uh, this was the part of the Monday morning meeting where we devoted this time to an in depth exploration into what went wrong during the previous week, who is to blame for it and how we could fix it with practical applicable steps. This part of our meeting

was nearly always devoted to chastising the same people for being late each week to chewing out the same production people for screwing up. Yet again, much of this portion of our agenda was also spent exploring who stole someone else’s leads and what we could do to fix it generic in week general comments like, Hey, I am not wanting to call anyone out here, but someone has been taking my leads were always available in abundance at these meetings. Then someone would inevitably respond with, I will freaking kick your boob. Don’t accuse me of stealing your leads. You. At this point in time, I completely was oblivious to the fact that the key to reducing this portion of our weekly agenda had nothing to do with increasing my intensity or increasing the volume at which I chastise people who are perpetually late to key to reducing our weekly abominations was only going to come through reducing the number of underperforming excuse making morons that we had present at our meeting each week.

For whatever reason, I just could not figure it out that I needed to fire the idiots. I didn’t. I don’t understand why it took me so long. Now I’m 38 I look back at it and go, what the cramp was. I think now the next part of our weekly Monday morning meeting was the motivational topic. Each week I would spend hours and hours reading motivational and business related management books in an attempt to motivate our underperformers and each week the motivational topic would always inspire one underperformer for a week before a week before they would be up to their traditional underperforming habitual ways. It was frustrating as crap for me to see grown men desperately searching and yearning for something to inspire and motivate them. Each week I would often read a motivational quote from somebody like Zig Ziglar, uh, where he would say, people often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing.

That’s why we recommend it daily and vests. I prepared my weekly motivational topics with a sense of religious duty. I felt then, and I still feel now that a leader’s number one job is to set the vision and to relentlessly make sure that the organization is always working toward the goals associated with the vision. Essentially working each week to make sure that the organization was getting closer to the goal instead of further away. At the time, DJ connection was averaging around $17,000 to $21,000 per week in sales, which was good. However, there’s $21,000 per week in sales was divided by Aaron, Nate, Josh Achilles, Jason, Keith and myself, which was not good to put this in perspective. Each sales guy was averaging is super weak sauce, $3,000 per week in sales. Thus we were each averaging merely $300 per week in commission payouts. Basically they were coming to work to have fun, but they were not coming to work to get paid and because one half of our sales team was making an additional $600 per week just deejaying on the weekends.

Some of them were actually content with their under performance at the time. The only three guys who were consistently performing at a high level, we’re people, I shall not name Boulitch, he’ll say three people were performing, everybody else just wanted to hang out. So in my attempt to improve our sales totals in to compensate for everyone else’s lack of performance, I just kept hiring additional quasi competent people instead of just rewarding top people and removing all of the bottom people. And with each new hire I brought it on, I further he motivated the top performers because their pie of inbound to sales calls as being continually divided into smaller and smaller pieces. I had not yet read Jack Welch’s philosophy on differentiation. The concept of hiring a player and B player employees was completely foreign to me. At the time, so I just kept trying to fill the gaping holes by hiring mediocre employees, by bringing on additional mediocre employees.

It was horrible, but to save you the headache. Let me briefly explain the belief system behind Jack Welch in his system of differentiation. Step one, review your employees and determine your top 20% your middle 70% and your bottom 10% in terms of their actual performance, not based upon their personalities and how funny they are, but their actual performance, not how much you like them or who you’re related to, but their actual performance. Step two, we reward your top 20% by publicly praising your a players with bonuses, love in various rewards. Step three, manage your middle 70% with extreme caution and care. As you will quickly find that most of your organization is comprised of this middle 70% of employees which Jack Welsh calls B players work tirelessly to be candid with your B players about where they can stand in your company. Where are they are in your company, where they stand over all in your company and how they can improve to become a flyers step for the hard part, you must remove the bottom 10% of your staff, your c players annually, and if not at least every six months.

Essentially, this system will allow you to reward your top people and to remove your bottom people. It works great as long as you are candid with people about where they stand in your company. And this is the hard part. He’s ain’t nobody likes firing anyone unless you are a real sick freak. However, you owe it to yourself, to your organization, and to your customers to mercilessly mercilessly. It’s easy for me to say mercilessly mercilessly remove the bottom 10% of your team who consistently and knowingly underperformed. But if it is any consolation to you, if you decide that you simply do not have it in you to fire anyone, you just wait a few months and your customers will fire you. Thus making it easier for you and now an unbiased voice of reason from one of our former Djs at the time, Mr. David Reese, who I just ran into recently at a at a local supplement store, David deejayed for us for years and uh, he was a great, great member of the team and this is what David describe his experience working with Dj connection as like he said, ingenuity, clay is and has always been quick to create solutions where no solution as a parent, if a necessary piece of equipment were missing from his setup and a wedding reception, he would never even for a moment be heard saying the show must be delayed or downscaled.

He would fashion a light trussing rod with his bare hands using only a roll of aluminum foil and stick and he’s stick of spearmint chewing gum and he probably has, if that was required to keep the party rocking. I’ve been in the passenger seat of a great painted Chevy Astro van to witness clay drive seven hours from Tulsa to Texas to host and our bond international Mercedes presentation. Afterward we drove nonstop back to Tulsa overnight. On a strict diet of Bananas, Strawberry Yogurt and Casey and Jojo audio listening pleasure. Three hours later he was arriving at the bridal fair to wow the brides to be for another eight hours straight. That’s how I remember him. A whirlwind of incredible, unmatched, unyielding, unbridled determination, ingenuity and funk. My friend. As I look back on it, I think that the time of growth at Dj connection was the most frustrating for me.

I got so tired of dealing with the same week alibi generating mama’s boy over coddled. I need a day off because today’s my birthday and I have carpal tunnel syndrome and have anxiety excuses and the same bearers of these alibis each week. It really irritated me knowing that certain people would show up late every day, literally every day with a new excuse for being late, while certain people would show up 15 minutes early every day because it was the right thing to do. It made me mad that certain people with often biblical, biblical, Biblical from the Bible, Biblical sounding names and self proclaimed biblical beliefs thought that there was nothing wrong with smoking pot on a consistent basis and it really irritated me that only a few people on our team ever showed any signs of productivity here I had worked tirelessly for eight years to build a large company and now DJ Connection was at its peak of its power, its profitability and its size, and I was fighting myself, hating my job.

Each week I grew more and more jaded by the abominations of the underperformers and if I weren’t such a management novice at the time, I would’ve been firing people left and right. Instead I was just growing more and more frustrated while carefully in diligently developing more idiots. Eventually when the accumulative and competence had reached an intolerable level, I would generally go off on the worst offender. I would usually list their abominations and it caustic way before firing them, I was known to say things like, Hey John, I appreciate you showing up late for the ninth consecutive day. I appreciate you being a slacker and I appreciate you ruining someone’s event because you were too lazy to do your job, but hey, congratulations, your fired you freaking idiot. I used to like firing people that way and I actually do like finding people that way today. I mean, if somebody is consistently not hitting their deadlines and they don’t show up to work on time and they are doing weird stuff, I don’t understand how somebody thinks that they’re in my good graces.

I don’t understand how somebody could somehow think that it’s not going to end that way. And so sometimes I have to do a public hanging where I fire somebody in a public way and I’ve been in a public way so that way everybody knows who was fired in why they were fired. So all in less than six months time, our family vehicle, a green Ford explorer had been completely destroyed by a Moron Dj with the last name of north who was fond to breaking the handles to both the driver’s side and the passenger side doors when he was not ripping knobs off of the radio, breaking the windshield, stealing coworkers, jackets, or taking my credit cards and you out there listening. If your last name is north and you know who you are, I don’t know how you deal with yourself, but think about that.

There’s certain people that just do stupid stuff. I drove the vehicle every single weekend and Everett broke it. Never had a problem with it, but this moron broke both doors to our car. We driven that car for a long time. I let him borrow at one time. He breaks the handle. What a freaking idiot. I had to find one employee $20 per day due to his lateness for over 60% of his scheduled workdays. That is as real. I had to fire one guy, everything. I had to find one guy thinking about that. I define one guy $20 per day due to his own lateness for over 60% of his scheduled workdays are new riding lawnmowers that we had purchased to mow our five Acre property at 8,900 south Lynn lane had been ruined by disc jockeys who we hired two more lawn on the weekends and apparently they were unaware that a mower can’t run over tree stumps.

Freaking idiots. Dj Connection with was routinely averaging over 60 events per week. And there are certain people on my team that just for whatever reason couldn’t keep up with it. In fact, my brother-in-law at one point referred me to a guy we’ll call him Lloyd, who had entirely destroyed my relationship with five wedding vendors because he used my reputation and his association with me to start a web development company, any used my name and my reputation to get deposits from people. And then once those people paid him deposits to uh, help them with their website, he would go from wedding vendor to wedding vendor, simply charging them a fee and then not delivering on what he promised. Unbelievable how he was hurting my reputation. But for him it’s okay. And if you go on Facebook, he’s divorced twice. Why? Cause he’s an idiot. And if you’re out there listening and you’re saying, well, clay, I don’t know why you would judge people or if you’re listening right now and you used to work for me and you said, I only had one affair with a married woman.

Listen, I guard my reputation with my life. All right? So if you are a member of my team and you are filling to hit the expectations and you are hurting my reputation, I, I view it as, oh, you’re killing my golden goose goose. I don’t forgive somebody who hurts my reputation. I mean, in a spiritual sense, I say I forgive you, but I won’t forget. No, no, I won’t. I won’t forget. Um, Robert Greene, the bestselling author of the 48 laws of power once wrote, do not leave your reputation to chance or gossip. It is your life’s artwork and you must craft it, hone it, and display it with the care of an artist. And I would even go deeper than that. I would even say that, that, that I would go deeper about, um, your, your reputation. I would go deeper. And if you have not, if you, if you haven’t read 48 laws of power, I would encourage you to read it because it is so important for you to understand how people go out there and try to manipulate you and take advantage of unit book will help you to vaccinate yourself against that manipulation that’s out there.

Robert Greene wrote, he said in the book, 48 laws of power. He says, reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone, you can intimidate and when once it slips, however you are vulnerable and will be attacked on all sides, make your reputation unassailable. Always be alert to potential attacks and fort them before they happen. It really, really hurt the reputation of our business for that Moron who worked for me to go out there and screw up people’s websites. But that’s what he did. And at this time in our business, we also had a large, uh, a female, like a large, like a linebacker sized female who pretended to fall down in front of our 8,900 Southland lane office while picking up her custom made cds for a presentation at an Arbonne event. It was a multilevel at the time and then she fell down. Oh, I hurt myself and she tried to sue me because she said that she was injured.

She hurt herself while ball all falling in front of my house and credible at this time. I also found out that a family member referred me to hire a disc jockey who he knew to be a full time drug dealer. What in the world at this time, I was also named as Oklahoma’s young entrepreneur of the year by the United States, small business administration. At this time, we had one of our former djs attempt to break into our DJ office and family home and does. I went to the DJ gun store and bought myself a DJ handgun and enrolled in a DJ gun

class to protect myself from exciting individuals such as this idiot at this time, our aerobic septic system that kept the crap out of our drinking water stopped functioning. Thus, I had the privilege of spending thousands of dollars repairing it. At this time. The daily dramas in the office related to Djs oversleeping over drinking over pot smoking and just being overly moronic grew to Jerry Springer s proportions. At this time, I was also named by the Oklahoma magazine as one of the top 40 under 40 entrepreneurs. As the awards kept rolling in and the frustrations mounted, Vanessa was now outwardly steading that she hated many of our disc jockeys and she couldn’t stand to see them taking their smoke breaks outside of our house anymore. She was tired of their constant dip spitting. Their constant lateness and my constant need to compensate for their lack of effort with additional effort on my part.

You see, Dj connection at this time was being run by idiots with so many idiots. I didn’t know the under. I didn’t understand the importance that people change seldom. I should not have hired B and c level character people, but as a new that a leader was supposed to always do more than than he expected from his people he had. She also knew that a leader had to be tough and willing to fire those that knowingly and consistently underperformed. That was hard for me. I mean, I knew that I needed to fire people that knowingly and consistently underperformed, but I felt bad for them. I wanted to fix them. I wanted to help them. Vanessa was frustrated with the Djs, but I think inside she was honestly more frustrated with me because I was too much of a week boss to reward our top people and remove our bottom people with ruthless pragmaticism.

In fact, I was ashamed to say that I did not literally even know what being pregnant meant at the time. I didn’t know what it meant to be pragmatic. All I knew was that I was working every night of the week during every anniversary during nearly every holiday except for Christmas Day, and then my wife was being held hostage by a bunch of 20 year old men who desperately needed a drill Sargent boss instead of a boss who was overly concerned with not wanting to offend anyone. I was seriously one of the weakest bosses in the world. Guys would call in sick guys would show up late and no matter what they did, I would forgive them for it because I didn’t want to offend anyone and I would just try to talk to them about it. Thus, to solve the problems associated with the underperformers, I launched Operation Krispy Kreme.

My logic behind undertaking this big, hairy audacious goal was to keep our guys occupied in a campaign that would bring them increased revenue. They were near. Now all in all making $1,000 per week at the, at the age, the average age of 24 years old. I mean guys are making $50,000 a year, but they were complaining they were being dysfunctional. They were, they were having issues. So basically the plan called for our top people to bring donuts to the offices of all of our major company referrals, all of our referral sources, all the wedding, all the,

all the, uh, ring stores, all the jewelry stores in any, any bridal store, any place that referred US business. I wanted our top djs out there talking to those top vendors all the time. So they had no time to sit around and complain and it worked. Each day. Dj Connection would spend nearly $50 on donuts and the bookings just kept pouring in. The faster the calls came in, the more our systems or lack of systems was tested. You see at this point, every call that came in to our phone, number nine one eight, four, eight, one 2010 every call that came into DJ connection.com every call that came in requesting a top DJ, every call that came in looking for the best DJ in town, every call coming in, looking for the best wedding DJ came into our single land line. And the phone number was (918) 481-2010 and we call that line the money line and thus when the money line rain, we new bookings were waiting for us during this time.

The money line never quit ringing, which kept our djs engaged and this temporarily improve the overall morale and level of productivity from our sales people. The only problem with this system was that every booking and every appointment was set had to be manually entered into a daytimer and then after that, after the, after the the actual deposit was paid, we had to manually enter in a confirmation into the system. Thus, I was now working at 4:00 AM every day. I was getting to work at 4:00 AM every day and ending every work day at 7:00 PM literally everyday I was killing myself through poor eating habits and sleep deprivation while simultaneously working tirelessly at killing my marriage through neglect. Luckily, Vanessa is the most tolerant and supportive wife ever Dj connection was now at a breaking point because I was at my breaking point. We needed systems that worked without my direct supervision.

We needed to break down the DJ connection workflow into easily duplicatable processes and that were assigned to to render an incredible customer service experience and Dj experience every time. The only problem was that I did not know what a workflow was and I did not know that I needed one. My friend Thomas Edison wants rote knowledge without application is meaningless. Think about this. Don’t allow this chapter to become more meaningless and empty then any parenting advice offered by Brittany Spears. Thus, enter the following self analyzing questions to make good use out of this chapter. Who is the weakest manager that you have worked for in your life and why? Question too, what makes this manager so week? Three who is the strongest manager that you’ve ever worked for and why? Question Four, what makes this manager is such a strong manager? Question Five, are you a weak manager or leader?

I know I was. Question six, make a list of the A, B, and c players and your organization, business or family, whatever is the most applicable. Your top 20% of performers, your middle 70% of performers, your bottom 10% of performers. Are you willing to reward your top people and get rid of your bottom people to improve your organization? That’s a question I would ask. Question number seven, are you willing to reward your top people and to get rid of your bottom people to improve your organization? Question number eight, if you were going to implement the differentiation system or management system tomorrow, what would be your first step? Question number nine question number nine, do you have a product or service that he would offer or that you will offer in the future reduced down to a system that is an easily duplicatable process? Let’s see, I may, let me rephrase the question a little differently or or better is the, is the service or product that you’re offering to the world?

Is it repeatable? Is it duplicatable? Because if not, you can’t create time freedom. If you make custom handmade swords for a living, you can’t make time or financial freedom. You can make a lot of sorts and you could create financial freedom, but you couldn’t create time freedom. So it asks you again, is the product or service that you’re creating? Is it possible in that industry to even create time and financial freedom? And maybe your goal is to not create time freedom. Maybe you just want to create financial freedom, that’s great, but if you want to create time and financial freedom, you must create a business model that is completely independent upon you and your unique skills.

Chapter 10 the exodus, the stress on us disclosure statements. My son goes blind and fun times with employees who have biblical names. Again, fun times with employees who have biblical names, life lesson. When it rains, it pours and then a huge chasms in the earth might just open up and swallow you whole, but God is in control. To say that 2007 was a tough year. It would be similar to someone saying that Roseanne Barr was slightly obnoxious. The year was horrible. As it rolled into 2007 I was still legally tied to a person that we’ll call. It was a partner. Well that’s good. Let’s call them Beelzebub. Beelzebub and us every day seemed to bring another prophet eating incident caused by Beelzebub, whether it was the party company’s van blowing up because the manager of the company did not check the vans oil for 11,000 miles or the evil former partners refusal to get the tags on the van registered, which sent me to court.

Something bad was always happening. Difficulty also ensued because Jason Bailey had now been promoted to manager, Aka zookeeper of DJ connection without being given the ability to discipline the meanest monkeys. This was a dumb move on my part and Jason, I’m sorry, which ultimately resulted in disciplining people from afar. Somehow my partnership beelzibub had forced me to become the lethal enforcer of all of our policies at Dj connection because I always had to leave for meetings. I never got a chance to celebrate the successes that the guys were having in the office. Uh, Jason became the good cup and I became the bad cop. Meanwhile, our son Aubrey was diagnosed with blindness, which we will get to in a moment, and our top sales guy went from acting like a choir boy to acting like he was a male prostitute or a pimp. This guy, he used to wear a suit every day, although our dress code Olin required everyone to wear a tie.

Also used to show up to work early to get a headstart into stay late all the time to help. Now he was smoking pot. He was crying at work. He was having people pull guns on him at his house. He was fighting with employees. He was accidentally knocking over coworkers beverages and then yelling at them for putting their drinks on their own desks. He goes, meeting girls on my space, proposing to them and then flying out to New Mexico to spend three days with him to evaluate their sexual compatibility. Then he spent his first three days back at the office team, motivating, inspiring, and distracting his fellow coworkers with his stories of sexual excess. He was accusing everyone of stealing his leads. He was causing Jason all sorts of Greece grief and he needed to be fired, which would again test our systems strength. Meanwhile, the choir boy was busy transforming into a demon.

The photography brand I created a with, we’ll call him Beelzebub, was generating considerable amounts of revenue and bookings, whoever it was headed for a full speed collision course disaster because of the lack of leadership provided by Beelzebub, my former say tannic LLC partner. The photography sales team was fired up, but they were selling the heck out of wedding packages. Whoever did. They did not have the skills needed to successfully deliver on the promises that they were making because Beelzebub was an experienced photographer who had promised to create a revolutionary, a revolution, a revolutionary training system and workflow as as his part of his contribution to the LLC. Apparently this revolutionary training system and workflow involved groping, fondling division, causing shirking from all raise personal responsibilities and wagering on the likelihood of sexual encounters taking place if this type of behavior is what he meant when he said revolutionary training, it what was certainly an understatement.

Every day I learned of another party foul that he committed or another commitment to train photographer pay or somebody hadn’t paid or a commitment he had broken or a promise he had broken. His promises were breaking with the intensity of a New Orleans Levy. During the great hurricane, my brain was on the verge of exploding before I found out that our three and a half month old son was diagnosed as being completely blind. At a certain point, it started to become comical. I felt like the character from the movie, pure luck who has this, who has this incredible knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time and yet onward, I marched because I was up to my eyeballs and obligations and quitting was not an option. Jason Bailey and a few members of our team where the only bright spots of the seemingly bleak future, the harder things got, the more these people seem to become solid people.

Jason and a few other people whose names I shall not mention physically, I was getting out of shape. I was emotionally losing my faith in humanity. Mentally I was overwhelmed and financially I was making tremendous amounts of money, but I was hemorrhaging cash to pay the partnerships, ongoing losses and I was completely spiritually empty. Now here is an unbiased voice of sanity from Jason Bailey who we ultimately sold DJ connection to WHO’s gone on to become a great owner of the company and uh, he was a very, very good, a member of the team and integral part of our success. Jason Bailey rights. I was taking my family to the zoo on my day off and I needed to go into the office to get them to get some things from my desk, so I hated that way. When I arrived, I saw Claire on the phone, which wasn’t anything new because he was always on the phone.

Only this time he had a different tone with a person on the other end, it turns out he was talking to the phone service agent about our bill. They were supposed to turn on the phone system the day we moved, but they didn’t get it on until two weeks after, so he couldn’t receive phone calls from customers for two weeks. Then when we got the bill, they had billed us for the month before we even moved in, so when I walked in, I hear Clavius yelling, I’m going to come out there and beat your ass in the parking lot unless you get this fixed. I don’t know how effective it was, but I, I can say that it worked out. They did get it done with renewed sense of urgency. However, I’m pretty sure that clay can’t get closer than 500 feet to any of the customer services offices.

Well, that was true. I did freak out at that customer service Rep and I did get it done and that’s usually what happens in my life. I feel like I have to always yell at people to get things done. It’s, it’s amazing to me how often it is that somebody says, I’m going to get something done, but they don’t do it because you don’t yell at them. It’s that followup. It’s when someone says, all right, the content for your website, pastor, update the bios on the website boss. Oh, I will go ahead and write the content on the website. I will call the leads. I will do what I’m supposed to do. Hey, boss, don’t worry about it. I will call the leads, but more often than not, they don’t do it. It has. Most people who know me can attest. I have never been a very, very religious person.

In fact, I would not have ever gone to church if it was not for my sensational life. Vanessa, oh, sure. I’ve gone to church physically, but mentally and spiritually, I’ve never gone to church up to this point until my wife, you know, pushed me to go. Our son, Aubrey deploy and Hill Clark was born on April 23rd, 2007 the logic that went into his name is as follows. We named him [inaudible] after my wife’s wonderful and inspirational step grandfather, who is a wonderful human and we chose Napoleon Hill after the author that changed the course of my life with his practical and applicable book titled Think and Grow Rich. I was really pushing to name him marvelous Aubrey, Napoleon Hill Clark, but my wife wouldn’t let me get away with it for the same reasons. She has not let me decorate our home. When we brought Abra home from the hospital, Vanessa and I were immediately excited about this new edition and we still are.

I as his dad was very excited about its potential as a professional athlete and for thrilly inspecting as small man body. I was convinced that he would definitely be playing in the NFL or the NBA with the next 20 years. I was so pumped when Aubrey was about three months old, the choirboy employee turned spawn of Satan started calling Aubrey scanner. He called him scanner because his eyes would dart back and forth quickly as if scanning a room without ever stopping to focus on anything in particular. He had always checked out perfectly at the doctor’s office and we just assumed that he was looking at everything around the time that Aubrey was about four months old, Vanessa Havana and Aubrey flew to Utah to attend a family wedding for her brother Adam, who was marrying a fun, loving young lady by the name of Sarah. This event was yet another wedding that I cannot attend because of my previous commitment to do a wedding for another couple in Dallas at the castle hills country club.

So I was actually in the middle of entertaining a hardy crowd of reception goers and kicking it so low like Hon. When Vanessa called me on the DJ emergency line, just like I answer any other call, ultra pragmatically and and enthusiastically, I said, Vanessa, what’s going on? She said, honey, something is wrong with arbors eyes. I glanced down at the counter on my CD player to verify how much time I had until I had to switch songs and then I repeated the question thinking that I had misunderstood what she said, which I normally do. I said, what bird? What? What did, what did you say? Vanessa repeated tearfully and urgently it Catherine, who is a pediatrician, says there is something wrong with [inaudible] eyes. She says they shouldn’t be moving so much. We need to take him to a doctor right away. When I get back, I don’t remember what I said next, but I remember thinking, holy crap, this is not good.

Oh Man, I’m going to cry. Yup. I’m starting to cry. What song am I going to play next? I Frantically told Bird, Aka my wife bird. I know that this is super important, but I will call you right back. I just have to play this next song. I’ll call you right back. Aubrey could not see and it, Catherine knew it. My wife was attending a wedding in with two kids and without me. Meanwhile, I was supposed to be having helping this couple, uh, celebrate the, the biggest day of their life. I was, I was missing my brother in law’s wedding at the, at the time with his, with his wife. I had to make this show ethic. I had to quit crying. I had to get my crap together and give them the microphone to get those people jamming. And I knew that if we jammed just hard enough, I’d be able to forget about my son’s potential problems for two more hours until it’s like get on the microphone and got those people on the dance floor with unparalleled conviction, enthusiasm.

And yet I still cried between songs, but at DJ connection, my friend, the show must go on. And so after telling my wife, I would call her back and after really, uh, wanting to call her back, I proceeded to Dj the crap out of this event. I made this wedding reception epic jam after Jam, I kept thinking, what could be wrong? What song am I going to play next? How could none of the doctors have noticed anything? And then I was step to the mic and say, Ladies and gentlemen, let’s get ridiculous, Kenny. See, that’s why I was asking myself. I would say to the audience, Ladies and gentlemen, let’s get this Congo line going to myself. I would say my son’s blind. I can’t have a blind son. What about the NFL? Does the NBA have any blind players? Maybe coaches? No. There are definitely no blend coaches in the NBA.

Then I would say on the microphone folks, we’ve got some Stevie wonder if he requests coming up next. And then to myself, I would say if my son is blind, well he’d be the next Stevie wonder. Long Story Short, I won over the crowd, kept people dancing and the audience loved on the newly married couple. After taking down the equipment I, I drove home to Tulsa with the long haired former pothead deejaying in training who was shadowing me in his Chevy old school, Blue Tahoe, Tahoe, all the while averaging 12 miles per gallon, which allowed us to appreciate the true splinter of the $3 per gallon gasoline. At the time, I apologize to anyone who’s ice cap melted as a direct result of the poor gas mileage we were averaging. When my wife returned from Utah, we immediately hit the doctor’s office, the doctor circuit. We, we first took Arboreta to see his pediatrician who was stumped and he referred us to another pediatric ophthalmologist.

We were then referred to the Dean Mcgee. I institute both doctors pragmatically said, your son is blind. Our doctor South Tulsa just kept repeating. Baby is not seen as Vanessa and I wept as he said it. I had known in the back of my mind that this might happen, but this was the last response. Finesse had expected. We had never discussed the possibility of him being unable to see permanently. Vanessa later told me she thought he was just having trouble with the movement of his eyes. She was completely taken off guard. I personally could not get my crap together at this hearing that your son will never see is pretty devastating. At the time, I was operating pretty close to the edge, emotional. Anyway, the doctor said, but there are great programs for blind kids. In fact, SoonerStart has a great program. Despite the appeal of working closely with the government bureaucrats on a daily basis.

We enrolled in the SoonerStart program and then we cried. When I finished. She started again. We made sure to rotate so that at least one of us was crying at all times and all sudden Saturday crying is what we did. Then I had to return to the office immediately, emotionally beaten down. When Eric asked me what was going on, I told him. Then I collapsed on my hands and knees and my dad’s accounting office. I cannot get my crap together. I cried during the day. Then I would coach myself out of crying before I began crying again. My wife cried at home while I cried at work. Bawling is what we did. We did more balling than I had ever done before for added measure. During our breakdown, I, I cried so well that I even got my somewhat stoic father to cry because my life was pretty stressful at the time.

I started to develop a sense of urgency about getting things done and about eliminating sources of my repeated frustration immediately because I no longer had the buffer of patients needed to keep me from taking the actions that I should have taken long ago. People on my team who are doing a crappy job, I dealt with immediately because I was so tired of being sick and tired because my life was pretty stressful at the time. I started to develop a sense of urgency about getting everything done. I told my dad and Jason and I had to fire Dj choirboy turns, say tannic demon boy with a biblical sounding name as soon as possible. I also let my feelings be known 100% candidly to the manager who was fond of create creating three to four days off per week. I called Beelzebub and encouraged him to go to hell and then the religious people started calling saying the usual or religious things, clay, God has a purpose.

We will pray for you. Our thoughts are with you. You can make it through this and as my doubt mounted with each call, I have always felt that someone was saying that they will pray for you is about the equivalent of, you know me saying, you know, I know you’re in a rough spot but I’m going to be thinking about you because what that typically means is that no one’s going to do anything for you. I mean, honestly, last time you told somebody, I’m going to pray for you. How often did you pray for them? The last time you saw somebody and you said, I’ll be praying for you. How often did you do it? Did you do it every day? If you did, that’s awesome and you get a make a point that’s awesome. You get to make a point, but how often if you told somebody, I’ll be praying for you and you didn’t do it, you forgot to do it.

Well, when people called me and said, they said that they would be praying for me, it did not encourage me and here’s an unbiased voice of sanity for my wife, Vanessa Clark. She said, looking back on the time that Aubrey was diagnosed as blind is surreal. I never quite accepted the diagnosis. Somehow I think that relates to his healing. I’m not quite sure how. I know there is power in words. I would never say the doctor says he is blind. I chose to say they said he’s having trouble seeing, I spoke constantly to clay about are we being healed in my husband didn’t believe in healings. I think he thought it was crazy, but we were both so upset. He chose not to battle me on my beliefs. I know that I needed that hope. I could not live with the current circumstances and I refused to.

So instead I went on day by day taking care of the kids and randomly breaking down. At which point I would have candid conversations with God about healing Opry. I constantly proclaimed God’s promises of healing. My son, I read in the Bible when Jesus, his disciples asked him, why was this man born blind and Jesus answered from John Chapter Nine verses six through seven he was born blind to the power of God, could be seen in him. Jesus didn’t proclaim Jesus, didn’t proceeded. Jesus then proceeded to heal the man. I reminded God what he had said and done and that he was no respecter of persons. What he had done for that man and he would do for my son. I continued to build my faith that it would happen now. It was just a matter of time. My friends, the more they paid for me, the more insincere their prayers felt for me.

The more positive emails I got from members of my team, the more I didn’t believe them, and I got an email from a member of our team, Dj Nate Moseley, who sent me an email during his honeymoon that said, your son will see that made me look up. Who is he to email that? What a jackass was he going to surgically repair my son’s eyes despite the doctor’s irrefutable evidence that nothing could be done? Was he going to use some Christian Ninja Jed, I boobs to heal my little former NBA prospect know Nate was not going to heal my son and I and I knew that God was not going to heal abra either. If everyone could just leave me alone, I would go onto, I’d be fine. I can just move on. But no, because my wife is a genius. Vanessa had an an undying belief that Aubrey would seat.

Maybe she was too upset to deal with what I thought was reality, but she always was talking about how great it was going to be when RB started seeing and what he would think to just start seeing out of the blue one day. Initially I told her about the email I’d receive from Nate because it was so offensive to me. However, one day spurred on from listening to my wife talk about Arby’s future vision. I told her about Nate’s. She was on fire. Vanessa immediately grilled me on everything related to the email. When did he send it? How does he know? Unable to answer any of the questions. I simply told her to call Nate. She did, and this is what she found out. Nate was on his honeymoon, a cruise with his wife, and he had been sleeping in everyday until until noon. He woke up on on a Thursday at 7:00 AM and felt that that you needed to pray in tongues, which I know freaked me out and probably freaks out some of our listeners.

When he finished, he felt that Aubrey was going to be healed and he was supposed to email and tell me Nate was unable to go back to sleep until he sent the email. My wife was ecstatic. I on the other hand, was in a state of despair, so I decided that it was time for a stress free vacation, but before we could go on our road trip to Florida, we had to go to Sam’s Club for food therapy. You know, we buy everything in bulk as most Sam’s club’s members can attest. The best day to go to Sam’s Club for inexpensive food therapy is Sunday, Aka a sample day. Thus on Sunday we went like most Sam’s club members do. We walked up and down the aisles coping for samples. Honey, look crepes. Oh yeah. I love crepes. I’ve never had one, but let’s sample three of them.

Oh look, macaroni, little smokies. Let’s sample that too and as we continued sampling, I continued self medicating with food therapy. In between sampling, I stumbled across a book that yelled out to me, buy me, buy me, buy me now, however that there was a problem. This book was a Christian Book and I disliked Christian books. I attended oral Roberts University and so I had seen irrefutable evidence that Richard Roberts and Lindsay and Lindsay Roberts were often insincere prayer towel, hawking hope, selling phony. I can’t say that word on the show. Thus I didn’t like the book. I didn’t like the idea of the book. I didn’t want to re, I didn’t want it to read a religious book, but the book that caught my eye was George foreman’s autobiography called God in my corner. I stopped for a second and said cautiously and suspiciously, Bert, wait a minute. I want to look at this book.

Did I placed the book down and kept walking? Almost immediately. George Foreman’s book taunted me some more. It was now almost screaming at me by me Sucker, or I punch you in the face. And so I bought the book. Needless to say, the book was compelling to me. I knew about George’s IX, extremely rough, early childhood and his life history of being a a mean talented and intense boxer. Because I am a sports fan. I knew that George Foreman had previously been considered to be one of the meanest fighters on earth, and then once he became a Christian, his reputation change to become the lovable endorsement character that we all associate with a lean mean drill machine. I knew this much about Georgia story, but I had no idea that he was an outspoken Christian. A few days later, as my wife Havana Opry and I drove eastbound in our silver jeep and route to Florida, I had Vanessa read George’s book out loud to me in man, did it speak to me?

I was astounded to hear about George’s miraculous encounters with God and how it changed his life. I was amazed to learn that George Foreman had a nephew that had a serious medical condition that had left him in a prolonged coma before he was miraculously healed by God after George had prayed for him. I was completely wowed when I learned that George had quit cold Turkey living his self admitted terrible lifestyle after God revealed himself to him. Minutes after he lost a major box, a major boxing match, and made your boxing match and I almost swerved into oncoming traffic with astonishment. When I learned that George is now an active pastor of his own church called the Church of Lord Jesus Christ and Houston, Texas, who knew the king of the grill machine was a pastor to a hundred impoverished inner city people in Houston who knew that the two time heavyweight champion of the world is an outspoken Christian who is willing to pray for, to witness, to, and to love on the poorest of the poor amongst us.

I had no idea. I had no idea. I had no idea. And so with some new found faith, I decided to pray for Little Avi. Shortly after we arrived in Destin, Florida, I started to see what my wife was seeing. This little dude with seen that’ll Opry was. See, I could not believe it. I doubted my belief, but I could not doubt what I was seeing. I was convinced that God would never heal my son, and I want it to be the guy who goes to church for the coffee. I wanted to be the guy who goes to church not believing in God. I wanted to be the guy that pointed out that the church is just a routine, that that God doesn’t actually heal. I wanted to be the person who despised a church, but you know would go every Sunday. I wanted to be a hypocrite, and if God were to heal my son, that would just be too weird.

If Aubrey were healed, I’d have to believe. I’d have to quit pretending to believe in God and his miraculous powers of healing. If Aubrey where he’ll that have to acknowledge that Richard and Lindsay Roberts, although corrupt, we’re actually maybe right and their theology. Maybe Lindsey and Richard Roberts weren’t right, but maybe God was right. Maybe Jesus Christ, father son, Holy Ghost. Maybe that was correct, but maybe Lindsey and Richard Roberts weren’t correct as maybe maybe they made mistakes like I made mistakes. Maybe they made flaws, like I made flaws. Maybe they had issues like I had issues. What’s your returned home? Vanessa called me after meeting with the doctor who had previously declared that our cinema was blind and I was sure that he would say that we were just drinking too much Christian Koolaid as a result of reading this book. I knew he would tell us that we were ultimately wanting Aubrey to see so much that we were now unwilling to deal with the harsh realities.

We were actually making up stories subconsciously about his seat. I knew the doctor was going to tell us politely that we were both making up a bunch of crap and that we were backing this crap up with convenient evidence. And this is exactly what the doctor did not say. The darker validated what my wife had believed. All along our son Aubrey had been healed without medical intervention, Aka we had just benefited from the hand of God, also known as we had experienced a miracle. Ladies and gentlemen, customers, friends, readers, neighbors, family, people that hate me, good natured people of importance. Our son had been unmistakably healed by someone other than a doctor. God did what medicine could not, and I no longer have a blind son, our son, Aubrey, Napoleon Hill can see for me this seeing equaled my believing. And I began seeing that all of the tough situations I was going through, we’re really not that tough when compared to the circumstances being faced by those fathers.

Living in America right now with with blind sons, with handicap sons, people dealing with bigger situations that me, fathers dealing with trying to feed their family, people living in Africa who can’t find a freshwater. I realized that my issues were not that big of an issue when in comparison to what other people were were dealing with. I began to realize that the stresses of dealing with managing week employees, corrupt partners, dishonest salespeople, and potential financial ruin, we’re not even challenging and comparison to what other people were dealing with. I was, I decided right then I was going to begin living my best life. Now on the very second that I first noticed RB could see, I went from being an inpatient and disgruntled person who was a frustrated with the Jack Asiri demonstrated on a daily basis from my employees to being a person who was thankful and content.

It took my son going blind for me to see who god is and what he’s truly capable of. And as I write this, I can tell you that my current life in the early chapters are filled with countless examples of what a Christian should not do. But I can’t tell you that God is real. [inaudible] healing is real and both of these revelations have changed my entire outlook on life. Although I still believe that Lindsay Robertson, Richard Roberts are not awesome. Maybe they can turn it around. Maybe they can change, but a, I’m not a big fee. I know I went to Oral Roberts University and you might say, why do you dislike them so much? I can just say that I don’t believe that they were at the time, sincere. Maybe they are sincere now, maybe they are great people. I don’t know. Now I don’t know if you can relate to this or not, but in my life I prayed for a lot of things that have not come to fruition and I have never seen a miracle happen.

Up until then, we, my best friend, mark to Peters was killed in a car accident. Isand silly prayed for his resurrection and it Lazarus kind of way, whoever. Unfortunately, mark did not rise from the, when I lived in Minnesota, I prayed for the ability to pass Algebra tests after I spent three years taking the same freaking class over and over due to my lack of natural math test taking abilities and for whatever reason my prayers were not met with the results and responses that I wanted, but my son was healed and thus I feel the need to bless you with the story our son begin seeing in September of 2007 but I did not want to tell anyone until I had medical confirmation that he was indeed seeing the healing of our son had me feeling euphoric, vivacious, and humbled. And now the the healing of Opry has me feeling beveled emotionally 15% more empathetic for most people.

And now I have a sincere belief in God. I’m full of faith and grateful for every day of good health that my family and I are blessed with. You could take away our nice house, but I would still have faith in God. You can take away our businesses, but I would still have faith in God. You could screw me over like countless people have done, and yet I still believe in God. You could have an affair with my personal assistant while her husband’s still works in my office. But I would still believe in God. You could smoke pot in, skip somebody’s wedding, which somebody has done. But I would still believe in God. You could screw me over in every possible way that I would still believe in God. My friend, my faith in Jesus Christ and his amazing healing power will never go away as a result of this miracle because it was the healing of my son that forever changed my life.

I think as a sound person, a skeptical person, a person who has a mind that functions my desk. Well, is he seeing now? Uh, yes. Aubrey is now seeing and he’s 11 years old and I’m still believing each weekday morning when he wakes up and looks up at me with his incredible seeing eyes. My faith is again renewed. I need that daily confirmation because I am a person of weak faith in a religious sense, but it is compounding with stunning consistency and unrelenting vigor. Like our national debt. I don’t know why God chose to heal every 3000 the name I call him most often after. So many of my earlier prayers have not been granted and I do not know why God chose not to restore my best friend mark when he was killed in a car accident, but I do know that Aubrey was healed, my son was healed.

I do know that I am not smart enough to fully grasp the concept of infinity and so I am trying to not get caught up in the Jack Handey style. Deep thoughts about my theology at this point, I’m just grateful. I am grateful that God healed my son. I am grateful that George Foreman shared his testimony with me through his book. I’m grateful that George Foreman was willing to meet with me when I insisted on meeting him and shaking his hand and telling him, thank you for writing his book. I’m grateful that Nate Mosley took a risk, went out on a limb and shared his faith with me. I’m grateful that my wife is smarter than me and has more faith than I have and I’m just thankful. So on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving 2007 Vanessa and I went to George’s church. We went to George Foreman’s church and at the church, I don’t know what I was expecting to, to experience or or to see, but I went to his church because I wanted to thank him for his faith building testimony and for boldly and unapologetically writing his book, God in my corner.

We were hoping that we might just get lucky enough to spend 10 seconds with the king of the grill machine to express our gratitude. However, after navigating for close to an hour or two is hard to find. Before Google maps, inner city neighborhood church, we received much more than that when we pulled into the parking lot of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, but a half hour late for service. It was raining with months soon, like ferocity. And thus when I opened the driver’s side door of the jeep to exit, I promptly stepped into four inches of water, thus completely soaking my dress shoes, my socks, my right foot, whoever. Armed with my divinely inspired sense of tenacity, I somehow was not upset by this debacle and Vanessa was not phased by the weather, influenced to hairstyle issues now rocking on her dome and we walked up to the church stairs. I think both of us were just thinking the same thing.

We’re terrible. We’re half an hour late to meet with George. It’s probably just not going to happen. Whoever we walked into his small sanctuary, we were amazed there he was. George Foreman, the guy who was on TV almost as much as Seinfeld reruns. He was there preaching from the pulpit to 20 inner city Houston neighborhood. People without any fanfare, homeless people, people that could barely afford to get there, that most downtrodden our society has produced were all there in his service. My friend, it was so humbling that I almost felt guilty for a attending his church. It was incredible. I mean, as he shared his faith with the congregation has incredible humbleness, was obvious. I silly could not believe it. He was literally walking around in between the pews and from person to person, asking individuals if they had prayer requests. And then one by one he prayed for them without any TV cameras, without any glitzy lights are glamorous staging.

He was not praying for these people so that he could make himself look good or that he was not making some large corporate donation so that he would look good. He was praying for the people who are in need because he believed that they needed a friend hope and encouragement, in my opinion, watching him preach was almost more inspiring than his book. And I think if I look at it objectively, I think that his, uh, watching and preach was more inspiring than his book. I mean, here was a guy going from person to person asking people if they needed prayer or help. And that’s what he provided as big. George went around asking for prayer requests. My always bold wife put her hand up and said, well, hello, what can we pray for? He said, and Vanessa told him while fighting back a grade, a few grateful tears of joy about the story of [inaudible] and I was healed, healed, healed of blindness and then big.

George asked if he could hold the Opry as he prayed for him and then he anointed opera with oil and began to pray for him with sincerity. Again, it’s worth repeating here. He prayed for him with sincerity. He prayed for him with enthusiasm and he prayed a simple prayer with conviction as he held Aubrey, I kept thinking, this dude is huge. His hands are huge. Thus, I am glad that I agree with him and what he’s saying and what he’s praying about because of I didn’t. He could dislocate my head. When George finished praying, he thanked us for attending his church and smiled with the most contagious smile that the world has ever known. I was wowed. We had connected with a sports legend, a hall of fame athlete and Iconic TV personality and with God. At the same time after George concluded the service, he introduced me to, Natalie, introduced my wife to Natalie hindrance.

He introduced us both to his family, Natalie Monk Red and his nephew who had been miraculously healed as described in his book. It was surreal. The characters in his book, we’re in front of me just meeting the real life characters from his book really solidified the books meaning to me. I like it. Meeting George’s George’s family to meeting Mr Spock at Walmart and electronic section, you know. Hey Mr Spock, how are you doing? Are you picking up some batteries? Mr Spock? Yeah, I’m picking up some batteries. They were running a special, you know, no big deal, live long and prosper homes and I’m sure for Natalie red monk, the nephew and for George it wasn’t that big of a deal, but for me it was worth writing about. George taking 15 minutes for me has really taken my Christian koolaid intake level to an all time high.

George shared with us how the story of Aubrey’s healing was encouraging to him and that made my Wednesday ethic take you George Foreman and thank you for and family my friend. If you’re out there listening to today’s show, listening to today’s chapter and you’re saying, well, how can I apply this? Because knowledge, because Thomas Edison once wrote, knowledge without application is meaningless. Well, please help support the don’t make reading this or listening to this chapter less meaningless then the plot of Ben Stiller’s tropic thunder by answering the following questions. Question number one, how many times are you willing to deal with temporary defeat problems and stress and route to achieving your business goals? Question number two, if you knew that you are going to die one year from now, what changes would you make in your work schedule to allow you to spend more time to pursue your goals?

Question number three, determine and write down a date that you are willing to make those changes. Question number four, what are your beliefs on God and how do they impact your daily life? And question number five, what action steps could you take tomorrow and every day after that to be to better demonstrate God’s love in your life as it pertains to dealing with people? Question number six, do you have any former choirboys torque turned spawns of Satan? Again, the question I ask is, do you have any former choirboys turned spawns of Satan currently working in your office today?

Question number seven, why have you not fired the person who’s making you not like the very business that you have created? Question number eight describe how you would deal with a bleak financial outlook and failed partnership. Question number nine, I would like for you to take the time to write out what specifically are you doing to make sure that you avoid partnering with somebody who is terrible? What steps can you take preemptively to keep herself out of a failed financial partnership? What values are you looking for out of your future partner? And question number 10, have you gone to big george.com and if you haven’t gone to big george.com I encourage you to check it out because George Foreman’s ministry helped to change my life. Check out his website today. It’s Big george.com big george.com chapter 11 the breakfast with Chet Cadieux. That changed my life life lesson 30 minutes spent learning from a guru is more important than spending eight years listening to the random opinions of everybody else.

My friend at this time, the year was 2007 and the, it’d be year went by fast because we had a lot of things that we were dealing with, but to, to give you an inaccurate look into, uh, what it was like to work with me at Dj connection at the time I interviewed a guy by the name of Eric Cooper, who at the time was our human resources director and our production director. His job was to go out there and to make sure that all of the files or finalized properly so that we didn’t play the wrong songs for the wrong bride on the wrong day. He made sure that all the songs confirmed, all the details were confirmed and that every wedding was confirmed to the best of his ability previous to us, uh, fulfilling those events with our DJ services. And Eric writes in the business world, there are several phrases that may come up when a difficult task is at hand, get it done, make it happen all nighters.

And the definition of an all nighter is the act of staying up all night to study or finish a task. In 2007, we moved to the much awaited corporate place building from the once luxurious Clark estate once too big. But now to credit, we moved to a new location. Any normal business would close up shop for one or two days and hire movers to take all the supplies and equipment to the new destination. However, if you know Clay Clark, he would say hiring movers is ridiculous. Closing Dj connection on a normal business day would never and will never happen. We did not close the time. Clay was covered in third degree burns from his vacation. We did not close when 50% of the city was victim to the largest ice storm on record. We didn’t even close when the machines we built turned on us during Judgment Day.

Sorry, a little terminator flashback. Anyway, we as a company started moving office equipment out of the estate at 5:01 PM on a Tuesday. We all were moving except for Josh Smith who at this point was doing phone appointments. I told you we don’t skip a beat to make the story even better while driving to our new offices. It started snowing in March. So then clay had a tangible reason to make us work harder and faster. Around 2:00 AM that morning when all the equipment was moved in and was out of our sight, clay asked us to get the office ready for the next work day. So for the next four hours, Jason Bailey and I sat in our it room carving cat five cable. If you have no idea what this means, and I would say it was similar to sewing eight buttons on 30 different shirts after a 20 hour work day.

After all was said and done, we made the move over night and the only loss we had was clays wallet, which he later found on top of our soda machine four months later at this point, Dj connection and truly grown from me to we as Magic Johnson had encouraged me to do through through his story and John Maxwell’s 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. We had grown from me to we and because we had built a great team who is truly committed to offering a quality product, I felt renewed, a renewed sense of urgency about improving our service to distance ourselves from the competition and I knew just how we were going to do it. This was my plan. I knew that quick trip was the best gas station chain in the country and I knew that southwest airlines was the best air travel service in the country.

Thus, I believe that if I studied these two companies with tenacity and intensity, I could mind their histories and best practice processes for applicable action steps and ideas that can be immediately [email protected] to improve our product and service. I had long revered, quick trip in southwest with the kind of devotion that most adult men only reserve their favorite college sports team. My friends, I am obsessed with the quality and customer service of Southwest Airlines and quick trip. I love these two companies, so I went out and purchased nuts, the southwest airlines, crazy recipe for business and personal success by Jackie and Kevin Fryberg who we’ve just had on the thrive time show podcast. When I read this book, I just finished reading straight from the gut from Jack Welch, which details Jack Welch’s ultra intense journey to the top of Ge. It was amazing how he grown from the very bottom to the very top of the Ge Mountain Mountain and the amazing successes that were achieved by Ge as a result of his management and leadership.

So I was mentally prepared to grind out the reading of yet another business case study style book. And as I read nuts, I cannot not help but to be inspired by the stories found on the pages from the book. Many business people have told me that a book or conferences worth reading or attending if they get just one nugget of knowledge from it. Well, in this case case than nuts was worth millions to me. As I read from page to page, I could not help but to feel as though God had divinely put this book in front of me to read at this very moment, I read how southwest airlines only flew seven 37 Boeing airplanes to maximize efficiency versus American Airlines who is losing money consistently. It blew my mind here. Ear, southwest airlines was making profit every quarter and here American Airlines was losing money every quarter and I thought maybe I could learn something from reading the nuts case study.

I immediately saw how it related to Dj connection over the years as I was growing this business at a lightning speed to keep up with the size of my ambition, I never took time out to think about our niche. As we continually bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment, I never took time out to think if the gear we were buying fit our niche or not. I never stopped to think about whether the people I was hiring fit our niche or not. I had never even taken the time to define our niche and so for the first time I did, I determined that Dj connection was going to specialize in providing entertainment for weddings for 300 people or less. I determined that we were not going to grow into a huge concert sound in lighting company as we’d been dabbling it. I then wrote down what standardized gear we were going to buy for each system, and I came to the realization that the only sincere people with a good sense of humor and ambition could work for us and be successful.

Again, I wrote down that only sincere people with a good sense of humor and ambition could work for us and be truly successful. After to finding our niche for the first time, I pressed on to discover Southwest’s incredibly, uh, simple philosophy of only promoting from within as detailed and nuts. This reaffirmed my belief and not bringing in outside talent to manage company insiders and longtime people. I was fired up to know that southwest airlines believed as I did and the importance of starting everyone at the bottom so they can grow with the company and motivate those around him who witnessed firsthand the work that they had to do to get to the top. The portion of the southwest book that that blew my mind the most, the portion of the book were the founder of southwest recounted. It’s beginning by stating that the company began as an idea to do lots of flights for a small amount of money per ticket.

Instead of treating a lot of money for a few of life for a few flights like the other airlines were doing at the time. This inspired me even more. I started realizing that unintentionally DJ connection to clawed its way into the market by think about this DJ connection had clawed its way into the market by charging very little. Therefore, we had actually created a niche for ourselves as being the southwest airlines of the DJ industry. While our competition was holding out for high dollar shows, we were profiting while charging nearly half as much. Plus our customers loved it and our competition hated it. Many airlines still hate southwest airlines because they ruined the industry with their low fare rates. However, customers love being able to afford flights for business vacation and to see family DJ connection. Customers love the affordability that we provided in our competition hated us too.

In fact, most of them still hate us today, which is good because I really wouldn’t want to hang out with them either if given the chance. I mean, we were absolutely destroying these people. We were bringing in 10 times the revenue of the average local Dj company 20 times the average revenue of the local Dj company because we had the philosophy that we would charge less and do more as a powered through Southwest’s book, the book called nuts by Jackie and Kevin Fryberg highlighting, notating and questioning everything that Dj connection was doing in light of southwest. I stumbled across this little southwest belief that employees are the company’s most important assets. Southwest doesn’t avoid firing underperformance, but they tried to avoid hiring underperformers using their rigorous employee interviewing process. Southwest believed that you can essentially train almost anyone with a skill but you can never train somebody without character.

Again, southwest airlines you can essentially train almost anybody to to learn a skill, but you can’t train somebody without character. Once someone with a great attitude actually gets through the screening and exhaustive training process, they are then welcomed into a company that system and systematically shares its profits with its employees and celebrates the business successes and the individual achievements of its people like they just won the Superbowl. Pretty. Ms Book inspired me to take Dj connection to a whole new level. I preach to our guys about continuing but the continuing need to hire the best people. Studying southwest changed my brain and reaffirmed a few core beliefs that I believed, but I had been reluctant to implement with the full faith that comes with knowing that these ideas have actually worked somewhere else previously and as luck would have it after we implemented the nuggets found within the southwest airlines book to the fullest capacity of our abilities, I got a response from quick trip for a years.

I had mailed him letters requesting a moment or two with the founders to pick their brains and to learn from them the Lord for the founding fathers of quick trip about the convenient store juggernaut and how they did it. And finally they had responded with an invitation for me to meet with the founder’s son and the current president of quick trip Mr Chet cajones. To say that I was excited about meeting Chet was an understatement. I felt like an early 1990s teenager girl getting a chance to meet the members of insync backstage before there Madison Square Garden concert and like any other good star wars nut would do when going to see a star wars film for the first time. I showed up early. In fact, I shut up crazy early. I should’ve like two hours early. I was so excited about meeting with him that my brain could not possibly cannot possibly deal with deal with it.

I was just, stuff was, I was fired up and I, I probably, uh, my brain could have probably been audibly heard humming with the electric energy being generated as my mind was building with anticipation. I sat in my 1984 stocker class Brown van that I bought for $1,000 and I wrote down questions I would ask him. I knew that he was the explorer who had found gold. He had found the lost city of Business Atlantis at Business Atlantis. It Lantis and I knew he knew how I could get there too. I just had to get the information out of him without coming across like a spy for as competition or some stalker who drives a 1984 Brown van strike one. Anyway, eventually at seven 45 I approached the front of the quick trip world headquarters. The place was everything that I dreamed it would be. It was like the Church of capitalism.

It had vaulted ceilings, high quality, quick trip logos, nice furniture but not unprofitably nice every section desk that was being manned by an incredibly friendly lady who encouraged me to sign in because chip will be right with you. Holy Crap. I was going to meet the Obi wan Kenobi of the convenience store, capitalism. I was going to meet the man with the plan, the dude with the right attitude, the boss who had paid the cost. I was going to meet the head of quick trip and as he approached me, I couldn’t help but not being able to recognize him. At first, he walked briskly and was wearing the standard quick trip polo shirt that all of his store employees are expected to wear. I expected him to wear a suit or to come in on a golden, maybe a solid gold hovercraft, but he just briskly walked, walked in and dressed like every other employee and that was my first sign that this dude was not like other CEOs.

You see it Quik trip. They also hire for personality and attitude and they train for skill like southwest. They also promote from within and thus Chet, the president, the son of the founder had actually worked in gas stations himself. He actually worked at night shifts, night shifts like everyone else. He worked at holidays like everyone else and because of that he had earned the respect of those working underneath him like no one else. As Chet talked, I tried my best not to ask for an autograph and I interrogated him with as much tact as possible while I peevishly took notes. Here’s a copy of the notes that I took that day. Chet Cadieux meeting notes, title, president of QuikTrip notes. Chet works hard at achieving balance. He reads three books per week and he always reads really cheesy crap. He sleeps six hours per night on average.

He’s an insomniac. He’s very accessible to staff to free up his time to work on business projects. Chet empowers people by making it okay to make a mistake as long as people show that they are learning from their mistakes. Chet says, don’t ask for something if you already know the answer. If you need someone to partner with you so that you are so that you are confident that you are making the right decision. That is okay. He says the best people you can get, the best people you can. He says, get the best people you can. Spend money on people and not marketing your people must deliver. Get solid paper people. Your people are marketing. Don’t care what people think. Make right versus wrong decisions based on whether you would be proud to tell your mother. He went on to explain that you can’t base your decisions on whether your father would be proud because fathers can justify things that your mother will not.

Mothers are the moral, moral authority. Love on your people and they will love on the customer. Business growth tips. Quiktrip employees can buy B stock in the company. They can continue to own it after they leave quick trip. They could only buy it if they work there. The company has 15 to 20% owned by employees. Investing tips. Invest in your people, Reinvest in your company, own one half of your land and leased the other half fun factoids each year. Every year. Quick trip has an employee focused new year’s party that celebrates their year’s end, not the actual years end QuikTrip benchmarks itself against against southwest airlines. Aka believed that southwest airlines is their biggest competitor. Recommended books. The one hour manager by Kenneth Blanchard, Phd in Spencer Johnson, MD, the service profit chain chain by James L Hasket, w Earl Sasser and Leonard a slessinger the value profit chain. My James L Heskett, w Earl Sasser and Leonard a slessinger retirement plan.

Chet will retire when he finds someone better at doing his job and he owns tons of QT. Be Stock employee ownership is key as you can probably imagine by now. Meeting with Chet sent me on yet another three months tangent to improve DJ connection with each and every business tip that he gave me when we parted ways, I wanted to hug him because meeting with him was everything that I had built it up to be and everything that I needed it to be. When he sent me home with an employee copy of the 40th anniversary of quick trip, I was pumped up. The 40th anniversary of a limited edition book was mine. I was pumped. I had my memorabilia. I can now hop into my 1984 Brown Chevy stucker class van thing, satisfied and content. When I got back to the office, I immediately ordered the books he recommended.

I told the office dude’s how cool he was and again, I think Jason, Eric and Josh were inspired and everyone else was pissed and knowing that we were going to become great, which meant that they too were going to have to become great through the process because achieving greatness requires a lot of work. This just in achieving greatness requires a lot of work. My friend when the books arrived, I read them as quickly as [inaudible] with as much focus as I could possibly muster. I got so many good nuggets out of these books that I felt as though I had doubled my intelligence when I finished reading them. Without exaggeration. Read these books, made the employee management issues that I used to deal with seem easy and if I was just willing to follow the steps outlined in the books, the books were case studies of outback ups, Geico, and various other industry leaders.

With each case study, I felt like I was gaining more knowledge than I had learned in my first 10 years of experience running DJ connection. As I read the service profit chain and the value profit chain, I almost began to feel overwhelmed by the excitement and the ambition that these two books I bought for $10 used off of Amazon we’re causing to stir within me. For the first time in my business career, I felt as though every small detail of my business to deliver was laid out in front of me with amazing clarity. I can now gaze into the future and see what Dj connection was going to become. I knew it was big coke going to become multistate multi city, multi. I don’t know how big Jason Bailey’s grown it, but I knew it was going to be big. I knew where we were going and how we were going to get there.

These books were, these books were so rich with knowledge in actual practical business case studies that they had an example that I could relate to for just about everything. How do I market my business with precision? They had a case study and example for it. How do I build a customer database that adds value to our customers? They had a case study to provide an example for it. These books really helped me expand upon in perfect the systems that Brent and e-myth had encouraged me to build these three books recommended to me by Chet instructed me on how I was going to build a workflow that would not require me personally to work 90 hours per week. How is it possible? I just bought a book for $10. It taught me how to scale my business. These books had action steps, charts and statistics designed to show me how others had done it and how I could do it to how I was going to develop team loyalty and systematically nurture employee relationships.

They had a case study for everything. This book absolutely changed my life and I go back to this notable quotable by Sir Isaac Newton, one of the leading scientists of his, uh, of his time. He writes, if I had, if I have seen further, it is because I have stood on the shoulder of giants. I shall repeat. He says, if I have seen further is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants. Well, at that point in the business, things were going well. We were growing. But to give you a historically accurate perspective of the of the of the business at the time, I decided to interview an employee who worked with us during that time and whose name I shall not mention, but he writes, going anywhere on the road with two or more djs was almost always guaranteed something strange was going to happen or at least something hilarious every year.

There was a certain amount of bridal shows that happened in the Dallas Fort Worth area, roughly four or five hours away. They’re required group travel and because we wanted to be as profitable as possible, group sleeping arrangements as in the cheapest hotel to be found in the area would be booked usually with a two person limit and we would regularly fit four to six people in the hotel and multiple people in the same bed on the couch, on the reclining chair, on the floor in the bath tub, et cetera. All Law Sam Walton during the early warm but Walmart years. One such situation found me sleeping in the same bed as clay and at one point in the night while sleeping, I got punched in the ear. When I awoke to see what was going on, clay had taken my pillow. I was so tired that I thought I was slightly delusional.

I just laid back down and went to sleep. Another time in Dallas during a two day bridal fair, clay got violently sick and Eric Cooper, Sean Taco and I were busy talking to brides to be said for the first hour or so, Klages lay on the concrete floor behind our table in our booths and no one else could see him and a buddy, but again to throw up inside of the bins inside of the equipment bins, and I was giving sales presentations less than a foot away from a semiconscious clay lying on the floor and the bride’s never knew he was there, which I found to be pretty funny. At the end of the event, clay was too sick to travel in. Shanai decided to stay back for support. Clay was stiff and his muscles were so achy that he was writhing and one of the hotel beds.

Why shot and I watch television. He kept asking for someone to rub his neck and head because how bad it was killing him, but either tion I would do it for fear that the whole thing being a way to make a fun of us later for a gay moment. Apparently he was not faking anything because later that night we rushed him to the emergency room and during the Hyler the night he had to get a spinal tap but fainted first when he saw the needle. What’s the moral of this story? I’m not sure, but I felt like the story should be told thus to keep this chapter from having about as much practical application as the old wives tale that eating chocolate causes acne. Get down to business and answer these questions. Question number one, most millionaires spend one hour per day reading information related to their industry, business or service.

Why aren’t you reading one hour per day? Of course. Number two, how long will it take you to order the service profit chain? And the value that then in the value profit chain books on Amazon. How long will it take you to buy and purchase the service profit chain and the value profit chain books on Amazon? Question number three. What is your current businesses niche? Describe this businesses niche in great detail. Make sure to define the businesses niche in terms of the products or services that you can provide. Question number four, write down three actions steps for how you will recruit employees who will be able to fit successfully into your businesses niche. And question number five, write out to detailed examples of how great people whom you’re company has hired for their personality and their attitude rather than just their skills have helped to grow your company tremendously.

Chapter 12 the DJ connection, founding principles, the founding principles at DJ connection. At the time I was running the company when I started the company, when I built the company. These were the founding principles. Now does the company Dj connection.com still believe in these principles? I don’t know, but I’m going to go through the seven principles that I ran the company by when I ran the company. Um, I think a lot of people, uh, want to assume that when you sell a company that the new owner will, will honor value, continue to uphold the principles that you believe in. Wa I would say that that Jason Bailey, that, that the owner of DJ connection.com it is, it is a great person. He’s a nice guy. He’s a, an honorable person. A guy you would like and trust. A guy that worked with me faithfully for years and I’m glad that I sold the company to him, but I can’t say that he either believes in or doesn’t believe in the founding principles that I use to grow DJ connection because we don’t talk.

I don’t talk to him about it. When I, when I sold the business again, it was like I’m breaking up with a girl and now somebody else is dating that girl. And I’m just not that into staying in touch with the girl that I used to be dating. But the founding principles that I have when I started Dj connection were as follows. At Dj connection, we believe in delivering more service than for which we are paid by delivering more service than for which we were paid. We will always truly be in demand. We will consistently deliver more service than for which we are paid and as a and as a result we will exponentially grow our company and our reputations alike. Think about that. We will exponentially grow our reputations and our company like and if you do not believe that, if you don’t believe in that philosophy, you can’t work at Dj connection.

Toning principle number one, our philosophy on the DJ business. We are a commercial and professional DJ service, a a commercial and professional disc jockey service, which means that our clients for the most part are not interested in our artistic ability. They’re interested in our ability to coordinate and facilitate the implementation of all the events which they have planned for a specific evening. We are hired to be the master of ceremonies paid to get the guests involved in the show as well as to get them to dance. We always deliver more service than for which we are paid. Founding principle number two, the proper DJ mindset to get those guests dance. It is important that we do not let our own biases or preferences get in the way of our ability to make sure that all guests go home happy and specifically the guest who’s paying us to Dj their event.

Sell yourself first and let the equipment do its job. If you are tired, you just broke your leg and your and your head hurts, the client doesn’t care. Not everyone who comes to a show is happy, but it is your job that 80% of the people should leave. That way. Every show is opening night. Why? MCA is always a good song. Shout is the most profound song ever written and electric slide never loses its electricity. You must always be happy when at a show. Founding principle number three, we are an elite club, not a family where everything is allowed and unconditional love is provided at Dj connection. Dj Connection is an elite club. Again, Dj connection is an elite club that you are allowed to enter into much like the professional basketball or professional baseball or professional football hall of [email protected] we recognize that Sam Walton was correct when he wrote when he first wrote.

There is only one boss, the customer, and he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down simply by spending his money somewhere else. Sam Walton, the Co founder of Walmart, founding principle number four, DJ integrity and ethics. Because we are a Christian owned business, we should act interest like it, Aka look professional if ever a song of requested that may be offensive or objectionable to our discernment. It is always best to ask the parties host a chaperone or the people paying us if they feel that the song would be appropriate for the event. If no one is around, don’t play it. Prospective Clients, Aka connections, maybe sitting at every table in every chair, offensive music and off color music. Maybe funny to a handful of guests, but if it offends the other 70% that makes a foot in the mouth. Dj Connection. Founding principle number five, we are the best.

There are 20 some odd Dj services in Tulsa and we are the best. We’re not average. We are not. Second, we are not third. The other ones are adequate at best. However, it is important that we never use negativity to sell our services over other companies. Principle number six, our mission statement at Dj connection. It is our goal that every client goes home with a smile on their face and he welcomed memory in their minds. Each client has unique needs and it is our goal that we provide the services and expertise that will meet those needs to the fullest extent possible. We will go, I repeat. We will go that extra mile to make sure that our clients next party reception or banquet is an overwhelming success. By catering our music lighting packages and show itineraries to fit their needs, we believe that genuinely satisfied customers make the best references.

Principle number seven, at Dj connection, we create the momentum again, founding principle number seven, we create the momentum at Dj connection and our, our djs create the momentum and the energy. If we do not wait for the audience to get the party started. Chapter 13, the right time to sell. Um, I can say this because I’ve had enough time to sit back and reflect on it. I mean, it’s been, um, now what, 10 years since I sold the company. So I think I can look at it objectively and unemotional and ex explain what I’m going to, to share here. Knowing that many current Dj connection customers are going to hear this and many current Dj connection employees are going to hear this, but there is a crazy ass, these three, three from the Bible. ECCLESIASTES, he’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a book in the Bible and in the Bible.

Ecclesiastes three three reads, well, let me, let me read Ecclesiastes three one it says to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven, a time to be born, time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal. And a time to break down in a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh and a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to cast away stones and time to gather stones together. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing a time to get at a time to lose, a time to keep and time to castle castaway. Well, this particular time, um, Jason Bailey, who was a, a great member of our team, expressed an interest in wanting to grow the company and to take the company to a different level and I didn’t want to do it.

Um, Jason was a loyal, faithful member of the team and he wanted to take the company to another level and I didn’t want to do it well. Why? I Dunno. I’ve been screwed a lot financially. I was beginning to make money from a variety of other sources that weren’t related to my DJ connection income. And Jason was passionate about it. He wanted to take the company to the next level. He wanted to expand DJ connection He had a vision to take the company to another place. And so before I sold the company, we were in, we were in a, we did events in Texas. We did events in Oklahoma. We did events in Colorado. We did events in Missouri. But Jason wanted to open up the business and put it all over the planet. He wanted to put it in Atlanta, in Atlanta. He wanted to put the company in Nashville.

He wanted to put the company and, uh, Kansas City, he wanted to put the company in Chicago. He wanted to put the DJ Connectionanyway, he wanted to put the company in Indianapolis. He wanted to put the company in Cincinnati. He wanted to put the company and Louisville, but I didn’t, I was frankly tired of, of managing people. I no longer cared about, um, coaching up Djs to become the best DJ possible. And so it was the right time to sell the company. I’d already deejayed for the Minnesota Vikings cheerleaders. I had already opened up a Kevin Garnett store when I deejayed at kgs grand opening of his store. I had, I had already deejayed my company had already deejayed for Chuck Norris. We’d already deejayed for, um, we’d already achieved all the awards and they’re not.com. We’d been featured on MTV. We, um, you know, Lady Gaga had a certain connection to our business.

The Wall Street Journal had a certain connection to our business. We were featured on a Tlc, the learning channel as a, uh, on, on the show. We’d already done all those things and I just wasn’t interested in doing that thing anymore. I wanted to go on to do something else. And so if you go to thrive time show.com, you can see what I’m up to now. But I think Jason Bailey was the right guy at the right time to take over DJ connection and to take it to another level. So to Jason Bailey, I salute you to the new DJ connection Dj’s. I salute you too, and tell everybody out there who’s event has been taken from ordinary to extraordinary as a result of what I built and what Jason has taken to the next level. I appreciate you because without you, it wouldn’t have been possible.