Being a B.O.S.S. | Big Obstacles Seem Small

Audio Transcription

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

[inaudible]. Yes, yes,

yes and yes. Thrive nation. Welcome back to another exciting edition of the thrive time show on your radio and podcast download and inside, inside the box that rocks. We have two very special guests with us today. We have Paul Hood with hood CPA’s and Jill Donovan, the founder of rustic cuff is in the box today. Paul Hood. How are you sir? I am amazing. I am standing next to Jill. She’s like a heroes. She’s like everybody knows has heard him or her and I’m here standing next to her clay. Thank you Jill. The thrill and Paul, have you already done a hard pitch for accounting a service? I haven’t yet by heart. I thought I would just let her absorb my incredible personality for a little while. Then we’ll talk business and her team was on the way out when they were leaving. Did you try to recruit her team to come work for you?

Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t know that was her team though, so I wouldn’t know. Okay. Now this is, sorry Jill. This is what happens. I mean this, if you’re a boss and you’re, maybe you’re listening, then you want to be a boss or you are a boss. I want to talk about three things that you have to be doing all the time. And then I would like for Jill to pontificate as to whether she agrees or maybe she has other things she thinks you should be focusing on. And because she will be the Monday morning quarterback, she gets to one-up me and then Paul, because it’s rude to one up people. You can really want a purse. So you’re going to one up me twice basically here. One of her as well. So here we go. A boss. You must always be recruiting good people.

Um, always. This is why bosses that I know who do well in business, every time they’re out to eat, they go, Oh, that weight are, we should, we should hire them. Yes. Oh wow. That’s a, that’s the always hiring. Second thing a boss should do. The boss is always making sure somebody is selling something. I mean, that’s, that’s like, uh, bosses are always going, Hey, by the way, Hey, I don’t know if you’ve thought about that. We could team up and do this. Or Hey, Hey, Hey, by the way, here’s my card here. I could do your accounting. I mean, bosses are always thinking that way and absolutely. And the third is a boss has to know their numbers. The boss has to know how are we doing? Do we know our numbers? Do we, are we doing well? Are we not doing well? Um, in a boss, I remember at the boss over all the big encompassing, put a bow on it.

A boss must make big obstacles seem small for their team. They cannot be the one who thinks everything’s overwhelming. But a lot of times employees, they don’t mean you don’t mean in a bad way. But a lot of times I’ll pitch an idea in a meeting and an employee will go, Oh gosh, but what if, is it legal? Is it ethical? When will we find the time? Do we have the technology? Have you ever done it before? How do you know you’re going to be good at it? How do we know it’s going to work? And a boss just sorta gets it done. So I’d like to start with you, Jill. Let’s talk about this idea of recruiting as the boss. Do you believe that that is one of your duties and, and do you do this

even when I don’t need somebody, I’m, whenever I am anywhere I look at the person, not their skill level per se, but just their character. And I think, I don’t know what I could have you do for my company, but I just like you and want you and I can’t, I can’t. I’ve done this on, on flights. I’ve done it at the mall. I’ll see somebody who goes above and beyond in a job that most people wouldn’t. And I just say, here, here’s my card. Call me. You do that. I do that. I have one of my best, best employees who now lives in Dallas. I found her through a shoe. Uh, she was selling shoes. Okay. And I put on a pair of bright, bright yellow patent leather boots. And she looked at me and they weren’t cheap and I thought for sure she’ll tell me for sure she loves them.

And she looked at me and she said, [inaudible] those boots don’t work for you. Really. And I pulled this I, which was awesome because she didn’t have a backup for it, which means she was going to lose the sale. And I S afterward I bought something else cause I trusted her that they didn’t look good and it was a lot cheaper. And I said, here’s the deal you, we’ve never met but I’m going to tell you, you are so honest with me about that very expensive pair of boots that you, uh, I gotta I gotta hire you. And so, uh, two months later I did and she’s been working for me for about four years now.

Really? So for you, this is the shoe lady you met here at the shoe store. And then what roles did you promote her to within rusty

because sales. Brilliant. Yeah. So Paul, let’s talk meeting, meeting the show room. She works in the showroom.

I’ve seen Paul do this by the way, not out of the show room, but I’ve seen Paul pick off the friends of his son. Oh, absolutely. Your son is a fitness guy. Yeah, he’s a hardworking guy. OSU graduate, Oklahoma state university, and go pokes and he’ll have these young whippersnappers. He’s hanging out with [inaudible] and you, you kind of get that crazy high and they’re like, what’s your dad doing? He’s like, I think my dad’s trying to recruit you. Right. And I mean it seriously. Don’t you do that? I absolutely, you know, clay, you gotta think of your business as a professional football team and you’re always looking for that next quarterback or that next running back that that the person that just has the desire and the heart and just wants to learn once the opportunity. We have a guy working for us right now as is actually Bryce’s brother-in-law and has no accounting background, no finance background, but he’s managing about $40,000 a month worth of accounts because he was hungering.

We plugged him into a system and yeah, we recruited him straight off the bat because, you know, he’s a, I don’t know what to say because he was a Marine, but you can’t say X Marine cause they say once a Marine, always a Marine. So he used to be an active Marine and that, that spoke a lot to me, but he was just that guy, you know, he was, he was, and I don’t care if it’s male, female, I don’t care. Sex, I don’t care, you know, race, it’s, it’s show me your heart, show me your desire and, and I’ll plug you into our system and you can be very, very successful. This excites me so much because you’ve already done the work for me and now I’m going to pick them up from, you know, here, there’s ago. Well now you know what high five, get them.

Yo, this is something that a M did is my ethics on this. And some of you might say, I thought this show didn’t have any ethics and you might, I believe this is my, my rules. And, and I, uh, unfortunately, um, feel like I need to share this, this, this, because somebody out there is saying, but wait, but wait, you don’t understand. Oh, I do. Okay. So here we go. Years ago I had a very good employee and a guy who I thought was my friend. We’ll call him a friend to me. Yeah. He says, can I come up to your office up there? I’d like to talk to you about hiring you to help me with my marketing. And I said, sure. And I, I swear, I swear the Lord knows this to be true. John out there knows to be true. Crazy. I go to the bathroom because I, the, the guy’s not there yet.

Okay. And I have a young woman who just started working for us, shadowing me that day. So this in this very room, the box that rocks I said on, I’ll be right back on and use the restroom. And uh, if the client gets here early, screed them and all, because I was, I was, it was early years before the appointment was supposed to start the swamp. The appointment book was supposed to start, let’s say, figuratively at like three o’clock and it’s like two 50 they’re not there yet. I’m gonna use the restroom. Well, the client, the potential client shows up early about two 55 I come back and they’re talking and I noticed that as soon as I walked into the room, the countenance of the conversation changed. The aura was weird. It’s like someone was minimizing a computer screen. It was like you busted someone doing something they shouldn’t be doing, and they’re like, Hey, Hey, Hey, what’s going on?

About a week later, this employee we just hired probably six months ago, says, Hey, I just want you to know I’ve taken another job. I hate to do this to you. So then I go into a store to buy something for my wife, from my friend’s business, my friend and me. And I’d see her work in their awkward. And I said, Hey. She goes, Oh, he recruited me that day. I was in your office. And I said, really? So I called my wife, friend of mine, I said, friend of mine, Hey did you re did you hire one of my people? And he says, uh, well yeah, it’s just business. And see that’s where I would totally disagree, right? So that’s where I would say, I’m Rick, I’m recruiting. Now let me tell you about me doing something dirty. And I didn’t even know I was being dirt. I was being dirt.

And this was me being dirty. I discovered that Chick-fil-A is good people. Very, and so Andrew, we’re hiring, we’re growing Epic photography at the time. Epic photos.com. Uh, and Andrew applies for a job and a hire Andrew. And I’m like, this guy’s good. So I said, Andrew, if you know of any other Chick-Filet people let me know cause they’re good people. And he says, Oh, absolutely. I’m dating one of them. And I said, really? He says, yeah man, I’m dating her. We’re gonna get married soon. So I hired her. Did he says that my brother would be great too. Hired him. I get a call from a dude, he lets me know, Hey, Hey, Hey. No, he called Andrew first and he said, Hey, tell your dude to quit hiring my people. Time out. Tell your boss to stop me. Stop hiring my people. So I said, okay. I told Andrew, Andrew, please

communicate. I did not, I’ve never been into that store to risk to snipe the people and, but I would’ve if I didn’t know the guy. Right. And Andrew it. But it’s interesting how like his owners, we have different kind of pirate ethics about this. My rules of I’m your friend, I won’t, I won’t try to recruit your people, but some people I know just don’t ever try to recruit people at all when when someone else’s business, uh, do you have a certain ethic to this, Jill? I mean will you, are you okay to try to recruit people everywhere you are or do you say I will not try to do it at someone else’s business or what are your rules for constantly recruiting? I can’t know the business owners. You don’t know them. It’s fine. I can’t know them or know somebody who knows them.

Now, I have to tell you this, just in full disclosure, there are a lot of teachers from my kid’s school who were, um, not retiring but had worked there a long time and then they came over to work for, do you get the evil eye when you walk up in that place? Well, um, ah, no, no I don’t because we all passionately love this school. But now that you’re framing it this way, I’m starting to feel a little, a little guilty, but here’s the deal. They, they, it was time for them. They were, Oh yeah, it was time. It wasn’t time to kill. No, it was, they, they were ready to move onto another phase, another season. And so I was there to catch them when they, when they were launched. Kelly, can I be honest with you? Yes, please. I’ve thought about stealing every one of your employees, but plate people, great ones.

Oh, this is what’s interesting though. This is what’s, and I have, I have other, I want to share about this because this is yet another story that the listeners need to know. Years ago, I had a client I worked with but a very small business and they said, we’re struggling. We’ve not made money in the years, years. Oh yeah, we’re deeply in debt. We’re barely breaking even. And uh, you know, so I, uh, noticed one of my top employees says, Hey, I’m going to take another job. I said, where are you going? Ah, I don’t want to talk about private. Where are you going? Come on. Just tell him, nah, I just want to add on. We worked with me for years. Could you just tell me where you’re going? I just wanna know. I’m just curious. I said, well, you can’t save me. I’m like, I’m not trying to, I’m not trying to get you back. I just want to know, just so I know, says, uh, well here, here’s the deal.

You know that client you helped, they, uh, they’ve, they’ve hired me and I’m like, Oh, now is it a two for one special cause usually it is, are they hiring two people or three? There’s two of us. So I call the client client who I’ve helped almost on the verge of bankruptcy. And become a big bad business. Are you hiring my people? And they said, absolutely, you guys produced the best there. And again, those are things, those are moves where I, I can’t go there with you, but I do know people that do that. My role is is I’m going to come to you first. There it is. I really like this person. If they have any indication they’re going to leave, then I’m going to ask for my move. But it’s not like written in a book anywhere. But like Angela applied for a job.

You met Angela there and I knew where Angela worked and so I called the boss. I said, Hey, is it cool? He said, absolutely she is hit hit the ceiling of what she can do here. You’re the best employer I know of for her skillset. Hire her. No reservations. All as well. But I called first. Yeah. We don’t know if it’s in a book anywhere. No, but you’ve invested significant time and energy and resources. Training people. And so yeah. You know, if fine, if my, if my enemies, if I have any, I’m sure I do. Come and poach my people. But we’ll for a friend and a friend that knows the type of, you know, time and effort that we’ve put into people, I would not hire a single person from you, clay and without your permission, even if they were leaving. Now somebody who is married to Damien, to Damien’s wife, right?

Um, she applied for a job here and at the time I was not hiring. And again, go back to Jill’s point, you’re never done hiring as a boss. You’ve got to make big obstacles seem small. And the way to do that is to never stop recruiting. So this lady comes in, sharp Damon’s wife, sharp lady, great lady, smart lady, and I’m going, I have nowhere to put her a site called Shaw homes. Boom shot. Are you looking for somebody? And Aaron Anta said, yeah, I am. I’m Aaron. And just the head of Shaw home. I know that guy. And so he hired her. I do that a lot. You’re the great connector. You have to do that though. You got to start. You’ve got to always, you can never stop recruiting. You’ve got it. You’ve just got to get the mindset today. You’re never going to take down the knob, the now hiring ads.

Now the next thing you must do as a boss to make big obstacles seem small. Again, all this is proactive stuff, not reactive. Don’t tell me about how you can’t find good people if you’re not always recruiting. Second idea, you got to always be selling something and it seems like the more people you hire, you’re, you’re like in a room filled with people. None of the people in that room have sold something this year or last year or in the last quarter and usually they have no thoughts about trying to sell something. I’m not speaking to Jill’s people or Paul’s people. I’m just talking about myself and my people. Usually they’ll say, is there any way we could talk about when we get off for labor day? And I’m like, we haven’t sold anything at all this way. How is it possible that every meeting in a row you never talk about selling something?

And he’ll be like, okay, I have one more question. Do we ever company values on the wall? Stop it. There’s a misspelling on a poster in the bathroom. Stop it. You stuck you, you try to sell something and they can’t sell something because they don’t have the dragon energy. So what they want to do is they want to take a little bit of your, something to tell you how you are. Something’s not good enough. They always want to say, you should’ve spelled checked it before you sent out the YouTube video. Somebody wrote a bad comment. Meanwhile, I’m saying sell something and just sell anything. Frick just can you just, I will sell, I will rent myself to you for a fee. Just so it’s some kind of transaction has occurred in this, what the crap. But I’m sure you’ve never seen this phenomenon, Paul CPAs. Can you talk to me about this? What, why, why is it that most people by default have an aversion to sales? And why do you focus on the bottom line? Brass tacks? Are we selling something?

People hate being rejected. And you know, even at our place, we have great, great people, um, but a lot of times are still waiting on me to lead. They’re wanting me to create the, to open the doors and then they’ll run in and grab it. And you know, I always tell them leadership is taken, not given. And as long as I’m creating the leads, then you know, I’m gonna make most of the money. And if you want to step out there and you want to grow with our farm and be more important to me, then you’ve got to take work off of me, or you’ve got to create more work. And I don’t care what business you’re in, it’s sales. I, I, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, you’re, if your business isn’t selling something, then you’re not in business.

Have you ever watched the a, the movie called the Alamo there, there Paul, you ever see [inaudible] a year watched the LMO there, Jill? I have. You know how like, uh, uh, in that movie, I, and I’m not saying we want to be the Alamo, but this is kind of like running a business. This is what it’s like to run a business. And it’s kinda like, you know, you’re there, you’re talking to your guys, you’re your, your guide. You’re firing up your troops, but then at some point you actually have to be the one as the leader who goes out front. You know, you have to be the one who’s out front there when the battle begins. And that means you’re, you have the most risk. And as they start firing, here we go, Oh, here it is. Oh, here he goes. And this crazy guy in the LMO movie, he’s out front right now. He was telling people to charge, but he’s leading the charge. Right. And as a business owner, you gotta be out front and the people behind you are like, I don’t know if we should leave this Fox hole. I don’t know if we should. They kinda like, wait, we should charge.

Selling is not, is not comfortable for everybody. It, it, I mean when I was 10 I had to go sell a box of chocolate chocolate bars to my entire neighborhood in order to stay on the soccer team. And there were about 25 bars in there. I ate 23 of them and had my parents,

I have an audio clip of you. You are kind of horse that day. This is audio of you to explain to your friends when you were 10 you’re kind of horse, so it sounds almost more mainly that day. Right? But this is you explaining to your, I believe you and Andrew was, was miking you at the H I Andrew because I don’t know how old Jill is, but this was like consent is Andrew preconception. Andrew filming this. It’s amazing. Let me queue this up. This is Sam. No good.

What if they say get outta your kid. You got no future. I mean, I just don’t think I could take that kind of rejection.

This is what this, this is what this is what people think though. They’re thinking like, I just don’t know if I can handle that kind of rejection. But a boss, we have to make the obstacles seem small. Paul. I mean, is it a, is it a phenomenon? I mean, I’m just telling you, I’ve sent people to trade shows back in the day. I come back. I said, did you sell anything? No, but we got our name out there, all know who we were. And I, I had to make quotas. I’d put video cameras in the booth. I’d make scripts and systems and processes, and I’d had had, I’d have one kind of figured of Davy Crockett per booth to make the people sell something because if not, they would just go to the show and pass out cards. I think there’s an aversion to selling. Did you incentivize them?

Oh yeah. And still came back not selling. We got, we got the Epic photography booth and the DJ connection booth into a fine tuned machine. But at first, yeah, guys would be like, well, what’s the minimum I can get paid? Yeah, 100 bucks a day. But you can make a huge commission and they’d still come back with nothing because it just fear rejection. They’d rather get zero rejections in less money than a lot of money and a lot of rejections, right? It’s not, it’s not, not for everybody. It is a very, very tricky thing to, to try to make somebody who into a salesperson who is not, now you have moves that you can do that there. There’s, there’s, there’s moves you shouldn’t do. And then there’s moves you should do and then there’s moves that uh, uh, are, are accepted and commonplace. So let’s start off with the move you shouldn’t do.

But what I did that worked back in the day, the DJs would not make it on the phone. They’re afraid of them. And I was thinking I was like 21, this is pre Christ for me. Okay, free crux, PC, PC, PC. So I say to my guys, I said, Hey guys, be like two guys sad sales meetings by the way, when there’s three people. So it’s like, do we have to meet? Yes guys, we need make a hundred calls a day each. And you guys made a hundred calls. Oh not this week. Not last week in total. And the total of this month he made a hundred calls. So you’re only about 97 colors short today and I need you guys to step up. The court guy number wants his brow. People just hang up on me guy too. The leads are, a lot of these are bad leads. Sound like here’s the deal.

I’ll be back. Like, where are you going? I’ll be back. Just just don’t leave this room for 10 minutes. I got a cute tea. It’s like 10:00 AM okay. They got cuties. Like, really? You want that much beer now this is not that. The intense beer we have now. You know, now we have the, the public kind of beard we have now it’s the, why are you gonna ask me at 6.0 why are you gonna ask me as much three times? You’re my business coach. Oh yeah. My parent coach. You’re the guy. I say peer coach. What do they say? So at six point beer back in the day, what was it, three to three to six point that you have? Both of them are so double fist. And I come, I come back into the office. I’m like, guys, here’s the deal.

[inaudible]

I’d been to weddings before. I noticed it every before every toast. The maid of honor always wanted to have a glass of something and the best man did too. And I thought, Oh man, we got to create that boisterous. Yep.

[inaudible] did

you guys get on that phone? And if somebody hangs up on you, you pop yourself a beer so you can you call. But if someone’s mean to you, hangs up, we record the calls. But if somebody hangs up on you, you get a beer. So they kind of wanted the beer. They’re like, Oh, I want this rejection call and super nervous. Hey, this is the pride to be who I’m called to be half of Dj connection, not interested. Yes, sweet. Boom. Pop a beer. Well, three rejections didn’t do it. It’s like 11:00 AM and the guys are like [inaudible] this is Karen. Yeah, Karen, this is the guy. I have a DJ connection at work, you know, and the brides are like, okay, kind of who is this guy? But if you, if you’re a DJ, you need to kind of sound like you having a blast. He blast hate.

And so converting my team into am alcoholics turned to this into a great Salesforce. Perfect. The details weren’t there. We might book people on the wrong thing. We to have bad notes, but then I realized you got to taper down this method. That’s not a move. So I moved on to the better accepted best practice, which was to wine, sit next to the guys, six sit next to the guys as they were making calls. So I’m in the trenches with them and I’m making calls and they’re making calls. I’m in the trenches with them, I’m on the phone, they’re on the phone, we’re on the phone together. And every time that they got hung up on, I gave him like a $5 bonus. And so I created an incentive where they didn’t mind that rejection. And now today, because I have so many recorded calls and so many best practice systems now, there is a culture where everyone’s on the phone every day.

Andrew, you can shout out a number, but how many cold calls per day does our average person make at this point per day and be like two 52 5,250 outbound calls a day per person? Yeah, per person. 250 calls a day. It’s wild. We got some that can do like three to 400 you heard Jay, here’s the deal. We’re calling, we’re calling right now. Paul’s a current clients who are very happy with his services and asking them to leave an objective review about his services. And, uh, you only reached like two people per hour cause people are at work or whatever. But we just pound that phone man. I mean, so you’re rolling. [inaudible] probably, you know, 15 people a day. What kind of person do you look for to make 300 phone calls a day? Andrew, let’s, let’s find clairvoyants I think she’s here real quick.

Let’s get her got. Okay. So what we’ll, we’ll come back to that. So you bosses must always be selling stuff. He’s going to go get Clare and we’ll come. We gonna interview her, but bosses always have to be so-and-so. We got to do it. I think there’s a big pushback where people don’t want, there we go. We’ve got Claire. Claire, can you throw out some headphones real quick on this? Quick impromptu and we’re going to do is this, it’s gonna be like Motown here where we’re going to have um, uh, Paul and it’ll be Paul and Jill are sharing a mic like a Motown. And then Claire has her own mic cause it’s so it’s a, it’s a kind of a dysfunctional Motown where we haven’t rehearsed ahead of time. But you just asked me what question they’re there, Jill.

Okay. So clay just told me that he has some people that make 250 to 300 cold calls a day. Now I don’t even like to call my doctor back after they called me and left a message for three days in a row, I said, what kind of a person does he look for when he’s looking for somebody to make 300 cold calls a day?

[inaudible] I love cold dog.

Great. It’s clear that first clear. You’re the one that is 100% me phrase break every 10 minutes. How do you, how do you not like, I can’t imagine making 300 cold calls a day. I don’t like one cold call a. So I got to hear how, you know, I understand, but it’s, it’s not just the fact of I’m just making cold calls, but it’s the reason why I’m doing it, which is back to everything. When it comes to running a business, it’s why are we doing what we’re doing? Is it I’m a slave to this or am I actually here to make money so I can live the life I want to live. So for me, I, whenever we’re looking for people who do cold calls, we want them to have energy, have spunk. Cause if you look out here, all the people that are making calls, if you look dead work, and I’m probably yell at you because we have a bell and then we start screaming for our yelling.

Um, so one, the environment is a big deal. So people have a hard time being isolated by themselves to here we have music playing, we get the energy going, we create the atmosphere because it’s all about the goal. Like why are we doing this? Because it can be mundane. Do you like to make cuffs? Cus I’m Jill, I’m going to be honest. I actually never made a cuff in my entire life. Uh, first of all, I have known you just a teeny tiny bit. Yeah. I, I’m just floored by the fact that you do 300 phone calls a day, but truly your reason behind it, that instead of the drudgery of making a phone call, that you have your reason why a Bravo to you because I think that, that you keep that in perspective, then you don’t mind so much. Maybe the hangups or just the awkwardness.

So [inaudible] clinics and it’s, I mean, like, it’s a cool cold calling is not like I live to cold call. Wait, can I go? Can I just understand really quick? Clay w I want to pretend I want to hear what a cold call sounds like. Okay. Okay. Can I just cause I don’t understand exactly what your job is. So you want me to call you cold? Call me. Oh, absolutely. Okay. Okay. Cold call. Right. This is Joel. Is this the amazing Jill Donovan? Um, I dunno about amazing. Yes. This is chilled on oven. Hello Jill. This is Claire and I, I’m actually calling on behalf of my boss. I’m clay stairs and his company, the leadership initiative. Okay. Jill, how are you doing today? I’m okay. I’m right in the middle of something, Claire. Absolutely. My daughter is throwing up but, but go ahead on the chain. My husband, he’ll come home about 20 minutes to play. Okay. Yes. So I know you were not just waiting for my call, so I’ll make this very quick. Thank you. So mr stairs, he is a business consultant. I’ll be right there. Yes. And he’s asked me

timeout. She is very, very, very good at this. And I have my last cold call that I ever booked at DJ connection. I have that recorded as well. So here’s this one. This is same one selling. Here’s my, how can I help you?

Hi, I was calling in regard to, um, a, um, phone call that you would send to me a while ago about a package deal.

See. And so again, the key is making enough calls because people call you back now just to get into some system details. And I want Paul to interrogate Sean about cold calling real quick is that when we, when you make calls, if you make 200 calls a day, you’re going to get about six to seven people that will call you back. Now, people don’t answer numbers unless they know the number. So you’ve got to send out a text now. So the key at the wedding shows you leave a veg voicemail. So Paul and leave you a vague voicemail. All right, these are the ones who get the call back. Here we go a again, this voicemail. So, um, Hey up. Paul, if you give me a call back, uh, this is, uh, clay up here at the insurance company and I need to, to, to reach it’s very urgent, urgent, or if you just call me back right away, that would be great.

I just need to get this wrapped up with your file. That’s going to get a call back. Now, if I’m calling on behalf of oral Roberts university back in the day, this is a good voicemail. Okay. Uh, Paul OD, this is clay up here calling on behalf of a ORU full disclaimer. I’m not any more. I used to, uh, economy of, of ORU and um, we have a concern about your alumni account and if you could just call me back. I just really want to get this result. And people are like cooking a concern now. Then when they call back, what’s the concern? They say, what is, what is the concern? You say, well, you know, we noticed you donated last year and we didn’t give you your, your free tickets to the game want to hook you up. And they’re like, Oh, okay, but you gotta get the call back, right?

That’s the move. Absolutely. It’s why you put dog in front of a have like a meat, not, not dog meat. He put me in front of a dog. Yeah. You know, it’s, you got to get reward thing. Now, Sean Paul’s can interrogate you about cold calling. So Hey, he could ask you any question at all about cold calling and be prepared to answer with the whole truth, the, or half the truth or whatever. Part of the truth. You want to do it, but so help you God. Hey Sean. So here’s my deal. So I think that that most of us that are driven, we’ll do a lot of things for money, you know, and it’s not money, it’s what money can produce. So I want to know how big is a, is an incentive program, um, in your decisions to actually sit and make all those phone calls? Or is this just something you’re just sick and psychotic and you just love to

people? Uh, yeah, it’s all about the reward. You bet. It’s 100% about the reward and we don’t, we break it down also for our employees so that it’s not just about the big reward, but there’s little rewards along the way. So if I set an appointment and that person picks up the phone, Claire will give you a Skittle, $20 for me. That’s $20 and then it, yeah, 20 bucks. If they both get the bumps, that’s an opportunity to sell our services. And if that person just so happens to say, yes,

I will buy your services, then I make an additional $425 see, so so, so when play used to, when I first started walking with clay, he walked around with a flyswatter and smack people. So the $20 is a four 20 but that’s better incentive. Right. So you can have positive and negative incentive. But you’re saying that positive incentive definitely works better for me. But if somebody is wanting you know, to, to get this kind of creative style because you’re an a player, you know that even even with an incentive based program. Do you think the incentives work for just anybody off the street or do you really have to come in with that motivation? That desire will get what percentage of, how many people have you had to go through to find the, you know, good, good, good fit here because we have a good fitting.

Just came back. She came back from LA. Yes. She left Tulsa, Oklahoma to leave to go discover LA. Los Angeles. Yep. Kindle to find greater opportunities to discover that Tulsa is where it’s at. Yeah. Let’s just say it’s really nice to get her back in the [inaudible]. I know she can do it on for a year. Uh, yeah, so showing what you’re saying is you, you, you find somebody who’s motivated, right. Has a desire that that wants something more out of life and then you create what to get them to do this? Well it’s a commission structure, a compensation instructive based program, but we also have a stick cause it’s important for the company. Yeah. We, we’ve got to hit a certain number of outbound calls and so there’s an incentive there to do that. And if you do do that, you can make some money. But if you don’t do that, there’s also a stick that comes in and that’s actually a ding to your base pay that you would take home for that day. If you don’t hit just the number of calls. I have audio, I’m actually you and mr stairs. There’s like last week, I want to say it was Tuesday. This is a Andrew thing at three o’clock Tuesday at 3:00 PM

and this is audio of stairs. Um, what I would consider what many would say is, is a, uh, letting you, you know, have it, you know, I’m going queue it up, but your attitude going through this, um, disciplinary process was really amazing. We queue it up here.

Thank you sir. Thank you sir. Thank you sir. Let me queue it up again. I want make sure I hear it. Oh, thank you sir. You bring it up.

Okay. All right. Well huh?

Yeah. Do you do the same thing Claire does? Yes. Yes. And so can I ask how often it is that somebody would pick up? Mm, it’s about 8% of the time. Business owners like yourself who are busy and have a lot of things going on, about 8% of the time they pick up the phone. Did you learn from Claire cause she was really good or did she learn from you? I think we’ve learned from each other. Yeah, sure. And how long did it take you to become good at your job? Outbound calling? Uh, several months and sure. Shawn applied for a job to work with me and I was, I was booked out. I didn’t have a spot. So I referred him to clay stairs. And you’d be here for, how long have you worked with clay? That’d be three months in October. Three years. Three years in October. Excuse me.

Whoa, Whoa. Shunned out. You went. Wow. Wow. Good correction. I’ll give you mega point. Okay. So I have, I have a couple other questions here. Uh, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna tee this up here. This one’s for Paul Hood. Then we’ll go to Jill and then, uh, Sean, because you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re hogging the mic. You can do whatever you want to do here. So here we go. So, uh, Paul, knowing your numbers, I see a lot of business

owners who say, I as an owner, I’m a visionary. My job is to find great people and a sale something. But then you’re like, Hey, but are you making any money? They got, who knows? I mean, I’m not a, I’m not the numbers guy. I’m the, I’m the business owner. I’m the visionary. But you know this, you can’t abdicate your finances. So Paul Hood, you can bring as much passion as you want to here. Please feel free to preach the good news of knowing your numbers. Cause people that do not know their numbers end up living in a band down by the river. A goodbye glare.

Coupa. Yeah, clay. So, uh, I believe we, we’ve won the ovarian lottery being born in this country. But the problem is we don’t teach our system with economics. We don’t teach people how to create wealth. We teach people how to be a good technician, be a good accountant, be a good plumber, be a good doctor, and they have no earthly idea how to create wealth, how to, how to manage. And you know, if you’re trying to lose weight, you’ve got to step on the scale. If you don’t step on the scale, you don’t know what you’re doing. You have to measure and be intentional with everything that you do. When Bryson I did that physique bodybuilding show, we measured our food exactly what we were going to when we were going to eat

E what weights did we live and everything that went in our body and every movement we made through had a purpose and so, but without that measuring factor, we wouldn’t be able to tell whether it was working. And so what we do at hood CPA’s is actually help people figure out where they’re at today because clearly they don’t know where they’re at. They don’t even get a lot of people when they meet with you, they, they had the impression that you’re going to tell them where they’re at, where they want to be. You’re going to tell him the fictitious story of when they want to be, but you sit down, I just want, I know. No hyperbole. You’re an account, you’re a CPA. Give us the measured answer. What percentage are you? Can you have thousands of clients? Yep. What percentage of clients know their numbers?

Like they know how much money’s in their bank account or that they know where they’re at. They’re caught up on taxes before they meet you. Uh, I, there’s less than 3% of the people that come in our office that know that clay, they just, people are so busy, they don’t do it. They, they don’t do it. And so what we can do is we, we take a restaurant that, that has a 82% of cost of food and in a matter of two months, they’re down to 50% cost of food because they’re actually measuring. We take a, you know, a drinking establishment, adult beverage place that is giving $4,000 a month away in drinks to the, to the band that they don’t realize and there’s all their profit. And because they just don’t take the time to measure. Tilman Fertitta owner of the Houston rockets in his book, uh, shut up and listen, he talks about this ID.

He says that he, some of his restaurants, he’s noticed that if you don’t put out bread and you ask people, would you like bread? Just that move of not putting the bread out first and asking, would you like bread saves his company millions of dollars. Because most people, if you put the bread out about half the people don’t want the bread. So the bread just goes unused and it’s a waste. And so again, it’s just knowing your numbers. Now Jill, I’m not asking you to divulge the numbers, but it rustic cuff. You now have a hundred plus employees, 120 something plus, um, show off. Talk to me about, uh, um, the numbers and why you have to at least have your, your finger on the pulse of the numbers. Cause people think it’s all vision, right? It’s all raw. Raw. They don’t think about the quiet time you spend alone when you were growing it. Thinking like, Oh my gosh, how are we gonna make payroll? I mean, they don’t. People don’t think about the quiet, meditative, meditative, even potentially soul-sucking agony of looking at your numbers. Yes. Talk to me about the importance of it

knowing your numbers. Well, when my girls and I were in the bodybuilding competition, we had to know every S sorry Paul [inaudible]. You weren’t even watching me when I was talking about that. Um, I was trying to get your attention. Clay, when I first started I had a, a sticky notes and I used to lay all the sticky notes on the left side for all of the bills we owed and then all the sticky notes on the right side for things that were coming in. And that was my accounting systems move. Yeah. And so I mean I knew it down to the very, very penny the pen. And as you grow it gets trickier. But I always know because if you don’t know, you can’t grow. I totally made that up. Scratch that. No it doesn’t. No it’s not. You can still grow if you don’t know. If you don’t know, you cannot be intentional about the moves that you need to make. So I still do my sticky notes. I do it at home or I do it in my head and then I let my accountants do all the, the detailed

clay. Do I have to get her permission to put that phrase on a tee shirt? I’m kinda liking if she doesn’t, don’t know you can’t grow.

Don’t quote me on that because I still think you can be growing. Even if the [inaudible]

I have one, I have one. I think we could put on a shirt that says if you have a a smoke induced stoma, you’re probably live in Alona. Oh, look at that. That’s that. You put that on

now that you can tell a quick story. This is funny. Yesterday I was telling somebody about the name of rustic cuff and how he came up with it. And I said in the beginning I was just doing leather cuffs, all rustic. And so naturally you name it sometimes because you don’t think you’re going to grow because you don’t know. Yeah, okay. There you go. And so I said it’s sort of like when you named your child something in the 70s when you were not really with it. Now that’s such a generalization, but, but during a tie, do you know what I’m talking about when you’re not really with it first bringing up. All right, so I’m sorry, I should look at clay instead of you. So you made your set, you name, you name your child something. And I said to this, do I talk over the music and stuff? So I said, so this group of people, I said, sort of like if you named your child Stoney and, and then let years later, you’re like, what was I thinking? Well, there were, I was talking to 10 people. The lady in the front said, my nephew’s name is Stoney. Mm mm. How

would you subscribe right now? Her rustic love. Oh, we’re going to hook you up with a partner out there. Somebody by the name of Stoney. I ain’t been out there. If your name is Stoney Leroy or Tony Shaquila, you’re just come on and go to go to rustic love.com we’ll get you a free cuff. We’ll hook you up with a fond young woman or male or somewhere in the middle. It doesn’t matter. Her dress really rushed. Anybody named Stony. I love that name now. Oh no. I mean, we actually used to call a Shaun that before he sobered up Ken. I’m just, I’m done with that analogy. We don’t know. Okay. All right. All right. I went off on a trail. I’m sorry, go back. No, no, you’re, you’re, you’re good. Okay. So now what, let’s, let’s, let’s put a little, uh, a bow on, on this box here.

Let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s kinda tuck in and show here. So again, if you’re a boss, you’ve got to make big obstacles seem small, but you have to always be recruiting. Number one, you must always be recruiting high character people to a boss must always be selling something. Three bosses must always know their numbers. Paul. Jill, I’ll give you two. The final word, Paul pylon. Is there anything else that a boss should always be doing? Cause you know what, boss should always make big obstacles seem small. They should always be recruiting, always be selling, and always know their numbers. What, what other, what other things should a boss always be doing? Well,

one of the things I learned, I’ve learned over the years, clay is, is everybody’s not created equal. And in my practice, and I think in most businesses you have to have those sales people, but you also have to have the support people. And, and I, and I’m a certain type, I’m certain personality and I, uh, again, back to thinking of my businesses as a professional football team, if I take somebody who is alignment, who is an a player, players alignment and tried to stick them at a quarterback, they’re not gonna do that. Great. So you’ve got to, I would just tell business people that you may meet somebody who may not be like you, but that can be an a player I’ve got in my firm, I’ve got people that they want to sit in a room with the door shut, they don’t want to talk to anybody, but they will pile out work. They will just push it out. And then I’ve got other people that will like to sell. So the thing is is you’ve got to know your business and you’ve got to know where you got to put players and then evaluate those players based on their skills at where you can use them as an a player.

I have audio of a Sean, I’m not, not this Sean, a different Sean. This was this Sean. We never had this problem with. It was a different, Shawn, this is audio, Jill of this before we can recruit the high court, the high character Sean, you see here, we had a different Sean and this is, this is audio of, of our, our sales meeting with him. And this is why he said, Hey, you got to get on the phone and this is what he said, and it’s in a smoke filled room. This is what he said. He said, that’s what he said. We’re saying, Hey, you gotta get back on the phone and he says, Oh, let me get it. I don’t know if there’s whole lot. I don’t know if there’s a whole lot of hope to fix a guy like that. I don’t know. Right. Jill? Big obstacles seem small. The bosses job, always recruiting, always recruiting, always selling something, always knowing their numbers. What else?

Always connecting. Always connecting at any moment. At any turn, at any point that you can with everybody that’s in your family.

You know, uh, I’m a, I work family and family. This is a, a is me in the morning before I have my quiet time, my Mehta time. Quiet time meds. No, but this is in the morning. I wake up, I typically sound like this cause I wake up and I’m like, Frick, it’s three in the morning. I look like a grim one. I feel like a grandma. I don’t want to be awake. And you’ve got to make sure as a boss every day you recalibrate and make sure you’re in a great, happy, optimistic, positive mindset before you see your employees. Because if you don’t, it’s really going to, uh, uh, suck the soul of your team. And like I always say like eating a spoonful of Draino sure, it’ll clean you out, they’ll leave you hollow inside. I don’t know what that means. Right? Thought we get at three o’clock in the morning, you look for these clip pledges. I’ve been, I’ve been looking for a reason to play this clip. I just feel like I just, I Paul, you know what they say? Like eating a spoonful of Draino sure. It’ll clean you out. They’ll leave you hollow inside. I say that at least once a week. Like, Oh well we’re going to end the show with the boom. And now that he further ed knew. Here we go. Three, two, one. Hello.

Stop what you’re doing and think about this for a second. What would happen if your company was suddenly able to generate exponentially more quality sales leads? That would be incredible. What would happen if your company came up at the top or near the top of the Google search engine results? Quill. I would just feel overwhelmed with all that. Pissed is how many thousands of dollars in lost sales or millions of dollars in lost sales are you missing out on simply because your potential customers can’t find you when they go online to search for the products and services that you offer. I refuse to think that thought because I don’t want any more business unless you are a dirty communist that hates money. My new book search engine domination will help you grow your business. In my new book, search engine domination, we will teach you the specific steps that you need to take to dominate the search engine results. What do you mean by dominate? You see in my new book search engine domination, we will teach you the specific steps that you need to take to dominate search engine results. Download your free ebook copy [email protected]. I repeat that V best SEO book.com. My name is Amy Baltimore. I am a CPA

in Covington, Tennessee. I’ve been working with the thrive team now for about a year. One of the first things that they did was to update my website and my search engine optimization. I prior had a website, but I was not being found on Google and all of my new business was coming through referrals from friends, family, et cetera. And right away I started to see results. People were calling and coming in saying that they found me on Google. They just Googled CPA near me and there I was at the top of the page. And so, um, it’s been a great help to my business.

Again, you can download your free ebook copy [email protected].

Hey, this is Dustin Huff. I’m with Keystone Harbor Marina. Um, we joined thrive, uh, back in January and had been working with these guys for about seven months. Uh, during that time period we have, uh, moved up our Google rank through reviews and SEO processes that we’ve, uh, compiled through these guys. Our leads have gone from about four week to now, 165 a week. So the process works. Uh, I will tell you from experience once you begin, you have to stay with it as long as you continually do this weekend and week out, month in and month out, you’ll continually grow.

The system works, but nothing works unless you do. You’ve got to take some action. Download the ebook for free [email protected].

Hello, my name is Daniel Daniels heating and air here in Amarillo, Texas. Uh, the way Google has affected my business, uh, we have got a lot of calls from Google right now it’s July and we’ve had the best month ever and it took us about eight to 10 months to get on top of Google. And I’m glad we did.

Remember, nothing works unless you do. You have to go to the best SEO book dotcom today. Download the ebook for free. Just download that ebook for free and you’ll be off to the races.

Hi, my name is Christina Nemus. I am the owner and operator of angels touch autobody and T T healing in borne Massachusetts. Um, we have been working with thrive and their business coaching for say eight to nine months and it took us about six months, five to six months to get on the top of Google. Um, and with their help with the website and marketing, um, and the SEO and retargeting ads with Google and it has been phenomenal. We just have light and day business coming in, phone calls coming in, uh, walk ins, uh, referrals. It’s just through the roof. Um, and we couldn’t be happier at the moment. We are up 50% this year from the previous year, and not only is that part of our own hard work and diligence, but also with the help of thrive and what they’ve done for us and getting us on the top of Google, you know, all their knowledge as a business coach. Um, and yet so super grateful. Super pumped to see what the future holds for all of us. Thank you.

This is your year to thrive. Today is your day and no lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. Proverbs ten four. I’m here to tell you you can do it. If you could just motivate yourself to up the masses had to cut off you. So on the day you would, I could run a misshapen, a tree that I had to prove I had to make tough to be here daily at noon and knowledge monsoon, I conveyed them. No promotes dose of doubt and you while you the next block and pedal or the next clue room for the next Dr. King who changed the rules and was in your way. When you’re one bite like are one back the one, it’s up to you. I remember by days back like the template well with the jobs that tried to consume hook food, the future that I could pursue what from the mountain top. Now I can do clue that you have what it takes up to your youth to thrive success. You today is your day and now it’s your year to today’s your day. And now this moment is profound to show up the crown. Your rope might’ve been rough with what you’ve got now is now even shut you out, but you gotta be the [inaudible] with the old plow started from the bottom of what my weight was been prayed up as a top dog. You got to get it. Don’t quit it. [inaudible]

and now today is your day and now all went to Keon. But we cannot begin without self discipline too far with your face. Get yourself up the pin. Attach yourself to closed up pale with the friends when the storms getting up with what you believe we believe in you, but not as much as God goes. If you’re going through hell, he’s got nothing. Apply what you learned. Increase what you do. Tie your gun money to a bird, a please. What you burn it into Tom, you got money to increase what you in do. Tangent. Got money to increase. What you tell him you got money to money. I’d like to down the doubt ERs silverbeet that be given your dream flowers, empower you to de devour all the obstacles that make your sweet dream sour. As for me, I used to [inaudible] start up, but now up on the microphone. Smooth light buck. If I can do it, I know you can do, but you bust. Stick to it like posters to and while Martin XOM McColl was what he’s saying, carbon shoot. Two, three victories. Today is your day to day show. Okay? And now y’all your singing sing. It says you will. Today is your day to day and now it’s your turn. It’s your time today and now we do a time sing it Barton. Today is your day. [inaudible] are the time I realized I can’t sing like that, but I can’t talk and

play the woodblock. Okay. If you guys need me, I’ll just be over here.