Everything Business from Clay to Z

Audio Transcription

Back in the day. I used to own a company by the name of DJ connection.com and one of our employees at the time, his, his name was Anthony Baka and Anthony Bochum has been diligently listening to each and every thrive time show podcast and every show and implementing what he’s been learning. So he’s been increasing what he’s been earning. This guy’s actually on the verge of selling his company for $400,000 and he joins us in the studio live today in the studio at camp Clark and chicken palace to ask dr Robert Zellner, Paul Hood, CPA and myself many of his business questions, he asks us about golden handcuffs, how to deal with negativity and the stress of owning a business. What makes Kobe Bryant, Michael George, Tom Brady’s super successful. He asks us about entity planning and so much more. What does it gentlemen, if you are an entrepreneur or an aspiring entrepreneur, you are going to love today’s show with special guests. Anthony baka. Some shows don’t need a celebrity in the writer to introduce the show. But this show does to may eight kids co-created by two different women. 13 Moke time, million-dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome

To the thrive time show. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Doctors say, how are you sir?

Oh, I love it when the show starts off with four yeses. Oh, just, just some beautiful, just something, one magical. I have to ask here. Z we have, we have a guest on today’s business coach show. Yes. And this young man, Anthony Bochum, he used to work for me when I had a company called DJ connection back in the day. He was one of those guys and this guy, check, check out this guy. [inaudible] We have a lot of loyal listeners, but this guy pays you, dr Z, dr Z. This guy pays you. He pays me. He buys things from your auto auction. Oh yeah. Very good. Of course. Yeah. So he’s, he’s, he’s, he said, Hey, I would like to at some point get on the show. So we have got Paul Hood here, a CPA with hood CPAs. Paul, how are you doing? So AML standing. What’s up, guys?

Well, basically we’ll pause here. He’s got the CPA knowledge. Z, you are an entrepreneur who was trapped for many years unfairly into inside an optometrist body. I know I’m still trying to break out and then we’ve got myself kind of a man bear pig. I’ll be the mediator and Anthony, you can ask anybody any question that you want and this will be kind of like an ask us anything segment and we have no idea where the show is going to take it. Those are kind of fun. I like those because we have no idea where he’s going to go. This show could be an entire show devoted to why the Patriots without Antonio Brown continue to win. It could be the entire show. It could be an hour show. It could be about that. We don’t have a feeling it’s not are you serving sandwiches? Cause if we’re going to go on that topic, I might need some substance, some food and break your lunch.

I didn’t bring my lunch pail, but if we’re going to get that deep and that serious, I may need to feed my buddy. Alright, back up. By the way, is your Porsche, is that new out there? You know what, the fun stories. That’s a very first Porsche I ever owned. Oh really? I just bought it back about three months ago. I love that car. You bought it back? I bought it. Buy it back. Well actually the funny thing, I sold it to my father in law who old manned it, you know, he pulled it out of his garage and wash it and put it back up and then he sold it to a friend of mine. And so I told him, you ever sell that car? You better call me. So he called me a few months ago. I got it back now. How long ago was that, that you originally early?

Yeah. it’s, it’s 2001 I think I had it in 2005. 2006 so it’s probably, you know from the upstairs up here. Is it a nine 11 or is it it’s a nine 11 convertible orange. Of course that vehicle is as beautiful Z as your son Bo. Do you know what I mean? You came to the studio today. I saw Bozon and I realized, Oh, we’re in for a great show. We’re in for a grade. You could fill it, you can fill it. The force texted another notch. Do you think, which one of you do you think is more beautiful? Do you think that you are more beautiful or, I mean right now you’re just hitting your prime right now I hands down is does they have your calves though? I don’t think he does this. We want to do a calf off.

We could do a calf fall. I’d say. Well we’ll talk about that letter now. It talks about the Patriots. We’ve talked about re-gifting, our re buying a Porsche. We’ve talked about Bose beauty. Really. We can wrap up the show. I know we got in the color orange, which is an awe and reverence of course. It’s an exciting start. A pinch. Have rid of big subjects has been covered. Anthony, what questions do you have for us, my friend? Whoa. I brought a lot of questions, but you know I went ahead and highlighted a few here because we’ll answer all of them. There’s so many of them, so good ones. Here we go. As a prominent donor of the doctors eat, eat that microphone like it’s like you have an addictive urge to eat to physically touch the microphone. Right. In fact, if you, if you care, if your lips aren’t touching that you’re not close enough.

Awesome. Well, as a PR, as a prominent donor to the dr Z travel fund, I figured I would start with you with a question here and the first one is how do you get over the challenge of online eCommerce in your frames? You know, with your frames at the optometrist clinic, how do you get over people just coming in, shopping, leaving and buying online? Wow, Ooh, give me the sound effect this, Justin, let me do this. Let me just, don’t, let me, let me cue up the music that allows you to calibrate and kind of formulate your thoughts that way. You’re ready with a Hottie answer. So he’s saying with your optometry clinic, there’s, there are brands out there that are online now. So on frames. Yes. Sunglasses. Yes. And he would like to know how do you, how do I overcome the challenges of, of competing with online retailers overcoming

An overcoming mindset? Well two things. One, we have to be very proactive and we make sure the, let everybody know about our warranty or free frame warranties and the benefits from buying from me. And in the sense, you know, we do free adjustments, we do have a free warranty and we’re very cost-competitive. A lot of those places out there that sell online very little evidence is actually due to the cost. It’s most of it’s due to the convenience or they think that selection or they like the experience. And more and more people are going online to do that in the privacy of their own home. They can shop in their little pajamas. Right. So we try to be, we try to be proactive and assuming that they’re going to think about that or do that. And so we try to get them sold on glasses that day and tell them the benefits of why they should buy here. And then number two, I’m actually starting to build a platform where I can sell my stuff online to not only my own patients, other patients. So when I say great idea out there like that, like, like it’s like, you know, back in the day. Why, why did I, why didn’t we do Amazon? Huh? Clay, why didn’t we do Amazon?

Well one, I think they’d be like 1996, maybe 96 on him and when Jeff Bezos got started. So that would have meant that I would have been a 16 and I was still a jerk. And you, I think you are, you are really getting deep into optometry. 1986 where you building them? The Memorial location?

No, 96. It had been open. I actually was now in a 96. I was starting the bought my, I bought the auto auction, the first one that I bought and was starting that one. So I started to diversify a little bit.

Where were you running guns? Was that 95? When were you running guns illegally from Mexico, wherever from Guatemala. Legitly allegedly that was back in the eighties. Oh, in the 80 mean school tuition does take a bite. There is no excuse for not doing it. Then we showed up done at Paul Hood. What advice would you have for him about overcoming? The question I had was dr Z is okay,

So I can’t just go online and buying glasses. I have to have my prescription. Correct. I mean, so they can’t get their prescription online. They come to you and then you fill that need. Right. And so we have them in our office and so it’s shame on us for not selling them. I mean, and so they come in to get their prescription and then a lot of times we’ll say, well, I’ll come back, you know, we know what that means. In other words, I’m going to go online. And so the other day someone asked me about some of the online, you know, that are selling glasses and say, what do you think about that? I said, well, I’m just don’t think I’m upset about is that I didn’t think I’ve at first true story. I back at the back of the day, back in the day, back in the days I was in negotiations to buy a phone number.

What? What are you saying? You can actually buy a phone number? Yes, it’s spelled out one 800 contacts and I was in negotiations. This was back in 95. A gentleman was out of Colorado, I believe Denver. You, I called the number dude. Two two, two, two, two, two. You kind of spell it out and the guy answered, Hey, and I’m like, Hey, I’m going to buy your phone number until we start to go shake hands. He actually shot me $100,000. I shot him back 50 and we let the games begin. Well before I could finish, I actually had another kind of career path move that I, I went down and so I didn’t buy that phone number. And now when 800 contacts is, is a thing. So I was, I was on the cutting edge of that. That was almost my, it was almost my phone number.

What year were you thinking about buying this number from the gentleman who lived in Denver? 1995 95. Okay. I’ve got the audio here of it seems like the, I’m not, I think it was, it was a concert YouTube met up to negotiate together. When you guys remember. Of course. Let me kid. This is, this is the concert

[Inaudible]

Oh wow. You, you, you go to the John Denver concert. Oh yes, of course. Of course. We weren’t. Maybe the John Denver concert. We’ll agree on a price. Interesting negotiation strategy. Well, I tried to pull out all stops, you know,

He’s from Denver, John Denver, kind of them up.

I have a thought about the online thing real quick. I have a very, a hot take here. You gotta win where you can win. I think as an example, if you’re at a place to Z where you built up your war chest to a point that if you want to spend the money needed to code out and build a very competitive online buying experience to go beat somebody on a national level or regional level, you can do it right. However, there’s a listener out there right now, and if you can’t afford to do that, you’re not going to like out Harry razors. You’re not, you know, Harry’s razors is a big company not going to outdo them right now. Correct. So you’ve got to find the place in the space where you can win. And so Warby Parker famously started the online glasses revolution.

But let me tell you about these homies. These homeys realized they couldn’t compete with a guy like dr Z. They couldn’t do it. They didn’t have the convenient location. They didn’t have the staff that was knowledgeable, they didn’t have the retail environments. They’re like, let’s just put them up there and see how cheap we can sell these things. And let’s just see what can happen. And that was like their way to win was kind of undercutting. And I’ll tell you this for me personally, I didn’t want to buy glasses online cause I want to go try them on, see them, get it by prescription, update it all at one time. And so you got, if you’re out there and you have a, you’re going head to head in the marketplace in some capacity with some online retailer, ask yourself if you can win and if you can’t win online critic, great experience and awesome experience and actual online in actual, in, in person experience that that will allow people enough to make them not want to go online.

Because if you’re trying to convince your people to buy from you and at the store level and your store experience is terrible, people are not gonna come back. So find where you can win and win there. Anthony baka, what does the next question that you have my friend come on, come in hot. Come on. What you got, kind of related to that, you mentioned the, you know, the career path, the diverging and that implies multiple businesses, right? So I’m curious, how do you decide what business to get involved in, but most importantly, which people to partner with to run the business terms of a managerial or business partnership? Two-part question. Yup. Let’s go part one real quick. I have a dense mind. So most importantly is how do you choose the people that you choose to give equity to and or the control of your business. So dr Z, how do you choose which people to give equity to and to put in charge of running the wazoo? Maybe they’re different people. What, what would you say for Mr. Anthony?

Number one, I, it’s somebody that I know, someone I’ve spent time with, someone that I trust, someone that I, a lot of times I’ll find the individual before I find the business. In other words, I’ll find someone and go, this is the kind of person I want to be in business together with. And then, then you build a business, maybe even around them where you go and you acquire a business or you go in and you say, Hey, let’s do, would you like to do X, Y,Z ? And that’s what I’ve business coached. You know, I business coached up my brother on this and my brother a lot of times he found someone who was great. He was an exterminator and he came to his house and he was an employee of a business and he was a really sharp guy that got along well. And, and next thing you know, Phillip, my brother is talking to this gentleman saying, Hey, have you ever thought about having your own exterminating company?

Or only a little piece of it with me? And he’s like, well, that sounds like a great idea. I don’t know how to do all that. He goes, well, let’s, let’s talk. So he left his employment, came on board with my brother. He was an expert at that. My brother knew nothing about exterminating, but knew this guy was good, good stock. The kind of guy that he would like to go in business with. You know, juicy man gave him a game, a percentage of the business up, they run it and now they have, I don’t know, six exterminating trucks and Zilner exterminating and run around town and all that bugs killing bugs. So a lot of times, a lot of times for me, Anthony, you, I would actually find the person first and then I would find out like, like let’s say they’re a great employee of a, of a business, right?

So if I was ever going to say get into the restaurant business, which I don’t really anticipate though, you never know. I would find someone now that’s maybe the general manager or it’s a rockstar at a restaurant that I really like and that, you know, over over the course of years of getting to know this person or months or whatever, eating there and being served by this person, then you go up to me and say, Hey, have you ever thought about having a restaurant? Well, in fact I have, I just don’t have the money. I don’t have the means. I don’t know where to start. Let’s talk. And so for instance, I had a guy one time contact me about being my banker Medi Matta. Oh one of these, you know, Christian fellowship of Christian businessman lunches. I was speaking at that event. He came up afterwards and gave me his business card, got to know him.

We we went to lunch a few times and he was wooing me to try to get my banking business. And I finally looked at him and I said, this is crazy. Why don’t we just go, let’s go get a bank. And he said, that’s actually a great idea. And I, I, that’s, that’s a, that’s a life goal of mine. And really, and I go, yeah. So lot of times you find someone in an industry and you really liked them. You connect with them, you trust them. You, you need to get along with them. I mean, cause I don’t have any, I wouldn’t want anybody being everybody, one of my businesses and being a partner with, if you will that it didn’t like that, wouldn’t want to go, Hey, real quick. I want to make sure this is, this is big. This is a really big one.

You said you’re not going to partner with someone you don’t like that. That is correct. Please continue sharing cause this is, I see people all the time working with people who are smart, who are skilled, who are Antonio Brown and everyone can’t lie. Everyone doesn’t like him. We’re tired of hearing about him. We’re tired of him texting. We’re tired of him going on social media. We’re taught, yeah, you’re athletic. Yeah, you’re talented. But get off the Patriots. Come on, man. Quit P it in our pool. There’s, there’s pizza. There’s somebody out there right now who has somebody who you’re working with who you’re thinking about partnering withZ who’s super talented, but you don’t like them. Yeah. If you won’t go out and do a happy hour with him, if you won’t go out and do lunch and if it’s kind of a chore to you to do that, that’s not your huckleberry.

You want someone that you look for in the phone rings, you look down and their name pops up on you go, Oh yeah. Smile on your face, answer the phone. Right. So many people out there are good at what they do. They just don’t match well with you and your personality. And so for me, I kind of know that now I’ve done, I’ve done this plenty of times. A lot of times I’ll someone will come up and want to just sharp take me out of the blue. I don’t know that person that well. So I don’t, I don’t really go into those kinds of things so much. Sometimes I’ll give them advice, but that doesn’t mean even if it’s a great idea, business idea, I don’t always say, yeah, you’re my guy. Let’s go forward. And what was your name again? I mean, so for me, I wanted to get to know them, have a relationship with them, develop a friendship with him. Say to myself, you don’t have friends. Only someone you spend time with, you don’t have to. Right? And so if I find myself drawn to that kind of person and then also I liked their skill sets, then that’s when that gear kicks into my brain.

You bet. XE, don’t you think though? Internally. So internally, because we face this a lot in the service type business were we, who’s going to be a partner, who’s not going to be a partner? And so you design a process so it’s not just, yeah, that’s a partner right there. You create first they, they, they need to overwork and they need to work more than what they’re getting paid for. Second, you create incentive-based pay because a lot of times people don’t really care about being a partner. And if you don’t have to give up equity, why would you give up equity? Because it’s, it’s, it leads to issues. I’ve got a client right now, two people that are great friends, their businesses grown to a point, they’re making a lot of money. One of them wants to keep running. Well they, they, they’re at an impasse because their partners, one wants to be coached, one wants to go.

And so you create incentive base pay and that may keep them happy. If it doesn’t keep them happy, then you create a system to where they earned being your partner. And so you can groom somebody. But you typically, I think what Z is saying, whether it’s a new business or an existing business, you don’t have to groom a partner’s going to groom themselves or a business owner or whoever’s going to have equity is going to groom themselves, but they’re going to go through the process of being, of, of doing extra, going beyond over-delivering. And then you create an incentive base paid to keep them in incentive and create incentives for them and then maybe they become an equity-type person.

I have a few notes on who to Partner with CZI and feel free to one up me, but first I have, I have audio of your brother’s extermination company. Oh, okay. Could you share the name of his company one more time for the Zellner exterminating? It’s really original. How do you, if you were to spell the name Zellner could you spell it like it’s a good spelling? BZ for the listeners who are [inaudible],

Z. O. E. L. L. N. E. R. Zellner.

Yes. Okay. So this is, this is audio of your brother killing bugs on, I think this was Thursday. No, this, no, this is the Tuesday clip. This is on Tuesday. And his name’s Philip right now, filled with one L. He’s passionate about removing bugs and Paul has a big old house, but about 25,000 square foot house. Paul knew now it’d be a big old house called, I understand the story you called and today I got a 25,000 square foot house and I’ve got a few bugs, you know, it’s starting to turn fall here. Bugs wanting to come inside, send out the best you’ve got, you know, give me the zoner special and followup says, I’ll buy my name with one L but I’ll give those bugs. Hell, you know what I mean? Come on. 10 so he’s, this is what he says he sends in a crew and this is what they were doing. And let me just kind of cue it up here.

Okay.

Seems a little, what is it? There was a shooting. Here’s a shooter. He put a guy up in a, in a turret up here whose it seems like he’s mounted up there on the sixth floor. Look at your screen. That looks like a jihad character in the middle East shooting the random wrong clip. Paul, you misled me. That’s interesting. That’s a different kind of extermination going on there.

Follow up one. What are the biggest questions? I was always asked when I would hire a new optometrist or new doctor and they’d be fresh out of school or a year or two out of school. I tried to get him a year or two out, you know, they’d always ask me the big question was what? Ah, can I, can I, can I own a piece of this someday? And I would look at them every time and say no. And then they would always, they’d just be like, you didn’t, you couldn’t even lie to me and tell me that there’s a possibility that you could tell her. Just like, look, I’d be like, well, what? Go? Yes. I actually was, and I told him every time, stop calling me Shirley, but so here’s what I would say to them and they’re confused. Look on their face.

I would say, here’s the reality. One, it’s an ongoing business and to value it. If we could bring a hundred guys in here and, and then I’ll come up with a hundred different values of the company. So as far as you buying into it or owning a piece of it, you know, getting the exact amount is going to be tough, number one. Number two, I never ever, ever, ever going to give up control of my baby. I’m just not going to do it. And it’s always going to be weighted in my benefit. In other words, if you leave, I can buy you out if you, you know, so I said if you want to make, I’ll pay you some money. And if you want to go invest in any other company out there that sells public stock, that’s what chicken do. And you can own a piece of whatever you want to own, but you’re never going to want control this optometry clinic cause it’s mine.

It’s my baby. Right. And you’ll always be a minority. And then if you ever leave, it’s going to be the language in the contract would be that I could buy you out for what you paid or what not. It’s always going to be weighed in my favor, right? So why on earth would you want that? Now I say to, here’s the caveat without doing though, and what I have done is I opened up new businesses. Now we know we all were on a fresh start here. In other words say it’s going to take $200,000 to open up a new business. I go to the employees that are longterm with me that I like here again that I like to have worked well. As Paul said, they’ve worked their way into favor with me, they smell good and I go to their best say, Hey listen guys, you guys want to own a piece of this?

And so now I have some of my optometrists actually making as much money or more and the investments and other businesses that we, he’s done with me over the years than he does as a salary from the optometry clinic. I say, listen, cause here’s the deal where it’s a bottom floor, we’re all in this together. You know, whether it’s successful or not and they’re always gonna be successful, right? Cause you just, that’s, you have to have that mindset. No plan B, right? You’ve got to burn the boats and take the Island. So I say, listen, if you guys want to start off, then you could start off and let’s say it’s a 200,000 to start. If you want to own whatever percent, 10% 20 you know, $20,000 come on board and then we’ll, we’ll grow this together. Right? You don’t have to be in the management, you don’t even have to run it.

You can actually be a part-owner in it. And so that’s when things I do, so I dangle that carrot out in front of new doctors or new employees, if you will, at the high levels. And then I also say, listen, once it’s an ongoing business, it’s, that’s, that’s, it’s there. There’s no more selling off of it. Okay. Does that answer your question? As far as, and now which business to open? A lot of times it’s predicated by what that person does. Like when the banker came to me, we went bought a bank. When like my brother example of the exterminating company, they started as terminating company.

I think it’s really one thing you do too is dr Zellner’s good at this is you don’t start a business with someone who could change it. You don’t, but you, you don’t say, this guy’s been dysfunctional ever, ever since I’ve known him, but I’m betting on him having a huge life change and this business will be the catalyst to do it. You, you’ve, you’ve said it a lot on the show. People change. Seldom. I see you look for people that have high integrity that get it done. I also see you avoid like the plague. People that are not consistent, people that are just flighty flaky people who, who are like, they act or act like they have this magic and that you owe them some kind of investment because they have an idea, right? You avoid those peaks.

I, I avoid those people like the plague.

Anthony, I think, I think the bottom line answer your question is I think a lot of businesses think they’ve got to look for partners prematurely. And for instance, my CPA practice, the average CPA out there, whether you’re a partner in a firm or you own your own firm, they’ll generate about four to $500,000 a year where the business, and if they do that, they think they’re killing it. Why I own 99% of my practice and we’ll do about 5 million this year. So I have a partner cause I don’t want to sign these certain audits, but I’ve got people that work for me that make more than most in other

Firms because we’ve created the ability to, to have incentivized pay. And they don’t care whether they’re partners or not. They want. And like says, they get paid today for extra work and then they can go invest in other things. They, it’s just so I think actually you don’t really need business partners per se. And so many people think that owning part of the business is the end all to end all. Where if it is a, you know, percentage-based pay, in other words, the more you work, the more you provide, the more you generate, the more money you make. That’s really the mindset you want. And so sometimes,ugiving some golden handcuffs is appropriate and golden handcuffs would be, okay, you’re going to maybe sweat equity a percentage of the business for the first five years if you leave, it all comes back to me.

If you stick around five years, there’ll be vested and you get 5% of the business. I mean, so sometimes you get a rock star that you want to hang on to. You want to golden handcuff them down because you don’t want to compete against them. You don’t want your competition to steal them. You know, there’s, there’s, there are those times that you find someone that’s an exceptional handcuffs baby, golden handcuffs baby. Yeah. And, and that for the employer and here again, the business owner, if you’re listening out there, folks, what you do is you can give it like you want to, you can always go to an attorney if it gets confusing to you. And that can help you write the contract, but what you do is you get them a little piece, sweat equities would call it you as part of your salary, part of your, part of your bonus, part of your structure that you’re paying them.

But you only vest after so long. And if they leave anytime before that, they get nada. And so that’s how you can try to keep employees longterm for long ways. And then after that, you’re like, well, now you’re now who’s not and how much is not only nada, nada, Oh, he’s one of the nada brothers, Billy Hata, Carl nada. We actually consult with, with clients for that. For instance, we just put in a plan to where he’s got, he’s got a couple of real key employees and a golden handcuff just means it’s non-qualified. And we won’t go into that. Where this doctor, we’re not deductible, but these two people, what happens is, is he says, if you work for me for another year, 65 one of them’s 15 years, when I’m 17 years, when you turn 65 we’re going to pay you $3,000 a month retirement for the next 20 years without you putting anything in. If you die while you’re working for us, we’re going to give your wife $200,000

It will move your body off the floor. That’s right. Get it off. We don’t, we’re not gonna leave your body there. We’re going to get it out of the workstation. That’s in the contract. I don’t know. That’s not him, but we want to keep your body there, but these other benefits can be sauropods. Somebody wanted to know that. I just wanna make sure. The key is, is

Is normally when you have retirement plans, I can know you can only tie them in for six years where the golden handcuff with the, then you can tie them in for 20 years and so, but it’s such a good deal that they’re, they’re dumb to leave because if they leave in year 14 or year five or years seven, they just forfeit everything. And so we get involved with helping design those plans and fund those plans all across the country.

Okay. Bochum you are blowing our minds and my friend. Keep them coming baby. I have got a lot of good ones here. You’ve actually answered two of my followup questions. Boom. Knocked him out. So wow, this one will be a kind of a round Robin. Wow. Do you have a new business startup setup checklist? So in your case, when you buy, buy a practice or when you’re starting one up, you’ve got the partner, you know, you’re doing the business. Do you have a, a systemized checklist or something to not miss anything? I do. I, the thing about it is that I update it about every month. So I called my Bulletproof checklist, which I’ll show you, but it’s like a lot of stuff. So as an as an example, let me just give an example. This is just something stupid, but it’s true. Google map didn’t exist in 99 you know, so you start a business that’s not on your checklist.

Oh, get a Google map or call recording. You know, it was, the technology was so do you remember your, how expensive the call recording used to be? Do those systems that record the phones. I dropped over $10,000 on three recorded lines back in the day and it was a big apparatus they brought in and it was crazy. Now it’s like 50 bucks a phone line. It’s a month to month. It’s great. So now on the checklist at clarity voice is on that checklist or installing HTTPS encryption on a site. Those are all marketing things. But then you also have, you know, you’re setting up your operating agreement. So there’s just a big old list and yes we have that. I would say for our lip for free, for our listeners, if you go to thrive time show.com and you go there today and you click on the podcasts button, you can download the start here book for free.

And in there it lists out a lot of it. But that checklist I have, I use that all the time. That’s, that’s the move. That’s the loop. It’s, it’s taken me a long time to make that thing and update it all the freaking time. Next question, sir. Awesome. So the next one I got is what is your most expensive business lesson? Why did it happen? How do you prevent it? Oh, I’ll go first. All Paul are expensive or painful. I’m going to let Paul, Paul can one up me, Zeke and one up me. I’m just gonna tell you this. This is what I did. I did not know. And if I did know, I didn’t listen to [inaudible] advice right here. Unless you’re a life coach, don’t coach lives. And that to me because when I was building, remember you, when you started, can you explain to the listeners how you and I met?

Seriously? Yeah. So you know, I was, and I was in my second year of college or first, I can’t remember which, but a loser, you know, antisocial, not really anything going on, but I figured in order to get these social skills I have to find a job that will teach me these. So I went and I found a DJ DJ I had, I was like, that’s the furthest possible I could imagine. So that’s, I’m sure that’ll work in some way. So I did it. I became a DJ, not very good at it. So you started working for our company, DJ connection.com DJ connection and then did that for about a year, you know, about 180 social guy. You learned all these skills. Yeah, man, it was awesome. Learn how to talk to people, be in front of people, you know, kind of manage people, manage the events.

And it was something that, you know, it’s completely invaluable. Did you grow up rich? No. The, the complete opposite. Share how you grew up just for the listeners out there, have some context. You know, probably $20,000 a single mom, three kids, you know, kind of craziness. Kinda raised my brother and sister up. And and so, and here’s the thing, this is what I and I not saying I regret helping you just want to share this with you. Sure. If you Google today, Tulsa DJs, right? All of the listings are former employees of mine who started a company to compete with me while working for me. All of them. Wow. So I ways in my opinion, and this is my, my wife agrees with this. I think I wasted an entire decade of my life just mentoring up jackasses who screwed me as a way to say thank you and I am super pissed off about it because I’d meet these other, meet these idiots.

I’d meet these, these people at my house for dinner and they’d say, Hey, Hey, I’m going through this life issue. Could you help me? I’d help them all. And then they would, this is, this would happen. We installed call recording. So I’m playing the calls one day and the call goes like this, but they’ve gone DJ connection. Yeah. I wanted to see if you guys had a DJ available on June 5th the guy says, let me check right now. I’m all booked out, but I have a company I would recommend for you. Let me give you this company, and he’s recommending himself. Well, sure. And this would happen all the time. All the side. I see this behavior. I’d pull the guy aside. I’m like, guy, are you starting your own company competing with me? And it was a poor judgment. It was a bad, it was, it was a bad decision was a decision that I’m owning now.

My bad. You know the guy who always plays sports and misses every shot and says, my bad, my bad, my bad. You played soccer with the guy on me, on me, my bad. He’s always getting penalties in soccer. My bad, my bad on me. And Vanessa would go, you got to cut that guy. You got to quit coaching him. So I would business coach him up. I’d get the guy up to making 70,000 a year, 80,000 you’re kind of co propping them up. Z coaching them, filling in for their, for their mace, massive gaping moral issues. They’re there. It’s like they have obviously have holes in the submarine but I’m plugging those things, duct taping them up there and then, and then they would just implode one by one. And now my philosophy now it’s so, it’s so much. It’s so, it’s so much better.

It’s so much better. Step one, I would not find, no I wouldn’t, I would not. I’m serious and [inaudible] so you are a blessing and so I have chose it. It’s a blessing that came byproduct that came from this. But now I just look for Andrew bloomers. So let me tell you the bloomer philosophy. Okay. One, if they can’t work at Chick-fil-A or Starbucks or they don’t have their crap together, I don’t hire to, I just offer great carrots, you know, great performance based carrots and then I teach them that the technical things. But I am not going to, for me personally, I am not going to business coach up people on here’s the keys to being an enthusiastic person. Here’s the keys to time management. Here’s the keys to stay motivated. Here’s the keys to not stealing anymore. Because I used to do that. And every time these guys would have like a two year window of their life, they would do well and then they would just fall off the cliff every time.

It was like the, what’s the show where they show bands where they fall apart? Th th the show that’s one hit wonders. It’s one where they show the Brit, the band broke up. Oh, they all break Epic’s guns. A few of them, you know, the show about guns and roses and poison and it’s like how they vote, how they implode. It was like that every, every year. And and it just, so I, for me, that was my biggest regret was trying to life coach people who I should have just fired him. I should’ve just been like, Hey, you know, y’all got a great tip. You’re fired. You’re fired. You’re fired. Seriously. Now I do it and I have so much more time freedom. I’m happier all the time. They both start with B. Buh-Bye. You know what I mean? Z, you’ve probably done it before.

You probably mentored up a jackass. You know I did that early on, but then I quickly realized, Oh I’m it take you to run seven minutes, seven weeks. You’re pretty pragmatic. Probably more like seven months, seven months before you stop mentoring. I’m like, this is stupid. And the key is when you find someone that you think the skills are more important than their core values at that individual and skill, you can always, always train up core values. Not so much you think you can. Right? You know you, you, you believe you can’t. That it was like youth group. I’m like guys, guys, guys, guys. Okay, here’s the deal. Now that we have climbed up to the trust that that was the trust fall, trust, fall. Now we’ve done that and now we’ve gone down the Illinois river together. Now we’re going to burn our CDs.

Oh yeah. Cause we got a burner. Secular music. Oh yeah. And we’re going to get shirts with an emphasis on it and we’re going to drive back and we’re going to live a new life. We’re born again. Here we go. Welcome to DJ connection. Come on. And then they would do it for like a week and then I would just get the car. I got the craziest voicemails. I, I, this is a fun story. You know the relay for life event. Oh yeah. It’s where you walk around a track. They had one back in the day and it was some event where you walk around the track in the winter and union to raise money for something. Oh yeah. And one of the DJs, this is his voicemail, a boss. I don’t know how it happened, but my car is stuck right now on the track.

I need you to come get me. What? Right. So it’s like three in the morning. My wife and I drive over there and there’s a guy completely intoxicated parked in a Honda. What does Honda boxy vehicles right in the middle of the track stuck in luck. No, seriously stuck in like a snow pile. And my wife’s like, why do we put up with this lie I told you about the new, the new to a Buddha hugger. Oh, the one down in Dallas. Yeah. That’s a good listeners who missed out on this story. I get a guy not going to knock on my door. It’s like two in the morning, sir. Very important here. We’ve got law enforcement here at a hotel. I’m in a hotel, the nice Hyatt downtown and with the rotating restaurant. Oh yeah sir. We need you to come down here and we have the law enforcement here in need.

They need to speak to you like what? What’s going on? They said just your room signed out to such and such and such and such. Oh yeah. Those are my guys. Well they’ve got the fire department, sir, and one of them is a nude and is a, I’m clinging to a Buddha and I’m like, what in the world? I think I make this stuff out. And so he ends up, he’s totally naked except for his underwear. And I guess he had a long Island ice tea contest with other employees to see who could have like 10 and like 10 minutes. These are good life decisions. So he apparently, while he’s still sober, still, they’re passing him on long Island iced teas while he’s out on this ledge. Like he’s liking the scene from empire strikes back or Lucas fighting with his father.

You know, he’s out there. It’s this impossible area where this Buddhist has a, there’s like a Buddhist statue with a waterfall and it’s like maybe two and a half, three stories up in the air. And then he realizes he’s intoxicated when he’s on that ledge and now he doesn’t want to come down and he didn’t want to fall or die. He’s just screaming. And I would spend my time with these kinds of life situations. I mean, we had one guy who he used to always get the vehicles impounded, always, I mean, like more than three times, four times, and was like, Hey boss, I’m down here at the David L. Moss corrections. I had a taillight out and I did not pay certain fees and I tried to, they pulled me over and I tried to get away, you know, just not, I’m sure I just duck around this corner and I need you to, so Vanessa was like, what are you doing?

I would just constantly try to put these idiots together. And it was because I was teaching BJ’s right. I think that’s where my [inaudible] you are. Yeah. You are life coaching and how’d that work out for you? Not well and I just can’t get those years back. But I’ve learned from it. Hopefully someone just got 10 years of your life back by not making that same decision. See what’s the worst business move you’ve made or maybe but you know, deal where you’re like, that was a dumb ad or a dumb strategic move. Or maybe maybe you didn’t do enough. Maybe you did too many calf raises and now your calves are permanently just too sexy. Permanently jacked. Yeah. Well what if I could go back and change is a particular lawsuit. I sold my first auto auction and I didn’t know compete. And I thought like, you know, a guy would think when the no compete ran out, I could compete again.

Oh, well that, well, you’re assuming the noncompete is over. Is that crazy? You thought that it was Oh yes. And Tom and in my, in my, in my ignorance after five years I started to put back together my current auto auction that I have open now, which is, I opened in 2013. 2010. My no compete run out 2013 I started a new business three years after the, after the noncompete. Yes, it was five years. Eight years later, boom. Got him. I’m up and running and sure enough, opening soft opening party here comes the servers

To serve me up a lawsuit. I already knew that.

Are you serious? Oh yeah. At the event. At the event. That is sexy

Hot. It’s hot sauce. Wow. Hey guys, I’ve got something here for you. But can we step into a back room? I don’t want to embarrass anybody. Well, sure we could step into a back bedroom, but it’s,

Oh Whoa. What could they for clarifying that was the music. No, no, no, no. I’m, I’m playing the music that Andrew said deploy. There you go. I’m just reading cue cards. I don’t even know what I’m doing. I’m like, get, that was the control by Andrew.

I get sued and of course I’m sitting there thinking, this is silly. This can’t hold any merit. This, you know, I honor the terms of the contract and there’s a little thing in do judicial system where if you think you’re going to the courthouse to get justice, you are very naive and when they pick out 12 of your peers to sit on the stand, you’re being very naive. And when they spend the kind of money after five years of battling and finally getting into court that they’ve spent, it’s really not about right or wrong. True. I’ll be honest with you. It’s about who has the slicker attorney, who has spent the money. When I, when I walk in the room, they had like 12 suits in there and I’m like, Oh, that’s not going to go well.

Bobby, Bobby Frost, Robert Frost, [inaudible] frost. He writes, a jury consists of 12 persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer. Exactly right. Think about this real quick man. If you, if you go to court and you’re in a business owner and it’s business owner versus employee, let me, let me tell you how that, how that goes. Oh, quick, quick poll here guys, before we get started, we’re getting the jury pool. We want to make sure it’s objective. How many of you own a business? Nobody puts the hands. How many of you are excited about this? Get me seriously. So the people who want to serve and want to spend their entire week on jury duty, our employees almost every time, right? And the statistics show, according to Forbes, nine out of 10 startups fail. So even if you have a jury of all business owners or who once were business owners, you have usually 11 people who are employees and have never been self employed successfully.

And so they’re thinking, cause this is the lie, this is the lie. They think if you’re successful, you must be screwing somebody. So there’s an inherent bias right there. That’s brutal. And then if you are going in heavy with the facts, like you, dr Z, you might think, I don’t need to spend a bunch of stacks of cash on an attorney’s. I don’t need to have like the best attorney in the whole world. I don’t need to have like a team of 12. I don’t need to hire the Wu Tang clan of attorneys. I don’t need 12 MCs here. I’ve got a slam dunk case here. Other guy lawyers up, right, spends a bunch of money and it’s whoever has the biggest illegal budget, right?

I, I tell you what, it was the most miserable week of my life. You look good though. I mean, I sat there listening to what they were saying and it was all just silliness to some degree, but yet, you know, when you’re sitting there, I mean, after a while I’m kinda going, man, I, I’m, I’m one bad dude. Wow. I been, I have look at the lives I’ve ruined by competing. Oh my goodness. You know, cause business is war. And, and I think that that’s one of the things that people think it’s all about a big kumbaya thing. It’s kinda like, well the pie’s big enough and you shouldn’t take too much. You’re an aggressive marketer. You’re an aggressive business owner. That’s why my business stay open.

Can I put audio of you, cause this was day. How many days were you in that court in the court? Tried to, I don’t know. I’ve tried to forget about it. I’m doing it. This was day three. This we’ll see on a hump day. And what happened was, is he walks up to the the stand or the, does he explain cause there’s, there’s a judge, right? Oh there’s a judge and there’s a jury of your peers that 14 to two don’t know that they’re not the final 12. Butterfat and Z says, cause I request a brief recess. I and know the judge says, well why? And he said, well sir, I, I want to get myself prepared for what’s going to happen next or sure, I’ll give you a few minutes. And he comes back. And this is audio view,after day three of, of really just taking it from the team here. Here we go.

Thank you sir. Thank you sir.

So then at some point, so then at some point it almost becomes that it almost becomes that and I don’t say sympathy card, I’m that that’s not the right word, but it’s almost that, you know, they lean on people’s, you know, what they think is fair, which is a horrible term, you know, in the,

Oh, it’s good. Like multilevel sales pitch. It’s, it, it’s like, do you hear that? Do you care more about fair business or about one man destroying America?

I mean, and so, and so it’s, it’s kind of when those deals, when it’s all said and done, you’re just kinda going, I mean, they didn’t get what they wanted and I gave them more than I did. And it’s kind of negotiation one on one. But you’re, you’re having 12 strangers that quite frankly, I mean, if I caught one more of them sleeping throughout the trial, I was going to come unglued. And did they really sleep? Are they sleeping? Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? Oh yeah. Sleeping.

I remember when we were in the DJ business flashbacks, there were certain guys who were pumped about jury duty. Wow. They were like, Oh my gosh, we be like 50 but 50 bucks a day or something, or 25 bucks a day. Oh, it’s okay to run your meals. So like I’ll get Schlotzky’s every

And I get to pick up the sandwich. I get as far as far as that goes. Now how do you, how do I look back and keep that from happening? That’s, that would be the question. So when I, when I say that was the most horrible experience I’ve had in business is sitting there that week and just having people come up and, and throw all of these accusations being, you know, say all these things about me, which weren’t true, but you can’t say, I’m gonna stand up in court and go, that’s a lie. But you, you can’t do it. You got to sit there and take it like a Chimp and sit there and try to smile. And you had this whole game. It’s all a big game. Trials are nothing about justice at all. And so if you think you’re going to Sue someone and go to go to trial and get your justice, you are being NY Eve.

Now I look back and I go, where could I have, where did the train leave the tracks? And I go back and go, you know what? It’s when I probably sold my first business. So, so ear one, don’t sell it, especially to a legit litigious company like, like I sold it to, I mean, whenever we’d gone into contract, the CEO walks in my office and shakes my hand and says horrible things, right? Then I go, I don’t like you, number one. I mean you just cussed me out. And you said horrible things right there. And I just shook your hand. You know, that’s, that’s a red flag. And now I look back at all the things that transpired over the course of those events and now it’s all behind me and you don’t. And I have forgiven and I have move on hoop. Dawn. Yes, Darth Vader. So if you’re going to get into business with Darth Vader, I understand you’re going to get lightsaber in a place you don’t want a lightsaber. Speaking of lightsabers

Paul, how are you doing? Hi am great. You know, two things. One you know, the, the proceedings, legal proceeding is really more like politics and anything. It’s not who’s right, it’s who looks the best and who says the words. And you can get away with saying just about anything because you can’t prove it. Now to answer your question for me is I got rocking and rolling at a young age was, was really being successful and I thought, well, I can be successful in anything. And so I opened, I bought a bowling alley. Oh nice. And then I opened a sports bar and dude, if you want to lose money fast, get in the restaurant business with and when you’re by yourself. So it kind of gets back to, I stay in my lane and if I ever do a restaurant again, first clay slap me in the face.

But if I ever do, it’s it’s only going to be, I got to make sure I have that person who has restaurant experience, who is an expert in that. So my, my deal, my worst mistake is just getting outside my lane. You know, any active business, I’m sticking to what I know now. I can consult with people, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be there day to day running a restaurant. So I just stay focused. I invest in real estate, the passive type things, but before you expand into another business, you’ve got to know because it’s going to pull you away from your primary business as well. You’ve got to have somebody who has expertise in that zone. You agree with that? I’ve got a great idea for a restaurant though, so whenever you’re ready, I’m, I’ll be your huckleberry. Is this, hang on. Is this the the one that has fireman running around with no shirts on. You were telling me

That’s a different thing. That’s a different thing. That’s different though. The car wash business, that’s the, that’s the carwash place. He goes to all. Ah, that’s the one. It goes out of business idea. That’s a place he buys from. Those guys are very good at cleaning cars.

Absolutely. They’re this Justin, these guys over there at the firefighter theme place are very good at washing cars. Okay. Back to you Anthony Buck M a in our, in our beautiful thrive time show help desk. Sir, what questions do you have? Well it kind of fallen from what you guys said. It’s kind of funny cause I’ve, I’ve had every single one of those lessons myself. I’ve learned how to hire a character of a skill if like, you know, it’s amazing how much that changes. I’ve had to settle two lawsuits on my used car dealer and I’ve, I didn’t even consider a trial because there’s no way I’m winning that there’s no way, even though I was right and I did start a business related to my car dealership as a car wash lost money super quick. You did, you didn’t have shirtless fireman Manny as your mistake. That was a mistake. That was your biggest mistake. There is still a lawsuit. So that’s probably why if I had another Lang, it all ties together. It all ties together. So this one is actually for you clay, and it’s kind of, you know, unique to I guess the certain personalities kind of like mine, like yours. Do you have any techniques to channel frenetic energy or rage into productive energy? Yes. Let me, let me get myself mentally prepared. Like eating a spoonful of Draino. Sure. It’ll clean you out.

Okay. This is what I have found is that, is that if you let your rage consume you, it definitely will leave you hollow. So you’ve got to find a way that it’s sustainable to channel that negativity you have. You have, you have to find a way and commit to it. So I’m going to give you four or five examples and maybeZ you could one up me of, of that. I’ve seen my clients do that have worked for them. And then you pick the one that’s right for you. UI got one guy who we had a very deep conversation. I’m pretty positive he’d had a beer before calling me. So it was a really good one. But he says, I just work out every morning until I am not pissed. So I’m like, how long does that take? You could be a half hour most days, an hour, hour and a half.

But I can’t tell you how mad I am sometimes. And I go, why? He goes, Danielle, tell me the situations. I’m like, Oh, I could see why you’re jacked. Sure. I mean seriously that, that, that, that isn’t, that is a thing. It’s a bit ability to take that negative, turn it into a positive and fitness might be the thing for you. That might be the thing. Another one, which is crazy. I give it to you. You throw it back. It’s fine. Napoleon Hill wrote about sexual transmutation. Now that right there, Hey, it’s in the book. It is in the book and I read the book and I, this is, someone’s going to, you’re sick. Get outta here. Just listen. Just take some notes. Google search. I’m not making this up. Napoleon Hill, this is what he says. He says, sex transmutation is simple and is easily explained.

It means the switching of the mind from thoughts of physical expression to thoughts of some other nature. A lot of guys who I have found guys, I don’t know about women guys who have like a very high sex drive are guys that can turn that energy, that shovel Rita wow. A woman and turn it into business goals. So for me, a lot of times I’m very frustrated about certain things and I’m like, I’m going to go out there and kick some butt for my wife. I’m going to go slay a dragon and bring it back for, I don’t know why I’m going to slay a dragon and I’m not sure why she wants to the pelt, I’m not sure why she wants that, but I’m going to go slay a dragon. So as an example, I got her a wedding ring me, Z. Tell me about this deal here.

Okay. I’d thought I would save money. It’d be a good financial steward. So I didn’t buy my wife a wedding ring. Oh my grandmother said when she passed away, I could have her ring. She passed away. I took the ring, gave to my wife. It wasn’t perceived the way I thought it would see. I got, I got done. How long after you married her did that happen? Was that, well, there was an immediate face facial expression that indicated I will not marry you. I had to ask Vanessa three times to get a yes. That’s all. Yeah. So I thought whatever, she’ll grow out of it. I’m saving money, I’m a good steward, whatever. So eventually, I mean, it was like, it wasn’t passive-aggressive. It was more of just like she would mention things directly, like, Hey, at some point I think it’d be nice if you’d buy me a ring or maybe that kind of thing.

I don’t think that’s so much passive-aggressive. It was direct. It was, and I, and I I was mad about it. I’m still mad about it. I don’t even like, I hate rings. It wasn’t gonna like cut metal. I don’t want diamonds. I don’t, don’t see the point in it. So I went out there and I’m like, I’m going to get you a ring that costs more than our first freaking conduct. That’s why I’m going to do, I’m going to go sell some, you know, and I did and that and so I find a way to turn like things that irritate. I mean to this day you say, are you happy about it? No. I’m like glad Vanessa has one. Sure. But I didn’t want to like it. She’s happy though. She’s happy. More time makes me happy. But yeah, but I’m saying life, I was able to turn a negative.

Paul, you had a hot take there. Oh, I’ll always going to say the comment about the rain thing is is I kind of have a different opinion about that. You want that ring on your wife’s finger so big that her knuckles dragging the ground that another guy sees that ring and says, I can’t even come close to saying take overpayment. Take some of those. Became a ring war with Steve Currington and NJ David was the winner of it. Oh yeah, because Kerrington’s like ask your wife can’t have a ring. Guys are the only ones that win and so funny that Jay’s like, I like this rivalry going on. So anyway, that was a thing, but again you can turn it into like a productive like action. Okay. The third, this is something I see Z doing. I don’t know. I would get, I’m just giving you what I’ve seen and you can, this is my perception of it is just don’t give anF or give a feeling.

Don’t even think about, just keep moving, just stay in action. It’s like when something bad is happening, don’t sit there and go to counseling for the 47th time. Okay, we know your partner screwed you. We know this is how you feel. Now we have to take action. Go, go, go. I see action. The fourth I see all the time, this is big is meditation or morning prayer. I see people that do that. The prep, the meditation, the morning prayer, they do that and the fifth one is a lawn darts. No, I’m just kidding. It’s a, it’s just, it’s, it’s maybe teaming up with somebody who can handle it, who you can not dump your ideas on. But it’s like somebody who’s through it, like a mentor

Or partner where you can go, Hey partner this, just so if you were partners with di and you could say, Hey man, I’m getting screwed by a guy I sold my business to and now he’s coming after me cause he’s like, Oh, I’ve been through that. And somehow just when someone can say that you feel like, Oh, okay, well you have that testimony that you can actually speak into someone’s life. It’s like a lady who’s had a miscarriage, could speak in a another young lady’s life. And if you haven’t like me, I would never really know what to say to someone like that. So in the business world, I’ve gone through just about every disaster you can go through, you know, owning all the businesses I have and all the situations that can arise. It’s, it’s very seldom when I go, that’s the first time that’s happened.

Right. So what do you, what’d you kind of go through those and get your high water Mark? You kind of understand that, you know, Hey, it’s going to be okay. And I think probably the biggest thing for me is the quicker I can get into forgiveness mode, the better off I am mentally, mentally, and spiritually and physically. It’s having that anchor, that anger, that unforgiveness in you when you’ve been done wrong, and you have every right, if you will, every right, you know, to be mad and plant that mad flag, Pat them and then dance around it, dance around it until you’re just worn out and you don’t take a little break, come back, dance more dance right naked by the fire pit, wearing a goat head, hugging a Buddha hugging, drinking log. I have found though that sidebar, that’s a sidebar. But the thing about it is that the quicker you get into that, into into forgiveness, that doesn’t mean you don’t deal with the problems that are at hand.

That doesn’t mean you stick your head in the sand and go, well, I’m just going to forgive him. And you know what? It’s just, it’s just, I’m not gonna worry about, no, you get a plan going forward to, to take care of your business, take care of whatever it is that got wronged, right? But you don’t sit there and walk around with all that anx and anger and that bitterness in you because that just eats away at you. That makes you less of a person that makes you someone. People don’t want to be around. And so don’t let someone’s ignorance or don’t let someone’s, what they’ve done to you, Rob you of your joy, Rob you of your peace, Rob you of those things. And at first it’s difficult. Don’t get me wrong. I mean, it’s difficult, but I have learned and done it so many times over the years. It’s now it comes easier and quicker and it’s the true, it’s the longterm best thing you can do. Or you could join like a secret society Z and, and you know, get weird brands and, and team up with conspiracy theorists and let it bother you and steal all your joy and get nothing done. And that’s plan B. Plan B is,

That’s your fallback. Some fallback plan. This is he and I, the last time we got really upset we couldn’t let it go. This is our Illuminati gathering here. Oh yeah, that’s right. I grabbed a goat head, I out on the pads. I was spraying around the room going, this is getting weird, but let’s, let’s continue down this rage. Join it. Let’s continue this rage path. This will help us.

But, and also too, it’s,

It’s easy to say when I’m getting ready to say and it’s kind of maybe difficult to understand it and that is if you’ve ever done any public speaking, right? Have you ever done any public speaking Anthony? A little bit that I’ve been hearing there. Okay. I know what happens to you just physically before you get up there to speak. You get nervous, little sweaty, you know you cannot try to take, so you’re really, you really kind of get frantic. Yeah, you get hives and you went on my inner thigh, lower back, all kind of soppy wet and all that kind of stuff. Right. So what does a good public speaker do now? Clay’s a great public speaker and he can answer that. But what they do is they take that energy. There you go. Because that’s what it is. It’s energy and this is all talking about how to channel the energy in the right direction.

You’re mad. That’s energy, you know, go through forgiveness and then take that same energy and channel it into productivity. Right? same thing when you’re public speaking, you can use that bump of a Dorfman’s. You can use that bump up, you know that feeling coming through you. Right? And that’s actually chemicals being released by your body inside. And you can go out there and you can kill it. Public speaking. Clay, did you have any like little moves you did before you public spoke? Yeah. Well I’m again, I paid Carlton Pearson to teach me and I read all the Dale Carnegie books on speaking and actually attended a course so I can, you got to kind of a leg up on this one is I use, this is, again, I don’t know if you want to do this, but this is what you would do. Craig Rochelle spins 15 pastor Craig Rochelle, the pastor of the largest church in America, spends 12 to 20 hours per week preparing his speech and brother Carlton told me, you need to say the speech out loud at least five times before you give it.

And I thought, okay, Oh, the other thing that Dale Carnegie talked about is have three to four or five times. You’ll have much more content than what you’re actually going to say. Like much more content, much more content that worse is getting a public speaker and then running out of stuff to say, I’ve got 15 minutes. So you get a log, much more content, and then you say it out loud and that preparation begins to take away the nerves and then all of a sudden you still so over-prepared you have a certain confidence going into it and then all the rules about don’t make eye contact that goes away without not shaking and not freaking out because you’re so prepared. It’s when you realize you have not prepared, therefore you don’t deserve the stage. That’s when you really get nervous is when you know you’re kind of nervous. Anyway, because you’re not, you haven’t done a lot, but then you have a prepared to kind of be the one to combo. That’s when you get nervous. And I was getting up there doing the old one, two combo where I was nervous and I wasn’t preparing properly and people could see through it. So that preparation, I think is a really critical moment to get over those nerves. Paul, you had a comment on how you deal with the stress of running away.

Yeah. Well, I was just going to say, you cannot, I challenge anybody to find me a successful person who hasn’t been attacked verbally, who hasn’t, who hasn’t dealt with negative things. You can’t, you know, businessman’s success. Now, most people will look at a successful person say, Oh, it’s an overnight success and you’re lucky. The reality is, is the issue that, that if someone is coming at me, if, if I’m feeling the angst, that’s my issue, it’s not their issue because one, they’re probably not a person I really even care their opinion. They, they’re not putting food on my, my table. They’re not, you know, they’re not somebody who’s who I have a close relationship with. And so I tried to just stop and remember everything positive and negative is a learning experience. And so they, they may say 15, you know, 15 things. Is there some sense of truth in that? How can I, can I separate emotion with fact and know that, that, that see that person as typically that’s an insecure person, that that is just lashing out. And then you kind of laugh insides and think of them as some, you know, five-year-old kid that has threatened to beat you up or, and they can’t do anything. It’s just all word,

Another middle mechanism. I have, and this was taught to me I want to say Lee Cockerell said this to me years ago and I’ve heard this over and over, but when you, when somebody really insulting use it, you know how you have a, someone who’s just irate, someone you had to fire or some, you know, it’s typically it’s a competitor who says something crazy or someone you had to fire. There’s some sort of friction. Don’t say how you feel for 24 hours and never send it via email or type it like, do you know what I mean? Like don’t say how you feel. Don’t do that. Give yourself 24 hours to cool off and then do not email that thing. I mean just getting rid of the emotion. It’s actually looking at fact you should’ve, you should’ve called Antonio Brown and told him that because he could have, he’s got the life lessons.

You have the 0.5 second rule. He’s like, if after 0.5 seconds you haven’t let go of the stress, send it to everyone. Yeah. And then, and then not only send to that person but then tweet it out for the world to see on believable. So again, the a, that’s a rule. The other one is again, the emotions. Whenever you get really excited, like you’re wanting to invest in something, buy something does that big up like, Whoa, we should do this again. 24 hours, wait on it. Think about it. Pray on it. A lot of times, even 72 hours, but just don’t make emotional decisions. Let’s call deal heat. You get in the middle of the deal and you just want to make it happen. Yeah. Deal. Kids, I’m in deal heat. Okay, next question. Questionnaires here. I’ve got a funny story about the deal hate thing.

When I got my dealer license, my first car, Bob was at Z 66. Right? Oh nice. There we go. It’s going through the lane. You know, they’re, they’re really, they’re pushing you to bid, but more and more and more. And it, it goes through and as it leaves I’ve won it. But on the back of the window it says no reverse. So I bought a car with no reverse because I didn’t think then didn’t calm down slow. And sure enough, last two grand, my first car. Nice experience. Nice. Yep. I mean, who really needs reverse? I mean, that’s the way you should live your life. You always look forward looking back, burn the boats, burn the boats. You don’t need to go back to his driveway was like an incline. Right? So he’s like, I don’t even reverse. I just got it. You guys rolled it out back over, backwards out of there. There you go. Okay. What is your next question? That was, that was, that was good. Now this one, a rule in this question is a no cliches allowed. Oh wow. What is the Kobe Bryant slash Michael Jordan slash Tom Brady trait of the 0.01% of the greatest and most successful that never gets talked about or written about. I don’t mean never give up, you know, I mean like something that is either kind of ingrained, you know? Well, okay, a 1% like something that’s very rare. Paul, you want to go first?

Oh, it’s easy. And it’s in about every success book you can think of. It’s about being intentional. Every decision you make is going towards the direction you want to do. People in life that aren’t successful is cause they’re, they, they drift and they’re watching TV and they’re on their phones. They’re not being intentional. So the difference between a successful person, I don’t care what field you’re in and a non-successful person is that successful person is intentional in what they do. They’re, they’re always looking forward. They’re everything. What if for instance, you know, we, I did a bodybuilding competition with my son and in 16 weeks I lost 29 pounds and got down to 2% body fat. And it’s because everything I ate was preplanned. How much when I was going to eat every exercise I did, it was intentional. So that, that proved to me that that anything can be, anyone can be successful if you have a path and you’re intentional and you monitor what you’re doing.

I agree with you Paul. And I think that that behind that intentionality Micheal Levine’s talked about this at our, at our shows at our plat, our in person workshops and on the show, Michael Levine, the PR consultant for Nike, for prints for Michael Jackson’s estate. He talks about they act super successful. People do things as though their life depended upon it. So as an example, ah, one of my clients, he’s a Canadian, a accountant, he’s up there in Canada. Mr Sperl sent me the preview pages to his new book and he said, clay, I’d like you to read it over the weekend if he could read or just proof it when you can’t prove it. He said, can you prove it? I said, I will proof it. I said, I’ll get to you by Monday. Well, why did I say Monday? Cause I want to get it done and you know what I was doing Sunday night after everyone goes to bed, I’m proofing the book and why am I proofing the book because I set a deadline and I’m going to get it done.

Unsuccessful people say, I’ll try. I freaking hate that statement. I know right away if you’re successful or not. If you say, I’ll try to get it done. Z, you see this all the time. I’ll try. Oh yeah, there’s a big difference. So if you have this deep burning white hot maniacal thing called, I am going to obsess about getting something done. I have refused to lose. You can’t compete with people like that. There’s a certain engagement they have, their just their lights are on. It’s like there you see it on an in sports, you see it, it’s a certain intensity. You just, it’s like they are all in and you’re kind of toes in the water. You’re kind of trying it out a little bit. It’s just, it’s, see, I mean wouldn’t you agree it’s a, it’s that burden, the boats mentality man. It really is. And I and to to to pile on with these guys are saying you want to be purposeful, intentional and you’ve got to have the desire and the drive to do all that. That coupled together, I think that’s why few businesses

Are really successful at the level that you would look back and go, wow, that’s they’re killing it. They’re doing really well. Right. I mean according to Forbes, which is kind of our business Bible, I mean as many as 90% of businesses fail, not good, not good between eight and nine out of 10 or like just fail. And so you go, why on earth would someone go through all that effort to start one? Cause we know it’s a lot of work. You’ve were all business owners in here. We’ve all started businesses, it’s not easy. And there’s road bumps and drama trauma along the way. And so you go, well, why? Why are so few of them running steel and why are so few of them are doing exceptionally well. And I think it couples with what pollen and clay just said. But it also, it also goes with, I think not having a, and this may be is kind of too cliche, but not having a plan B.

In other words, not having a backup plan. So many people that I talk to, they’re like, well, if this doesn’t work, I think I’ll just go back to work or I’ll do this or I’m going to do this. You know, I’m hopeful that it works. You know, those kind of, when they talk about that, if you have a plan B, your level of success goes way down. I forget the actual numbers. Clay could probably sport it off like that. But the idea is, is that there’s no chance, there’s not even a room in your brain to even entertain the idea of this business not being successful.

Let’s think about this for a second, okay? 57% of people right now, according to Forbes, 57 57% of people according to this is business Gallup here, Gallup says, 57% of Americans, according to the Gallup, want to start a business. All right? 33% of employees, according to Gallup, are engaged at work. Meaning they’re trying, engage, engaged. 70% are not, not trying. So when I went to college, Oh, are you? I wanted to pay my way through college and it was a 20,000 a year to go there. And I sold tickets to my dance parties for $5 a ticket and I had to pay for my college. So I’m a math wizard and that would be 4,000 tickets. And so I decided I’m going to get people there. So I put out fires and I get a call from the Dean’s office and they said, Mr. Clark, could he go on down here and said, sure, I’m a freshman.

How are you doing? They said, Hey you can’t pass up flyers and it’s against the rule. And I said, okay. And again, this is pre Christ. Okay, this is pre Christ. The point is here, this is to say you get it done. So I’m like, well I can’t, you know, put up flyers on the bulletin board. We know I’m gonna do, I’m gonna find the popular volleyball girls and the popular soccer players. This is division one athletes. And I’m going to have them pass them out on their floors underneath. You know, cause I can’t go into the girls’ dorms that the volleyball lady do, that I’ll have the guy, the guys do this, and then I’ll pass them out. And I’m gonna carry a flyers with me on every, everywhere I go, I’m gonna have a backpack and I’m gonna carry flyers. And every time I run into anyone ever, I’m going to pass out a flyer every single time, right?

And then I’m going to put soap in the fountains on the day, the Wednesday before the dance party, cause the dance parties on Friday nights, I’m gonna put the soap in the fountains on a Wednesday and they’re going to make a big stink about it. They’re going to say you would have this all voicemail system and it would say you have a message from the Dean’s office kitchen students. Somebody has put the soap inside the pattens and we need to, if you know any prepayment of any information about this, please report it to the Dean’s office so that we can do with this, you know, that kind of thing. So then I’m putting in there Wednesday and I’m going, Ooh, Ooh, you’re getting pretty finally. Bubbly, fun. Yes. Around the lunch room. I’m going, Hey guys aren’t the dance party. We’re going to let you know who’s putting out, who’s putting all the bubbles in the, in the fountains.

We’re going to let you guys know. I don’t know who it is, but we’re going to announce who it is. You know? So you’ve got to tap into that. So Friday you put more bubbles in there. Pretty soon everyone on campus is like, there’s a dance party on Friday. There’s flyers everywhere. There’s bubbles. Maybe those two are connected. Maybe. Then Anthony, I hand painted my vehicle, my 1989 Ford escort to get attention. So I drove around. Everyone would see this thing they knew. Like that’s the guy with the DJ business. That’s the guy with the fountains. That’s the guy with the flyers bubble. Dude. You keep doing this over and over and over and over and pretty soon everyone shows up. Pretty soon you get kicked out of college pretty soon. Now this is the thing I could have, I could have said I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna market it cause I don’t have the budget.

I’m not going to Mark it cause it’s not with the rules. I’m not going to hand paint my vehicle cause I can’t afford an auto. I can’t afford an auto rap. So I guess I can’t Mark it with my vehicle. You’re an outer wrap. Before outer wrap was Adara, I couldn’t afford a Dolly. So I literally was carrying these almost five and a half feet tall JBL speakers up the fire escape. Cause I wasn’t allowed to bring them into my dorm room and I go on and on all the things I did. But losing is not an option. Failure’s just not an option. You have to have that mindset,

You have to have that mindset. And I, and when I tell people, Hey, you know, they want to start a business, and I, and I kind of walk them through just to see where their mind is. So many times I’m just like, Oh, in the back of my mind I’m thinking, just go punch a time clock. You don’t have the fortitude. It’s, it’s not easy. It’s, it’s war. War is war. And when people hear that, they just sometimes kind of like, they kind of repel from that like, wait a second, Oh, I want it to, Oh, I don’t want to be mean. I don’t want to, you know, and I’m saying, I’m telling you the truth. It’s your, when you get down in the trenches context sport, it is, and you’ve got to be ready. Because I promise you this, when I opened up my optometry business, I didn’t have any other optometrists coming up to me and saying, you know what? We’re so glad you’re in town here. Take some cash, take some money when he’ll pay, brother, can we be help pay your car payment? Or maybe a house payment. Let’s go to dinner. And just as tough and ministry, it’s tough in any business you’re in and any day you want to open up. And so you’ve got to have that, that you know, that mindset of no matter what, no matter what, no matter what they’re, I don’t have another option. This has to be successful.

Well, clay, you know, I think you, both of you two will, will agree that there is a pattern and you teach that pattern at your workshops. I teach that pattern. We have a financial coaches that are at our office and, and, and we meet with clients every month that hood CPAs,

You know, we have clients all across the country, but there’s a pattern. And when, when somebody sits in front of me and they got all these, you know, the, Hey, I want to do this, I want to do this, I want to be successful, I want to save, I want to, you know, live right. And I say, go read this book and this book and then let’s get back together in 30 days. And then they cancel their appointment or they don’t read the book. Is that my fault? Is it? It’s, it’s that person’s fault because life is about choices and choices lead to consequences. So if you want to lose weight and you’re eating fast food and drinking pop all the time, you’re not gonna lose weight. You really don’t want to lose weight. And if, if you come to some, if you aren’t willing to come to jinx Oklahoma for a two day seminar, that’s going to revolution, change your, your life for the better. If you’re, if you’re sincere, then don’t come. But it’s your fault. So we, there is a pattern there and I’m sorry. That’s tough. It’s, it’s brutal. I’m feeling, I’m feeling patient. I give everybody a hug afterwards. But the point is, stop making excuses. There is a pattern. If you want to contact my office, who’d CPAs go to thrive and go to one of the web seminars and go to get on podcasts and, and so stop saying you want to be successful and be successful.

If someone has some, some excuses though for not wanting to get, for not be able to get the work done, you know, for not be able to read the books. Could they come to your 25,000 square foot a mansion with their 25,000 excuses.

I read them to you slowly come home, come home. But that’d be fun. I’d probably be sitting outside only if it’s only when his favorite football team’s played OD DB. They guy better bring pizzas. All I’m saying if we’re going to talk about [inaudible]

Lock and we have time for one more question, but before we get to your question, you have been implementing all the things we’ve been teaching. You’ve been listening to this show. You worked with me at DJ connection, you implemented the systems. Tell the listeners kind of, I don’t you, you know, you don’t want to brag on yourself, but we want you to brag on yourself. Tell us about the success as man. Tell us about the win. It’s been almost exactly a year since I went to the business conference last year. And you know, talk to Paul’s credit when you mentioned if you can’t make it to the business conference, you’re not serious. I have lost multiple friends this year cause I was like business owners to say go to the business conference, you’re going to learn, you keep asking me questions, go to the business conference, it’ll tell you more than what I can answer.

No, I just can’t. This and that and that. I’m like, after five times I don’t even talk to anymore. Right. So people have to do laundry. It’s laundry gets in the way. Yeah, exactly. And Oh, you know, my employees, this and that and this and that. I was like, well just shut down your business for a day because you’re going to learn like a hundred grand worth of knowledge. I mean, this is more valuable than college. The stuff you learn at this business conference within the year I’ve implemented not only my selling my business next month, but I’m going to be able to sell the business for approximately 400,000. Nice, nice. Nice. So now Z Z has this rules. He has this new thing he’s been working on called if you attend a conference and you implement the things and you, you, you generate a profit of 400,000 joint, the first $380,000.

Did they go direct deposit into your [inaudible]? I’ve seen it in the fine print. The tickets when you, you come to the business conference, if you make $400,000, the first 380,000 Kelechi feel like a dad tax on food. What exactly communist thing. It’s, it’s a, yeah, I think it’s fair. I think it’s fair. Trader pro, it’s kind of embracing that North Korean attitude. There. Okay. So back to you. So yeah, I did, I implemented stuff and I think the new most important thing I learned was the hiring aspect to learn how to hire a character of a skill. You know, how to do the group interview, how to get the best people. Cause I’ve, I’ve fired multiple people in the past year and every person is better. And yes, it feels almost like an entrepreneurial like superpower because you know, you can get the best people and you can train them and now you’ve got this time freedom.

That’s amazing. All from knowing how to get the best people into your business. And that’s been a game changer because, you know, I had a lot of people that just just sucked. And now that I knew how to find those people that were just going to come in and be rock stars and then teach the skills, that’s been the biggest change. And the secondly, you know, really learning how to streamline, create the efficiencies and even to a greater degree than what I was doing before. And I think that’s taken me from being, you know, I’m highly active and the involvement of the day to day activities to now I’ll spend about 30 minutes a day managing the day to day flow of the business and spending the rest of the time on the business or other stuff. So what’s your final question you might have for their dr Z or Paul or myself or maybe all three of us as we as we wrap up today’s show?

That is a good question. Oh, it’s a question about Z where the question about what questioning. The last one was an awesome one and I’m not sure if I can top that, but I’ve got one actually here for Paul and you know, it’s of course it’s not, you know, tax advice or legal advice, any of that stuff. But I would ask how, what, what kind of tax structures and entity structures might someone use to save on taxes, tax advice and not just not just likeS corporate LLC, but maybe more along the lines of like entity structuring, income shifting, you know, C Corp, you know, and getting stuff off your personal return and putting it in, you know, this or that. There’s like more complex stuff that Richard people will do than just an escort.

Right. Well, what we do is we walk people through a pattern and of success. And at first you want to keep it simple. Then we typically will say the LLC, if it’s an active business, select as status because you can control social security taxes. We look at qualified plans. And really where it gets fun in the planning is when if you really are diligent and you’re, you, you have discretionary income, meaning you keep your lifestyle below the income that you’re making, then we can really start doing entity planning, see corpse or we can do a, you know, stock option plans. We can do retirement plans, we can do and, and so we walk you through that. And then finally at the end we have, we can help you sell your business without paying taxes. We just say helped a client sell a $15 million business and instead of him writing a $4 check, uncle Sam’s writing him back, a Sam or $50,000 check. And so it’s just, there’s a process, but you’ve got to get to the point to where your business is creating more revenue, more net income, then then you need to spend or you keep your lifestyle below that, then we can really do some planning.

The Anthony. That’s, that was a very fancy answer and I will applaud you, Paul, that that was very, very fancy, very fancy, very suave. But I know the truth. Oh. Oh wow. And is it okay if I call Paul out on the truth? I would bring it baby. Bring it on the train. Yeah. I mean, you know, he drives around these fancy cars. He just bought a new fancy house. Right. And he dresses fancy. He looks fancy. He’s in a rap group. He, he probably is a fancy one public called the fancy pants or something like that. Right? Yeah, absolutely. And this is really how he got there. All that, all that, you know, bait and switch started at the top. Now he’s rich. Yeah. Started at the time went more likely rich. It went more like this when people would come up to AME and seek advice for the blind to get further in life. Right. He would tell him he’d line him up and he’d say this,

Okay, okay.

No, you got to do it. You got it. Y’all. I can’t keep it. I got it. I got it.

Andrew, thanks for coming here today. I want everybody form two lines. Those are wanting to get rich over here. This slide it out. Give a crap, get over and get over here to get rich. I want you all to call drew frowns and have him show up here immediately with $1,000 each cash. Okay. [inaudible] he was the top of the Caribbean and for those of you that are okay,

Let down. Hey real quick. No seriously, this is, this is a audio of, of this is a lot of times with these, these seminars where Paul uses a megaphone to teach people how to get ritual fast, zero, pylon and Z. This is like, this is audio of you pile it on at the end of it where you are given your kind of a bonus tip in the back of the room and you see if you can decode what this means cause a lot of our listeners are going to go, I don’t know what this means but I think shoe know what this means. I’m going to queue it up here. Go here, me, get it.

Babies before we’re done here. Y’all be wearing gold plated diapers.

Why don’t we play it again? I know you, you had had a one glass of red wine after a 15 hour session. I don’t that food. I mean that’s, and this is what you said. I just want to make sure if you can decode what this means for our listeners. Dakota, please.

Okay. Babies, before we’re done here, y’all be wearing gold plated diapers. Well, here’s the thing about it. You’ve got to know the audience you’re speaking to. If you think about it, what would a baby and so

Bladed diapers, you’re going to call them out prophetically and say, listen, Hey babies, right? Babies, it could say, Hey baby, I’m going to get you a brand new Lamborghini. Baby can’t drive a Lamborghini. What good is that going to do? Right? You’re not going to, you’re not going to get gold plated Lamborghinis. Yeah, that’d be right. It’d be a gold plated diaper because who wears diapers? Huh? Huh? I’m begging. Oh, it all coming circular. It’s amazing. Thank you. Wow. Feel the flow. Ride the bull. Well, auntie, thank you for so much for joining us at the man cave at camp Clark and the Lampoon lagoon. Paul, thank you for your time there. Paul Hood with hoods, CPAs, if you’re in need of an accountant and I know you are, check out hoods, CPA’s dot com now Z, if you are, have a great accountant. I could CPA’s but you can’t read the financial statements cause revisions bad.

You going over to your optometry clinic right there, right Dr. Robertson. And if you can see, and if you’re feeling kind of sick because you’re driving or getting motion sickness, Z because you bought a car from your auto auction, you drove to Paul’s to look at your accounting, you go to your, your drive over to Paul’s to get, you know, get the accounting. You can’t really see too well, you have motion sickness cause you’re driving on one of your cars. You have the a to Z medical seat where people can get, get, get, you know, feeling better. Right? Well, yeah, it’s actually that a DME company, but the sleep center, if you’re not sleeping well, if you can’t sleep well, you’re going over there and they get you to a haircut. I mean, you gotta hurt and if you can open the room, get yourself a haircut, I mean we’re to help you.

It’s a man’s grooming experience kind of high end. If you’re out, if you’re out there today though, seriously, we want to help you. Don’t be a stranger. Go to thrive time, show.com and book your tickets to the in-person thrive time show workshop. If you care about your wallet and you care about you know, growing your business and taking it to the next level, go to the thrive time, show.com. Book your tickets today. And if not, well then we can’t help you with [inaudible]. Right? Getting aligned to, yeah, you’re the other line. We like to end every show with a boom and I’ve discovered that it kind of pops a little bit if we, if we boom, too close, we haven’t got a backpack. There we go.

If you are out there and you own a business and you want to increase the profitability of your company dramatically, you must record your calls or your business will fall off a cliff called mediocrity. You’ve got to record your calls or your business will bowl off. Cliff called mediocrity. Now, what’s the company I recommend? I recommend clarity. Voice. How do you get a good deal? Go to thrive time, show.com. Forward slash. Clarity, thrive time, show.com. Forward slash. Clarity. Tim you work in the call center. What’s your final justification and reason why you think all the business owners out there should record their calls? Yeah, if you you wanna make sure you actually have a good call and don’t sound like you’re having a panic attack while you’re talking to know the customer, probably be a good idea to record your calls. Daisy, what’s your final encouragement as a call center manager?

How impossible would your job be without recording calls? What’s your final tip for the, for the listeners out there as to why they should record their calls? Well, I just look at Tim. He’s like my personal testimony literally called him the nervous bomb diffuser for the first six months he worked with me and it’s like he went from nervous bomb diffuser to Brad Pitt over night. And I used to be the fast talking confused guy, my first job. And then they played Mike calls and they’re like, wow, you talk fast and wow, you’re confused. And so we all have some sort of dysfunction that we can’t fix, right? Absolutely. Can’t hear the call. Absolutely. So if you’re out there today, again, go to thrive time, show.com forward slash. Clarity. You know, they say, go to thrive time, show.com forward slash. Clarity. You know what they say? Go to thrive time, show.com forward slash. Clarity. You know, they say quit. Quit saying that because I, I don’t know what they say, but I know that I say, go to thrive time, show.com forward slash. Clarity. You know what they say? See abroad to get that booty active leg. Smack them. Yacko thanks. That clears it up. Wow.