At What Point Should You Have Fun and Start Taking Money Out of Your Business?

Audio Transcription

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

Yes. Luke Erickson. Welcome to the thrive time show. How are you sir?

Oh thanks. It’s great to be here. I’m doing wonderful.

Can you share with the listeners a little bit about your background and previous to joining the thrive time show and to make your life Epic team? Because rumor has it you actually once led praise and worship. What kind of jobs have you been doing before joining our team here?

Yeah, I have had the privilege of working for several churches, um, as a praise and worship pastors and young adult pastors and such, uh, worked for an incredible organization called Hilti. And uh, my amazing, beautiful, sexy wife is still working for Hilti. But then from there, um, had an ah, the, the awesome opportunity to work for life church, which is an incredible organization led by pastor Craig gross shell. And, uh, while I was there, I, I got to oversee huge volunteer teams. And

how many volunteers were you managing at any given time?

Yeah. Uh, so each campus has specific goals, but, uh, one of the campus had over 700 volunteers and, and the other one that was a little bit of a smaller campus had about 500 volunteers.

Well, it’s a conference week right now. So if you’re listening to the show, I apologize for them for the background noise. There may be, maybe you like the background noise and you kind of like to hear our overhead music. But, uh, I wanted to take a moment to answer this, uh, question, um, from a thriver that, uh, asked me last week in a meeting, a question I thought was super, super, super valuable and I’m going, man, that’s a great question. And I know there’s a lot of people out there listening that have a similar question. And the question is, at what point should you start taking money out of your business and enjoying it? At what point should you start taking money out of your business? Now, those of you who listen to the show, um, often know that I have a pretty intense, uh, mindset about these things.

But there’s a, there’s a, there’s a notable quotable by Jim Roan, the bestselling author, and he talks about seeds and saving and he’s talking about how if you do not develop, if you refuse to develop the habit of saving money, the seeds of greatness are not within you. Again, if you do not save, if you don’t have, if you don’t develop the habit of saving money, the seeds of greatness are not within you. You can’t, you know, money is just fuel for your, for your business. Um, but you, you can’t, money just allows, money is like a dollar is like a unit of time. You can use money to buy back your time. That’s what you can do with your money. You can use your money to hire someone, mow the lawn for you as opposed to doing it yourself. You can buy back your time with money.

You can hire us, somebody else to code out your website instead of you doing it. I hire people to bring me lunch in the office. So whenever I eat, if I, I pay someone to go get it, you know, some of them, I’m someone who I’m paying, I asked them to get me lunch. That’s what I do. Um, I pay somebody to drop off my deposits at the bank. I don’t know the listeners know that or not, but I don’t ever go to the bank. Why? Cause there’s people there at the bank who would like to talk and I’m sure I would like to talk to them too and therefore that’s not productivity and I don’t want to leave the building. So people say, how could you possibly have lunch and how could you possibly go to the bank? How could you run a company without leaving the building?

Uh, one, I have Amazon ship stuff to me. I have someone else bring me lunch and I have someone else who delivers the deposits. I have someone else who mowed my lawn, I pay someone else to clean my house. You say, well, what do you do? I spend copious amounts of time working on rap songs that I find to be funny that maybe no one else enjoys and maybe no one else will even appreciate. Maybe people don’t like it. Maybe people are saying, I don’t understand why you would take your time to record a rap song that will be played at the elephant in the room stores exclusively. Or if you go to EITR lounge.com by the way, you don’t, you can always click on clay Clark radio and you can listen to the playlist that I have personally curated and selected. You can click play there and you can listen to the overhead music we play in our building.

But you might say, why would you pay someone to clean your house, to mow your lawn, to drop off your deposits? I mean, what would you, what are you doing with your time? And I said, uh, this weekend I’m like, you know, I’m going to spend, I dunno, 12 hours working on a song about the elephant in the room. And you might say, well, do you get paid for that? Is that a thing you get paid for? Let’s talk about this for a second. We remember as a kid Luke, how we played GI Joe. Ah, those good memories. Basketball. Oh yeah. Does your son like playing basketball?

They actually, that’s his favorite thing to do. He is eight years old.

Is he getting paid? No, not at all. Let’s think about that for a second though. What if the goal of your business was to have fun? What if, so I recently, I just took a sales call from a Yelp representative. You heard the call? Oh yeah. Can you summarize the, how the call went?

The Yelp representative wanted to know why you hadn’t claimed your Yelp page and you proceeded to tell him because you were too busy. Dressing is Obi wan Kenobi. Uh, playing with lightsabers and having fun.

I, so I told him that I’m not gonna, I don’t wanna read, update my, my Yelp. Yes, but tell them, tell the listeners why I told them I don’t,

you’ve hit your goals, you knew your goals, you hit them, you don’t need to grow anymore. And now you can

see this is what’s interesting. The listeners out there right now out there is going to find this hard to believe, so I need somebody to vouch that this conversation happened. I told the guy that I’m, I’m done, right? Yup. Yup. You, you knew your goals, you hit your goals, you don’t need to keep growing and uh, you’re happy right now I have this cool thing I built called thrive time show.com. If you click on the business school, you can see where I personally invested four years of my life recording over 2000 videos, interviewing millionaires, multimillionaires, everyday success stories and those are all available for $19 a month. I’ve done that for you. There we go. I record nine shows a week. I do that for you. I’m not going to update my Yelp listing for you. I am not. I have things I’ve signed up for, but let’s talk about it.

The root question was, at what point should you start taking money out of your business? I think I perceived the question to be different. The question I hear is at what point can you start having fun enjoying life? Because this guy who asked the question is, is what I would call a diligent doer. This guys is a saver. Now again, we’re going off the off the premise that we’re, we’re already a saver. He’s developed the habit of savings so much so that by default he doesn’t ever spend on himself or his family. Um, as much as maybe he would like to because he’s so baked into, so committed to delay gratification. Sure. But I’m going to throw out a few rules that I, I was thinking about some rules. I had three powerful rules that I wanted to teach the listeners today and we’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll go through them one by one here, Luke.

Okay. So rule number one, you’re going to be dead soon. Everybody out there, write that down. Obey that rule. You’re going to be dead soon. I am one second closer to my death now than I was just a second ago. I just talked to the pastor and he started off the call. One of my business coach clients, the pastor. I said, how are you sir? He said, dumb dude. Okay. I’m a young lady in her twenties, just died in a car accident, car accident this morning. And she goes to our church and I pretty positive she didn’t choose the specific time and place of her demise. None of us. Do. We all, I have a, I have a picture that I like to talk about a lot. I have a picture. It’s in the man cave and it’s a picture of a, of a boat. It’s a, it’s a sailboat at night with a waterfall.

And if you guys look up, just type in sailboat at night waterfall on Google images, you can find it and I’ll put a link to it as well on the show notes. So you guys can see this thing. But life is like this. It’s like we’re having a peaceful, serene evening on our sailboat and then we die. And you can’t pick the day with which you die unless you’re trying to play God. Um, so you can’t pick that day, but it’s going to happen. And so when it happens and you die, I don’t think you’re going to wish you had another, $117 in your bank account because if you had thought as your final thought, as you’re giving it, as you’re giving your last breath of air and you’re thinking, man, I wish I brought up saved another 107, I don’t think you have that thought.

So rule number one, embrace that you will be dead soon. Let’s, let’s commit to that idea. You will be dead soon. Should we just wake up every morning, look in the mirror and say I will be dead soon? Um, I think so. I think, um, yes, I I do. Um, that’s a great question. Um, Steve jobs delivered the commencement addressed, uh, years ago. Um, he delivered that, uh, at Stanford and um, it’s interesting cause he does not have a college degree, but yet they’re the, one of the most prestigious schools in America is asking him to speak to their graduates. He said a lot of great things at that speech that, um, I think everyone should watch it. I think it’s powerful. The commencement address, but one of the things he said during his commencement, which by the way the word commencement doesn’t mean you’re done. It means begin at the beginning and that’s what commencement means.

It means beginning when you have a degree, you’re not done learning. You’re just beginning and that’s what it means. It’s the beginning. It’s not the end of the race. It’s the beginning. He says, Sunday, remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered. The most important tool Steve jobs has ever encountered. Yes, remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool that I’ve ever encountered. I’m going to under, I’m going to bold that. I’m going to highlight that and put a little on gonna. Put a little like a underline that says, remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Almost everything, all external expectations, people from Yelp, all pride, all fear of embarrassment, sales calls or failure. These things just fall away in the face of death.

Leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking that you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason to not follow your heart. No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is how it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. So today if you, let’s work off of this, this is what I would call this is this is kind of the action step. Let’s pretend that every month, you know you only have 30 days left. That’s how I would live.

And let’s pretend as though every month you knew you had 50 years left. That’s how I would save. Hmm. Yes. So you want, you want to do rule number one is remember, remember that you’ll be dead soon. Rule number two is spill over cash reserve spill over. Spill profits into the fund zone after your bank account has a certain level. So spill the profits over the, the, the, the safety zone into having fun. Spill the profits. Spill the profits. Spill what spilled the profits over the safety zone into the fund zone. So I don’t know how much money you want your bank account. Let’s just say this. Um, I am not comfortable unless I have years of savings. Somebody else’s not comfortable is to have months of savings. I’m asking you what’s your comfort zone? So let’s just say every month you’re going to automate, 10% of your money goes into savings.

You automate it. There’s a book called automatic millionaire about it. The book called automatic millionaire. It’s phenomenal. Automate your savings. Say 10% of my money’s going into the savings zone. But you know what? 5% goes into the fund zone because it’s, it’s over 10%. What I need to save to feel good, but that 5% that, that, that’s fun. Now you’re, now you’re budgeting for fun. Now you’re not splurging on things you shouldn’t buy. But a lot of entrepreneurs who are successful, they typically will save like 40% of their income and save 0% for fun. And they always roll all of their profits into growth. They buy more trucks, more vans, a bigger office. Just talked to a lady today who just signed a 10 year lease in town. She’s stuck in the building and the whole conversation was about being stuck in a 10 year lease.

Wow. And regretting the decision. And she did it because her staff six months ago said they would like a better office. Oh boy. So she signed a 10 year, 10 year lease and that’s what the meeting was about was what the meeting was about was, I don’t know why I signed that lease. I don’t know why. And I said, well, why did you say, well, my staff thought we needed a better office. Now I’m like, you’re in there now. How’s that going? She says it’s almost two times more and we have the same revenue. Now we’re a lot more profitable. And now these people, and one of the people that demanded the new space just turned into two weeks. Of course, that’s what happens. Of course. So you say rule number one, you’ll be dead soon. Rule number two, spill the profits over the safety zone into the fund zone.

Rule number three, rule number three. This is a great rule. Automate intentional strategic savings. Okay, so every year, max out your Roth IRA, your individual retirement account, maxing out the current max that you can do this year. Let’s type in Roth IRA, 2019 max contributions. The max contributions this year you can put in is there’ll be 6,020, 20. Um, and uh, so just at 6,000 right now, 6,000. Okay. So that when you automate your savings, that money can go into your, your savings account and it can buy shares with your, in a Roth IRA. And what happens is that can come against your taxable income. So just be smart about it. I mean, if you put the money in savings at a bank, you’re gonna get what? Like 2% return. If you’re lucky, two and a half percent, one and a half percent, you buy a Roth IRA and then the economy over time as the economy grows.

So under Trump tastic the economy’s grown from, you know, uh, the, the Dow Jones would bounce around between 16 and 18,000. And as of today, let’s look at the Dow Jones average today, Dow Jones average today. Uh, let’s cut the number. Here we go. And yes, it’s 27,879 today. So your money would have grown by a third if you had it invested there. Wow. And the economy goes up and down, but just automate your savings so you don’t have to have that emotional thought every week. Do I want to save? Do I not? All right. And then buy real estate that’s undervalued. Just anytime that you see real estate that’s undervalued by it, like anytime that you see like, wow, that’s a nice neighborhood and that house is beat up. We have a clearly a nice neighborhood and we have one house that’s beat up and you hear about the deal.

If you can get it for 30% less than it’s worth, buy it, buy it. But you can’t buy it unless you have money saved and you won’t have money saved unless you automate your savings. So we get into this and you say, well clay, now that you’ve achieved your goals, what are you doing? You’re, someone’s mowing your lawn. You don’t like to mow your own lawn? No I don’t. Um, you, you make your own food? No, I hire someone to do that. Okay. Do you go to the bank and deposit the money? No. What do you do? I spent my time this weekend working on this elephant in the room song. I’m going to tell you how difficult it is to make this and if you’d be, even if you don’t like it, I don’t care. I made this for me cause I like it. I’m going to hit play. I like it. But if you don’t, it’s fine. I’m hitting play. The song will be playing in the elephant in the room stores it. It’s a mixed tape version of an outcast song, so called trans DF express. Let me hit play here.

Yep.

I thought was stolen from a Rob bass song. You know I want to rock right now. It starts that way.

Loose traits, continental domination, devil, devil truth, the rules, transcontinental domination, the level and the role.

Only going to be heard by people by the way, that at work, any elephant in the room stores and if they get any of the clever wraps that I think are clever, that’s awesome. If they don’t, it’s awesome. Either way I did it because I didn’t have time to update my Yelp listing or to go to the chamber event or to network or I had multiple speaking event invitations this week. I didn’t have time to respond to those because I was so busy making this song that does not produce a profit.

Welcome everybody to the edit room buff place where you could do and when the side of the boom back Coby Winnie used to throw that poops to Shaquille pass Nam. Don’t because our team has gotten seals. Yes sir. We got Cod chopping with consistency like the tick box on the cracks. Every 15 is the best up in the pistons, but up on the microphone. Who is this? Is the C to the L a Y the guy obsessed with your hands. Look at safety first. Bang. We don’t run it with the scissors. Now grab my ticket and get out with the big park. My wife calls me big [inaudible] domination. Now the fellow Prince Conoman and if you get the jokes for you, don’t, I don’t care. I’m having a good time. Here we go.

First two verbal greetings. Gong over to, we want to show it off like a new tattoo, which is why we always do that deal. We always do [inaudible] called the first time you roll through cause when Jordan catch a, Hey, you’re going to love y’all too round here, back top sauce to be tap boom. Which is why we have people not show for you. Good people could slip us in a price. That’s right. When you lead, you’re going, Oh wow, your car [inaudible] will be saying that, Hey, it looks nice. It’s a beautiful man. I got to take a picture and frame it just right. Oh my gosh, did that medicine. They shouldn’t show hip up on his head is the facet. Somebody gave me a ticket to that boom. Done the place where the head of a fence room. Now

the thing is, you win whenever. Whenever you record a song, you want to do an acapella version cause the acappella version. You have to mix the levels with the instrumental version and then you got to go in and add all the background. So let’s hear it without music. So you kind of hear it.

The dojo, this is the elephant in the room.

So this is the acappella traits kind of nettle. There’s no of level. You go, why would you do this? I don’t have time to go to the chamber events or to return calls. Transcontinental. If you call me, I won’t return your call unless you’re a business coach client. You say, Hey, I had busy. I’m doing this in the room.

Oh yes. Welcome everybody to the Ana fit room. A place where you could grow them with a side of the boom by Colby. When he used to throw them. Oops to Shaquille Hamsterdam. Don’t cause our team has got the scales. Yes sir. We got car chopping mop with consistency like the tickets on the clock. The elephant team is the best up in the business, but up on the microphone, boy who is this is the C to the L a Y. That’s the key guy. Obsessed with your hands.

See I spell my name CLA. Why? But if you end it with a question, it works. Someone says, why would you invest time doing that? Are you gonna make any money? No

spine. We don’t run it with the scissors. Now grab my ticket and get out with the big Burke, trans continental domination. Nother level elephant in the room. I woven

my Cobra attack from GI Joe cause I just wanted to to see if anybody would get it was continental domination. Now the left. Why would you do this? I don’t know. I’m asking you rhetorically. What are your goals for your faith, your family, your finances, your fitness, your friendship, and your fun? What are your goals? Do those things have fun with your kids? Go out with your kids, have fun with your wife. Have marital sex all the time. Make it make a freaking life. You want to live? Quit doing mindless BS. I’ve got people in my life who always have a legal problem, always emailing me. Oh, this is urgent. What’s because your grown ass doesn’t save money for taxes. It’s not an emergency for me and just because I’ve had success doesn’t mean I’m a slave to responding to every single person’s urgent email about their tax problems.

Furthermore, I don’t care just because I’ve met you and for in college and now you are angry that you can’t be a guest on my show because you’re not successful. I don’t care about your bad review that you left me. I’m not going to respond. I am too busy recording rap songs that nobody’s going to listen to, to respond to things that don’t matter. Mr Yelp, I’m asking you right now, the question was at what point should you start taking money out? I heard, I heard the question those at what point should I start enjoying my life? And I would say right away and whatever you put into your schedule will happen. Let’s continue listening, listening to the rest of this lyrical miracle. And by the way, listeners, if you type in thrive time show lyrical miracle right now I think I have like 25 lyrical miracles I’ve done and it’s, it’s just, and some are deep and you know, wow, that was kinda good.

Some of them you’re like, why would you write a song about nine executive desks? Oh, I did a song about nine executive desks. I thought it was funny that I had nine executive desks and I thought there’s no songs written about what it feels like to buy nine executive desks. And I feel like that’s going to resonate with an audience of one. And so I did a song about it or like about having to have a sec to me, the fact that I chickened out twice and I had to get drunk as a skunk to get the surgery cause I took Valium and every time it didn’t work, I just got more fired up and I kept, I, I’d show up, they’d say, we’re going to know, I need you to have you a drop your pants. And then it would occur to me at that moment that what was going to happen.

And so I would call it off and my wife would get so mad. I called it off twice. Wow. So the third time I was like, I know what to do. So I stayed up all night just sipping on vodka and cranberry and the next morning I, I, I didn’t really go to sleep ever. And I showed up and like, sir, have you been drinking? Absolutely not. And then I had my surgery and I’ve passed out. Drop your pants away and they’re already dropped. That’s right. So let me hit, let me hit play here real quick. Let me hit play.

Does this have your major plans scheduled with a man? What would you do with your schedule if you handle the money and the time? What would you do? Reinvesting

in your business. If you’ve hit your goals, don’t let somebody else set your goals for you. Don’t let corporate America say you always need to get bigger. Don’t let freak Yelp call you and convince you that you need to send a sign up for yet another password. Another thing, if you’ve already hit your goals, I told the guy on the phone, I said, Hey, I don’t want any more business. You heard me say that, right? Yup, absolutely, so I don’t want any more business. He didn’t know how to handle that because he’d never heard that cause there’s nobody in the world except for super successful people that think that way. Business exists to serve you. Yes, your car exists to serve you. I don’t cry and

it was fossil fuels are so good. I love fossil pills. I love my vehicles so much. I’m never going to get out of it. I’m just going to stay in my vehicle.

Staying in your business a hundred hours a week. Enjoy the destination when you get there. Yup. Let’s continue.

Excuse me. Sorry. I was in your first top and the mic introduce you to the [inaudible] and we’ve been doing this for nine straight years and this wouldn’t be possible if you weren’t here. So on behalf of the staff, we toast every time that you call. It’s a Whitman for your hair and us. And when we stop, we’re down the tracks. But no, I couldn’t get, I couldn’t get Andrea

3000 to appear on the song for various reasons. So I just [inaudible] I took his verse. So he says the first rhyme and then I complete it. So it’s like we’re going back and forth cause I’ll never get an opportunity to do that. So I thought I’d make my own. So here we go.

Down the tracks, put in the [inaudible], the Alliance of a lead, them teaming up with Hess Savvis to tame hair clean across seas, shampoo, Google, put your mind at ease. You are now ordering all sinks. It all roles combined with the call center, all caught up in the stone. That’s why I dream duet and every happened. Andre,

you’re out there. You, you know, you want to team up with me for a song. Just one song.

TransCanada and Andrea, 3000

was the inspiration for the song. Cause people ask, well why doesn’t Andre 3000 make rap songs anymore? The guy from outcast, why doesn’t he? He says it’s too easy. Really? He wants to do something challenging and he doesn’t need the money anymore. So he’s working on like his own clothing line and stuff. Nice. And that’s just sort of how I feel about certain business things. I just, I don’t want to sit, I don’t need to have a thousand business oah clients to somehow, I talked to a guy yesterday who handles the PR for a um, uh, Mitt Romney and for the veggie tales and stuff. And he’s like, how come I’ve never heard of you? I said, well, cause I don’t travel or do interviews unless I agree with the person who’s interviewing me. And let’s say I just, so I guess I could make my life to the pursuit of fame.

I could do that. I could, I could do every interview. I could speak at every event. That will be awesome. No, it wouldn’t be because then I would be doing something else other than recording rap songs that no one listens to. And you had to take the time to figure that out. You, you have to know what you want before you can know how to implement it is 100% correct. So if you’re out there today, my calls to action are this step number one, commit to the belief that you will be dead soon. Let’s commit to it. That’s going to be in the next 90 days. They’re positive nothing to stop. Law of attraction. If you speak it, you get out of here not talking about demons and sayings. I’ve been saying I’m going to die every 90 days for now. Like, you know, 18 years, I’m fine, but maybe I’m not who?

Maybe he’ll die today. I don’t know. Knock on wood. Oh, and by the way, I love the number 13 just love that floor of any building. It’s incredible. I just love, I love black cats. The walk underneath ladders. I love them. I just, Oh, I just flirt with superstition. Okay. Rule number two, spill the profits over your safety zone into the fun zone. So commit to what you’re going to save and anytime that, anything above that, have fun with it. And rule number three, have a financial plan. [inaudible] strategic financial plan. And I would encourage you to max out your Roth IRA every single year. And every time you find real estate, that’s one third off. Buy it. Buy real estate. That’s a third off away. Why? Because it goes up in value. Buy real estate. Buy real estate. That’s 30% off. How do you find that property? Well, you just always have your antenna up when someone’s looking for a divorce, they’re always a good source.

That’s just a little notable quotable for you. Write that down. If you’re out there today and you know someone who’s getting divorced, you know they will be a good source for deeply discounted real estate, and they’re also looking for an attorney. If you’re probably attorneys out there. So positive thoughts. We’re going to end today’s show with a boom, and if we’ve yet to meet you at a conference, we’d love to do so. Book your tickets today. If I go into thrive time, show.com we limit the attendance at Eaton, each and every workshop to 125 people except for our December conference. Why? Because I don’t want to have the audience so big that I can’t meet everybody. I want to be able to meet you. Shake your hand, answer your questions. Aren’t you turning down money? Yeah. It’s amazing what happens when you turn down the almighty dollar to have a real relationship with somebody that you want to help. That’s a deep thought. Pull in the show with the boom. And so here we go. Three, two, one.