Going Into Business with Family

Audio Transcription

Learn the 9 steps to successfully go into business with family. A must-listen for Family Businesses! Taught by business coach Clay Clark.

Going into Family Business:

The Nine Steps from Clay Clark:

1. Seek a Win-Win

2. Determine What Tradeoffs You Must Make

3. Determine Your Profit Per Deal

4. Determine the Monthly Break-Even Point

5. Determine Your Monthly Goal Achievement Point

6. Determine the Downside if Everything Falls Apart, How You Will End the Partnership

7. Determine How Much Money It Will Take to Start the Venture

8. Determine Goals and Roles

9. Determine How Much You Value the Relationship

Welcome into the man-cave. It’s Josh Merrill here, with business coach, Clay Clark and Mr. Tim Redmond. Good to see you guys today. Clay, what are we talking about today? What we’re talking about here is going into business with family. If you go to the thrivetimeshow.com, what happens is, is you’ve got a little button there that you can click. You click the button that says I have a business question. Call the business question hotline. And what happened is somebody called 855-955-SHOW. Boom. They called that and they had a question. Their wanting to know should I go into business with family. It’s a little more complicated than that. So Josh, can you kind of read us the question here, my friend. It’s a mailbag question. “I’lI have a question about compensation in my parents green house business. There was an opportunity to add fresh flower arrangements the product mix. My mom doesn’t want to do the work and my wife loves to do that type of thing. The catch, we don’t need the money and time is important. With kids, helping out with alarm being relatively free. Our offer is to run/manage the floral department for 75% of the net profits and run/execute the market using all of the stuff from thrive15 (obviously) for a flat $1600 fee. The response was “How about $12 an hour?” Do we give up on this partnership idea? Or keep trying to make this happen?” First off, that was a lot of questions there. I think at the end of the day, it sounds like we’re saying, should I go ahead and team up with my family even though it appears like there is no upside. We’re talking about a total of $1600 a month. Is that what you’re hearing, Josh? That’s what I am hearing. Tim, am I missing something? I think we are right on track here and it is an issue that almost everybody in the world deals with if they’re going to go into business on their own. So here we go. This is something that I want to say right now. Do we want to go into business with family? So I’m going to break it down step by step. This is for anybody listening. Whether you have gone into family or contemplating it, I have broken it down into some very specific steps. Tim and I are going to go back and forth, giving you these 8 steps.

The first is you have to seek a win, win. It has to be a win, win. Tim, I’m going to read this notable quotable from our main man Andrew Carnegie. Now Andrew Carnegie some of you might not now. He was the guy the started working while still a young young teenager. He worked and he ended up becoming a telegrapher, back in the day before cellphones, before telephones. If you want to send a message to somebody, you tap the little button. that was him. He ended up becoming very very successful. Ended up becoming the world’s second wealthiest man. He has this quote. He says, “The discriminating man, with a definite major purpose in life, will prove his wisdom if he forms close relationships only with those that can be and are willing to be mutually beneficial to him. The others, he will tactfully avoid.” Tim, so we’ve got a family over here. You’re working during the day and then you’ve got family. So I kind of look at it like a calendar. You have 7 days a week and maybe 2 days a week, you’re will family. Josh, do you go home every night? Are you with your family every night? Im with my family every night. What percentage of the day are you “home”? When are you with your wife and kids? Well, I work from home so that would be 100% of the day. But, i don’t know, that’s a good question. I have never counted the hours or the percentages. Tim, lets think about this. 9-5 Monday-Friday, most people are working, okay, and we go home at night to our family. So we’re asking, Do I want to take my family that I’m with from 9-11, do I want to take that family time and all of a sudden be in business with these people? Yeah, so Tim again, Andrew Carnegie is saying that you only want to make a mutually beneficial relationship. So when you seek a win, win, if you’re sitting down with a business client right now. Now Tim, has grown a business from 2 people to 450 people. It’s called Tax and Accounting Software. He teamed up with the founder. They grew this thing and sold this business to the turbo tax people. So, Tim, you have a lot of wisdom here. But, what would you advise to somebody that goes should I enter into a partnership with family and oh, by the way, they’re only going to pay me $12 an hour. Would you do it or no? There’s so many aspects of that, Clay, and I hope we dive into it. If you cannot have a direct conversation with somebody’s performance, it doesn’t matter if they’re the most important person in the whole entire world, you will destroy the relationship. If you cannot talk straight with them, and most family members, they feel obligated to have to start a business with their family. If they’re gonna start a business, than people are staring at them, they’re sitting on their butts waiting for something to happen. They go, “Oh. You’re starting a business? Well, you ought to hire me.” We feel obligated to do it and I’m saying woah, woah. Let’s really count the costs first.

Tim, in my family, if you’re from Minnesota, this is what you typically say, “Oh what was the about? Come on. So you want to start a business together?” They have this whole Norwegian accent going on kinda casual mindset to live. And these people, you’d have to ask yourself, “Do I want to seek a win, win with?” and maybe they’re a hustler, maybe they’re not, but what happens is if you just go “Do I want to seek a win, win with somebody from Minnesota that I happen to be related with”, that’s probably not a good decision. So I’m going to ask you, win, win, if you and I were related right now, how would you know if it was enough of a win win to partner? You’ve got to look at your view, your goals, your perspective. So if I were to work for $12 an hour, I would be willing to do that if I got like 90% of the growth of the business. So you’re saying $12 an hour, plus something. That’s me. So what I see family members do, is they get romantically in love with this idea that we are going to have this growing busting business and then we are going to live happily ever after. And it’s not going to be quite that way when we begin to rely on each other and one doesn’t follow through with what he said or she said. Curtis, I am the mean guy, Tim is the nice guy. Josh is a really nice guy. Here’s the thing is, my brother in law and I a year ago we started a business called the Elephant in the Room or EITRlounge.com. It’s a men’s grooming lounge. That’s one example. And over here, there is a guy name Phil. Phil Pressey, his father coached the lakers, he coached a couple of years for the celtics. Good guy. He’s a friend of the Thrive15 team. He says this though. Phil says this, “Clay, I want to start a basketball camp. A basketball coaching facility in Dallas. Would you partner?” I’m gonna tell you this. He’s not like family, but he could be. He’s my brother from a different mother. He’s a great guy and I treat him like you family. He just said this, “Can you partner with me? Would you be willing to partner with me?” And I had to say “You know, what is the win, win?” So we worked it out and we talked about it. If phil is willing to pay for the cost of the gym and I’m willing to pay for the cost of the marketing. I said to Phil, “I’m willing to do it for $1200 a month, plus $10 a month per kid that signs up.” Truly, this just happened today. I just literally got off the phone with him at about 4 o’clock. Now he has all sorts of NBA connections, he needs marketing and internet marketing. I am not in the NBA. I’m not athletic. I don’t know guys that are athletic. But he can fill it up with pretty good. But the thing is, I had to ask myself if this was a win, win and if it’s not, you walk away. So right now, I don’t know because I don’t know what else is involved. But if you’re going to get $1600 a month, you have got to some kind of upside a month. You can’t just do it for $1600 a month. Why don’t you just go get a freaking job at like Walmart or something. Walmart, if you show up everyday on time, you don’t show up late, you just get your job done, you’re going to make $12 an hour pretty quickly. Josh, am I clear? Am I leaving something out on the win win?

Okay, we’re moving on. Number 2: Determine what trade offs you must make. I’m going to read you a notable quotable from my main man, Jack Welsh. When I say main man, I have no connection to Jack. I’ve never met Jack. If he saw me in a lineup, he would have no idea who I was, but he is my main man. He say’s this,”There’s no such thing as a work life balance.” That is so true. He says, “There are work life choices. You make them and they have consequences.” Jack Welsh is saying that there are trade offs. So here we go. Determine the trade offs that you’re going to make. What kind of trade offs do you think Curtis is going to have to make to run this green house? Well, first of all, Clay, we underestimate the real work that it is going to take. I’m just going to work this many hours, for this many months and it will take at least twice or three times the time. It will be a lot more demand. So when you’re doing this, you’re going to sacrifice the hourly. You’ve got to make sure that what you put in, you’ve got some upside once the company begins to grow. Josh, this is how I’m processing. It’s like all I’m going to do, man, is work in the greenhouse. Put a little over here and a little over here, probably do a little bit of marketing while I manage a little bit. Probably do a little bit of floral department design. But now, it’s a lot of work. Josh Merrill by the way, you google this guy, you check him out. He made a video today, I’m not kidding. He made a video for a medical facility and it just blew their mind. They love it. Have you ever done a video project where you are like, oh my gosh, is it worth it? You’re pulling all nighter, you haven’t seen your wife in 6 weeks. Literally, you haven’t seen your wife in a week because every night is an all nighter. Have you ever done that? I’ve done that for you. Not a specific video there was this anguish of making this video and you’re like, I don’t know if I want to do this, maybe I should just go work at subway. So you’ve done this before than? So here’s the deal. Ask yourself Curtis: step number one, seek the win win; two, determine what trade offs you must make.

Step number 3: You’ve got to determine your profit per deal. Now Josh, we have a notable quotable from our main man Bill Gates. This is the cofounder of Microsoft. Really successful. “Know your numbers is a fundamental precept of business.” Determine your profit per deal. Let’s say our main man, Curtis, is working. He’s talking about how his wife loves how to do this kind of work. She loves doing this kind of stuff, relatively free. She’s willing to do it for a flat $1600. They said that we’ll just run the whole thing for 75% of the profit and all of the marketing for a flat $1600. Tim, when you talk about determining your profit per deal, talk to me about all of the expenses that you have to think about when you think about the profits. Cause you’re telling your family, “hey, I’m willing to do it for 75% of the profits, but 75% of nothing isn’t very much. A lot of businesses will take 2 to 3 years to go from the red to the black. Many multibillion dollar companies today have never made a profit. Twitter, Amazon, Netflix, Walt Disney. These are big dudes, that have super smart people driving it. So what I want to say to our dear friend here, is to know all expenses here, to really sit down and think about it. It’s the rent, it’s the insurance, it’s the gas, it’s the delivery, it’s the repairs, it’s the rising price of certain utilities that are coming down. There are all types of different expenses. And if you email. Tim, by the way, in his former life, was a CPA. Tim, what does a CPA stand for? Certified Public Accountant. You have actually done this before and Tim has worked with our Thrive15.com team and they have made this unbelievable template. And so if you email us at thrive15.com, we have a worksheet and if you fill that out, it will help you and you don’t miss anything. Tim is talking about your rent, your utilities, your variable expenses. The point is, is there is a lot of them and you need to take the time and fill out that worksheet. And I will tell you, Clay, just to go down and you literally go case by case, line by line. Don’t just estimate. Really look into it. Matter of fact. With a flower shop, I would go to another flower shop and go show me your expenses if you don’t mind. What all expenses do you have, just to make sure that you’re not going in blind. I freaking did that on Saturday and I almost shot myself. the first of the month this month was on a Monday, every month. This month was good though because the end of the month fell on the Saturday and Sunday so I had that time. but I’m in there, I’m looking and I’m just throwing off expenses. But I’m going through and going, “Okay, went to Reasor’s, Godaddy.com, post payed telephone.” I’m auto shipping some that I want auto shipped. I’ve got google, adroll, adroll, adroll, adroll, adroll. Adroll by the way is an unbelievable retargeting program. Facebook and those guys based in Ireland. i’m going through this and I have all of these expenses and every month, I still within a set permitter and the point is, Curtis, you’ve got to seek the win win. Two, determine what trade offs you have to week. And three, determine your profit per deal. So you got to figure out how much profit am I going to make per deal to make this even worth it.

so you got to determine your profit per deal. How many customers have to come in? So let’s just say that one customer comes in and they buy $15 of flowers from your green house. Are you making a 20% profit? Well, good news, Curtis, you made $3. I’m getting my calculator out and Tim, if you disagree with my math, you tell me. Cause Tim is a recovering CPA. So if I take $3 and x .75, I’m making $2. 25. So Curtis, if your wife is seeing like 10 people an hour, she’s still going to make like $20. She is going to make very little hour to do that kind of thing. And this is something you knew specifically with DJ Connection. Yeah, $167 per show. And you knew that? Yeah, I got to a point where i measured out the point the cost of the advertisement, I knew the cost of paying the DJ, I knew the cost of maintaining the equipment. I set a little bit more aside than maybe more people would have for breakage and that kind of thing. I set $50 aside per booking for marketing. So I spent $50 per customer to get a customer. I set a certain amount aside for taxes. but, I had $167 left. So what happened was, when we did 4,000 events, that final year, I knew I would make $6,668. I knew that, I just did that. It’s a beautiful thing to know that though. It is. I’ll tell you for Elephant in the Room, our first location, I know what the profit is. For the second location, I know what the profit is. And the third one, I know how many we need to get to to break even. And as of today, we are shooting at like 41% occupancy for our 3rd location. So if you go to eitrlounge.com, if you’re listening right now. We have thrivers in Singapore, China, Australia, Canada, Roatan, Ireland. The thing is, if you come here to Tulsa, Oklahoma your first haircut is $1 and I’m going to pay $23 to inquire you on marketing. So $23 per person we are willing to spend to acquire you as a customer.

Now we are on number 4. Determine the monthly break even point. You have to know how many deals to break even. So you have to know how many deals do I have to have to break even. So again, just write that down. How many do I need to do to break even. Just think about your family here, if they’re paying $1600 a month and you’re not breaking even, whats the point? So we met with this doctor today and Tim, you and I were there. I talked to the doctor going in and I won’t give you all of the details and he said “Hey, I only need 3 people a month to refer me.” 3 total people that I pay you guys. So today, I don’t know, he didn’t really lay all of the specifics. He seemed to be pretty excited today. Oh his numbers are already ticking up. We haven’t even kicked in all of the marketing yet. Yeah, so this is a doctor, a thrive15 thriver and he said, “hey, can you help me guys?” Josh is making a neat video for the guy. But he knows that he has to get 3 people a month to pay for us. So he goes, “if I have two maybe I would pay for you, but 3 for sure.” So today he pulls me aside, just being brief on the phone. “I think I have like 4 or 5 on our marketing right now. I’m going to have our front person track. But I think you guys are already paying for yourself. So thank you very much. I’m very excited.” Now if I had generated zero and I’m still talking about things that don’t matter, at this point, he would be a little frustrated. So again, determine your break even point. So Tim, from your experience having worked with companies. You’ve worked with coffee shops, you’ve worked with apparel companies, catering companies, you’ve worked with everything. So why is it so important for someone to know their break even point? I’ll tell you. It’s like when you’re setting your motivation, setting your goals, your businesses are going to grow to the degree of the energy, the smart energy put into it. So if you know your break even, that you have to sell 153 donut holes for you to break even, and you’re averaging. I have a client here, right now, their break even on one store is 3x greater than where they’re currently at. And I’m telling him that he has a profitable location at one location but he’s losing hand and fist at this other location. Shut that down and get this one stronger. So I want to ask you this. I see people that say, “Well, I have this great vision to open up this in the northern region. We’re going to go out there and just completely dominate. We’re going to produce a product that is going to change the world. It’ll be on Ted Talks, on feature films, the point is, it’s going to be huge. And what we’re going to do is we are going to transform the world.” And you say, “How many customers do you need to break even?” “Listen here, we are changing the world. We don’t need to focus on profits. We’re not going to get sucked into your profit game. We are focused on huge profits.” “How many do you need to just pay the bill?” “You listen here.” “Judge, don’t question the order. I have big plans.” How many times do you see that, honestly? This happens so much. We have people that just don’t get a realistic view of what they need in terms of number. I have one customer that does an average of $20 per transaction and they are doing about a 150 transactions a month. In order to break even, they need about 600 transactions. That’s 4 times more than where they are currently at, just to break even. Theres one lady that I know and she sold custom furniture and she says, “listen here, do not doubt me. I know what I’m doing. My mother sold the furniture and I’m going to sell the furniture. I’m going to do it. I know what I’m doing.” “Well how much profit do you make per?” “Listen here, I’ve been doing this since. How old are you? I’ve been doing this for 35 years.” I asked her, I’m not kidding. I pull her aside and ask her, “have you ever made a profit of more than $10,000. “Listen here, I don’t want to deal with your hate, I just want to make furniture.” True story. My assistant was in her office and was like oh my gosh, I don’t know what to do. And her husband called me, “Here’s the deal. We’re hiring you as a consultant so that I don’t have to deal with this, but like at no point have we ever made a profit. And she took over her mom who at no point had ever made a profit. And the dad had made millions with oil and gas, so I’m just, please don’t ask her about the numbers.” But the numbers can very frustrating for people that don’t focus on them. So, Curtis, I’m just trying to help you. Number 1: seek the win, win. 2: Determine what trade offs you have to make. 3: Determine your profit per deal. 4: Determine your break even point.

And 5, determine your monthly goal achievement point. This is super important because if you don’t determine that you are going to be working, working, working and you won’t have know if you’re getting close to that or if you’ve even achieved your goals. And so I would just say, how many deals a month do you need to break even? So I am going to give an example from my office right now that is a little bit frustrating. I own a photography company. It’s called epicphotostulsa.com. Josh, do you want to ask me my goals just to make this easy? I would love to do that. Clay, what are your goals for your photography company? Real quick, this is where we are at with the business. I want you to get your computer out. Tim, i would like if you do it. Josh, I would like if you would do it too. If you look at it. Josh, look at the years that we won the awards and tell us the years that we didn’t. People on their smartphones are on there right now, I can tell you that. You won 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016. You won this year. It’s knot.com. It’s like the better business bureau of weddings or the chamber or whatever group you want to say. It’s like the top thing for weddings. And I got to be real. Every wedding that we have, we have a checklist and a system. It’s called the Service Profit Chain. I’ve implemented it and it’s very profitable. So a guy comes to me and says, “How come you’re not focusing on growing the business?” You want to know why, Josh, that I’m not focused on trying to grow the business. Because every single piece of equipment is booked out almost every single weekend. i just bought $42,000 of brand new stuff. She just started working with us and she goes, “What cameras do we use?” I don’t freaking know. The point is, the brides are happy. You go online, let’s google epicphotographytulsa and we have 45 reviews. But the point is, we have great reviews, we are top in google, things are good. I don’t want to grow it. So i’ve got two options right now: A. I can sell it or B. I can continue to grow it. But the thing is, is I know my monthly goal achievement point and I am hitting it right now. So I’m just being real, Clay Clark, how come people don’t talk about money? Is it because they’re afraid of it? How come Donald Trump won’t release his tax returns? Listen, that company can pay me about $2600 a week and that’s about all I want. Y’all have been to my house. We’re in my house right now. We’re in the man cave. I want nothing else. I’m 35, I’m a grown man, I have kids, I have no other goals. I’m done. So, I’m on the show right now. My goal was to have a radio show since I was 16. We’re now going to be broadcast regionally and nationally on 1170 talk radio. It’s great stuff. If you go to thrive time show, you can watch it. I have no more goals. So this guy in my office is just beating me over the head, “How come we’re not measuring? Why are we not measuring?” And i’m like, “Dude, even if we did measure, I don’t even give a crap. because we’re hitting the profit goals. We’re growing 30% a year. We’re doing everything we need to do. I know my KPI’s. I no longer care.” “Well, how come we’re not getting new cameras?” “I don’t care.” “This video company is doing this kind of video and we need to do that.” “You know what I’m not going to do, that video.” He says, “Why?” “Because I don’t give a crap.” So every year, we win the awards, we have a system. I made the system ten years ago, I no longer care. I don’t care. It might be uninspirational to you listening or it could be inspirational. But all I am saying is that I know my numbers and i know my goal achievement point and I know my beautiful wife likes to go to limited to buy her jeans and she likes to go to whole foods to buy her food. We have kids, we have 5 kids and one of them has a preexisting condition. My son was born blind and we’ve had some health issues and stuff. So I know my costs. I know my breakeven point and I have no more goals. So today I got a call, and somebody wanted me to help grow their business. But it’s a neat company. it’s a pain management facility near by who’s reached out. She wants me to help her, I can’t help her anymore. So boom, it goes to  Tim Redmond. Tim Redmond is a great guy who has a waiting  list so it’s kind of like who can get in. But all I’m saying is you have to know your goal achievement point. So Curtis, what is that goal?

Okay, we’re on number 6. Determine the downside if everything falls apart, how will you end the partnership. And that’s a big one because we’re talking about family. Well, Phil Pressey his jersey is in the background of all of our Thrive15 videos. But Phil, I said, “listen, if you pay $1200 a month, I will do all of your internet marketing. And I want $10 per kid.” And Phil is great. His dad, if you look up Paul Pressey, he coached the Lakers last year. He’s been in the NBA as a coach for 26 years. That’s the deal. I said, “I want you to have 51%, I want your brother, Matt, to have 39%, and I want 10%.” If you’re pissed off, irritated, you don’t like me, you can buy me out. I want 10% of the business. Because that’s all I’m doing. I’m getting you to the top of google and I’m making $10 per kid per month and you’ll get thousands of kids per month and that’s great. But I don’t have a desire to own the whole thing. I don’t want the glamour, the glory, and I don’t have any basketball skills. So Pressey Camp. We’re going to go to google. What you want to do is google, Presseycamps.com and we’re going to totally reamp this thing and it’s going to be sick. I’m just telling you its going to happen. But I already know that right now, if I don’t fulfill my part, how much percentage do I own? 10%. So, if he’s mad, he just buys me out. For how much? We’ve already talked about it. There’s no drama, it’s just done. So what are you going to do, Curtis? Are you going to buy out your mom? You going to buy out your cousin? You going to buy out somebody? I would. So, let’s talk about real people that hate me. My brother in law, Justin, we partnered, he likes me. I have another brother in law, he doesn’t like me anymore. He’s pretty pissed off, he doesn’t like me, and you want to know why? He’s a sloth. He’s terrible. He didn’t do a good job, so I said you’re out. And I don’t feel bad about. it. You fired your own relative? Many times. Many different family members, I don’t care. How can you decide to fire your own relatives? Do you love them? Here’s the deal. And you guys that are listening might go, you’re a horrible person. No one ever talks about this kind of stuff. My wife got me this book by John D. Rockefeller years ago for my birthday and he talks about friendship in it. I read this book and ti’s called “Titan” by the way. I read this book and his wife said he died, I cried. That’s how close I was to John D. By the way, the jersey I’m wearing has Rockefeller on the back of it. But anyway, he says, “A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.” i am going to read it to you in my own way. I family member founded on business, is better than a family member founded on friendship. So I don’t give a crap if we’re related or not. I’m done talking to you if you can’t deliver. That’s just my whole deal. Why do you think it gets so messy with family members, with friends when you try to do business with them. Okay, well heres the example that happened here recently. This guys he says, “Hey listen, I want to come work with you.” And i said “Here’s the deal, with family I’m not going to have you work under me directly, I’m going to have you come work under a young man in our office. He’s going to manage you because he’s a manager and I want him to manage you.” So here’s the assignment. You tell me if I’m cruel here. He says, “You’re going to drop off flyers and invitations for this business we’re working with.” And by the way, this is how I work. If you’re a consulting client, if you’re listening right now to the thrive time show and you say I want you to help me grow my business, this is how we do it. Tim and I do the same thing.  So this guy had a fitness company, he had this thing called the Dream 100. It’s written by Chet Holmes. He’s the author of Sales Machine. The point is you reach out to your 100 companies that are your ideal and likely referral sources. It’s a fitness. So he’s dropping off flyers at Jenny Craig, he’s dropping off flyers at a nail salon, he’s dropping off flyers at places where people that care about fitness are likely to go. I held him accountable to 20 a day. And why? Because I promised the client 15 a day. So I promised the client 15 a day for you. But i held my team member, in this case it happened to be family, 20 a day. One of the places that we’re dropping off is someone who knows us and I verified that drop-offs were happening. We’re just dropping off flyers and invitations to come out to such and such fitness. We offer better way to do things. How many a day out of the 20, Josh, do you think that this family member went to? I feel like he maybe did five? A month. This is a true story. So I talk to the manager and say, “Hey, what’s going on?” “I have a concern. This family member of yours is dropping off maybe five a month. This whole month. And we promised the client a week, fifteen. So I was having my wife drop stuff off. So we’re good, we’ve delivered, but I’m just telling you.” So I call my family member and this is what he says. “Bro, I was so busy, bro. Did you know there are pool parties at the casino, bro?” And I said, “Are you serious?” He said, “Oh yeah. There’s pool parties at the casino bro. And I was so busy, bro, that I didn’t get a chance to drop them off. But I know you ain’t hating.” Now what am i going to do? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to honor what I committed to with the client or my family member who is saying that I went to these pool parties and theyre all night and it’s hard to wake up. I’m talking about a 40 year old man, by the way. What would you do? It’s obvious. So here’s the thing. So if you start in business with a family member, you’ve got to be able to have the skill of weeding through all of this emotional garbage that people want to throw on you to try and deter you from making the right decision. How do you think I handled it? What would you have speculated would’ve ended up happening? Well, I think you had a very direct conversation and said you’re fired. So we’re in the hummer, we’re driving and I said, “I understand that you went to five this month and you’ve turned in 60. Which I paid you for. Which is lying. I’ve paid you 4,000 this month and it looks like maybe you’ve done the work of $500. So for the client, we delivered in spite of you. So I want you to look me in the eye and tell me did you drop them off?” “Bro, I was going to these pool parties, these chicks are hot. I’m going through some stuff since the divorce. I’m just trying to get back in the flow.” 40 year old man. I said, “here’s the deal. You’re fired. I want you to get out of my car. I’m going to give you $500 cash. Get a ticket, I’m done with you.” Because people who don’t honor their word in business, don’t honor their word in anything. I’m just telling you. I’ve gotten so many Facebook messages and email messages, “you’re a terrible person.” So curtis, i’m trying to help you. If you’re going to go into business with family, please understand that you’re going to be exposed to the best and the worst. Because you’re going to say to the family member, hey I need you to pay me this week to what you agreed to. Are they going to stroke you a check or Oh I thought it was different. I mean that’s how it is. So anytime I work with somebody, the first week I work with them, they’re like “Is he going to actually pay me?” Second week, “I think he’s going to pay me.” Third week, “He’s paying me. Fourth week, “I feel okay.” Fifth week, “Have you worked with this guy for very long?” “Well, for five weeks in a row, I’ve been paid.” Pretty soon you build trust. Without trust, it gets. If you take away the trust, it starts to rust, it starts to fall apart. So I’m just encouraging you, Curtis, before you go into this, before you partner with family, please understand that you have to understand the downside of everything doesn’t work out. You have to put that in writing. Josh, am I making sense.

We are going to move on to number 7. Determine how much money it will take to start the venture. Yeah, so figure out how much money. Sounds like they already have the business. Sounds like they already have this great green house, so it sounds like you don’t have to put in a lot of money. And maybe you do have to put in a lot of money. Maybe you have to get printing pieces, business cards or you have to replace your wife’s income because she is now helping you. I don’t know what those costs are, but please determine all of those. Okay? And we’re going to get into point number 8 and we have a little bonus point, point number 9.

Number 8: Determine roles and goals. We’ve got a notable quotable here from Jim Rohn, the best selling author and world renown author. He says, “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments.” Okay, so let’s talk about goals and roles. Josh, you and I never had this conversation in person, let alone on the microphone so it’s kind of fun. You are a good video writer script maker guy. But do you know that I know that you’re better at that than I am? I would hope so I guess, yeah. I mean, do you believe that? I think I can make a video better than you, i guess yeah. I’m not saying that I’m not talented or that Ive got an insecurity. But I clearly have seen what you do and I believe that what you do is better than what I could do. By the way, if someone wants to watch some of the highlights that you’ve done over the years, how can they find it. Vimeo.com/maturian. And can I just say this, a lot of times this is a one way street, but if someone was too DJ, but I know the best. The GOAT. He might come out of retirement for you. Or if someone were to ask me about a business coach. I would say “You know, why don’t you subscribe to Thrive15.com. Clay Clark has it all.” So you’ve met with some of the clients that I work with and you see what we do. I’m very secure in saying that this is the guy that we are going to bring in to help you guys make the video for your company. I don’t feel like i need to pretend like I am an artist in every single aspect of the business, but we determine the goal. The goal is I want to help my client grow. And the role is that you make the video. The role, I’m just telling you if you’re listening right now and you want a business coach, Tim Redmond is perhaps one of the strongest business coaches that I’ve ever seen in terms of like he grew a company from two people. Like working in a condominium. From 2 people to 450 people. When I worked there, I had to hit an elevator. What floor were you on? We were from the 15th floor to the 20th floor in tower 3. Wow, this company has 5 floors, 450 people work there. Very few people have grown from 2 people from 450. I’ve grown to about 100. But 450, are you kidding me? People call me all the time and say “I’m stuck at 75 employees and I want to grow, who is the guy?” And I say Tim Redmond. You have to determine your goals and your role. Now Tim and I have a good relationship. They say “Who can help me fix my website? Who is going to have the specific detail to break it down into action items?” Tim says, “Clay Clark can do that.” So we have goals and roles. We have a big goal. Our goal at thrive15.com and the Thrive Time Show is to mentor millions. So if you’re listening right now, you are my goal. I woke up today looking at my beautiful wife. It’s kind of disturbing. I looked at my wife I’m going, “where are my shorts?” So I run around trying to find my shorts. I found my shorts, my dogs barking. i have these two pyrenees puppies, which by the way, just moved to Dr. Zoellenrs ranch because they are too massively loud. I find my shorts, I get up, take a shower, do my thing and I have my goal right there in front of me. My goal is to mentor millions. And Curtis, you are one of those millions. My goal is to help you. That’s why we’re doing this. So I know my goals and one of the best ways to achieve my goals is to have Josh Merrill co-hosting this show and to have Tim Redmond on as a guest. I’m telling you, if you say, “I have 75 people, who should I call?” I am going to say Tim.  I need to make a video, I’m going to say Josh. But you have to determine your goals and roles because if not, it’s going to get awkward. So I want to ask you this, Tim. you’ve been married for a long time. When you first got married, did you and your wife every confuse those roles and then it gets a little conflict, maybe? Yeah, what’s really interesting is over time, everything tends towards chaos unless it’s closely managed. So even roles begin to drift and then you get these misunderstandings and so I’ve had this one month, sometimes it’s once a week, we just have to reconnect and say who is doing what, who owns what, who’s responsible for what to respect each other in that. So in business, I see this as a huge thing. We see a lot of dysfunction, a lot of upside down, no profit, we have all kinds of symptomatic problems. A lot of times the problem is because of lack of clear roles. Who owns what, who’s responsible for what. With a 9 million dollar business, a manufacturing company, they’re all over the board. They’ve got all sorts of different challenges. Well, they’re really making some progress now because they are starting to really clarify and respect those roles. Josh, do you get to watch the summer olympics? Do you care about that? Yeah, Rio though it seem like kind of a mess, I’ll watch it. Tim, is it on right now? Is it on soon? August 5th is when it starts. If you could imagine in your mind, Curtis, it’s a sprint around. It’s track, and it’s got different lanes on the track. Or the swimmers have lanes. Everyone has to stick in their lane and so today, I got an email that was very very harsh. I was cc’d on it it was beautiful. It’s one of the guys that I’m partnered with on one of my businesses. He’s so so smart. He’s built a successful company. He’s got tons of franchises. Do you know what his email said, Tim? He says, “Can we determine who is the single person who is to contact on such and such. Im so freaking tired of people co-mingling. Who owns this? Who is the single point of contact?” And it’s this massive email about who is the single point of contact. He is so frustrated that multiple people are like, Oh I’ll help, Oh I’ll help. You have to have one person that owns it. And if you own it, you can have other people that help you, but you have to own it and be accountable. You have to own it. Two people can’t own something.

We’re going to move on to number 9. Determine how much you value the relationships. Josh, I just had this happen this weekend. If you’re one of the last members of my family who hasn’t come to me to be employed to team up with me in some capacity, please get this message. You don’t want to work with me because if you do, I’m going to judge you based off the content of your character. Not based on the content of your skin, of your nationality of your race, of your family, of your lineage. Martin Luther King Jr., he had this awesome quote. He says, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but the content of their character.” Now I have a dream that my five children will one day live in a nation where they’ll be judged by their ability to get things done, and not based off of their family relationships. Because I’m so tired of people that are in my family coming to me saying that they need help and they suck at their job. They’re like ‘hey well please turn a blind eye to me, because we’re related meanwhile, don’t mess up with the culture of your company.” Screw that. So i’ve got a guy in my office right now who’s freaking awesome. And you know I hated him when he first started working for me. I hated this guy. You want to know why I hated this guy? He beat me to work. I get to work at 3:30 at that office, he’s there before me. That’s my deal. So I get to work the next day at like 2:46 or whatever, his cars already there. Is he sleeping? I get there he’s working. 2:20, he’s there. So I pull him aside, “hey dude, what time are you getting here?” “20 minutes before you do.” He and I are good friends now. He’s a great guy. He helps us out a lot. What I’m saying is, I judge him based off the content of his work effort. “What time are you going to bed, bro?” “At like 8.” The thing is, he wanted to beat me to work because he wanted to get my attention. And I’m just trying to explain to you, if you’re listening right now, you want to judge your family based off of what they get done, not based off of their intentions. If you don’t, you’re going to have a dysfunctional family. You have had a lot of relationships, a lot of family members in business with you that hasn’t worked. You’ve also had one that has worked very well. What is the difference there when the family member did work? Well, Justin, who I’ve worked with. By the way, if you’re listening right now, you need to get out to Tulsa, Oklahoma. The tourism capital of the world. Get out to eitrlounge.com and get your $1 haircut because it’s unbelievable. Justin, if you’re listening right now, you know I’m being real. Justin wasn’t raised by entrepreneurs. It’s my wife’s parents. They’re good people, but he just wasn’t raised by entrepreneurs. So I was upstairs and I said, “I swear, if you don’t get your stuff done, I’m going to fire you. I’m so tired of.” People are like shutting their door and going, “Dude.” They don’t know what I just said, but I like lost my mind because I was so tired of it. But he wanted to be coached. So his normal wasn’t excellent. So he came to me with a humble heart and said what can I do better? I have seen that over the years. Since that time, I don’t really blow up anymore because every time we’ve had a problem, he says, “Hey, that’s by your my business coach and mentor. What can I do better?” And so I almost feel bad. it almost brings me to tears just thinking about it. But he’s like asking me what can I do better? It’s been a neat thing because that’s kind of how my relationship with Dr. Zoellner is. It’s been a neat relationship. My wife worked as his front desk lady 20 something years ago almost. So I’m 36, it will be 18 years ago, my wife worked with him. She was the front desk lady. And she moved up to be the person that dilates your pupils lady. Dr. Zoellner was a mentor for my wife, a mentor for me. I’m sure theres time when I’ve done things in the past or even currently where he’s like “Why would you do that?” But he’s committed to mentoring me. As long as your coachable, you’re approachable. So I’ll leave you with this little quote. “As long as you’re seeking criticism and not praise, you’re always going to get that annual raise.” Absolutely.

Hey, you’ve been listening to the Thrive Time Show here on talk radio on 1170. Also, from the man cave, we’re rocking. If you have any questions for us, just email us at [email protected]. It’s been a great show. I hope we answered your question, Curtis. Hey, if you want to talk to us, give us a call as well. We’d love to help you out. We’d love to talk over the phone with you. By the way, if you haven’t checked out Thrive15.com, let me tell you what you get here. It’s $19 a month. It’s less money than you’re spending on  crap that you don’t need. You get the video version of the trainings, access to the world’s best business school, thousands of training videos, proven templates, best practice downloads, exclusive access to the in person, face to face, come to see us workshops and you get to give  a free high five to  Tim Redmond if he is there. If they come out to the in person workshops, can they get a $1 haircut? Yeah, absolutely. If we’re fully booked, I’ll get my trimmers out and we’ll give you a bowl cut. Thanks so much for listening to the Thrive Time Podcast. You can listen to all of these at the thrivetimeshow.com. You can hear all past and future podcasts. Thank you so much for listening, we’ll see you next time. Thanks business coach, Clay, and Tim.