How to Build a Business That is Capable of Working without You (WIth 3 Mystery Guests)

Audio Transcription

How is it possible to grow the business that works without you? On today’s edition of the thrive time show, Clay’s joined with three mystery guests, one from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and two from Florida who have chosen to ask clay a variety of questions bout how to build a scalable business model that does not require them being present 100% of the time I was at possible. You have to be a Harry Houdini to implement the magic code running a business that works without you all this sent mall on today’s edition of the thrive time show.

A very exciting edition of the thrive time show for you. You see on today’s show, we have a two guests who have flown in from another state to be here and I’m not going to tell you who they are. This is an anonymous a show where they’re in the studio, but no one knows who they are. So they can ask the really dirty nitty gritty, tough questions that people want to ask. And then we have another guest on the show who I’m not gonna tell you who he is either. So you sir, our guests a you, our guests B and you are guests C and we saved the best for last. That’s why. That’s why she’s a C. Okay. So here we go. So guest a, any question you want to ask about business management, sales, marketing, accounting, anything you want to ask, legal, crazy stories, anything you want to ask guests a what question do you have, sir? All right. Any question, any questions? Any and there’s no, no out of bounds.

All right. So clay, you’ve obviously built a lot of businesses as a business coach. You’ve employed a lot of people, true. A lot of different personalities. Yup. Right? what is let’s see. I remember, I’ll just take this back a little bit. Jack, whenever I used, whenever I was driving our our service truck on the road, I’d listened to you on the radio. And you’d mentioned about it’s kind of some horror stories you had with some employees. Right? But at the same time it was kind of like therapy for me, right? Because it let me know, Hey, I was normal. Our business was normal. You know, there’s some hard times yet.

Real quick, you’re talking about, you’re saying you turn on some old school old trees here. Let me just go and get, let me get some, let me get it ready. Yes. All right. So take us back to old school and I’m driving around. You’re driving around or let’s guys are driving around here. Listen to the show. And you’ve heard me share some of the old school stories. Okay. Continue. Absolutely. So what are some of those? Let’s see. What are some challenges that you’ve had with with Dillon employees? You know, in the past. I mean, and how did you overcome those? Well, just in general, this is the overall thing that I discovered that was just so hard for me. I grew up in a Christian home. I was not a Christian, but didn’t give, you’re a Christian. You have to believe fundamentally that people have the power to renew their mind, right?

I mean, we have to believe in it. So Kanye West somebody said Kanye West, he put out a Christian album. He’s becoming a Christian. I don’t believe it. This is what someone said to me. And they said, I don’t believe it. And I said, well, if you look up the Bible and you look at the 12 apostles, it wasn’t like Jesus had like an unbelievable high moral character filter process to find these dudes. I mean, this was like murderers, thieves, not great people. Then to my knowledge, Cardinia hasn’t murdered anybody. So I think that it’s, it’s possible. So all buy that stock over time. I want to see him consistently do it, but I do believe he could change. I’ve always been that person. I believe you can change. Then dr Zellner, who’s kind of like business coach Darth Vader, he’s kind of like my Darth Vader. And I’m like, Hey boss. And I was probably 24 at the time. And I said, Hey, Hey Z how come I have such dramatic things happened to me in my businesses and you don’t? And he goes, Oh, you want to know? You want to know the, the real, the real thing. Do you want to hear it? This is a real question. And I said, yeah. And he says,

Yay.

Takes off his mask. And he says, here’s the deal. People change seldom. And unless you’re a life coach, don’t coach lives. And I thought, this is the most negative man in the whole world. This man is absolutely. I left feeling discouraged. I really did. I was like, this is terrible. And he said, ah. So we met again. I come back a different angle and this is a true story. I said I heard what you said. I grew up as a Christian. I believe people can change. He goes, you, no, no, they can’t. It’s just exhausting. And you will spend all of your time changing people because you’d be a life coach. So unless you’re a life coach, don’t change people. But I want you to get out a hammer and I’m like a hammer. We’re out. You know, we’re out at Ruby Tuesday’s a restaurant, like a hammer.

He goes, yeah, yeah, go get a hammer. And then you come back to my office and then we’re going to pull your junk out of your pants and put it on a desk and we’re going to smash it for over and over and over and over. And that’s less painful than a life spent trying to change lives. And I’m going, okay, I don’t want to do that. I don’t like this game. And so once it occurred to me, I can’t change people. They have to change. And my job is to find happy people and teach them how to do a job. And then in my personal life, if I want to help people, then I can do that. But I can’t. [inaudible] He gave me so many other examples, but it’s like if you have a fan who really loves the new England Patriots and he says, I want to play.

I want to be on your team, please. I’m passionate. Come on man. Hey, you know, and he’s two 85, five foot nine 47 years old. You shouldn’t let him on the team just because he wants to. And in the event that you did work hard enough to help him lose all the weight and learn how to throw a football, it would be exhausting. So why do we do it for our businesses? It’s the same thing. And, and I just, it took, that was the hardest. That was the hardest thing to recognize that most people will not change. And now the elephant in the room, people say, man, you have a great team. You guys a a guest B. You went to the elephant in the room store today. You saw July downtown. Isn’t she a nice lady? Yeah, she’s, she was killing it. She was all over the place, but she had a smile on her face the whole time.

She never lost focus of taking care of the customers that came in while she was talking to us. And it, I mean she was just amazing. And you met Nick today in the store and you met you, you vet and you, you’ve been in the office all day. You, we have a lot of great people do. We don’t have to be, they’re nice people. We were actually talking in between going from the office to the store. And how long did it take for you to filter through the ones that didn’t fit that obviously they’re not going to last, but, well this is what’s, this is what’s so cool. I sold the DJ business in 2007 and one of the rules that when you sell a business, they get to take your stuff usually. And the rule was I couldn’t hire any of my guys.

And they got to keep all the computers and all the stuff, but I realized I don’t need this stuff or the computers or the guys cause I know how to build it again. So I was able to like build a brand new team that was better in like two months for my new stuff I was doing just cause I just don’t, I just hold the group interview and find a good guy with this guy worked at best buy and he came in, joined the team and I taught him the moves and taught him videography and photography. He came in, did that, did the group interview, found another guy, a who I met at a taco. Bueno. So his nickname was bueno and I found a lady who used to work at the hotels that I used to DJ at and she quit her job to come join us and there we were doing our thing.

And it’s just, it’s pretty easy once you put as long, long as you do the group interview and you have zero tolerance for jackass theory, it’s awesome. But you saw me this morning, a a person B. But you saw me this morning. I had a one lead, he was moping [inaudible] talking about that and I don’t remember, but I gave him the manager. I said this week, call her on it, help her become an mopey my Friday or do you remember? I said, yeah, or fire. Yeah, so you gotta it’s a great, it’s a four day therapy program, so get better or you’re fired and that’s how you do it, you know? But back in the day, I would have spent years with this person years.

Well, my son is a manager of our, one of our restaurants. And I was talking to him about it. I was like, in the 30 years I’ve been doing this, when you had that feeling that someone’s gone the wrong way or they’re not the right fit, they ne never ever would for

Works and doesn’t work. But you think as we want, we want to fix the people. Now let’s look at the stats. There are 330 million Americans that we know about. 16 million according to the SBA, small business administration, say they’re self employed every year. But Jared, you know the stats, according to Forbes, nine out of 10 businesses fail. Oh yeah. So that means, think about the statistical probability. 16 is about half a 32 okay, 16 so 16 million is about a half a percent. It’s like it’s like 5% so there’s 330 million Americans. 16 million is like 5% 5% ish of our population. If we had 33 million entrepreneurs, it’d be 10% so we’ve got about 5% of our people out there say they’re self-employed. Nine out of every 10 fail nine, which means you have a 0.5% chance of being a successful entrepreneur. That’s not encouraging at all. What that means is if you tad a group of people and an audience of 670 people and you said, could you please stand up if you are successful?

Only one person could in every room of 670 people, one out of 670 so when most people give you advice run, just get out of there. Don’t listen to it. So if you’re a pastor or this is going to hit somebody’s heart, if your pastor gives you advice on how to manage, plug your ears unless he’s successful. Seriously. Cause I see people who owned businesses going, well you know my pastor, I see this all the time here. They say, my pastor told me that it’s called the inverted pyramid in a true leader serves. So you’re at the bottom of the pyramid, your people are at the top. And I’m like, that’s so cool. That is so cool. Has your pastor ever made a profit? No. Has your pastor ever read the part of the Bible where it talks about Jesus flipping tables and they go, what?

And I go, you know, Jesus was a table flipper. So if you open up your Bible, it’s a book we could open up from time to time. It’s, it’s a controversial book. I know, but Matthew chapter 21 verses 12 through 13 reads, I’ll read from the Bible the whole thing. I won’t paraphrase. It says Jesus entered into the temple courts and drove out all those who are buying and selling there. Okay, we’re going to think he overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling dubs. It is written. He said my house will be called a house of prayer. But you are making it a den of robbers. It sounds to me, I mean I dunno. When was the last time you guest a, when was the last time that you flipped the table in your office because people were not getting Google reviews or following the systems?

Oh I haven’t, you’ve never flipped the table? I’ve wanted to but I have I talked to you about the water throwing water? No, Ty used to own a company called Epic photography and I looked at one of the teammates and I said, today I’m going to break things because it’s got to, we got to break the dysfunction loop here. And I’ve put up with it long enough. You know, I’ve, I’ve, and I and I, when you have partners, everyone wants the a P partners. They go to these churches and read these books and they’ve gone and got ideas and they’re all wrong. Cause the only one, I don’t have 670 people was right. So they got ideas and their ideas are like, well if someone sends the wedding photos to the bride late, we shouldn’t penalize them. Cause I had a policy. If you, if you sent the photos to the bride late, you lost like half your check.

And it’s like we shouldn’t do that. Cause it’s mean. And I’m going, I disagree. But since I owned majority control and I’m trying to be nice, we’ll try your method for just to prove the futility of it. But then when people are upset and they’re complaining, now I’ve got to put out the complaints. I’ve got to call the complaints. So I went to a meeting with bottled waters and I I can’t remember the whole context, but basically for every wedding that was late, I threw the water as hard as possible against a sheet rock wall and broke it. Oh yeah. And I just kept putting holes in the walls and they were like, stop it. And I’m like, no, no, no. This is Jesus flips tables. I throw water. Let’s do another one. Do we have any other late files? So we had one more.

Boom. Do we have another one? Boom, Eric, stop it. You’re all getting all emotional cause it’s not normal to see a 28 year old man throwing, you know, bottled waters and breaking sheet rock. But I’m like, this is actually, the damage I’m causing is less expensive than the refunds we’re doing. We’re doing $2,000 refunds. This is less expensive. It only cost me 2000 to fix this whole wall. I’ve got to keep, I get some satisfaction. So then I went up to the editors and I said, Oh, because editors are all photographers and all that. They’re all artists. And I said, you guys have these cherished paintings and pictures up here. No man, I just broken waters all day, all morning, probably for 30 minutes straight. I said, now upstairs, we’ve got these things we valued, we’ve got framed pictures of our family. We’ve got where did this mug come from?

Oh, this is a friend. My cousin got this from, they brought this back from Africa. This is from Europe. This is my dad’s. This is my cousins. I’m like, okay, next week, anybody who has a late wedding files, I’m going to break all your most important things because these are the brides weddings. This is her big day. And if you mess it up, you ruined her day, so I’m going to ruin your day. So, and I told them, and I don’t think they believe me. So the next day, and this one young lady, I said, this is [inaudible]. You remember how I said I’d break your things? And she says, yeah, but you know, I got late. And I said, okay, I’m a good guy. I won’t break it this week, but next week literally I’m going to come in here and it’s going to be like a nuclear, it’s going to be awesome. It’s going to be at Chernobyl in the office. So she got her files late and I just started breaking all of her prize possessions and she started crying and screaming and yelling, and she left and it fixed the problem.

As I flip the tables. Another example was with back when I was running a photography business and being a business coach, you shouldn’t sink your, you can’t bring your smartphone to work for over a lot of reasons. Okay? You just can’t. And there’s a thing airdrop and airdrop, you can sync files from your iPhone to your computer. Kendall, you’ll get a crack, you’ll, you’ll, you’ll crack up about this. So this particular person, this woman would always bring her phone up at work. It’s, Oh, I need to airdrop this thing. And that’s why I have it. [inaudible] Well, one day she accidentally airdrop nude photos of herself to our entire share Dropbox. So all of the employees saw her on the editing. It’s coming through and I’m like, Whoa. Was shunned, you know? And it’s those dramatic things though that cause people to stop doing it. So you have to be a table flipper.

Another example, we had a, an employee about a year many years ago. I don’t get myself in trouble. West always hates when I give you real answers. So years ago, so far ago, it’s, it’s so long ago, but he ordered a prostitute from the workplace. So he went on to Craigslist in order to order to prostitute during the work day. And then he also ordered drugs and was trying to sell them to other employees. And so I, you know, got the screenshots. And it’s in my folder, I call it the Sith folder kennel. If you want to look it up, sit as you can find it, don’t look but you could in there. And I said Hey everybody in our group meeting, somebody has been ordering a prostitute and I guess that you know, you need a receipt cause if you’re making a purchase that large, you need a receipt. I just want to know who do I need to give the receipt to. And there’s like 50 people going, it’d be just like our team meeting today. And they were like, who is it? Somebody used our internet connection to order a prostitute and I just want to know who needs the receipt.

I don’t know who it is. Why don’t we check everyone’s history? No, no, no. I’ve already done it and this guy is super red faced and I’m like, get outta here. Leave you’re fired. You know, I made a huge deal about it. And then when he was walking out I said, please take all your porn too cause it’s a lot of it downloaded so we’ve got it in a little folder for you. So take that too. Never saw him again. It fixed the problem. I’ve never had a problem with adult content in the office since then. I’ve never had a problem with the, you know, or with the ordering. The prostitutes never had a problem with people accidentally sinking in their drive to things. But you’ve got to flip tables, you have to flip tables. Jesus didn’t walk in and say, Hey, Hey guys, is there any way you could stop?

And I’ve been reading this book about inverted pyramid and I’m a servant leader. So if you guys will just, you know, do your best. I mean, Jesus didn’t feel bad at it. I mean flipping it, I’ve never flipped tables. Could you imagine flipping tables? No, those are big tables back in the day. Some is speculate in the biblical times. These were big tables. I mean that’s like flipping a dining room table. So the hardest thing for me was not being willing to flip tables one and then two, trying to life coach everybody. Those were my biggest issues. But now I’m known as a table flipper. People say Kendall wasn’t here when it happened, but I did break the I through the brother printer as far as possible. Oh, I heard about this. So were you there then? You were there, you saw me throw the, as Heath, we have proof.

We have proof that I through where you flurry your thinking at the time. Were you thinking what was going, I just heard a crash. Yeah, somebody refused to order toner. They said, Oh well I ordered it online. It’s not here yet. Meanwhile, the office has no ability to print. So I said, you got to get ink tonight because we need it tomorrow. We’re having like three people that can’t print. Then the last hour of the day I need it. So the next day he doesn’t do it and he says, Oh, I was going to get it online. I just disagreed. We could save like 10 bucks. I’m like, so the whole team can’t print. I’m like, so long we’re going to play a little game and the game is called were getting. This isn’t me acting irrationally. I have a plan. I told John I was going to do it. I said, we’re going to play a game.

Does a printer bounce? It’s a fun game. We’re going to take a printer that’s expensive and throw it, and he’s like, you’re crazy. You’re crazy. I’m like, well no. It’s crazy. The productivity you’ve cost, it’s cost me thousands people can’t print and to save $10 I think we should make a printer boats. So he throw it and he’s just, you’re crazy and solve the problem. He never came back. This is how it works. Flip some tables. What do I do? I think it did a bounce. It did not bounce. It was kind of a, but I mean those are the kinds of things you have to do. You got a hire, great people don’t be a life coach. And then B occasionally flip tables and I don’t know if you’re watching an NFL sideline, is bill Belichick having a good time over there when guys don’t follow the place?

Hey guys, is it possible you could try to do the place better? That crap doesn’t work. This is not church camp. This is not any kind of camp. This is called business coach and businesses more similar to war than it is to camp. It is not nearly as bad as the horrors of war. And I hate to compare it to that, but it is much more warlike than it is camp. Like if you try to make a business, some community camp thing that does not work. And that is the another example. Are you familiar with the the Patriots beat the Eagles yesterday? Oh yeah. Okay. did you hear about what bill Belichick said today? No. Where do you say, Oh my gosh. Last year they won the super bowl. Two years ago, they lost to the Eagles and one of their star players on the Eagles came out and said that he is so glad that the Eagles won because he would hate to be on the, the Patriots cause it’s so boring.

His name was lane Johnson and Lane’s like, it’s so, he’s so mean on the Patriots. They run it like it’s a prison camp essentially. It’s like everyone has to follow checklists and systems. Sounds horrible. And so bill Belichick did his interview last night, but Blaine Johnson said it wouldn’t be any fun to be on that team, you know, and he was just very critical about bill Belichick. So this is what bill Bellacheck said in the press conference yesterday. It’s so great. Let me find bill. C’mon bill. Talk to us about it. So let me see. Bill Belichick, he did and he’s been sitting on this for two years. I love bill. Bill and I don’t let go of things. This is what bill, this is what bill says during the interview.

Cool. Would you be able to have some things to say in his own way? Hmm. Interesting. You know, he’s always so dry and very much so. But, but we do read between the lines when he talks, you have to, okay. I’d rather have fun and win a Superbowl than be miserable and win five super bowls. That’s what lane said after the Eagles

Beat the Patriots and Superbowl 52 cause he’s dumb. Apparently boring old bill Belichick heard the word, the new England head coach dropped a subtle bomb on lane after yesterday. Seven point win over the birds.

Our defense played really well in the second half. Minimum players, they covered well. They rushed well at tackled low. They just, they just did a good job. Okay. Like I have a lot of fun out there to middle

And he never ever says we have fun. So again, winning is fun. And now our office, you’re seeing a team, it’s happy. We have great people up there, there’s a good energy and we’re having a fun time. But in order to get to the fun time, we’ve got to fire some people. We’ve got to put some fear in there. We got to flip some tables. Now once you’re winning, it’s fun. There’s a momentum, there’s good people, but no one wants to do that part. That’s called the messy middle and people don’t like to talk about that. Now guest a, B, I appreciate you traveling here. I half a country, half of the United States away. What question in any question that you would like to ask at all? Well, when you’re, when we just start out, you become the business coach to, everybody wants to talk to be from OEM.

Know they won’t give an order, they won’t take a catering Navy. They known me since birth and I just met him yesterday. How did you step away? I assume it was with the DJ connection. How did you, how do you keep control of a business? I’ll walk you through the steps and this was, I’m not, I’m pretty, it’s messy. It’s called the messy middle. I mean it’s not pretty. It’s what is messy middle. So step one, my wife and I agreed on my new calendar. That stuff. So you and guests see can talk about that. Cause I have found that my wife is very good at designing life. I’m very good at making money. So she designed my schedule. That’s like a Jesus take the wheel thing. That’s like a, cause I’m never going to design a schedule that that I mean even when I compromise it’s still somehow 70 hours.

I’m like, Oh here’s my new schedule. This one is like, this is really family focused schedule. It’s 80 hours a week trimming it down from 102. That’s what I do. Cause that’s me. That’s why I like working. So my wife’s like well just stop it. So my wife said this motivational phrase to me. She said if you don’t change your schedule, I’m leaving. And I’m like, Oh like to the store cause I’m a dense guy to the store. That’s cool. Could you pick up, could you pick me up something to honey? I’m hungry. You know what I mean? I’m thinking like I’m serious. This is what I was, cause I was working and she said it while I was working. I’m leaving and I’m like, could you get me some? I mean, I remember I was like, can you get me something to eat? Which makes it worse.

And she said, no, seriously, I, I didn’t marry you to make an income. And by the way, there’s other attractive men out there who’d be happy to marry me, who would be happy to spend time with me, but you for some reason have chased me around, brought me back to your two year of castle and then you locked me up there and you don’t spend time with me. That’s, that’s what you’ve done. And I’m like, those are fighting words. So I do what I do. I go to Atwoods where sell farm products. I go to Atwoods thinking about stuff like I wonder what she meant by that. It’s like, call her up, you know? Hey RP me. You said leaving. Is that like a metaphor? No. Like I, you and me no longer married. That’s how it would be. But I don’t need you to just earn income because there’s other people that can do that.

So I need a husband, like a boyfriend, like a father for our kids. That’s what I, that’s what I thought we were getting. I don’t remember dates consisting of me shadowing you working. So I need to go back to that a little bit and I’m like, ah, you know, you know, I can we work in the middle somewhere, can we come? So I came up with this new schedule and it literally was me working like 84 hours a week as opposed to like a hundred. And she’s like, this is not a scheduled stop. So that happened then. My son was born blind at the same time, which that’s not the move in my second kid. He’s blind. So I go to dr Grove’s office, got dr Grubbs if you’re listening, doctor groves, I’m so sorry. Dr groves calls me poop. This is clay DJ connection clay.

Dr groves. I need to talk to you son. Yeah. What’s going on? He says, you need to come to these doctor’s appointments with your wife. And I go, I can’t am working doing appointments. He’s like, yeah, yeah, I get, I get it. I get it. Yeah. Yeah. So here’s the deal. Your son does, your son is blind. I never heard that before. And I’m going, what? He’s like he’s never going to see, I run all the tests. You know, like if you look at like Stevie wonder, his eyes were open, his head, they doesn’t see light. There’s nothing, nothing, no lights, no flashlights, nothing, can’t see, doesn’t even know if I’m in the room. I’ve walked in quietly, doesn’t know you’re there. Nothing. So we’re going to refer him to Dean McGee eye Institute, which is Oklahoma’s number one, a hospital, one of the top in the country.

It’s like the mu, it’s like the Mayo clinic for eyes. So we go there, the doctor pulls me aside and says, your son is never going to see like ever. So we have paperwork here. You can fall, fill out when you start school, basically with babies to teach him how to get by without seeing, need to learn compensatory skills. So you can function, but you have a blind kid. And so I was going, what? No way. No way. So I told Vanessa, I’m like why don’t we go on like a trip? Cause my wife was praying for my kid for Aubrey and I banned her from pranks. I’m just a great husband. So I said, you can’t pray in this house. Stop it. You’re making me crazy cause I need to just embrace it. He can’t see that way. I can work, I can just live with that.

I can move on. She’s like, he will see. And I’m like, sure. Did Jesus tell you? She goes yes. And I’m like that. That’s great. That’s, that’s great. Cause that’s what I knew you would say. You’re not only are you crazy but you’re pissing me off. This is what’s good. This is what’s good. This is, and then so now we got, and it’s not going well. Things are not going well. The Clark house. So I we went to Florida, to Destin, Florida and we went to Sam’s club to buy everything in bulk that we don’t need. You know, you go there and I’m thinking maybe I can just eat, you know, trail mix for two to two weeks straight or a week straight and figure out my life. So we’re driving down and we get to the Sam’s club and I see the book, God in my corner by George Foreman just sitting there.

It’s in here somewhere. It’s in, it’s on, it’s there. And I’m going, babe, I need to buy that book. And she says, well didn’t get it. And I’m like, but I don’t like the religious books. They’re all stupid. And she said, well don’t buy it. What’s your deal? Cause that was all, that was just a bad mood for you know, like a year. So she says just get the book. And I’m like, I don’t want to, she said, well stop talking about, but I kept going to the checkout and I’m like, do you want anything else sir? You know, you wait in line forever at Sam’s club. And I’m like, ah, yes. And I sprint back, I grabbed the book, I said, please read this to me out loud while we drive, cause I don’t talk if we’re not, if we’re in a road trip, I don’t talk.

I do not speak when I’m in a road trip, I get all, if we drive 12 hours or four hours, I don’t speak because I had nothing to really talk about other than work. Cause that’s my thing. So she’s reading this to me and we get to like the part where George Foreman says his nephew was in a coma and he was not a Christian. He said, God, if you’re real helium and if you do, I’ll retire from boxing. And he said that he had that prayer and then nothing. So he goes out to fight in the ring, you know, and he’s getting, he gives this, George, you have a call. So it’s in the dressing room. He takes a call on a landline. What is it? He says, Oh, he’s out of a coma. We don’t know what happened. This kid’s been in a coma for every town of a coma.

And George said, it was like Samson cutting his hair. He had no power at all, like just lost all. And he goes, we’re not there to fight. And he said he just could not. He said he felt like he had like mono or something and he just got destroyed. So he came back in, lost, lost to have someone who should have beat, comes back into the locker room and I’s age agent. I’m like, what was that? And he’s like, ah, I promised God I would become a pastor and quit boxing if he healed my nephew. And it happened. So I have to quit now. And he was like 31, I think 32. And so that’s how he, so I was like, I don’t believe this story cause that’s how my mind works. So then I had to drive to Houston. I met Roscoe, his trainer, and I met his son red and I met his family.

I’m like, here’s the deal. My cousins live here. I’m here for Thanksgiving about this time, you know, this Thanksgiving and my my son was blind and I was in Florida and I was reading the book and then I was highlighting the book straight from the gut from my Jack Welch. And my son grabbed the highlighter and looked at me and smiled for the first time right after reading your dad’s book. And I made a promise that I would change my entire life if it happened. And so I need to meet your dad cause I needed to deal with it. It happened. And so I met George Foreman biggest hands in the whole world, strongest hands ever. Like scary big hands. He’s a pastor by the way, as a church down there. And he was doing a service and it’s probably 30 people in a service.

And the way George does it, it’s just for inner city people. And he walks around. Does it matter if you’re the poorest person or the richest person and he prays for you? And church goes as long as he needs to, to pray for everybody. And I’m there and I’m like, he’s like, I know I’m the white guy. So it’s like, why is Casper here? You know, no one else’s is white there. And I said, I, I, I’m here. My son was once blind. Now he can see, you know, and I just, I had had to know, did that actually happen for you? And he’s like, yeah, that’s why I’m a pastor and I’m going, so why’d you box again? And he said I was 38 and 39 and I was 350 pounds and nobody comes back at the age of 38 in boxes. And God told me I should win a championship but this time do it for him.

And he’s like, so I did it. So I just started running and I’m like, you lost 70 pounds. No, like 90 pounds at the age of 38 and I went back in one, but I couldn’t do it. My own strength, it was all God this time. And I’m like, what? Shunda this is great. And I was like a amazing thing for me right there because I’m going, I listened to a lot of TD Jakes, but it was like I had TD Jakes in my head now. Like it was the craziest thing ever. So I then I, I mean, this is how I felt the moment it happened. This is kinda how I felt like it put my a sound bite in my head. This is how, this is how my head sounded.

You can run it off.

I you know, talk to a guy. We had Cox clear channel they all wanted to buy the DJ business from, everyone kept calling me about buying it had a guy who worked for me and I said, you want to buy it? Said, yeah, I said, I’m out, so let’s do it. So I sold it and I didn’t want to sell it, but I did sell it and sold it. I had this thing where it’s like you have to stay there for a year or two, some sort of purgatory. You can’t compete with yourself and you have to be there, but you’re kind of some people can relate to this. It’s, it’s a little bit of the step parent thing where you have no authority but you have a kind of title. It’s like a vice president, you know. So I’m up there and people were like, we don’t want to follow the script.

And I’m like, well you need to follow the script. And then the new owners like, well we don’t have to follow the scripts. All right, okay. Why did I just talk? I mean it’s just every day it’s like okay guys, we’ve got a bunch of complaints this weekend. Well we need to do merit based pay. We pay people less if they do a bad job, new ownership. We don’t want to pay people less than, we don’t make everyone get paid the same. We don’t want to do a group interview. We want to do one on one interviews. We don’t want to do a lot of changes and new ownership wants to change it. They took all the pictures down of like Jack Welch quotes and replaced them with like Chuck Norris jokes and they took down like our war room area and they put in like bean bags and video games.

And I dunno, I think that if I had like a, a tip, like if I wrote a book on the eight tips to be a jackass, that’s what was happening in my opinion. It was like, we have scooters in the office, bean bags, video games. It’s just weird. And everything started late. It was just in the new owner. To his credit, I think he’s doing well now. People like him, it’s great. But I mean, I can’t be in an office where guys are on scooters and bean bags and do, you know, mess it up. I can’t handle being things being late. So anyway, but I was there and I just had to honor my show’s day. And the people would call and they’d say, or person B, I’ll edit that. But they would call me and say you know could you do my wedding?

And I would say could, could clay to my wedding and they said Nope he can’t. Why? Because there’s new ownership involved and he’s doing, we’re going to be doing it. And it never went over well. It never, ever, every time it was like, but he did my daughters, what, you know what I mean? And so for about a year and a half, almost two years, I somehow was in that purgatory where I couldn’t like not be there, but I didn’t really, I didn’t own it anymore but I got a big check, you know, that kinda thing. Now though, so I’ve got two years of that process, but it’s, if I was giving someone tips on how to do it, I would say one, you just agree on a schedule with your wife that makes sense that she likes that you won’t like that she likes D you will not both like it.

You will not, she will like it. Happy wife, happy life. But you will both not like it is not possible in my opinion. That’s why the man cave looks like this and the rest of my house does not. So it’s like two different worlds. Get the schedule that you agree to and then I agreed to as an like you just say yes, that’s what you do. You know? He’s like, I’m going to talk it over with my, with my wife. Okay. Yes. That’s what you say. Then you say all right now, no, and you just practice it and no. And you’d have two moves you can do with a direct no, like I’m not going to handle it any more because I’m spending time with my wife. That doesn’t go well either. Or you could say I can’t because we have a little bit new of an ownership situation now.

And with my partners, which you have partners, you know, well my partners I’m no longer allowed to do that. And then they’re like, but I know your partners. Well it’s just to something like we’ve been taught, we’ve been, we have partners, they don’t know who your partners are and we’ve just agreed I’m not going to handle, I’m going to handle more of the customer experience. You know, that’s how you do it and then it’s going to be weird. And then you get mystery shoppers in your stores so that everyday you get feedback from people who are customers about what you did well or not. You know, today we showed up at the stores and we went in the bathrooms and they were clean, but they didn’t know it was coming. But the mystery shoppers already texted me like, Hey, clean bathroom, good job. Or Whoa, what is going on in there?

You know? So that’s how you do it. And then you just have to understand that you have a weekly meeting, have staff meeting to pump up your team. You need to be in charge of your group interviews so you don’t have any idiots. And then you need to lead your daily huddles and then you get your talking back. And he can go lift weights and eat protein and BCAs and kale and, and [inaudible] and walk around the beach and pontificate about how great life is. Meanwhile the one trade off is I couldn’t DJ anymore. And then the only person who really didn’t respect my boundaries for this was dr Zellner and dr Joe lye. Cause I did tell dr July’s wedding and now he’s turning 40 and dr Z cause he helped me a lot and I owe him. So I deejayed for his daughter’s wedding, Bridget and everybody loved it and wanted me to DJ another wedding and another wedding.

And it led to like dozens of requests, but I said no to all of them and all the people, I said, no two were upset. One lady said, I will change the day of my wedding for you to DJ. So we’ve committed to June, whatever, I’ll move it back six months, just give me a date. And I’m like, ah, never. And she’s like, I don’t understand. You did my sister’s wedding. What’s your deal? And that’s how it was. But you just got to say no. You just practice it a lot new [inaudible] it’s like, why don’t you want to start with the [inaudible] sound? It’s kind of easier to [inaudible] duh duh duh duh duh duh. No, no, no, no, no, no. You just practice it and then eventually you get better at it. But it’s probably gonna take you a hundred nos before you get used to it. Is that helpful at all?

Yeah, that’s it. Yeah. And then our final incredible guest here, we saved the best for last a contestant number C on the thrive time. Show the anonymous guest. What questions would you have for me? Anything at all? Well, it sounds like I need to talk to Vanessa and get some helpful hints. That’s right. Totally need to do that. She’s the best. You talk about, you know, doing the a hundred hour work week. Real quick about why my wife had to tell you this. I’m not, I’m not just being dispiriting. I fight with her like a samurai fights with Chuck Norris every 30 days and it is crazy. Like, it’s like, cause of ninjas, there’s like 75 of them and they’re making them make loud noises. Like they got knives and you know, and they’re very, they’re just a lot of that. You can picture all the Ninja stuff going on and you would think with that many ninjas that they could take out Chuck, you know what I mean?

Because there’s so many ninjas. I mean it’s like how many more you see the movies? I mean, how many more ninjas do we need? They’ll have like ammo they’re wearing, they got [inaudible], there’s, they’re fighting, there’s a lot of noise. The kids are like, what is going on out there? Just, and then I, and it just happened, it just happened like as recently as this past weekend. It was like, Hey, you need to go to the cheer thing in this city. And I’m going, why delegate elevate? You can’t delegate being a dad. And I’m going, well, I kind of want to, like, I don’t want to go to this thing and sit and wait and drive four hours. And she’s like, well you’re, you’re going to, and I’m like, well I’m going to go to Atwood’s but I’m, I mean I have just submitted my schedule to her cause it just, it’s easier.

It’s a better thing, you know? And, but forever I would not do that. And so every 30 days I get a little crazy with the case of the crazies, which I did yesterday. And she’s just like, what? You just go to bed, you just go to bed. Cause I mean I get to a place where I’m like all just cause in business coach to when you have to kind of fight. Right. I mean I don’t, I don’t attack her and call her personal names or anything, but I’m just like, yeah, God, are they kidding me? I try all the moves and if that doesn’t work, I go with the, come on baby. You know, you don’t hate me. Why do I have to go? I try all the different angles. I’ve tried getting flowers, I try bribery. I’m like, you can buy some new shoes. She’s like, I can buy shoes, whatever I want.

I’m in charge of the bank accounts. I’m like, fine. No, I mean it’s like you can decorate the new house like I’m going to anyway, I’ll go ahead. Things will not be good for you in the future if you’d say, Oh, they will be great for me. What about for you though? And I’m like, Oh, it’s like a Ninja. Anyway, so sorry about that. I want you to know Pete butts, the messy middle people want to talk about and she flips the tables every 30 days and I’ve been corrected as recently as last night. So I am now healed from my jackass. Okay. So back to you. I’m sorry about that. So my question is, you talk about working the million hour weeks and you know, eating the ramen. Yeah, sure. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So how do you get, or how long does it take to get from that part to getting to the time freedom? Well, you’re there.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, because we just raised prices. Yeah. So we knew we didn’t feel like it, but we raised prices and I did the math and I, and if I’m wrong, correct me, but I think it’s like 80,000 a year we just created, I think through the price adjustments that was much needed. She had raised prices in forever. Right? But I think we just created 80 there. Okay. Then I think off of the alcohol, if we raised them 50 cents a piece or whatever, I think we’ve just raised another 15,000 so that’s a hundred so let’s just say I’m making up numbers. I have no idea. But I’m just, so let’s say you were paying yourself 30,000 a year or 35,000 you should have created that extra. And then each week when you do your a date, AKA your accounting date, you want to ask yourself, how can we reduce costs by 3% and how can we, how can we make the experience better by 3% so as an example, there’s one restaurant I worked with back in the day.

I still can’t talk about it cause I have an NDA. Help these people a lot. But I can just say they put in a a big aquarium where you could see these exotic fish all swimming around and they got rid of a lot of free crap they gave. You said they used to come to your table and you’d always have bread out, like garlic knots were just there. I complimentary, that kind of thing. Or like free bread or freedom saying it’s like a free, they just like all garden has a free bread. They used to just give you free bread and instead they put in these beautiful aquariums where you can see these beautiful fish, right? So while you’re waiting, you’re seeing these cool fish and then they would ask, Hey, I know everyone’s on a diet right now. Do you want Brett civil phrase?

Hey, I know everyone’s on a diet right now. Are you? Do you want bread? That little phrase, the phrase, yeah. Hey, I know everyone’s kind of going gluten free here. Can you eat bread? And by doing that they go, you know, I am gluten intolerant, whatever. Okay, well we have a gluten free, let’s say pizza or a gluten free menu or something. For you, but it got them out of providing all that free, which by the way was like a crazy amount. We’re talking like 25 grand a year kind of stuff. I mean there’s, so when you think about every week, how can we improve the experience and cut costs by 3% you’ll, you’ll get there, but you’re, you’re, you’re there. And in my opinion, you just don’t feel like it yet because we haven’t, we got the new suit, we haven’t worn it very long, but you’re there.

I mean, you’re going to see it and four months stay the course and you’ll see that bank account get to where it needs to go financially. And then your second restaurant, that one cannot lose money. So the big rules that can’t lose money once it’s open, it can break even, but it can’t lose money. So we’re going to, you know, we want to do aggressive no-brainers, you know, so I would do very aggressive, like, you know, three, $3 first meal or whatever your costs are. So your people get tipped well. But there’s a, by the way, a big line, you know, $3 first meal for some customers, $3 or something just to get a big buzz going and just get it full right away just, but don’t sit there and get a few new customers every night for 10 years or five years. Just get that thing, velocity speed as fast as possible. Is that, is that helpful? Yeah. Yeah. So helpful. And then the vacation thing my wife just books up so she’s like, you know, Hey, we’re going to kill it. Me.

She’s like, we’re going to go on the cruise, you know? Yeah. And we do. And I don’t, I don’t, I love my kids. Let me tell you this. We have great memories. So I’ve cooled with my new travel move. I’ve told you about my new travel movement. I’ve been doing this probably the last five years. I bring a backpack, the one that I used to start the DJ business, small backpack, little van sport or something, I don’t know, some bro. And then I got that and I’ll get my boxers. Four pairs of boxers, you know, fourth socks, five pairs of socks. Get my end one shorts, two pairs of those get my four undershirts all rolled up in there, you know, and I got my wallet and my book and my little clipboard. That’s it. And then I don’t lose my luggage, which is always a big stressor.

If we went traveling and then I plant, we always take the first flight out because all the flights are late, so I don’t care. And then I right away right away, I mean right away. Like why did you jump? We’ll be flying to Florida and hits on the 5:00 AM flight here folks. Thanks for joining us for the early bird, early bird of flight, the red eye flight to Florida. We’ll be leaving here in just a few minutes. And the the trail becoming vitamin for breakfast orders or for a nuts steak you provided with Southwest airlines, that kind of thing, you know, and I right away I’m like, boom, hit the button. Boop. Oh yeah. Yes sir. How can I help you? I need a cranberry vodka and she does too. Can I get, I get air sickness. I’m assuming I get sick, I get, I’m very sick in the year, I get motion sickness.

So I’ll get out myself to adult to adult beverages before 5:00 AM up there in the air and I’m good. And once we land, I don’t get motion sickness cause motion sickness was a huge thing. I would just be nausea. I’ve tried Dramamine the thing you wear in your rate, just nothing seems to work. And then I just have no expectations of getting things done because you were born for productivity, which is how you are. That’s why you went to get stuff done. So you view a happiness based on what you got done that day. That’s how you view it. I do too. And most people don’t. And so you’ve got to find that way. But really if you think about it, if you go on one trip a month, that’s the equivalent of the equivalency of you giving up four out of 30 days a month.

So if there was a war, you would be winning 26 to four every month. You know what I’m saying? And so I think realistically you’ve been, she would still be losing if the score is still 26 to four so we want to get to a score where it’s 15 to 15 and that’s a good score. And I say 15 to 15 and really it’s like 17 to 13 with my wife right now. And then she’s really happy and the more happy she is and we’re happy I am. It’s a great thing. But I have just found that that, and again I only share with you these raw rugged things I went through because I made a lot of bad decisions for a long time. I was definitely, definitely, definitely as a husband, like a D, not even a Diaz and F for a long time. I don’t know.

I think the only reason she stayed with me is because she remembers how we were when we were dating. And I could provide, stop looking over here, but I think she could, she, she wanted to stick with me cause she knew what I could be and what I once was, it’s like Dayton Darth Vader is how I would describe Dayton me after we were married. It’s like dad, we take off the mask and come join me and he’s joined join me and I showed it to dad, take off the mask and quit running around with a Cape. It’s weird. Come on B, you know, and at the end it was the third movie, you know, where he takes his mask off and they become koombaya buddies at the end and then he can see a hologram of his dad. But it took him till his dad’s death to see that.

Like he doesn’t have to run around trying to kill people. That’s kind of how it was for me. It was like I almost got to the end, you know what I mean? So I don’t know if that’s helpful. Is that, is that helpful? Am I helping you? It is. It is. It’s just hard when you, you’ve come up so many years and you, you build the scene, you think you’re doing it for those very reasons that you need to take time off. Yeah. You’re doing it like, Oh, if I’m doing it, they don’t have to. Kanye West was talking about his new schedule balance while he moved to Wyoming and he’s talking about how I always told people, I’m building these business coach. I’m building this empire and building this for my wife and kids. And then Kim pointed out, well, you the people you never see or your wife and kids [inaudible] so you must be building for someone else because we never see you.

And he was like, Ooh, that’s fighting words, Kim. You know? Yeah. And but it ha he had to get to that realization. We all do at some point. And just, if you’re a production minded person, you’re eventually going to have to have that thought. Cool. Very, you guys are great Americans. I appreciate you putting up with putting up with me. I’m going to do some show editing here with, with a Kindle and a contestant a. You, you are, you’re a beautiful man. Oh, thank, thank you for that show referral. By the way. This guest today was awesome. Absolutely. I’m seriously in this guy. I mean Richie’s his last name, James Richie. I can’t wait to put this show out. I mean, not a lot of people retire at the age of 35 and build 26 businesses before the age of 38 age of 35.

That guy just mind boggling. That was a great, a great find right there. That’s a James Richie. If you’re looking for the next show to watch, check out that show. And we’d like to at each and every show with the boobs. So we’re going to end the show with the boom. So here we go. Three, two, one,