Speaker 1: … presenting the world’s only business coach teaching school without the BS, with optometrist and entrepreneur, Dr. Robert Zoellner, and the Forbes small business administration entrepreneur of the year in your ear, Clay Clark, it’s the Thrive Time show on Talk Radio 1170. 3, 2, 1. Boom.
Clay Clark: All right, Thrive Nation. Welcome back into the conversation. It’s your daily dojo of mojo from your favorite business coach, and this is the show where we keep you in the know about what you need to know and do to make your business grow. You know? I know there’s so many people out there that unfortunately are listening to today’s show representing some of the unfavorable statistics that are out there. According to Forbes, 8 out of 10 small businesses are going to fail. According to Ink Magazine, over 96% of small businesses are going to fail. According to the people that I’ve met, just anecdotally, you know, people that I’ve met over the years, who’ve been friends of mine, who’ve started businesses, I’ve seen almost all of them go out of business.
There’s reasons to have hope. You shouldn’t be discouraged by the statistics. You just have to know that when you’re trying to be successful in the world of business I’ll liken it to trying to climb to the top of a mountain. Okay? Let’s just say there’s a mountain that you want to get to the top of, and you can see it in the distance. We’ve all definitely agreed that this is the mountain that we want to get to the top of. However, just to make it exciting, what you do is you go ahead and you put on a blindfold. The blindfold I would call it is ignorance, or lack of knowledge, or not knowing the proven path, but basically you don’t know where to go.
What happens is you, with great passion, with great energy, with great enthusiasm, you work hard to get up to the top of the mountain, but you have the blindfold of ignorance or lack of knowledge on. You’re trying to get to the top of Google without knowing how to do it. You’re trying to optimize your marketing pieces. You’re trying to make more effective ads, but you don’t know how to do it. You’re trying to systemize your business, but you don’t know how to do it. As a business coach and somebody who’s been coaching businesses for a very long time, I unfortunately will say that college does not prepare you to be a successful business owner.
There are many dentists that we work with. Specifically I can think of one in Florida that I’m working with right now that he said this openly, but he said, “Hey, listen. Before I had your business coach servicesI had no clue where I was going. You know, the college didn’t prepare me at all for running a business. They taught me how to be a good dentist. They taught me the technical aspects of becoming a dentist, of getting that degree, getting that license, getting that certification, but they didn’t prepare me. What is happening is you are trying to make it up success mountain with a blindfold on, and it’s very hard to do that. You shouldn’t beat yourself up if you have been going the wrong way, because if you’re passionate, you might be walking fast. You might be walking quickly. You might be moving at a rapid pace. You’re jogging. You know, you might be sprinting, spending upon how athletic you are. Who knows? You might be doing a marathon jog. I mean, you’re going at a world record pace the wrong way.
What I’m saying today is let’s just take a moment. Let’s get out a sheet of paper, and let’s rate ourselves on the scale of 1 to 10 on a couple areas today. Let’s work through them together, and let’s make sure that we are being honest with ourselves of how we’re doing, of are we truly getting to where we want to go? We’re going to start with a fun, but … Well, it’s fun, because a lot of people want to talk about it, but I don’t know if it’s fun for some people. Maybe a third of you say, “This is not fun at all.” We’re going to go ahead and rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10. Go ahead and get out a sheet of paper and rate yourself. Get out a sheet of paper, of paper. Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 in the area of marketing, 10 being the highest, 1 being the least. Marketing. Marketing being your ability to generate leads in a turn key way. Again, your ability to generate leads in a turn key way.
Let me give you some examples of what is not a turn key way. Not a turn key is you going around town networking. That is not a turn key way. You personally texting or Facebooking, reaching out to people via Facebook that you know, that’s not a turn key way. What you’re looking to do is you’re looking to build a business that could work without you. Right? You want to be thinking about, “How good am I at building a turn key marketing system that really does work without me?” Let me give you some examples of what would work here. Elephant in the Room, that’s our men’s grooming lounge. We get customers in a turn key way that requires zero of my physical time so I can be a business coach. I don’t have to do anything during the week to go get the customers. Now, I did have to design the marketing materials. I did have to think about the strategy. I did have to devote many, many hours to coming up with the original system, but I know longer have to go get them myself.
As another example, Dr. Zoellner and Associates, the top optometry clinic in Tulsa, according to just the sales totals. These guys, you know, Dr. Z, you won’t see Dr. Z running around, passing out his business card, trying to procure new business. You won’t see him networking around town, passing out cards, but you will see people going to his business located right there at 65th and Memorial I believe, right there next to the Woodland Hills mall. Again, on a scale of 1 to 10 I want you to rank your ability to get customers without personally going after them.