Entrepreneur of the Year and Business Coach

Clay Clark: (singing) It is me, he is I and I am him, the man with the flat-bill-brim. My name is Clay Clark, former US SBA Entrepreneur of the Year and Business Coach.

Sent here on a mission to get you in a great financial position as a business coach that can help. I know many of you have struggled, year after year, and what you’re doing, is you’re starting to say things like “maybe it’s the economy, maybe I don’t have what it takes, maybe it’s luck.” I’m sensing that somebody here, I feel that somebody listening right now, you’ve had people tell you it’s probably not gonna work out, well if you listen to what I’m saying and you maybe write these down, maybe this will build your faith, ‘cuz I believe in you.

I know what you have what it takes. Did you know Walt Disney lost it all at the age of 36, again? He ran out of money at the age of 36. You know, Ray Crock, the guy who’s known, the movie Founder just came out, that shows you his rise to prominence as the guy who took the McDonald’s restaurants and took it into a national franchise called McDonald’s. This man didn’t have any success until his 50’s.

You know, Colonel Sanders had no success until he looked like Colonel Sanders, that’s why the, you know, the drawing of Colonel Sanders for KFC he doesn’t look like a young whipper snapper, he looks like Colonel Sanders ‘cuz that’s when he started the business and had success, he looked like Colonel Sanders.

Robert Redmond: In his 70’s.

Clay Clark: Yeah!

So I’m just telling ya, many of you listening out there that Google didn’t produce a dime of profit for over four years. I mean many of you don’t even realize that Facebook took three years of struggling to make it.

A lot of you didn’t know that Airbnb was always a week away from going out of existence. These guys at Airbnb they had no money, so they actually took cereal, this is crazy, they went to the store and bought boxed of cereal and they took those boxes of cereal, they pulled the cereal out of the box, they kept it in the plastic bag it was in, and then they made, ‘cuz they had a kind of graphic design background, they made their own cereal called Obama O’s, and they took the cereal from other cereal boxes and they stuffed it inside their own box called Obama O’s, and they started selling them on the street in San Francisco, which is a largely Liberal city, and they sold out. And that’s how they made payroll every week was by selling Obama O’s cereal.

Robert Redmond: Where can you read that?

Clay Clark: You can go on Pando Daily and watch the interview with the founder, if you just Google “Airbnb Pando daily” you can watch the interview where he explains that.

Robert Redmond: Did they also have Cap’n McCain?

Clay Clark: They had Cap’n McCain’s yeah, that’s what they did. They had Cap’n McCain’s, they had Obama O’s, I’m just telling ya, then they ran out even more money so they started renting out their own apartment and sleeping in a closet. So I’m saying I don’t care where you’re at right now, you qualify for success.

You know, if you’re in a garage, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, a lot of people start somewhere. Steve Jobs started in a garage. Right, the Garage-Mahal. Hewlett-Packard started in a garage. Henry Ford started in a garage. “Oh I don’t have an office.” Well you can start in a garage. Get a business coach asap!

Now if you are in business, and you’re struggling to find good people, then you can say “Well I just can’t find good people.” And that could be your story, forever, or you can decide you know what, this is my day, to make it. This is when I decide to thrive. This is my year, and I’m gonna make it happen.

And so some of you are going to take the step today and reach out to an executive recruiter, who’s gonna help you find the top talent that has you stuck. That is what has you stuck, you need to take the next step and reach out to Stacy Pursell, an executive recruiting guru.

And I asked you before the break, a little bit, but once you find a talent that you like and you feel like they’re the top talent for the position, do you do any background checks, or do you just say “Well looks good, you’re hired.” What do you do to make sure that people are vetted?

Stacy Pursell: Well keep in mind that the people that I am looking for are people that are gainfully employed so we have to be really careful not to jeopardize their current situation ‘cuz these are people that are not unemployed, and people that are unemployed may not care if you’re contacting their former employers but people that are employed, they don’t wanna jeopardize that so we have to be really careful as you do as a business coach.

So what we do is we validate by people that have worked with the individual, so when we’re recruiting on a position, in a niche industry, we will ask people in the industry who do know you in the industry that’s the very best person doing A, B, and C. And we’ll have hundreds of conversations with people and you’ll hear that same person’s name mentioned over and over and over again, so anyway we go through the interview process and the person is selected.

We outsource our background checks to a company called HireRight, and then sometimes our clients prefer to do their own background checks but like I said we’re looking for that top 5-10 percent in the marketplace and those are people that already have jobs so we don’t wanna jeopardize that as I am sure you can understand as a business coach.

Clay Clark: Unbelievable, now Thrivers, many of us are not doing background checks, why are we not doing background checks? I’ll tell ya why, because we have never hired a lot of people before, and if you’re struggling to find a tip-top talent, the very best of the best, you need to reach out to an executive recruiter like Stacy.

Now move number four, step number four, question number four, point number four, someone should write this down. How working with a recruiter gives you an edge in your job search, and in hiring talent. How does working with a recruiter give you, give the listener, an edge in their job search and in hiring talent, Stacy?

Stacy Pursell: Well confidentiality, so when you are somebody that is gainfully employed, and you don’t wanna jeopardize your current situation, you would work through an executive search consultant or recruiter because they can confidentially help you find a new position under the radar, versus you posting your ad all over the internet and blasting it out to a large number of employers. You don’t do that if you’re employed.

And from the employer’s standpoint, we have a lot of times, employers are wanting to hire someone on a confidential basis, we had a client that wanted to build an entire sales organization from the ground floor, and they did not want their competition to know what they were doing, because they did not want their competition to know that they were entering a new segment of the marketplace.

So they hired our firm to confidentially reach out to sales people that had the experience they were looking for and recruit them for our client’s organization. All these interviews were done behind the scenes, and it was not announced that the company was hiring, or had hired this sales force, so I’d say confidentiality is the number one reason on both the employer and the candidate side.

Clay Clark: Now if you’re listening right now, Robert, and they’re saying, “I wanna take the next step, I wanna get started. I want to start that business that I’ve been thinking about, I’ve been dreaming about, I wanna be, I’m a startup, I’m not an existing business. I’m thinking about starting.” Maybe you have a business and you wanna grow it, could you explain first off, where are the Thrive15 business coach workshops located? Where are the Thrive Time workshops? If you could kinda explain the dojo of mojo?

Robert Redmond: Yeah, so you can look up our building first of all, there’s some people out there that we like to call “charlatans,” people who put on a good smoke screen right, but there’s no really substance behind what they say, or where they are, Tai Lopez, try looking up-

Clay Clark: Oo Tai Lopez,

Robert Redmond: Do you remember Tai Lopez’s address?

Clay Clark: Yeah he actually his address that business is located if you follow it, it’s listed on his site, if you follow it and you go to Google Maps, it’s like an abandoned warehouse in the UK, and it’s, Tai Lopez, his 67 steps to scamming is what I would call it. Check it out.

Robert Redmond: So go to Google, type in Thrive 15 Jenks, or Thrive 15 business coach conference, and there you’ll see our address. So we’re here in Jenks, our 20k square foot facility, and the great thing about these conferences, like you’re talking about Clay is when you’re starting a business, a lot of times when you’re starting up, you don’t know where to start. Right?

When you’re starting up you don’t know where to start, I mean there’s systems and processes, there’s sales, there’s marketing-

Clay Clark: Branding-

Robert Redmond: Branding-

Clay Clark: Logos-

Robert Redmond: Priority management-

Clay Clark: Print pieces-

Robert Redmond: Human resources, hiring people-

Clay Clark: Pricing-

Robert Redmond: And it’s like, where do I begin?

Clay Clark: Websites.

Robert Redmond: And how do I do this stuff?

Clay Clark: How do I do it?

Robert Redmond: I got a great idea, I’m able to solve a need that people are willing to pay me for, to solve for them, but how do I do all this other stuff? Well the great thing about these two-day, 15 hour workshops, it’s a Friday and Saturday, April 21st and 22nd, is we’ll show you what to do.

And it’s a linear system.

Clay Clark: There’s gotta be an upsell in the back of the room though.

Robert Redmond: No upsells.

Clay Clark: I read on the website it’s $500. But what if-

Robert Redmond: Free coffee. We won’t even charge you for the coffee.

Clay Clark: It’s $500, and I know I can bring 3 or 4 people with me if I want to, but what if I can’t afford it, what if I can’t afford the $500, what then do you have for me wise wizard of business coach es?

Robert Redmond: Thanks to some wealthy investors, we actually do have some scholarships available, so you say “Hey, I really wanna come, but I’m a startup, I don’t have a lot of cash right now.” Give us a call, go to thrive15.com fill out a form, and we can tell ya a little bit more about our scholarship options that are available.

Clay Clark: Now for somebody who has a successful company like Stacy over here with the Pursell Group, Stacy could you just, I wanna ask you this question, I don’t wanna put you on the spot, but you obviously have a very successful company now. You’re kinda known as the leader in executive recruitment now, was it a little stressful when you started the business? Like day one, was it a little crazy, little stressful, or did you just start off with a bang immediately, ‘cuz you’re obviously known as kinda the legend now of executive recruiting, was it a little bit tough?

Stacy Pursell: I mean yes and no. I mean I had been doing executive search and recruiting for 7 1/2 years before I started my own firm, so when I did start I did have some knowledge, but I hadn’t been a business owner, so that was the unknown for me, that was the intimidating part, is that I had worked for somebody else doing executive search and recruiting but when you own your own company, there’s a lot of things that you deal with that you don’t deal with when you’re working for somebody else. So that was a scary part.

Clay Clark: You know for me, the hardest thing to learn was not selling, not branding, Dr. Z taught me so many things as my business coach. My hardest thing was the emotional aspects of managing a team.

The elephant in the room, the other day we had a team meeting where all the employees showed up, and I’m going “If they wanted to, there’s like 80 of these people, and there’s one of me,” even if I was a skilled business coach ninja, it’d be tough to take out all 80 of ’em, I mean they could gang up on ya. And so managing a team, leading a team, holding the team accountable, training a team, staffing for the team, finding top talent, Stacy if someone is struggling to find top talent what’s your website and what is your phone number?

Stacy Pursell: Our website is www.thepursellgroup.com that’s thepursellgroup.com, our phone number 918-488-3900.

Clay Clark: Now if you are looking for a one on one business coach, you’re looking for an in person workshop, you’re looking for the podcast, you’re looking for the world’s best business school, check it out at thrivetimeshow.com and as always 3, 2, 1, boom.