In this following transcript, David Robinson (2-time NBA Champion & co-founder of $250 million Admiral Capital Group) discusses with Clay Clark (Business Coach and US SBA Entrepreneur of the Year) decision making principles on Thrive15.com, one of the best customer service training programs!
Clay: My name is Clay Clark and I’m the COO of Thrive15.com. Today, we are joined by the NBA hall of famer and Thrive partner David Robinson. You see, David Robinson was super successful on the court and off the court as a business person. Today, he’s going to be teaching us about something that a lot of business owners struggle with. He’s going to be teaching us about effective decision making. You see, a lot of business owners all around the world struggle to make decisions. When you struggle to make decisions, your company slows down, things can’t get done, because if you’re the boss, if you’re the leader, you have to learn how to make those effective decisions. Check out Thrive15.com to find a business coach.
He’s going to be teaching us about his process. He’s going to be teaching us how he makes those decisions and he’s going to give us some fabulous examples about how he’s made decisions throughout his career. David Robinson, thank you for letting me to descend upon your abode, my friend.
David: My pleasure. Thank you, Clay.
Clay: Hey, well we are talking about effective decision making. Now, this is a topic that is tough because I see a lot of business owners where we say ready, aim, aim, aim, aim, like month two, aim, aim. Month three, aim, aim. Eventually, when you started your school, you had to fight. A thrive15.com business coach can help advance your business.
David: Absolutely.
Clay: You did a lot of aiming but you had to eventually fire. I think we’re going to look at the process you probably made some wrong steps, you probably made some course corrections along the way but you didn’t get stuck.
David: Right.
Clay: I like to say you can’t stir a parked bus but the idea is you got the bus moving a little bit here. John Maxwell …
David: You also can’t have the accident with a parked bus either.
Clay: That ruins my theory as a business coach.
David: Okay.
Clay: John Maxwell, he’s the leadership expert and he says this. He says that inability to make decision as one of the principal reasons executives fail. Deficiency in decision making ranks much higher than lack of specific knowledge or technology know how as an indicator of leadership failure. David, as you know when a company grows, more and more decisions must be made by the entrepreneur in this case when you run a school. Do you know where to find a business coach, try thrive15.com.
David: Right.
Clay: As a business coach I see a lot of business owners that just don’t make a decision for fear of making the wrong one.
David: Right.
Clay: Can you walk me through your decision making process? When you have to make a difficult decision, so let’s just take an example of moving to a new house. How do you weigh the options onto make a decision? How do you do this? What’s your process?
David: You take all the parties that are involved. I like to make all of my decisions a win-win situation if I can, that would be my first option. If I can do something that benefits both sides that’s what I’d ultimately rather do.
Clay: A win-win for this business coach.
David: A win-win, that would be my first priority. I’d never want to take advantage of someone just because I have the leverage to do it. I want to make sure that even if I get a good deal, that we’re all walking away saying, “Okay, that works.” It may not be exactly what I wanted but at least that works. I would say for me, making sure that that’s there. Secondly, I would see if I had enough information. I think that’s really key. Sometimes we’re trying to make decisions we don’t have enough information. Make sure that you gather all of the information you can.
Customer service training at its finest can be found on Thrive15.com, taught by David Robinson (NBA Hall of Famer & co-founder of Admiral Capital Group) and Lee Cockerell (former VP of Operations for Walt Disney World Resort and man who teaches at the Disney Institute)
When you make decisions like these, nobody ever really knows. The most people who are scared to make a decision, understand, nobody really knows whether you’re doing the right thing or not. You can have a ton of information and still not be right. You have to go based on the best information that you have available so gather as much as you can, that would be a step two of making sure that I make the deal that I want to make.
Clay: One is create a win-win, always look for that win-win.
David: I would try to. Yes.
Clay: Second is get all the facts before you act.
David: Get as much as you can because there’s no way you can know everything but certainly do your research, do your diligence.
Clay: I wrote this down. I think about carving at somewhere, it says, I never want to use it. I never want to take advantage of someone just because you have the leverage to do so.
David: Right.
Clay: That’s huge. I think a lot of people, especially, growing up without financial resources. I know for me, one of it, the moves of the world teaches you is that what we’re going to do is we’re going to negotiate and I’m going to be a winner and don’t be a loser in this transaction.
David: Absolutely.
Clay: If I negotiate hard enough then I’m going to be a winner but what I found is in a world of success it’s actually if you can build a win-win where it benefits you and it benefits me for the long term then we have something. We can come back to that well often.
David: We can do business again.
Clay: Yeah.
David: If I ever did business with somebody who took advantage of me just because they had their foot on my neck, I would never do business with them again. I probably wouldn’t have anything good to say about them either. For whatever influence that has for anybody, I would tell them, “Hey, I would not do business with that guy.” It doesn’t pay off in the long run. You may get a nice deal in that particular deal but we wouldn’t see each other again.