180 Degree Life Change | What Do I Need to Do to Change Life Dramatically? – Ask Clay Anything

Audio Transcription

Do you have questions? America’s number one business coach has answers. It’s your brought up from Minnesota. Here’s another edition of ask clay. Anything on the thrive time business coach radio show?

yes. Thrive nation. On today’s show, I get the opportunity to answer the business coach question that I get asked the most, so hopefully I do a good job of answering it. I mean, I’ve answered this question so many times for so many people that hopefully I now do a good job of answering the question. The question is, what do I need to do today to become successful tomorrow? What do I need to do today to become successful tomorrow? All right, I’m going to walk you through the steps. Uh, I will tell you there are seven or eight steps. You’re going to have to take notes here. There’s eight steps. It’ll kind of sub points for each step, but take notes on these steps here. Step number one, you need to write down your f six goals. What you want to write down, your goals for your faith, your family, your finances, what your friendship, your friendships, your faith, your family, your finances, your friendships, your fitness and your fund.

It’s very hard to get somewhere if you don’t know where you’re going, are you where you want to go? It’s very hard to know if you’ve gotten where you want to go, if you don’t know where you want to go. So I encourage everybody out there to write down your f six goals, but I have. I write down my goals and I don’t achieve them. I get depressed, okay, well that’s loser thinking in that could probably be a different show, but you need to go ahead and write down your f six goals. Alright? Step two, you want to change your calendar and your daily schedule immediately. So I’m going to help you save a whole bunch of time right now as an example, immediately cut all television out of your life. I like to watch ricky like reruns, but what if I die? Well, I mean cut all of the television. That doesn’t make you money. I mean, maybe there’s a show you like to watch that’s very awesome, tops you makes a lot of money, but I would just say for the average person, according to all of the research I can find out there, I mean usa today did a report. The new the New Yorkers than report. The average American right now is wasting five point two hours per day watching TV. That’s five point two hours per day watching TV and this just in

TV. So I would encourage you to just stop watching TV. So many people say, the reason why I don’t have time to have success as I’m. I’m running out of time, I’m just so busy. The reason why I can’t have success is I’m just so busy. Well, if you stop watching five point two hours of TV per day, that’s going to free up a lot of time per day, five point two hours a day, times seven days a week, times 52 weeks a year. That’s gonna save you 1,892 hours a year divided by the 40 hour work week. That’s going to save you. I mean, just an insane amount of time. I would encourage you just go out there and stop watching TV. The average American, just so you know, this is kind of crazy. The average American watches five point two hours of TV per day, five point two hours of TV per day, which equals 47 point three, two work weeks per year.

That’s like having a second job, so stop watching TV. Move number three. Step number three again, step one, click. What was step one? Step one was write down your f six goals, all of them. Faith, family, finances, friendship, fitness, fun and posted on your mirror someplace. Very cleaver. Someplace where you can see the goals on a daily basis. What? Yeah, because if your faces, if your face doesn’t see the goals on a daily base is it’s very hard to know whether you’re heading towards the business coach goals or drifting away from the goals. Write down your f six goals in place them somewhere where everybody can see them. Step to change your calendar and your daily schedule immediately. Should I change it slowly over time? No. Rip The rip the bandaid off baby. Rip The bandaid off this just in. It’s now time to rip the bandaid off. If you’re unhappy about the life you’ve been living, rip the bandaid off and write down your f six goals today. Step two, stop watching TV today. Pretty done with it. Five point two hours of TV per day. 40 seven point three, two weeks per year. Stop watching TV. What if I die? Because if I dial that, I won’t even know what’s going on. Step three, turn off all of your social media notifications. Oh, immediately. Immediately. Yeah. Immediately.

Lou,

it would be more productive to spend your day talking into a box fan saying

a lot.

Lou spending your day on social media it. It’d be more productive to spend your day in a hot tub trying to sell ice cream to people in the hot tub.

Yes. Welcome to my hot tub. This is clay’s hot tub and in the hot tub of love, we fell into the super dark chocolate. We got some extra special super special strawberry. We’ve got peppermint. I just love it.

No, it’s not a good use of your time. It would be better to be going door to door trying to sell phone books.

Oh No, no, no, but I wish I could get that excited about that. Are you kidding? Hey, so three Johnson Barr stopped funding. Now people

look at this book every. There’s so many things that you could be doing with your time. Why in the world are you on social media? Two hours per day. What are you doing? What are we doing? Psychology today wrote a subtle article called your smartphone is destroying your life. What if I get off social media and I die? They wrote your smart phone. The title is your smartphone is destroying your life. It says, here’s another disturbing statistic. This tally seems to increase daily, but by one studies count the typical smartphone user, not you. Other people interacts with their smartphone 85 times per day. Well, it’s great because when I had my smart phone on, I’m only interacting with it 45 times a day and then often includes middle of the night checks for work emails and new likes. What are we doing? America, not America. People on other planets.

The Philippines. People in Samoa, people in Alaska, people in Canada, Australia, people all over the world. What are we doing? Why are we on social media so much? Ron Friedman, Phd, psychology today rights studies indicate that even brief interruptions exponentially increase our chances of making mistakes. This is because our attention is diverted. Buyer smart. We use up valuable cognitive resources, reorientating ourselves, living less mental energy for completing our work. Research also suggests that frequent decisionmaking causes us to tire my friends. Get off the smart phone, get off of the TV, and write down your f six goals. Click. Could you repeat it from the top without yelling? Okay. Step one, write down your f six goals, your goals for your faith, your family, your finances, your fitness, your friendship, and your fun step to change your calendar and your daily schedule immediately, immediately. Do Not Watch TV anymore.

It’s five point two hours of TV per day that you’re throwing down the drain for all the guys out there. If you want a a, a more productive thing to be doing than watching TV, just p and your gas tank and see what happens. You get the feeling of like you’re, you know, exploring nature, you’re having a good time, you’re, you’re, you’re wild. You’re getting to just express yourself, and when you urinate in a gas tank, tell me what’s a better use of your time urinating in the gas tank or watching five point two hours of TV per day or 47 point three, two work weeks per year, which oddly enough, is more time than the average American actually spins at work nowadays. Step three, turn off all of your social media notifications. Your likes, your heart, your followers. Unless they’re paying you, get off of that.

Quit wasting your time creeping on. Other people seem whether people are doing yourself to other people. It’s just not a good use of your time. Step four, get up and play in your day. One hour before you see your first human. What? Yes, get up one hour before you see your first human. In planning your day, we call this Meta time Meta from the Greek word meaning above. You could call it planning time. You could call it. I like to call it prototype. It seems a little more, you could call it. I just. It’s my morning tea time. It’s my time. I get up in the business coach moment and I just decided to up my day will have my tea. That’s fine. I don’t care what you call it. You could go, well, I tell you what would I do in the morning? I caught my kicking some butt time, you know, because I get up in the morning and I planned out my day and I just kicked some butt.

I don’t care what you call it. I really don’t care. Well man, I’ll tell you what I call it. I call it getting up, you know, before everybody else was up because that’s when everybody’s asleep. You know, you get it. I mean you could call it whatever you want to cut. I don’t care. Go Lord. I call it. I call it the time when I’m alone. When people are so noisy. I call my quiet time. I don’t care what you call it. We’ll call it. I call it a the time when I wake up and I. I know what else was up. I call it that time. It doesn’t matter. Don’t get all hung up. Don’t worry about whether it’s meditation time or prayer time. Just get up one hour before you see everybody else in planning your day. Step five, not betting cleanup, but close.

Automate your savings. Automate your savings. What does that mean? I mean you need to go talk to the business coach company a who pays you. You know a tyranny is here. Say you are an employee or say you are an employer, but you get your check from paychecks and get your check from pay calm. You get your check. Whoever your check from, just automate your savings. Decide to save a set percentage of your income in our office and incredible man by the name of Andrew Bloomer has decided to save an incredible 25 percent of his paycheck. He and his wife may have decided to save 25 percent of their paycheck, and guess what? Guess what’s happening as a result of them deciding to automate their savings, they have saved 25 percent of their paycheck. Now the Federal Reserve, the Federal Reserve, those fancy people, the Federal Reserve, they did a little research and here’s what they found.

They found that 40 percent of adults, regardless of age or income, still cannot cover a $400 emergency expense. What 40 percent of adults still cannot cover a $400 emergency expense, and I’m putting a link to the survey on the show notes. My friends, you’ve got automate your savings. If you want to become successful, that’s what you got to do. Now, step number six, you want to commit to overdelivering by 20 percent on every project you touch. So if you have a job today or you have customers today, you wouldn’t make it your goal, your little game to exceed the expectations of each and every customer, each and every person that you engage with on a daily basis, whether that be your boss or your customer, which has the boss. You want to make sure you exceed their expectations by 20 percent. Make it your goal because even if you fall short, you will still wow them and when people are wowed, they will share close to.

Now step seven times with Kevin, so if you’re out there and her name is Kevin, congratulations to you. Step seven, refuse to spend time with negative people who are perpetually emotional, negative and drama focused again, refused to spend time with people who are perpetually emotional, negative and drama focused. Tim Ferriss, the bestselling author of the four hour work week, the four hour chef tools and titans, tribe of mentors, one of the early stage investors in facebook, twitter, evernote, and such. He says, you are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic unambitious or disorganized friends. If someone isn’t making you stronger, they’re making you weaker. But that sounds so mean. It might sound mean, but it’s so true. I mean, it just is. If you’re, as an example, uh, I have been married to my wife now for a.

we’re going on 18 years. I’m 38 years old. I have five kids. If you were to shadow me, follow me around for one week, you would realize that my schedule is something that I’m in control of. I have a very intentional schedule because step one, I wrote, I wrote down my f six goals this morning and I write it down every morning, so I have a very intentional schedule, right? So four in the morning I go work out, right, pour in the morning, four in the morning, I go work out. Then, uh, at five in the morning I review my business coach notes for the day. I do my meditation. It takes one hour, right? Six o’clock, have my first staff meeting, right. And I have, I have very intentional scheduled. Seven o’clock is my first client meeting at 8:00 is my next client meeting at 9:00 and you would just watch me go from, from meeting to meeting, but they’re all in one hour intervals and it’s because I’ve designed my schedule to work that way.

And you’ll notice there’ll be time blocked out for a, the radio show to talk to advertisers. There’ll be time blocked out to do sales calls, will be time out to have staff meetings, there’ll be time out to coach clients, there’ll be time out to. There’s a specific block of time for everything. I want to get done, so everything I want to get done has a specific, uh, allocated amount of time for it. There’s no randomness to my day, right? Because I have written down my goals. And then step two, you would notice that my calendar is probably very different than that of the average person. My schedule is, I don’t watch TV, so I have five point two hours more. I have five point two hours per day, more time than anybody else out there typically because I don’t watch TV. I also don’t interact with social media at all.

So I have another two hours a day. I have seven point two hours more per day than the average person and because I’ve scheduled time for the things that matter, um, I don’t have like an empty day where I’m sitting around doing nothing. I just have taken those seven hours a day that people are spending on five hours a day on TV in two hours a day on social media. And I’ve replaced it with other things that are scheduled. Right. And then step four, you notice I get up one hour before I see my first human. Uh, you noticed that I automate my savings. You noticed that I have committed to overdelivering by 20 percent on pretty much every single thing I do. It’s just sort of a thing I do. It’s a mindset I have. It’s a commitment I have. But if you were around me enough, you would notice that my habits would start to become your habits.

I would start to, if you were around me enough, you had noticed that you would start to automate your savings. You would notice that if you’re around me day by day, eventually it would be uncomfortable for you to not automate your savings because I would probably bring it up to you. Uh, anytime there’s downtime. So if you and I were having coffee together, a fictitious world, Brett went up for a coffee, I would sit down and I would say, hey, so how are you? When you’re saying you would say, so why are you talking with a deep voice like that? And I would say, well, why are you talking in that weird whisper voice? You’d say, wow, I just, that’s how I talk. And I’d say, okay, well I’ll continue to talk like I’m from the civil war or something, but I want to ask you this.

Have you automated your savings yet? Have you automated your savings? Well, no, I haven’t really. Look, here’s the deal. If you will stop a not automating your savings. All stopped talking like a civil war veteran and you can stop talking like the whisper voice. Does that sound like a deal? Okay. I guess I could. Okay. Well put point is you had noticed that I’ve always using funny voices or voices that I perceived to be funny. I’m always talking about automating your savings, automating my savings and I would just continue to harass you about it. There’s a point where it would be uncomfortable for you to be around me also if you don’t appreciate humor and that kind of thing where you wouldn’t like me because I’m always joking around. I’m always having a good time because I just enjoy having a good time. So again, if you around me enough, you will become a, a fairly funny person because I have never done a joking around giving people a hard time.

That’s what I do. My kids are around me enough that my daughter is becoming funny. My oldest daughter’s becoming pretty funny. My son is becoming pretty funny. All my kids are becoming pretty funny. Why? Because they’re around me all the time. It’s like, um, when I talked about this a lot, I’ve talked about on previous shows, but if you’re from Minnesota where I’m from, everybody in Minnesota has these little phrases that they say and their way of saying it because it’s like a Minnesotan accent. And if you live in Minnesota, a lot of people who live in Minnesota aren’t even aware that they have the Minnesota accent. But this is the kind of thing you would hear for in Minnesota if you’re in Minnesota and something is, I’m really a nice uh, or some, if you, if you were to go to someone’s home and they’re living room is nicely decorated, you might say, oh, for cute off or cute.

Bjorn. I mean for cute. What in the world? Yeah, in Minnesota. People also say, so what was that about? Oh, come on, bjorn. And they say, what was that? A boat. A boat. It’s not about, it’s a boat. So what was that about? Bjorn and other things people say is they say often, often, a lot of times like if something bad will happen and is like, oh, whenever you’re upset with someone in Minnesota, you would call them a hoser hoser one who gets what, who hoses? You would say, Oh, you want to hold her, you are a holzer. Um, nothing people do is everyone’s going up north for the weekend. And if you lived in Oklahoma or any other part of the region, you would say north and you’d end it with north. But in Minnesota you’d say, oh, we’re going to go up north a cabin with a Russian Darfur.

Don’t gentle. And you like to in statements with don’t gentle in Minnesota. Why don’t people just say don’t shit? No. In Minnesota people don’t ask you, you know, do you want to come with me? They say, do you want to come wit wit? Not with, but Oh, don’t you want it to come wit. Um, and again, if you ask someone in Minnesota, how are you doing the typical answers [inaudible] as you know, the typical Oh, it’s great. Or things are good. I’m doing wonderful in Minnesota. People say, Oh, I can’t complain. I mean, it could be worse, don’t general. There’s a lot of that stuff. It just, it’s what people do in Minnesota. People fish on frozen lakes in the winter, they will actually drive their vehicle on a frozen lake. People will drive a completely, a solid, a great condition. You know, let’s say big Ford truck onto a lake and there’s no emergency.

There’s, they’re doing this willingly. They’re not, they’re not doing this because there’s an emergency, not trying to save somebody. They will drive their perfectly good vehicle onto a frozen piece of ice known as that lake. Then they will drill through the ice with a device called an Auger and he’ll put a house on the ice and heat said house to room temperature and they will sit in the house known as the Ice House or the fishing house and they will sit there for hours, put with, put the pole in the hole and they are ice fishing and this is totally normal for these people. If you’re in Minnesota and you don’t have a snowmobile and you have a pretty decent income, people wonder why. It’s just people have snowmobiles. It’s just what they do. If you’re in Minnesota and you don’t know who prince is, if you don’t at least know a purple rain, purple rain, who’d you probably, you know, it’s probably, uh, you know, you’re probably not from Minnesota.

That’s just how it is because over time you become more like the people you’re around the, it’s just what happens through osmosis. You began to pick up the character traits of the people that you spend the most time with. And you might say, well, what’s Osmosis Osmosis is the gradual for unconscious assimilation of ideas and knowledge. It’s the gradual unconscious assimilation of ideas and knowledge. What it is, the gradual unconscious assimilation of ideas and knowledge. Osmosis. There you go. Awesome. Moses, I wonder if you knew that. Now, step eight, you want to study successful people at every chance you get. Um, there’s a notable quotable from Colin Powell, Colin, what? Colin Powell, Colin, who? Colin Powell, he’s the American statesman and retired four star general in the United States army. During his military career, a Colin Powell also served as the national security advisor from us. 80 seven to 89, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, commander of the US army, command 1989.

He’s the first African American or United States Secretary of state serving under President George W dot Bush. He says this, never received counsel from unproductive people. Never discuss your problems with someone in capable of contributing to the solution because those who never succeed are always first to tell you how not everyone has a right to speak into your life. You are certain to get the worst of the bargain when you exchange ideas with the wrong person. I don’t follow anyone who’s not going anywhere. Again, don’t follow anyone who’s not going anywhere. Someone says, I want to hear that again. Don’t follow anyone who’s not going anywhere. Someone says,

probably stopped playing that sound clips. No, no. We’ll play it again. I get Colin Powell says, don’t follow anyone who’s not going anywhere. I would encourage you today, just look at these eight steps again. Step one, write down your f six goals, step to change your calendar and daily schedule. Immediately. Get rid of that TV. Stop watching the TV. Step three, turn off all your social media. Push notifications. Get them Outta here. Get off that, that that gives you seven hours a day back right there, guys, between TV and social media. Step four, get up and plan your day. One hour before you see her first human. Step five, automate your savings. Step six, committed to overdelivering by 20 percent every project you touch. Step seven, refused to spend time with people who are perpetually emotional, negative, and drama focused, and step eight, study successful people at every chance you get. And now, without any further ado, three, two,

boom

thrive nation, I want to sneak in one little bonus snack pack here for you. It’s Kinda like you. Your mom packed her lunch and she added in a little snack pack. Just a little bonus. Um, I want to queue up an audio testimonial for you. Have a guy who was once a school teacher who became a client of mine. I’ve worked with him now for seven years and I had to teach him all of this stuff. I had to teach him. Time management, sales marketing had to make a new schedule. How to pal around with different people, how to say no to things, had not watched TV, had not engaged in social media, has refused to spend time with emotional people. How to study successful people, had to commit to over delivering by 20 percent, had automated savings, how to do all these things. And now today he has become a millionaire. He’s a former school teacher, turned millionaire and his name is clay stairs. And he agreed to sit down with us to share how the actual implementation of what he’s learning has changed his life. So now that any further ado, here is the clay stares story.

My name is clay stairs. I am the founder of clay stairs.com. And the leadership initiative growing up as I went through middle school and as I went through high school I was pretty much a big fish in a small pond. And uh, so I felt uh, I, I have an over inflated sense of self. So once I graduated from college I might have been like a lot of folks who graduated from college terrified. So I ran to ministry, ran to the church really quick. From there I jumped into being a school teacher, but all the while I knew there was something more inside of me. I took over shepherds fold ranch, which was a summer camp and a retreat center. But then once again, now here I am at about 47 years old and I’m feeling like it’s time. There’s this business coach shift beginning to go on like, okay, at this place I’ve done what I’ve needed to do.

It’s time for me to expand. It’s time for me to grow, but I didn’t know anything about how to run my own business. As I made that shift from being the Executive Director of a nonprofit organization into running my own company, I found out really quickly where my weaknesses were. I’ve got to know something about sales and marketing and all those things that terrify me, and so it was about at that time when we’re doing some fundraising for shepherd full grant that I met a young man named Clay Clark. Clay would tell me it’s just a formula. Do these things and outcomes, production outcomes money. I just didn’t believe him. Yeah, it was probably just there in the. In the first month, maybe six weeks with clay that I got my first speaking engagement, but when they. When we started talking about money, I totally locked up and just said, I’ll just come down and do it for free, but after that first few months it was like I stepped off a cliff and all of a sudden everything stopped and so play started talking to me about making phone calls and begin to beginning to do that.

Making a hundred phone calls a day is like, are you kidding? No one has ever done that in the history of man thrive has provided this confidence that I didn’t have before and as a result, I’ve been able to turn a 2,500 or a $3,500 deal into $10,000 or $12,000. Through working with clay and working with thrive, I’ve been able to look through the Lens, not at my capacity, but I’ve been able to look through the lens of my destiny and you might say, okay, that one seems a little bit. Woo Woo.

We’ll have been out there a little bit far fetched. I don’t want to become a speaker guy. I wanna, I wanna. I wanna grow my pest control company. Okay, well I’m gonna keep an audio testimonial for you from a couple by the name of jared and Jennifer, and this is the story of how they were able to successfully grow platinum pest by 400 percent within 12 short months as a result of implementing the things that we teach. Great people.

Cute.

The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411 percent over last year. We are a jared in Jennifer Johnson. We own platinum pest and lawn and are located in Awasa, Oklahoma. And we have been working with thrive for business coaching for almost a year now.

Yeah. So, so what we want to do is you want to share some wins with you guys, uh, that, that we’ve had by working with thrive. Um, first of all, um, we’re on the top page of Google now. Okay. Um, I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin Terminex, they’re both one point $3,000,000,000 companies. They both have two to 3000 pages of content. I’m attached to her website. So to basically go from a virtually nonexistent on google to up on the top pages is really saying something, um, but let’s come by being diligent to the systems that the thrive has about beat by being consistent and diligent on, on doing a podcast and stay on top of those podcasts, um, to really help with getting up on, on, uh, what their listing and a ranking there with google.

And also we’ve been trying to get google reviews, you know, asking our customers for reviews and now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Peston lung company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate and the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411 percent over last year.

Say that again. How much are we at 411 percent. So 411 percent. Um, we’re up with, with our new customers. Amazing, right?

So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now, our closing rate is about 85 percent. And that’s largely, uh, due to, uh, first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten, people really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. Uh, that script has been refined time and time again. Uh, it wasn’t a one and done deal. We, it was a system that we, that we followed with thrive and in the refining process. And that has obviously, um, the 400, 11 percent shows that, that, that, that system works.

Yeah. So here’s a big one for ya. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91 percent. We actually booked more deals and more new customers last year than we did the first five months. Or I’m sorry, the first we book more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year before we worked with thrive. So again, we looked more deals last week, then the first five months of last year. It’s incredible. But, but the reason why we have that success by implementing the systems that, that thrive is taught us and helped us out with

some of those systems that we’ve implemented our group interviews that way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. Um, we’ve created and implemented checklists and everything gets done and it gets done right. It creates accountability. Uh, we’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly, both out in the field and also in our office. Um, and also doing the podcast, like Jaron had mentioned that has really, really contributed to our success, but that like is it the diligence and consistency and doing those in that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives. And also, um, you know, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten the success from following those systems. Yeah.

So before working with thrive, we were basically stuck really no new growth, um, with our, with our business and we’re, we’re in a Rut and we didn’t know

the last three years our customer base and pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t drinking, but we weren’t really growing either.

Yeah, and so we didn’t, we didn’t really know where to go, what to do. I had to get out of this Rut that we’re in a but thrive helped us with that and you know, they implemented those business coach systems that they tossed those systems. They taught us the knowledge that we needed, um, in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind. Absolutely. It’s been a grind this last year. Um, but we’re, we’re, we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it now. So again, we were in right, thrived, helped us get out of that Rut. Um, and, uh, and if you’re thinking about, I’m working with, right, quit thinking about and just do it, do the action and you get the results will take hard work and discipline. Um, but, but, uh, but that’s what it’s going to take in order to in order to succeed. So I would just want to give a big shout out to thrive. The big thank you out there to thrive, we wouldn’t be where we’re at, where we’re at now. Um, without their help.

Thrive nation. I hate to slap your baby, but you’re not gonna have any success unless you implement what you’re learning. Vision without execution is hallucination. Once again, Thomas Edison once wrote, vision without execution is hallucination, and he was right.