A DEEP DIVE into the Mind of Dr. Zoellner with Business Coach Claire Yinger

Audio Transcription

On today’s show. Claire Django, the business coach who works at the leadership initiative with Mr. Clay stairs joins the thrivetime show to ask doctor z about what an ideal day looks like for him. His thoughts on life balance, how to know whether you are a bad manager or whether you just have bad employees, how to hold your employees accountable. Delegation One oh one and much, much more. 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, yes. I’ve got an issue with the, I’ve got an issue with the intro. Hey, by the way, I do, I miss you and your issues. You’ve been, you’ve been gone a lot recently and I’ve been hearing back slaving away by the, by the river. We thought we had to by the river. We evacuated. We, we, we bring this stuff back in the whole time and I just missed you. I miss you because you have that unique ability to, to to, you know, it’s like there’s a scab forming and you pull it off quickly though. And I, I missed that. Well, and here we go. Okay. This guy’s going to get ready set. Oh, there we go. The intro talks about my Broda from Minnesota. You know what? It’s, I think that’s a little bit of a misnomer. Hmm. You spent a hot minute of your life up in Minnesota.

What percentage of your life, you’re 37 30 at 38 how old are you right now? 39 30 okay. Mr Bike? I’m 30 yet. I’ve mentally anticipated 39 I’m 38 I’m 32 38 okay. 30 thank you. How many years of those? 38 did you live in Minnesota, 12 and Oklahoma, correct? Did I move to Minnesota? Okay. Here’s the thing. I came back and I was 18 so, okay, so six years. Yeah. So it was a, it was the, the wilderness years. It was a, it was bad. It’s wonder was coming. It’s not quite one-sixth of your life you spent there. Right. Cause six times six would be 36 I’m 38 so not quite one second. Just turn the Homie at the core. I know am from Minnesota, but I think that that came back from, I think, I think you just use that because it rhymes is bro Minnesota Broda from Minnesota.

I think you, I think you relied cause Minnesota was [inaudible] in Oklahoma. The rhyme scheme pro, Oklahoma’s easier. They want to get into what they might do. We hopped out stomas and comas and just, it can be hot. I understand that, but I think, I think you’re just being a little disingenuous by talking about Coda from Minnesota and you are someone who is offended by today’s content. I just, I encourage you to go a taser yourself because we gotta move on. We’ve got to move on because we have, we have, fair enough. We have a thrive, I’ve said my piece, she works with Mr. Clay stairs. Sam Three type guy. Let me tell you the habits that Robert Pinard entered into our lives here. Clay stairs has been a longterm client. Great Guy. Greg. He’s the former school teacher. Turned millionaire guy, you know, clay steers.com great guy and uh, clay stairs.

He says, I’m thinking about hiring the said person. I said, Oh really? Cause you the first hires. You know Sean and Sean. Sean is a great guy, very diligent guy. And I’m going, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. Because you know Sean set a pretty high water mark. You know Sean is like the great flood of Tulsa from 86 he’s nine high water mark. Oh yeah. And he says, I know this. I’ve done this white lady for a long time. Met Her at a shepherd’s fold camp. She’s served as a counselor there at the Metro Christian. Nice Lady. And I’m going, I doubt it. I doubt it sounds too good to be true. We met her and that the team likes her. She’s a great lady. She’s been a great coach, great consultant. And now she’s here on the mic. Claire, welcome onto the show.

Hello. Hello. Hello. All right,

Claire yinger. What questions do you have for Dr Zoellner?

Oh, I came so ready and so prepared. I write down my questions. I’m a little scared. So I kinda actually first have a personal question for you. Okay. A real day in the life of Dr Zilner. What is your actual ideal

day? Uh, wake up, uh, going to the airport and asking myself what do I want to go today? And, uh, then making sure I pack the appropriate clothes or if it’s, I make sure I have a credit card to get there and that, no, I’m teasing. Um, my perfect day is, a lot of people ask me what I do and I tell them, I said, I’m like the old Vaudeville Act. Are you familiar with Vaudeville? Um, I wanna go with no

And there was a, there was an act which, uh, goes something like this. You have a stick and on top of the stick you have a plate and what you do is you spend said Dick and it makes the plate spin and it sits there on top of it. It’s like a miracle. It gets like a physics miracle. And then you’d go and you’d get another stick. You put a plate on it, you know, get out of here. It’s like pessimists, you spin it. I’m pretty soon you could have like 12 sticks with plates on the stage spinning and you stand back. What do you do? Do you run to the plate that’s spinning really well?

You find the one that’s wobbling the most and what do you do? You go and you hightail it over their Claire, you high tail it. You want that major. Is there a noise for that? No yelling. You’re sprinting over boom.

Oh, oh. You spin

that stick and you get that plate towards back. A on level ground and spinning again. Okay. Yes, and that’s basically what I do. I own multiple businesses and every day there’s a business out there that the plates wobbling just a little bit more than the other, little bit, a little bit more. Now I have scheduled things in the, in, in, in that vendors and rebs and new business ideas and, and what I’m working on to like, I’m going to open up a new business. I’ve got to meet with the architects and the contractors and the landlords and the for you know, the former or the future employees I should say. So I mean there’s a lot of like busy work and starting a new business, which I’m in the midst of right now. And there’s also the concept of balancing the plates with the sticks. And so a lot of my day, my perfect day is, is all the plates I was getting that all the plates are spinning really well looking good. How often do you have a crisis? Um, a crisis? How often do you have stuff that I need to deal with personally every day

then do you have a crisis that would make the average small business owner cry, but for you because of your high water mark,

you, I would say every week, probably one, two, probably once a week. Yeah, back in the day, you know, and I used that analogy before, once a watermark gets up so high, you know, anything lower than that, you’re like, that’s no big deal. Right. We dealt with them and it’s up here, right? This is kind of like our man cave. Your man cave. Yeah. Was that three feet of water in it? It’s kind of crazy. Yeah. So now anything that’s not like a big deal. Right? So I think to answer your question, my perfect day is when all the plates are doing well and I can actually get done my to do list that I need to get done. I don’t have to put anything on hold because I’m having to deal with something. I didn’t even know what’s going to be coming up this morning. So I think for me that’s when everything’s kind of running the way it’s supposed to, the way you assume it’s going to run, right? When everybody, this is gonna sound crazy clear, but when everybody’s actually doing the job I’m paying them to do. Are you saying that you the whole time act people that you are paying to do their job, are you talking about sound mean? That does. That doesn’t mean it sounds like a lot. I know it does. It sounds like I’m being an ogre. I’m being an eye. Basically I should paint myself green and, and put on about a hundred pounds clear. Does that answer your question?

Um, that does answer my question, which actually leads me into my next questions. Yeah. Door leading hack in about how to manage, okay. So this is coming from a client that um, one of our coaches works with WHO’s down in Norman and talking about how to manage the work life balance when you’re working about 80 hours a week and this is coming from someone who wants to, who they do, they deliver an a plus product. Okay. But they have a hard time of letting go of wanting to deliver a B plus product to have a plus life. So how was it that you, Dr Zellner, what would your advice be about how to do that work life balance when you’re working 80 hours a week?

I have a quick insert I want to editorial and

doctor z was seeing patients, he was just phasing out of doing it all the time that my wife started working for you. 99 I think you were in there like each location, maybe one day a week. But you are managing it, you know, very correct. Edit. You’re in there once a once a week in each one may be seen occasional patients just to keep your finger on the pulse, you know? Correct. And you are building up guys like Dr Boat, right? Really good people that could be on your team for over a decade. But you are funny. Oof. And people used to talk about how funny you were and I used to hear stories about your ridiculous Ah, you know, I chart things you would do and the funny stories and the segues and the way you would greet people and it was just, you had it, you got it down to a show. Gotta be yourself.

And I default to humor. I love humor. I default to humor, humor, kind of Brixton, lot attention on people coming to the doctor’s office and they’re stressed or what is my prescription when they’re nervous? You know what’s happening here? My vision is so important to me, right? Yeah. Is it getting worse? Am I going to go blind team now? But when you left and it was, he was like a comedy show meets optometry. Correct. And when you left and the other guys you hired before you built that team, you have now, when they were good, they were competent, they were confident, they weren’t funny. And people, there was one lady who pulled you aside and said, hey, I’m really frustrated. I came here to meet Dr Zellner. Remember that? And they said, this lady said that she wanted to see, like she was super happy with doctor’s Eleanor and didn’t want to see you.

Do you remember that? She went to see Dr Zellner to see you. They call me down, said there’s a cylinder only in room two. So I’m like, okay, what does Eleanor only, I’m here, I’ll go down and see them. Right. So I grabbed the chart and that’s back when we actually had paper charts. It’s very old, long ago. I’m sorry. You may not, you may not know what paper is. You can kids, I mean, I was born in the 80s Joe. I’m saying, Oh, you do remember papers? Wow, that’s crazy. Hello. So I’m flipping through the, and I’m noticing it’s up to the chart. It’s the last doctor that Sarvis Dr Boatwright. Dr Boat, right, Dr Boat. Right. So I’m getting down about her fourth visit, you know, it’s kind of a thick, thick foam. Now I’m walking in the room and know, and I’m didn’t think I’d introduce myself, but I’m, before I introduced myself, she said, oh, oh no, no, no, no, no.

And I just stopped my track. She goes, I’m sorry but I, this is going to sound, maybe, I don’t know how you’re going to take this, but I, I wanted to see Dr Zoellner and uh, the, I requested him and I said, we’ll, I’ll go get him. So I blocked out the room, put the chart back. Kids switched it over to a boat boat ride only and it’s, so, anyway, it was fun because boat ride would always go and stop at McDonald’s on the way to work every morning. And we always give them scrubs on the left side. The scrubbed, it said, my logo, Dr Zone and associates on the right side of the scrubs, it had their name Dr. Boat, Ron, Ron z Boatwright and I’ve got eight doctors that work for me now and they’re all great people. My daughters, one of them. In fact, she’s very funny, very funny.

Anyway, so he goes through the drive through every morning to get his biscuit and whatever from McDonald’s, right. Make Gretel McGriddle or whatever. Yeah, Mick ribs three and season. I mean that’s a big deal, right? That is a very big thank you. It’s what he goes through. So towards the person at the window is his left side and they see, they see the logo, which happens to be my name, Dr. Robertson and associates. So every time he comes to the drive through, the lady says, Oh, Dr Zellner, you’re back again. How are you doing? You want your same or what? Your, here’s your same thing. So good to see you. At first he’d say, no, I’m not Dr Zoellner, I’m Dr Boatwright. He said that. He said, I don’t know how many times I said, and finally he was like, thank you. Okay, you just accepted it.

He became, they’ve all learned to channel just a little bit of doctors. So when you were at delegating off to people that at first weren’t quite a pure standard yet because you hadn’t trained them yet, you had trained that level yet he hadn’t built that a player team you have now. You know when you had to go down a little bit in that quality during those years we were, how did you deal with it emotionally? Well, I, the thing is to get back to your question clear, you always want to make sure here, and this is very important. Listen to this, to me ears to listen. Listen to this. This isn’t going to be hard, but I’m telling you what, for the longterm benefit of your mental health, your financial banking account, your, your heritage that you leave your grandchildren, you want this, you always want to make sure you’re doing whatever you can to put out the a plus product.

When you say to yourself, I’m going to devalue my goods and services so that I can x, Y, z on the personal side of life, you’re really missing the boat on your business. You have to make sure your business has a plus and running well and doing whatever you can to do that. Now what happens is clear, is that what I see done wrong? It’s not the amount of time people are spending with their personal life. I either spouse, I either children, I their siblings, their parents, whoever is pulling on them. It’s not the amount of time they’re spending with them, but the quality of time anymore. In other words, a guy spends 10 hours at work, hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle. Work’s going great. Now he popped home, it’s about dinner time. Roddy pops in for dinner, but at the dinner table he’s got his laptop up cause he’s expecting an email from a vendor that could come that night because his phone sitting up on the table because if there’s an emergency at the shop, he’s getting a phone call, right?

And he’s over here on this and now he thought, you know what? She’s bringing out dessert right now. I’m going to Google my competitors, you know, website. I haven’t checked on them in a while. I’m going to do that. And all the while his two children are at the table talking about their soccer game that they had this Saturday and he’s not even listening to them. And I think that’s the thing that I find so much is that what I tell people is this, is that they go, how do I know when to go home? Cause I love working. My business is rocking, I’m doing good, I know it’s my future. It’s got to have my attention right now. And I said you have to do the one thing. Listen, listen to your spouse, listen to your children. And whenever you get that call of you just tell my dad or what do you look like? Or It’s, you’ve had the call,

I forgot the [inaudible]. I’ll say this, if you’re out there listening, just examples of, you know the McDonald’s brothers, people don’t know their names, but they actually served every burger for years. And then the idea of scaling made them cause them to make certain compromises. So the totality of all the parts allowed the qualities stay high, but they couldn’t personally serve burgers to that many people. So some said it’s not the same as when they used to make the burgers some set, but billion said it feel pretty good. Still pretty good. Yeah. And so it’s not that you’re openly trying to devalue your quality, it just, it’s saying like the elephant in the room. I used to answer all the phones when we first opened and it’s not that like, I want my calls to be bad. We have a great business coaching team now, but I can only answer the phone so many times. So in a way, your ability to serve more people goes up, which I think is a, as a, an a plus.

But yeah, it might not be the same jokes as Dr Zylander and you just gotta get to a place where, be an a plus, to be honest with it. And maybe it’s solid a and that and you know, but it’s, it’s unsustainable for me to see every patient that’s coming in the door to unsustainable for clay to answer every phone call that comes into your head. Oh, we tried. They wouldn’t. You can. Yeah. But it’s unsustainable. And so you have to, you know, you have to train up people and get them as close to your DNA as possible. Put as much in as you can because nobody will cares about you as you do about your business. And so, you know, you just have to get as close as you can and then let them, let them run with it and know that. So when did you realize that you were ready to let them run with it?

Oh good. It’s pretty, I mean pretty early. I mean you, you give up little pieces of it pretty early and I think that’s the thing that some people do. They hang onto it because they do it well. They know what to do well, they, they know they do it like clay. He know, you know, I promise you this, nobody answered the phone. Nobody answered the phone better than he did at elephant in the room. I promise you that you could, you could put it behind. There’s a pretty funny material, a hundred a hundred phone answers and I would put my money on this. It’s his business. He wrote the script. He gets it and he knows what he’s doing. Yeah. And so, you know, that’s the kind of guy that’s almost impossible to clone. And yet you try to cloning and you cloning by by just like can you used to live with your Djs, here’s the script, copy it, repeat it, copy it, repeated, here’s the platelet, plug it rolling over and over and over. No call do to, to, to Eh, you know, can I get you just role play and you put people in those scenarios. Um, and so what happens is, is by default to get pretty good, maybe they don’t have quite enthusiasm, maybe they don’t have quite the,

I don’t know if over time they might actually get better because that’s all they’re focused on is that thing by me. Right? So first you kind of go down in quality, but then over time they can surpass. Yeah. Yeah, it happens a lot. Claire, what other questions do you have for the great super humble? Dr Robert Zellner?

So I have a question about management. And this is from a contractor down in Alabama, Alabama. Okay. So the question is, is how do you decipher

[inaudible] if it’s your poor management or you have poor employees, it’s always a little bit of both. No matter how great or mannered you are, [inaudible] you’re always going to, you know, you’re always going to have a little bit of yourself in there that doesn’t need to be in there. And you know, it’s, it’s always a little, a little bit about that. I don’t care how great a person you are, you’re always going to be invalid. You’re always, you’re never going to be perfect. Absolutely. And, and whenever you’re dealing with another human being, you’re going to find out that they’re not perfect. But I’m telling you what, if it’s not working out, they go and you don’t.

I got a funny story for you about how you, these are kind of a checklist of things we need to do to make sure that you are a good manager. Okay? Yeah. And then I, it’s funny, Dr Zelner’s story that I’ve never talked to you about. Oh, mine. Oh, so one, you need to have a checklist for everything possible. Not to the level of ridiculousness, but you won’t have a checklist for it and get everything out of your head and get the expectations in writing that that, that would be step one. Okay. If you don’t have that, you are a poor manager. If you’re just running around and giving people verbal traditions, I mean the Bible is written down that way. It’s clear if you’re in violation of the 10 commandments or not. I mean, don’t you don’t run around with having a verbal xenon, that tribal knowledge crap that’s ridiculous.

Or assuming that people can read your mind or it’s common sense this too. Don’t be the person who does it to be a great manager. Again, one of the checklists to always show up, like don’t be the manager that misses work all the time. You know, is he the guy that’s just flaky and unreliable? That’s a, that’s a, that’s an issue and three is never stopped recruiting because you’re gonna end up, if you stop recruiting, you’re getting up. Like just accepting the people that are around. So that would be kind of my checklist. If you’re a good manager, if you have the checklist, if you never stop recruiting, and if you do what you say you’re going to do, that’s like my big three

[inaudible] the big of bandit that gets kind of frustrating is that when you see, um, a manager that is trying to be friends and not a boss, there we go. And that’s, that’s a tough, that’s a tough thing cause everybody wants to be liked as a human. I mean we, we like to default to, you know, hey, you like me, I like you.

Let, let’s go do lunch together. Oh my gosh, what’s your face bucket, Kelly?

Everybody wants to be friends and even parents out there today, they want to be friends. Kids need parents, employees need bosses. And so a manager has to understand that they’re a boss and that they’re held at a higher level. And when you look out there and you’d see a manager that’s not living up to their expectations, they’re not living up to their potential truth that aren’t doing what you’re paying them to do. Right? And they’re out there trying to be buddy buddies with everybody. And not try to make the hard decisions. You’ve got to have a real deep talk with yourself. Is that the, is that my guy or my girl going forward? You know? So here’s the, here’s the story we’ve not talked about yet. Should we get to story time? Well, this is this just in my wife worked for you on that call today. And some of you know friends who went to college with work there too, and everyone thought this is gonna be doctors. He pays well and he’s a great guy and he provides them just going to be honest,

they taught me to be a hot job. But what ended up happening was it turns out you have a nomenclature system back in the day when there’s paper. Oh yeah. So Claire came in to get her eye exam or I came in, you would have it sort of, how was it sort of thing. How are you supposed to do it? Alpha. Alphabetical. Oh, see that dye idea. That idea. It’s crazy. That’s the 26 letters. They actually come in a paid out with an order. You’re supposed to actually do that. It’s crazy and there was somebody that I knew we’ll just keep, it won’t clarify the gender or anything. You know, it can be transgender. I don’t know. Somebody, somebody. This person though would just play the game of like, let’s not do it alphabetically. No. See what would happen if some, if everyone in your team occasionally saved things, put things, medical records, et Cetera, in the wrong place consistently. You know what? Whatever would happen. People would go crazy. We would spend hours trying to find this chance. So the rumor it has, my understanding is you quit

occasional

explosions around 98 99 when was the last time you had a good like, are you kidding me? What was the last little fast you’re texting last time? I can just take the word he word that I was told was he stopped firing off the cannon at a certain age. W when would that be? HBS? I run out of gunpowder probably in the late nineties I mean I, but I mean there were, there’s a few people that were around then and you got to Canon, but you’ve got no cannonballs and powder. You’re just here, what’s the point? But you know what I mean? You made a change, right? Well you, you know, you, you have to, I mean, I think that as you mature in life, you realize that uh, uh, throwing an absolute fit is not necessarily, there might’ve been a time earlier on where you may have, oh, I think you get early on, you know, you’re a tad bit more emotionally charged, you’re younger, you’ve got your juices are flowing as we used to say, Claire, real passion, real passion about that thing.

And then you realize, you know, hey, it’s going to be okay and this person put the thing in the wrong place. Oh, all the time. And apparently a person who was managing the business who take your, took your spot was like, let me tell you what, if Dr z would have seen this back in the day, let me tell you, well let, let me tell. Let me tell you. Let me tell you what ha what had happened. And it became this big, like, like an epic journey. It was like we’re talking about like the Odysseus and Eliade. It was like a big thing, you know? And so I’m picking my wife up in this person, taking him home and they were like scared about what you used to do, wow. Or what you would have done or what. And then they were scared of the way that she spoke and the way she talked.

And my wife was all about high and tight, put stuff in the right place. And this person was like, and then she raised her voice and she was getting aggressive and she was just intimidation. And I’m like, so did you put it in the wrong place? Well, yeah, but [inaudible] say it is, but that’s, you could, if you didn’t have it to a agreed upon nomenclature system and organizational system, a checklist, then you couldn’t be upset really, because there would be no expectation. Right. You’re right. And the thing about it is management’s difficult. True management is part of, you know, because you’re not, you’re not the owner. And so you know, you’re, you’re charged with taking this person’s basically child and raising it when they’d come in and checking on you every now and then. And, and it’s a, it’s a challenging thing to be in management.

And so, you know, because you’re judged upon how good the people underneath you are doing and how well you manage them. And it’s a, it’s a tough deal to inspire people, you know, cause there’s always the stick or the carrot and, and gotta have both though. He got to have both and how to motivate black hat white hat window. Right. Someone up when not to ride them, when to be the good cop and to be the bad cop. Sometimes you have to like, a lot of times I’ll have to, I’ll have to know how to be nice to someone on a Thursday cause I got to go off on Monday. Yeah. That happened as recently a couple weeks ago. There’s someone who I, they were really in my dog house and I’m going got gotta lay it. I got to lay down on Monday because I had to be nice ramping up on Wednesday. Got, I’m going to get into that. Nice. You know, have Thursday. Nice. Any of that Friday nights with the ones with the wonders, you’re a combs

Z, I mean business coach management, it’s tough. It’s tough. I think one of the keys is, is that when you get a manager on, onboard in your, you’re going that direction. Yep. Is to have them physically be around you at first as much as possible. I love the way clay bring somebody in near they shadowing and they’re around him. And what that really does is saying, Hey, I really want you to see it now in my business we have, they have a saying and it’s WWCD what would z do in that situation? And I’ve taught them enough. I’ve been around them enough. I’ve poured enough of myself into them that for the most part, I would say 99% of the time they get it right. And I don’t have to be there because I’ve been there enough with them and they followed me enough. They’ve seen what I do, they’ve heard me, they, you know, put on speaker phone when a patient calls in, all upset and they’re around, they’re listening and I handle it the way I do.

And they’re going, oh, that’s how you handle an upset patient. Oh, get it. You know, and so they learn by you doing. You don’t, you don’t want to just hire one and say, you know, I’m, Hey, I’ve headed the Bermuda. I’ll see you in six weeks. Yeah, you don’t take off. So bad employees hire, train your new employees. Oh, that’s the correct. That’s the worst. But you don’t ever stop training. You never stopped training and you, you always want to spend time with those managers. You want to make sure people come through those managers, they have problems and you really want to honor them and give them the authority. But you know, like I tell them all the time, I’ll go up to manager all the time and say, is that an employee over there doing the wrong thing? Yeah. I’m not going to fire them.

I’m going to fire you. Yeah. Cause it’s a reflection of the other day, Claire, you know, I was asking to see, I said, hey, it’s either tough situation here. I’m handling it good now I’m not freaking out. Let me tell you this situation. How [inaudible] is a manager. You have to be the mentor that people can go to in the moment that your people quit asking those questions. It means you’re not a good enough of manager. They don’t come to you. But that would be now you have, we have to, we have time for two more clear questions. Okay. To show two more questions. Two more clear questions. The Q five time show player questions of the day. Who Kid who aspires to be like Ellen or Oprah in the future but not, oh, you will get it if that talk show. Nice. Did they show?

Yup. Shunda oh gee. A SOA when it comes to finances. So when you first started your optometry clinic, okay. Um, being your own boss, how involved were you with your finances and did you handle that or did you hand that off to someone else? Why or why not?

I handle it myself. Very important. Very first of all, I’ve worked that busy so I could handle it. I made all the deposits this month. I had a whole 20 as huge. I fill out the deposit slip myself. No, I did it for a while. I did probably for about six months. I mean myself personally, and it was a crazy thing. I actually had a CPA come in who was a patient, became a patient and he goes, Hey, do you have a CPR account? And I go about, why the heck do I need one of those? And I was laughing, you know, going, you know, I knew I did. Eventually I was going to get when I got time. Right now I don’t need that. I know I got plenty of time on my hands and we actually get a little bit busier. You know, you start doing little advertising, start taking care of people that, you know, word gets out on the street that you’re not idiot.

You’re funny. You’ll start to want to see the show. They weren’t to the show. You not have puppets and you know kinds of a pony that we’re bringing on occasion. Oh this, no, of course not. I could be, it could be a little disingenuous on the pony part, but the pony per body part, I didn’t want to have a pony walked through the opposite certain times. I would not be mad. Thank you. But you’re welcome. But, but he came and said, Hey, I’ve let me be your CPA. And so we negotiated a deal and got it down. Pretty good habits. You won’t believe this. This is 27 26 years ago. Yeah. Here’s my CPA for $75 a month. I can say that I pay 550 a month per store for elephant. The room. I think that this is today’s dollars. This is back in the day and I was just starting nine years. You paid that? No, I didn’t. No, no, no, no, no. I said that’s what I started out 26 years ago. I’ve been in business 27 so, but anyway, you know, you whatever, you don’t have the time to do it and you don’t or you don’t want to do it or you’re not good at doing it, then you’ve

did that. Never delegated. Knowing the numbers you delegated someone doing the entering of the data, the bookkeeping, paying of the checks, clarification. But you’d ever said abdicate, hey, you go run own finances. You always looked at it and you were aware this is how much is in my mind now.

He texted me daily numbers. So I mean I still get a daily touch on every day on numbers, on my businesses, what they’re doing. And so, and this is from your accountant? No, this is from my staff. And then I, then I meet with my accounting team once a month to go over numbers. Um, just last week

he always knows how much is there, how much money is there. You got? You Ha you have to know it. It’s your accounting. Don’t, don’t overspread talking about depreciation. I’m not talking about write-offs. I’m not, no, I’m not talking of the strategy I’m talking about. You have to know how much cash is in that bank everyday. It’s, it’s the scoreboard. Scoreboard. You gotta know it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And not how much should be in there, but how much is in there? What is your next question card? We have time for one more question. If you were coming into you’re sneaking, you can stick in a couple of Geesh.

So my next question has to do with, well this is another finance question from a doctor down in Hot Lanta, Aka Linda. Okay, so what does an accountant need to actually do for you? Question of do they do your taxes? Do they do your payroll? Do they handle your insurance? What would you say that your accountant needs to actually be doing?

Well, I’m going to go first and let z pile on and went up. Me here. One, your accountant, your accountant has to make sure that strategically you are paying the amount of taxes you owe, not less than you owe or more than you owe. And that turns out to be tricky. A lot of accountants want to make sure you pay no taxes to help you out, but then they’re not the ones held accountable. If you’re getting get busted for not paying taxes, your accountant should make sure you’re paying enough taxes, the right amount, not too much, not too little, no editorial, just this is how much you owe. That’s one too. And effective accountant should make sure that you are looking for the um, they’re not loopholes in a bad way. Looking for the specific deductions that are internal revenue service has created on after Congress has voted on to stimulate the economy.

There are certain days either certain tax credits, things that are out there that are designed to get businesses to move to certain cities, to open new offices, to buy real estate. And your accountant should make sure you’re using hire certain people. I mean there’s all kinds of stuff they need to make sure they’re on top of that. And three, they’ve got to make sure that the numbers are accurate. That is my opinion of what they should be doing. Um, turns out I see a lot of accountants who are really aggressive with their strategy, putting entrepreneurs in a bad spot and then four years later when they’re not your accounting anymore, you owe a ton of money. That’s not good. I see a lot of accounts not being proactive with their clients. Not Saying, hey, here are, by the way, if you’re going to interview four people right now, just so you know, there was a tax credit right now, if you hire four people in this city as opposed to this one, you can benefit or they’re not.

There’s no strategy going on Z. I just see a lot of accountants reacting to you and saying, oh, by the way, you owe back taxes, file an extension. I just I that that’s what the counts should help you be proactive, but they are not responsible for you collecting money from your clients, setting your prices. That’s not what they did that they shouldn’t. You can’t delegate any math to an accountant and you can’t take the entire math part of your business and say, Mr Accountant, could you set my prices right, Mr Accountant, should I? Should I set myself? How much should I pay myself? The accountant is not that they’re the Z. I’ll go back to you.

Well, I think there’s two levels of accounting and when I, when I think about it, I think about my internal people that are on my staff. I’ve got about, I’ve got a CPA, I’m almost a CPA, a and two other accountants I would say. So I have an internal team now that does my profit and loss statement that monitors the day to day that I’m, I meet with on a monthly basis if not more often. And we talk about strategies, we talk about how the business are doing, we talk about, hey, what we’re, you know, my, what’s his costume and what’s that’s causing me do a, an analysis of this. What’s my, you know, cause those, those prices keep creeping up. You know what I mean? I set the price for a pair of glasses, a pair of frames and that price, I may have said five years ago and now guess what?

It’s twice as much. I’m still telling them from what I’m selling it for so they can help pull invoices. I put them on different assignments, I put them on different things internally to look at. Um, and they do help me with a, or can we, can we save money on a certain insurance? Can we, you know, go guy going 15 minutes. Employees don’t fulltime step this. Yeah. This, this is my accounting team that works for them. You pay a salary or w two that they worked for me just for you. Then I have an outside firm that is CPA. We hand them all of our stuff at the end of the year and he helps me with that deep thinking. He ups like, he’s like the deep sea fishermen, you know, he’s the one that says, hey listen, um, you know, we may need some tax credits this year. I know some tax credits that we can get, uh, that are been offered in Oklahoma.

They’re legal. Yes. Are they right? They wrong. You could debate that all day, but they’re out there. They’re available. And it’s something that I could get my hands on for x amount of dollars and it helps defer taxes or it helps minimize my tax liability. And so he’s, he’s a guy that I meet with not every month, but he’s a guy that I meet with a couple of times a year for the longterm strategic and he’s the, that puts his chicken stamp on our tax returns every year and kind of helps that and make sure that we’re being as aggressive as we can without raising too many red flags. That’s kind of the game. It’s Kinda like what Rez ret raises a red flag, what doesn’t, what’s the gray zone? Where do we feel comfortable? And you have to be able to find someone at that level that is aggressive enough for you that’s not too aggressive or not aggressive enough. And so, you know, that’s a kind of a personal thing. And so you, you shop those and you meet with those.

Yeah, I was going to say, how would you go about finding the right accountant for you and or CPA?

Well, I think what you do is you get three or four maybe areas that are on the gray for your business and you say, hey, listen, I like to have 15, 30 minutes every time I’m looking for a new CPA. And they’ll line up, they’ll trust me, they’ll line up, oh well do a clown and I new accounts. Sure. You know, and so they will, uh, show up and you can ask them a few tough questions and see how they, what they think of.

Meet with three. Yeah, I’ll wait with three. Always meet with three. I’m just telling you, you gotta meet with a minimum of three because your best friend from high school, your best buddy from college, they might not be that great at their job, even though they are a CPA.

True. Right, exactly. So I think we have time for one more. Oh, let’s do a sneak attack quite often. Montclair, N***a. Okay. So this has to do with systems and processes. Okay. So what is the most efficient way to make systems and processes? It sounds [inaudible]

crazy, but what you do is you just get a big white board or a big something to ride on. Yup. And you literally grab your core couple, three people that are closest to you in the business that is high ranking the business. In other words, if you have like two vps or you’ve had the president of the company, you have a manager that runs a big area, you get a couple, three people, not too many in that room with you and you get a, you get a black erasable felt pinned justice today for the real estate business and you’ve got eraser in your left hand and you literally start writing down what step, what step one in our process of checking in, right.

Patient just happened today just with the real estate business. I work with Sam Adams Realty. We had a newer real estate agent who was representing a buyer. So not my agent. I represent a buyer and their buyer wanted to buy the house. Okay, perfect. So they made the checkout to Sam Adams. Well, you got to make the check out to the title company, to the closing company, just like clear the closing company, right, because it goes into escrow and right into the escrow is a third party account. It doesn’t go into my account. Not yet. It just goes into a holding account to confirm the deal. We’ve agreed on the price. Money’s cleared at a closing date and they wrote the check to me and not to the closing company. Well, I thought to myself, you know this, I don’t know why they wrote a check to our company. Uh, I asked our, our, our agent did yet, did you tell them to write it to us? She said, no. I said, okay, it has happened before. She’s, yeah, which one other times someone did that. I said, okay, well we need to just move forward. We need to have a checklist for close confirming a deal.

So saw where the was and you’re

like, oh. And we went north down and we moved it around a bunch and we thought this step goes first. This goes second and whiteboards so great. You move it around and Andrew put a link on how to make a whiteboard for under a hundred bucks because you can spend like $1,000 on a huge white board or you can make one for like 80 bucks by buying a thing called shower board. And I’m the shower board king. I know one has more shower board than me. It’s a great tool. It’s very effective. You shower board in your shower, do I use shower and I put carpet in there. Oh that’s your about comfort in the shower. I get, well that’s your time off. That’s your time. I was like a wet cat. Oh yeah. It’s amazing smell ever get done.

Well so, but this brings up a good question. So when it comes to making your systems and processes, where do you start? Where do you begin? So you just said that you guys were talking about real estate.

I write on the board, I I to get a white board out and I wrote on there today the issue

because it came out of a conversation.

Yeah. I just, anytime you hold people accountable to a certain standard and the standard is not met, I always ask, how can I answer this question one time so I don’t have to answer it a thousand times again. That’s good. And then I write it down and I’m going, how does, how did an agent think, if you’re a real estate agent, you need to know about escrow. You have to go to class for this and they should know that they write, but obviously people don’t know. Right. And so on or you know. Yeah. And I just in that, in photography we used to have people that would just go to a wedding and take just bizarre photos and I’m going, how could, how could one possibly think that that’s what the photo of the bride wanted? No. So I made a checklist of images that the bride had, the photographer had to get of the bride, you know, cause a bra.

We had a photographer one time, I remember this was the first kiss. The bride is looking at the groom, you know, the first kiss. And then she like took a photo of like the mom’s reaction and didn’t get their first kiss and didn’t get the groom seeing the bride for the first time. You always want to get the shot of the bride seeing the groom for the first time. That’s what they did. That’s the money shots. I’m not shiny  in the backup shot is the groom’s. He didn’t, she didn’t get any of this stuff and she like lives in this esoteric world of, of of hipsterism. When he’s kissing her, she took a picture of their feet. That’s, that’s the move, right? That’s true. I’ve seen this. Had one photographer who literally asked the bronchial, he says, he says to the bride, can I see her wedding ring?

She says, yeah. He goes, let me tell me an awesome photo. It’s going to be in danger was with this guy. He takes the ring, puts it on the limb of a tree that’s dangling over a like a cliff, where if the ring were to fall off of the tree, they would lose the ring forever. Forever. And he’s like, put it right here. Kind of a little bit of wind going. Let me get, let me get the photo. Everyone’s like, are you kidding me? Oh. So you ended up putting it on a checklist. When you train people, you say a deep rule, a deep thought here guys, anything we can do that would ruin the Wa. The bride’s dress or ring cannot happen. CanNot happen. Because we’ve had, we had photographers who are like, why don’t you guys hold up the wine glasses? Like you’re really excited but not too excited. So it doesn’t spill on your dressing. It spilled on her dress. Oh yeah. Like the whole thing. And I’m going, you cannot have that. I can, if you’re questioning it, maybe just don’t. Yeah, but just common sense is not common. So you gotta put it on checks. You gotta put on checklist. Your question for doctors, Zelda, the Zohan are you, do we have an answer?

We have one more. Okay. This is final show. Ah, okay. So this has to do with management again. Someone were talking about doing constructive criticism and also keeping your team motivated. What are your easy how tos, what would your suggestion be for a small business owner who’s frustrated but wants to motivate you? All things happen.

You always want to finish every spank with a pat kicking hug or someone say kicking hug,

kicking a girl’s sandwich, carrying a stick or yeah, you want a hero sandwich. You got the bread, you got the meat and the bread. So it’s soft. Oh, tents, soft sandwich technologies where we lost me that I’m gluten free. So that’s you’re trying to kill me. No, no. Bread. Bread. Oh there off shares. C bars. There’s gluten free pizza there. I know he just had something today. And Salinas. So good. It’s good. The question is how do you manage people consistently? How do you do the kick of the hug of the Darth Vader?

It’s a, it’s a black hat. White Hat. So here’s the deal. Is that when someone screws up, you gotta talk about it and nobody wants to hear about how this screwed up and people get embarrassed. They want to make excuses. They want to crawl under a rock. They want to, for Heaven Sakes, not be told in front of anybody else. They screwed up

right on Facebook. Write about it because I’ve seen that move a lot recently. The playing, the pull the banner, you know, belly screwed up yesterday at your dude, your company picnic, you know on the beach. The literary literal mistakes are very easy to correct this on misspell something they miss, saved something they miss type something. Right. The ones that are hard and it’s about a third of the issues are the more nefarious ones where they intentionally didn’t do something and they mask it with three excuses that humanity has come up with it. I forgot, I forgot. I forgot. There was a miscommunication. I wasn’t sure what to do or there was an emotional like I, my dog died last night. You care more about my babies or Mike checklists. Yeah. This is weird that those are the three. Every time. The three, the three, every time. Those are the hardest ones to deal with.

Those are the hardest ones to deal with. But the key is, is that you need to be a good parent knows when to discipline. A good parent knows when to reward. A good parent knows when to say yes, a good parent knows when to say no. So as an owner of the business, but you have to do is you have to look at it and take a deep breath. And when a manager or an employee does something wrong, you have to come in and correct them. And the more you can do that love and not anger. And I know that’s easy to say. So sometimes you may have to do the old count to 10 before you say anything or go on the room and you know, kick your dog or something. Oh, sorry. Pita that uh, we do not promote the kicking of dogs.

It’s a stuffed animal. The shop. Really a dog. Not really a dog. Thank you. SPCA. You are, you are. You’re eating a cue card that Andrew left for you. Oh, I know. I know. You’re just reading the cute card drill peanut. When you, when you re when you read the facility’s names a n you made my wife cry right there. When you said kicked the dog immediately there’s tears. But my point is get your act together then talk to them. But did I think it’s all so the board, the board difficult to conversation is for obvious reasons. Like clay was saying, some of the easy stuff is easy. So you say, come on,

come into my office. My, you’ve done a really great job of

copying this

first. [inaudible] has an ass and not a sand. I should write that down. Down, down, down, down is an eminent right and an emirate and is an eminent. Just stop. You’re hurting me. You’re hurting my ears right now aside. You’re hurting my ears. So we’re going to do now as you see the stick over here, but at your hand, and I’m going to flog your hand now 12 times.

Thank you. We have another Shunda. There’s a certain, there’s a certain amount of tough love that you have to do and we had to pussyfoot around it. You have to be to the point, here’s what I expect. If you didn’t know that and they’re going to, they’re going to try and drop in those three excuses on you. Or they just may man up and say, you know what? You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll do better next time and rock on with it. But I think sometimes the more that some people handle criticism better than others, some people handle correction by than others and Semat really just, you can just see it destroying them. You could see just deflating them. You could see it really zapping the life out of them. And if you’re it never criticized attention, never criticize something that they can’t control, by the way, that’s a bad boss.

You see people go, hey, I’ll mark I, you know, your haircuts sucked. Well, they can’t control that. No, but I’m saying [inaudible] the shape of his head. Okay. That’s a thing I see people like criticizing people like, Hey, I hate your laugh. Well, they can’t fix that. I can’t fix that. Right. A criticized fig. Don’t make it personal. Don’t job doing the job. But then the more that you see them kind of shrinking, then when you’re done with that, then you have to give them a little positive Mojo. You’ve got to give them a little love. You don’t like when I blow into this container, I like it when you make like a deep like sound above like art or you don’t like when I do that, I do like it actually. Oh, I thought you said I’m sorry. I’ll just go back to doing it.

There you go. I’m your newest to the, she did the phone you’ve got, you’ve got to give them a little love. You’ve got to maybe tell them some things they did right. You’ve got to give them a win of the week. You’ve got to give them something that encourages them and edifies them, pumps them and builds them up because you’re a coach and a coach is a difficult thing. You got to correct the play they did wrong. Correct. Also though, keeping them in the game, keeping their mind focused and letting them know the games aren’t over. Never build need. You still need Jesus. I need my guy.

You’re my guy for a reason. Billy and I need you over here. You’re doing great in this area, this area, this area, this area. Keep up the good work. Let’s just make it look minor correction over here and let’s rock on with it. Okay, Billy and rock out with it. It’s pretty much the kicking hug. Okay. This bank, this bank, and what I say Spank, when was this? I think you spank it. Mine’s a slap. And he said, somebody just slap at a pat slap, slap, slap it a main method night. For years I was doing, he said, no, I met kicking hug. I’m like, Oh, I’ve been slapping and maiming people. That’s why always, you know why? Yeah. I kept shaking and he didn’t. He pushed you ball off to the side. You’ll never, you’ll give up the game. Well, see, I think it’s now time to, in the show with a boomer, you psychologically ready. I, you know what? I’m little spint clear on her little little spin on 30 [inaudible]. I am prepared. Okay.