Avoid Distractions Stay Focused on the Right Actions – Ask Clay Anything

Audio Transcription

My name is Clay Clark, the former SBA entrepreneur of the year, father of five human kids, and on today’s best business coach show, what we’re talking about is helping you get to where you want to go financially. But the principles we’re going to teach today could be applied to many other areas of your life. So today’s show is titled Avoid Distractions. Stay focused on actions again before. Avoid distractions. Stay focused on the right actions. So think about this for a second. Did you know the average American gets interrupted by their smartphone over 70 times per day? Did you know that the average American is now watching three to five hours of TV per day? So how do most people stay focused on long term goals? This just in, they don’t.

This just did.

The average American is watching five hours of TV a day, three hours a day, minimum three to five hours a day average. The average American is being interrupted 70 times per day by their smartphone. So how do they stay focused on longterm goals? They don’t. So think about this for a second there. There’s a study out there by psychology today and I encourage everybody to look it up, so this is your smartphone making you dumb. Read that article, read some of the notable quotables from Laval Ramakant. He’s the guy who started angel list. It’s a venture capital funding site. He was one of the early investors in a lot of the social media you see today, Navarro. Robin talks about how in today’s culture, these social media that he invested in and then he helped to create is absolutely making your life less happy than ever before and he helped create it and I guess he’s.

He’s talking about it now with almost regret talking about how a lot of these social media platforms that he created, he’s never come out and said, I wish I didn’t make it, but he is coming out and saying I don’t use it. He is saying it is not making you happier. He does advise you to limit your use of it. He does advise you that you are now on a hamster wheel and the more time that you use social media, the more ads they can sell. So you are actually the product you are being used as the best business coach product when you use social media. He does go on to explain that. Uh, one of his colleagues, Paul Graham, the guy who invented dropbox and airbnb and Reddit, he does not use a smartphone. He actually doesn’t allow them near him. He keeps. These doesn’t use smartphones. So why would the very people who are creating these products not used, why was the head of Marlborough not a chain smoker?

Hmm. So when these big companies are being investigated, the big tobacco companies for I’m creating products that kill people, why were, you know, they have them then when they have these massive, a class action lawsuits, these congressional hearings to find out how much money, big tobacco was liable for, you know, when they had joe camel and all of these brands that were used to get people addicted to smoking. Why were the heads of these companies not out there during the congressional interviews? Why were they not taking smoke breaks and going, well, yeah, I don’t see that yet. If smoking affects the lung health at all, I’ve been smoking for 80 consecutive years. I have zero. It doesn’t affect my lung. I mean, why do you not see the heads of big casinos in there playing the Games next to the lady wearing the oxygen mask while smoking.

Hey Lady, do you mind if I take a drag? If you could insert it into my stoma since I can no longer use my lyrics, that would be great. Why are they not saying, do you have a quarter? I would like to play with you and think naming being really mean anything. It’s because the people creating the systems to manipulate you don’t manipulate themselves. That’s right. So how do you avoid distractions? We’re going to talk about the off button a lot today. We’re going to talk a lot today about saying no to push notifications. So first Paul, I’m going to read you a notable quotable from Daniel Goleman, the best selling author of emotional intelligence. He’s a psychologist in New York Times bestselling author, and he writes, we need to create boundaries. He says, we need to recreate boundaries. Think about that. They’re thinking about that there folks. We need to recreate boundaries. When you carry a digital gadget that creates a virtual link to the home and office, you need to create a virtual boundary that did not exist before Paul Hood. What? Say you,

hey, hey. You know, I think there’s two words in that statement. There we create. Um, we are the, we can create our own reality or own and in our minds and physically the problem is, is most people are lemmings and they just kind of follow and listen and do. And, and a Chet Holmes says it like this, that he about a retake either activating system in his book, ultimate sales machine and while the reticular activating system, not to get real deep, but that’s a filter that’s in our brain that tells us what’s important. And the problem is, is we’re allowing other people to tell us what’s important by turning on that TV or listening, looking on facebook and everybody’s got this and everybody’s got that. But we can determine what’s important and what’s what goes into our mind. And we determine that by what our, what we surround ourself. In a with who we surround ourself with, what we surrounded, so what junk. It’s junk in, junk out, and if you are very systematic and very specific on who you listen to, what you read, what you allowed to go into your mind, then you determine your own future clay.

Well, this is a, uh, a very big struggle for, I would say 90 percent of the people listening today is how do you recreate digital, digital boundaries. So I’m walking you through what I do and I’m encouraging you to do this. I’m encouraging you to do this. You don’t have to do this. This is just what I do. And when everybody I’ve been around who makes significantly more than I do or as much as I do. And you might say, well, clay, how do you, how do you make your money? What do you do? Are you a charlatan? Okay, I’ll tell you, there’s a medical practice and Tulsa called revolution health. I’m a partner, so every time you go into see a doctor, I get paid. Okay? There’s a place called the garage. It’s an automotive repair shop. It’s in broken arrow. You go and repair your vehicle every time you go in.

I get paid elephant in the room. Every time you get a haircut, I make about a buck 75 to $2 every time that somebody buys one of my books on Amazon and hundreds and hundreds of people do that all the time. Um, I get paid every time. So every month hundreds and hundreds of best business coach people buy my book and I get paid A. People buy sponsorships, they buy a advertisements, they go to score basketball. I get paid and you go to basketball lessons. I get paid. I have a lot of partnerships, a lot of partnerships from businesses I’ve invested in in a long time. Built that relationship where, um, I believe in the product. So I promote the product than I did sign a nondisclosure agreement and a competition agreement, which means I cannot compete with them in that space. All right, so tip top canine. Every time you get your dog trained, I get paid.

So last week in Oklahoma City, I made about $650 training dogs, right? But I didn’t treat any dogs. Why? Because I invested in the system, so all I’m saying to you is I’ve had some success in my life. There’s some people who’ve had more success than me and so I’ve reached out to them, so I’ve got to be friends and have gotten to know George Foreman, the boxer. Uh, David Robinson, Nba Hall of Fame Basketball Player, the, the founder of Skyy Vodka, Maurice Kanbar. These have all been clients of mine, people I’ve worked with and I’ve noticed that when I went out and I interviewed David Robinson the entire time I was with him, his phone never rang. And I thought, wow. Because I see a lot of people wanting to have success with like I gotta get this gotTa, get this gotta get this, and they never actually can focus. And so David had one phone that his main point of contact could reach him on, but that’s the only person who could reach him.

So like for elephant in the room, we have Jason on the show. He’s one of our super managers. So Jason needs to reach me pretty much nine to five, Monday through Friday. If I miss a call, I’ll call you back right away. You texted me and that’s how that works, but I’ve had to limit my access with that business. I don’t want every single member of the best business coach team calling me. I just want you calling me because I want Jason to be able to reach them, you know, in the event that Jason can’t reach me, I want John to be available. Can you talk to me, Jason, about why, how that’s helped you when you have less points of contact with them, but they’re very responsive as it relates to leadership and it maybe why you’ve seen me do that? Well, not only is it super helpful for time management and distractions, but it gives me my own sense of self accountability.

And so if there is an issue, if I had an entire network of people that I could just fire off a text or call and have them fix it, it would be too easy. And now I’m growing and being able to make my own decisions. But also it limits the chaos. The over and over phone tag. Right. I would say between, um, you know, let’s say 60 and 90 to 90 people, depending upon the time of the year for elephant in the room, there’s a lot of employees and people involved in the marketing and in the day to day aspects and the hairstylist, the grooming professionals, the front desk people. And so this is how the org chart works. Okay. There is the CEO that’s me underneath the CEO. There’s Jonathan, Kelly, Jonathan Kelly. His job is if for some reason Jason can’t solve the problem, which is almost never, he can reach John now if any of the managers have a problem, they can reach Jason and if any of the employees have a problem, they can reach their manager.

But setting up that org chart and being intense about it, that’s huge. Now I have digital band boundaries and I just want all the listeners to know this. I have blocked probably 7,000 people from my phone, so anybody who calls me who’s not on that list. So if you’re a business coach and you work for us, I’m accessible. But if you’re a high drama person, I block it. So you can’t reach me and I created that digital boundary. I’ve also turned off all push notifications and I turn off my phone on Friday at five and I don’t turn it on again until Monday ever. So these are digital boundaries I had to create, not because I’m a great guy because literally this week you’ll probably, I probably have 10,000 customers this week between all the companies and when you walk into the medical clinic or you walk in and get your car repaired or you walk in to get a haircut, I don’t know who you are. All I know is I appreciate your business and I’ll be happy to shamelessly promote the business, but I can’t have you reached out to me. And so I think Paul and it’s a big part is blocking somebody or, or turning off the notifications.

You mentioned, you mentioned passive income. You mentioned businesses that you get a little bit, you know, you don’t want, you weren’t just given those things. You helped create those things. And in most people they all, they look at as the results, but b, we all have the same 24 hours in a day, seven days a week. And what you do is you decide what gets what, how your time is used and you’ve decided that and then now you’re getting. Well,

let me give you an example with with. Well our relationship together here, this book, I’ll look under the hood. I don’t know how many hours you’ve logged on it. We’re going to get that up on Amazon. It should go up on Amazon in the next 14 days. I’m very excited about that. The ability to get a look under the hood with Paul Hood on Amazon. How many hours do you think you’ve spent on the book editing the books? I can. I’m going to tell you how much I’ve spent on it, but I want to get your best business coach take on it because I know I know what I’ve spent, but how many hours have you been editing that book? Working through the book, speaking about the book, really refining the book to make it what it is today.

Well, I, it’s, it’s hundreds and hundreds of hours, you know, you told me that by the time we get about the sixth or seventh version of it, it’s, it’s a, it’s a printable version and we’ve gone through this with you and your guidance and, and both of our time, I, I guarantee it’s three, 400 hours easy.

That’s going to say the same thing because my, anytime I work on a book, it’s, it’s people will look at it and go, dude, how long has it taken you to write this? And I’ll say probably 400 hours so far. Um, but Ernest Hemingway, the best selling author he wrote, he said that the first version of anything as crap, but he didn’t use the word crap. Starts with an s, used a different word. A Paul Graham, one of my favorite entrepreneurs, the guy who started reddit and dropbox and Airbnb, he said the first eight versions of any product are really terrible. And so I would just encourage you out there, you’re going to have to block out time for what matters. You can have to set those, create, recreate those boundaries. Now, here’s a notable quotable from naval ravikant, and I really want to break this down for us naval ravikant, who’s the founder of Angel List, one of the early investors in Uber, twitter, facebook.

He read, he writes, I don’t think modern science has good answers here as it relates to social media. I think that made the modern world is actually really bad. The modern world we’ve created is full of distractions. Things like twitter and facebook are not making you happy. In fact, they are making you unhappy. You are essentially playing a game that we’ve created and yes, it can be useful once in a blue moon you’re engaged, but you are engaging in dispute, resentment, comparison, jealousy, anger and anger about things that frankly just don’t matter. Naval ravikant sounds like a guy who kind of felt bad about what he created. Paul talked to me about the importance of setting boundaries for those things. For social media in your life.

Well, I mean, I, I would just say listeners that think about how many days do you think about in a week that you feel like I got nothing done and you know, there’s only a few people making money and getting wealthy and buying time freedom off of facebook and social media and it’s not you.

Why don’t you get something done today and go to [inaudible] dot com and schedule your free consultation schedule. Your free consultation today at Hood Cpas Dot Com stated today we’re talking about specifically is avoid distractions and staying focused on the right actions. Now, Paul, you’ve been able to build three locations. You have thousands of customers that you’re serving. And so I want to open it up here for uh, a young whippersnapper by the name of Sean. He’s a business coach. He works with clay stairs and the leadership initiative. I want him to be able to ask you any question that he has about accounting time management. Really, it’s just kind of asked Paul anything and it’s a double blind study because I have no idea what he’s going to ask. And Paul, you have no idea what was going to ask and frankly I hope it’s weird.

Yeah, I just asked him, don’t ask anything about women. I don’t know.

So let me, let me get my. Let me get my breaking news. Sound effect. Ready to go to Shawnee. Ready to go? Yes, here we go. Ready? Okay. So whenever we are working with clients and we’re trying to get into trying to figure out where they’re at financially, it’s a very important thing. Sure. So upfront we ask them to provide kind of like you do, uh, some, some back data on their income and expenses. Just a real simple spreadsheet we use, here’s the income for the month, here’s the expenses for the month. Sure. You asked for 12 months, why is that?

Well, there, there are certain expenses that are, you know, you have some expenses that happen every single month and you have certain expenses that are, are very sporadic and when you’re setting a budget, you know, only one a budget and control your money for your phone bill. But you want a budget in, maybe you have a family vacation once a year or you’ve got real estate taxes that are paid once a year and if we just take up, if we take a piece of the pie that is for three months, we may miss some of those things and in because really the intent of trying to see where they’ve been is to reconcile that with where they want to go. And so if, if, if we want to say this is where we want to go and we’re taking these three months and we project that out over a 12 month period, we may have missed some of those majors.

Paul, what percentage of the time do people actually have their data readily available when you ask them for a year of data, but right off the bat, maybe three percent of the time. So how long does it take you to help them gather set data? I mean, what kind of intensity kind of forensic deep dive do you have to do to help them round up 12 years ago of stuff?

Well, clay, what we do as, as well, first off, let me tell you too, we do have three physical locations, but really we have clients in every state, the United States, and we’re actually starting to get more clients out of state than we have that come locally. Um, but what we do, clay, is we’ll, we’ll tell them to bring in 12 months and we’re like a personal trainer in the athletic world. We’re not going to get in there and do all the work. We’re going to help them hold them accountable and show them what to do. And so what we’ll do is we’ll bring them in and have them bring that data in and we’ll set them in front of a computer with one of my staff and one of my staff will help develop, say for one month, help them compile that. Then we’ll send them home with that spreadsheet.

Um, and, and their assignment is to finish that out. And I’ll tell you, very rarely, virtually never does. Somebody come back and say, oh my gosh, I didn’t know I was spending this amount of money at this place at starbucks or like you, you like ice cream, you know, I know ice cream is, is huge, you know, but they don’t know they, they really don’t know where their money’s going and and a dollar here in $5 here, $20 there adds up. I actually tell a lot of clients that that if they spend a lot of cash to carry around a little notepad with them and write down every penny they spend for the next month and where that money is going so that we can control. We have to. We have to get our arms around where the money’s going right now and then to set boundaries and set budgets because the power of a budget is, let’s say you, you budget a $100, $200 a month at starbucks and so in here we are in the say it’s the 25th of the month and you’ve already spent your $200. Guess what the power of the budget is. You’re not going to go to starbucks for the next five days because you control where your money goes. Good question. Yeah.

So when you’re looking at the data, when you get it from these clients, uh, I want to go back to the real quicker. Yeah. I don’t think you’re going to get the data from 90 percent of clients until about three months of tasering people. Will they try to shortcut it? They’re always go, okay, I’ll just give you two months. That’s why as a business coaching program, we know people for about what most people reach out to. A business coach are in a spot where they need to see wins. They need to get a head significantly financially with a 90 days because they’re not doing well. Remember the average American best business coach business, if you say, if there was 100 companies in America started today, according to Forbes, 90 percent would be out of business within a year now of the 10 that make it only for are ever profitable ever crazy. So I’m saying as a business coach, our job is to help reduce their expenses as soon as possible. And if we get three months of data, I mean I feel like if we, if we get three months of data, this is where I think to myself

with Jesus, I just want to, I don’t want to thank you right now for helping this person for making a spiritual connection because I know that in the natural they could not have done it. It was like a required some spiritual interaction to get three months. It’s so is dealing with a lot of proactive people. He deals with a lot of big businesses and small businesses. So if you’re dealing with a startup, Paul, you know, a lot of times you’re, you’re going to ask them for 90 days where if it’s like a, a big company like culottes fitness, they usually keep their, their financials updated all the time.

Well, that’s what I’m saying though. We all have a. all I asked him to do is to get their bank statements and credit card statements. And then a lot of times they’ll want us to do it and they’ll pay. I have to pay us extra to do it. But does that make sense? Yeah, they, they, what they do, clay and I don’t know if this happens to you, they’ll come in and we’ll start trying to be focused on where the money’s going and then they’ll want to go off and talk about, well, should I advertise here or should I write this person? They divert, they tried to divert and it’s our job just like a personal trainers to keep them focused, but yeah, you’re right. If, if we can get three months, it’s at least a start. It’s, it’s there. If we can get three months of them compiling data, that puts them ahead of 95 percent and 98 percent,

so I’ll make sure shawn gets this. You’d love to have a year. Yeah. Yes, but I’m saying as a business coach will be, we’ll reach out to me, I know the temperature of the average American business and I can get three months. Right now I’m happy for you, but Paul is helping people plan out longterm strategies and so he’s not in. He’s trying to focus on your accounting and your marketing to. Yeah, we’ve got an hour of power and I’m trying to hit both and that’s kind of why there’s a difference there. Next question, Jason, you can ask any question at all. Paul Hood, legendary CPA, three offices to serve the Tulsa area as, as well as the ability to serve people all over the country. Uh, Jason, what do you have there? So I actually worked in accounts payable and accounts receivable over. I started here at what company we arguably kind of industry. Um, so one was a rental car company and one was oil and gas. Okay. But uh, for both the receivable and the payables side, every time we got to that dreaded word, end of month everybody would seem to like collapse and cripple and we were there long hours and nobody ever really had their stuff together. So as an accounting powerhouse, have you found a system to where when that comes along you don’t sweat the small stuff and you’re just like berating yourself trying to get it all done at the very last second.

Well what Jason, what’s you’ll find out as you get older? I mean, what are you like 15? I mean, how old are you? Twenty five. Twenty five. Oh Wow. He does. He does aging well. A lot of fish oil problems. Good. What you’ll find out is a life. I’m just like, uh, um, uh, when we have clients, when we have a meeting next week or we have a meeting tomorrow, I know that the assignment or the things that I’ve asked them to do, they’re going to do it the day before when you were in college or when people are in college and they have a test tomorrow. They’re going to study the night before they going to stay up all night. So people. But that’s, that’s uh, if you can get somebody that will plan ahead, that’s great. But the reality is, is the power of that deadline, the power of that is that it’s a deadline. And so it forces people to do it. Have you found that clay?

Yeah. Well, I will say this, um, this is just a thought. One of my good friends, his brother played for the nfl in the NFL for the St Louis Rams. And you had to be in a certain physical condition leading up to ots. They’re optional team training where you don’t have to be there, but if you’re not there, you’re not going to be on the team. So heading into the NFL, Ota is for the rams. He had to be in a certain shit and he was a backup linebacker that never really played at a high level, but he was in the pros for it. So he played professionally for six or seven years, but he never liked was a starter. But as a linebacker he had to weigh a certain amount of weight. I don’t know the number. It was probably two to 50 to 60. Well his brother and I were very good friends and I said, dude, you know, such and such as head of the ots here, how’s he, how’s he doing?

He goes, dude, he is fat. Like what? He goes now, he’s probably to 80 right now, but he would do it every year. And most of the guys do cause they eat a tight regimented, uh, during the year that he eats so tight, so clean that it’s like they know they have to restrict calories, eat protein, clean up their diet, and so most of them about two months before Ota is they get into this ridiculous routine and they’ll just trim up and slim up and they’ll stay regimented and it’s that, it’s that accountability. But a lot of the guys, as soon as they retire, they put on a ton of weight because there’s not that accountability. There’s not those deadlines, there’s not that. So what Paul does is he gives people best business coach deadlines and typically they’ll get it done, right? But that’s just life. It’s very rare you’re going to find a proactive person that does things without any type of outside stimuli. So productive accounting really is about Paul setting deadlines for people that are ahead of when things are actually do and that way people stay ahead of when they’re actually do, but it’s, they’re still going to get it done at the very last minute on average poem.

That’s correct. Yeah. I mean basically you understand the answer. I mean basically there is very few systems that you’re not going to buy a software program that’s going to force people to plan ahead. I mean I, I hate running but I ran a marathon and so there’s certain things in life that you have to plan for them because I can’t go out. The average person can’t go out and run 26 point two miles tomorrow and so, you know, it took me six months, but most things in life aren’t like that and most people in life aren’t like that. And if you find somebody that will actually plan forward and, and you know, I’ve got to this, you know, in 16 weeks, then you work towards

Paul. I’m shameless effort commercial. I haven’t been in here before. We wrap up today’s show. You want to be proactive about your accounting or do you want to live in a van down by the river? Do you want to save money or do you want to be homeless? Do you want to get ahead financially or do you want to be an idiot? If you going to be proactive, go to hood CPAS DOT com. That’s [inaudible] dot com and schedule a free best business coach consultation. If you’re not living in a van down by the.