Avoid the “Holiplagues” | One Reason 96% of Business Fail (Recorded on the Wednesday Before the Wednesday Before Thanksgiving 2017)

Audio Transcription

Oh, eating and deadlines for gotten,

making excuses right up. These miss does rotten because nobody else cares about how small your make count Scott, and you’re taking more time off. All the more problem retain lawful Wednesday before the Wednesday Thanksgiving, although it’s not legal to text and drive to our knowledge, there are no laws against broadcasting while driving. Here’s yet another edition of the Hummer of love on the thrive time show.

I’m recording today’s show on the Wednesday before the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, 2017. So right now we got the wits the Wednesday before the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. So you know, Thanksgiving falls on a Thursday and the day before things before the Thanksgiving. Thursday is always a Wednesday. I’m talking about the Wednesday before the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to talk about something I call the Hala plagues. Now, the Halep plagues are a time of the year where small business owners start acting like employees and start having financial problems as their income goes down while their life expending, uh, habits go up. You see the rest of the world who are employees, they typically spend more money during the holidays. They buy Christmas gifts and food for Thanksgiving, they travel, that kind of thing. However, um, they have jobs, they work at a business, right. And, uh, so they’re not impacted too much by the fact that they’re spending more during the holidays, then other times of the year because they’re actually spending more.

Um, but they’re making the same income. Maybe they’re on a salary or they have a consistency of an income and a job. But for self employed people, I have noticed over the last 12, almost 13 years coaching that most self employed people take off the Wednesday before the Wednesday of Thanksgiving, they start taking off then and they really don’t get it back together until the Monday after Thanksgiving. So do they miss an entire two and a half week period of time. And then they also, uh, do the same thing on the week of Christmas. So the week of Christmas they’d take the Monday off of the week of Christmas, the Tuesday off, they take the Eve of Christmas off, they take the Eve of Christmas Eve off, they take Christmas day off, they take the day after Christmas day. Off the day, that weekend off too. They take new year’s Eve off, they take new year’s day off. And what happens is when you are self employed, therefore you are relying upon yourself for an income and you work less than any other time of the year, you generally make less.

So if you have a heat and air company and you service less customers during the holiday season and you spend more money, you’re, you’re spending more and earning less, which I, the profundity of this has never cease to amaze me. So today I just thought I would keep a log exit because the Wednesday before the Wednesday of Thanksgiving, I just kept a log of what happened today so that you as a listener could see the kind of the microcosm of what happened. So my first meeting of the day on the Wednesday before the Wednesday of Thanksgiving was at six in the morning with my coaches. That’s when my first meeting was 6:00 AM with the coaches. Now my next meeting is at seven and I’m not gonna mention the name of the client, but again, the next client was it, was it seven, seven in the morning on the Wednesday before the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, they made their appointment.

Oh yes, they did. Now the next client was at eight and they made their client to or made their appointment to they, they showed up. They, they shut up for their coaching call, so my seven and eight showed up. Boom. Now my 9:00 AM my 10:00 AM my 11:00 AM they all couldn’t make it due to the fact that they’re getting ready for the holidays. The Wednesday before, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, now my noon, they showed up. My noon showed up. My one did not show up. My two did not show up. My three did show up. My fours showed up and my five showed up. Now, if you look at the clients that didn’t show up for their meetings on the week before the week of Thanksgiving, if you, if you think about the clients of the clients that didn’t show up on the Wednesday before the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, do you think the clients that missed the Wednesday before the Wednesday of Thanksgiving, do you think that those people make more money on average or less money on average then the people that showed up? What do you think? [inaudible]

I’ll give you a hint. The people that missed their meetings on the Wednesday before the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, those people always struggle. They’re always struggling. They can’t start their meetings on time. They can’t seem to call their leads. They can’t seem to call their clients back. They can’t seem to gather Google reviews. They can’t seem to ever get anything done. They can’t see me to do the group interview. It’s, there’s always you’re busy. They can’t seem to, and there’s like fundamental things you have to do to grow successful company. So step one every week you’ve got to keep, maintain consistent marketing activities and the people that missed the the meeting the Wednesday before the Wednesday of Thanksgiving. These are the people that can’t seem to do it. They can’t seem to do their dream 100 they just can’t see me to do the dream a hundred marketing.

They can never quite find the time to call their leads. They just can’t do it. They can’t quite start their staff meetings on time. They’re always having tax problems. It’s because that is how they live their life. They lived their life that way where it’s like, Oh my gosh, the Wednesday before the Wednesday of Thanksgiving, I’m going to revert into employee mode and I’m going to not show up because I’m self employed. I can impose self poverty on myself. This is the phenomenon known as the of plagues did I talk about each and every year. It’s bizarre why you would be self employed and increase your spending while decreasing your income for an entire month of the year. It makes zero sense now. Big businesses, they make a killing during the Holiplague. They sell more stuff than ever during the holidays. They are super profitable. The average business does more business during Holiplague.

They make more money during Thanksgiving and Christmas. They’d make more money during the holidays. Why? Because they know that the average person is out there barring things. They’re taking time off of work and buying. And so in order to sell them something, they have to be there. But, but the vast majority of small business owners don’t get this idea they want to take off too. They said the whole world’s taken off during the holidays. I want to participate in that too. I want to take the time off. And then they’re shocked when they’re financially struggling. Oh, world is out buying. The average consumer’s not buying things right now, which means your business needs to be in business. You need to be open. And I always like to release this show, you know, a couple of years after the actual date. So people can’t guess what clients I’m talking about.

I’m just trying to give you real specific examples and we live in such a, you know, easy to offend world that I wanted to, you know, record this to get like a time capsule from 2017 here and that village air this at a later date. So we can all benefit from it. But I want, I want, I’m gonna to give you some stats real quick. In America today, according to our census Bureau, there are 330 million Americans right now, 330 million Americans. Now if there’s 330 million Americans, how many Americans do you think every year say that they are self employed? They, they, they, they checked the little box on their taxes where they say, uh, yup, I’m self employed, I’m a sole proprietor or I’m a uh, LLC S Corp. what percentage of people are choosing to designate themselves as being a self employed or the owners of a company time’s up 16 million.

So in a population of 330 million people, 16 just 16 million are self employed. So it’s it’s if it was 10% there’d be 33 million self employed people, but it’s not. So it’s like 5% of our population to begin with will ever become self employed. Like 5% of our population will ever become self employed. So okay, but then what percentage of businesses fail within 10 years? They just shut down the doors. They can’t. They shut the doors they can’t possibly make. It’s too hard. It’s too challenging. What percentage of businesses fail within those first 10 years? What do you think? 96% 96% of businesses fail my friends. And that means that you have a 0.0019% chance of being a successful self employed person for a decade. It’s two tenths of a percent. That means in a city of the size of Tulsa where we have 400,000 ish people, there’s only 700 some odd successful business owners who’ve been around for a decade.

It’s just so rare. So I encourage you, do not let the haul of plagues kill your business. Don’t let it happen. I encourage you to go ahead and take off for Thanksgiving. Take off for Christmas day, but you don’t need to take off the day before Thanksgiving. You don’t have to do it. You don’t have to. Most people will do it. That’s why most people are not successful. We’re all going to sit down on Thanksgiving and watch professional athletes who are playing on Thanksgiving day. Why? Because they’re successful and they committed to being there on Thanksgiving day. We’re going to watch the NBA play a Christmas game and the athletes will be there. Why? Because they’ve committed to it. Act like a pro athlete acts like the best of the best. Commit to being the best of the best and the number one thing you could do to be the best is to be consistent about over-delivering.

Don’t take off. You don’t have to take off the Wednesday of Thanksgiving. You don’t have to and you don’t have to take off the Friday after Thanksgiving either. You don’t have to. We have a Saturday and a Sunday every week. You don’t have to take off Thanksgiving, Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday. If you want to take off Thanksgiving, that’s fine. I get it. But you don’t need to put yourself in a tough spot financially to just sit there on Friday knowing about all the sales you’re missing out on. People are still going to need heat in their calls. People are still going to need plumbing. People are still going to need, you need haircuts. Don’t impose the Hala plagues on your business. It’s a, it’s a spreading insidious wealth destroying disease and nobody gets it. Nobody gets it because just 0.0019% of the population to successful as a business owner.

So you’re not, you can’t go ask the average person what they think about this because they’re wrong about business. They might be right about other things in life, but as it relates to business, consistency is King. Think about quick trip. The gas stations, those homeys are open. The billion dollar company, quick trip is open on Thanksgiving. Throw open up Christmas, pick about target. Think about Walmart. These places don’t take the whole week off. That’s why they’re big businesses. Tick about, think about Walmart or think about Microsoft. Think about Google. These people don’t take off for the entirety of a month if you’re, if you, unless you want to stay small with small dreams and small goals and small wallets. Don’t act like a small business owner. Get out there and get serious about being consistent. My name is clay Clark and I’m avoiding you to avoid the Hala plagues. Avoided the whole place.

It’s a contagious thing now, so everybody around you, they have to the vet, but the vast majority of people around you, these people have been infected with the whole plagues. They’ve been infected. They have a dangerous disease or a disease that there’s no ease in their house. It’s called poverty and poverty loves company company. The average person has, has no money in poverty, loves company. They have no money and they, they want you to, you know, also be poor with them, whether consciously or subconsciously and therefore they’ll give you advice like, Darryl, how come you’re not taking off the Wednesday before the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Darryl, how come you’re not coming home early on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving? Darryl, why do you have to work on the Friday after Thanksgiving? Because I have a commitment to my customers and to my own success. I’ve committed to it. That’s why I encourage you, my friend. Do not let the haul of plagues destroy your family’s financial success. This should be the time of abundance, a time of winning a time where you can get things done. Do not let the hollow plagues kill your business. And now, without any further ed, do.