Business | Customer Service | How to Take the Customer Service Experience That You Offer to Your Customers to the NEXT LEVEL!!!

Thrive 15 presents, Awkward Business moment number eight, Hold the Mayo.

Hi there.

What’s up?

I ordered my burger without mayo.

You don’t want mayo on your burger?

No.

Cool. Let me take care of that.

All right.

One burger, no Mayo coming right up.

Waiting on my double.

Wayne.

Yo.

Lady didn’t want any mayo on her burger?

No mayo on the burger coming right up. No more mayo.

Burger no mayo. There we go, ma’am.

Great. Thank you.

Awesome. Next up.

Don’t let this happen to you.

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All right, Thrive Nation, this next lesson, this next principle can absolutely change the life for many of our listeners, but I want to make sure that you’re taking a lot of notes. So I’m going to go slow and I want Dr. Z to then pile on with some editorial. And I’d like to get Eric Chup’s take on this as a business coach. And Ryan, your take on this as a business owner. So management 101, without follow up, nothing other than good intentions and bad results will happen. So John D. Rockefeller explains the kind of person that can effectively follow up in his mind as a good manager. And he said, “The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee. And I will pay more for that ability than any other under the sun.” Management was a huge issue when growing the Rockefeller Enterprises.

When he could find a good manager, he’s like, oh my gosh, that guy is a genius because there’s very few people that can manage. Now, here are the principles I want to teach. The difference between delegation and abdication is that delegation is where you tell somebody what to do. You’re very clear, you’re very detailed about who needs to do it, when it needs to be done, what needs to be done, and you follow up until it’s done. Abdication is where you give somebody a vague set of ideas and you don’t follow up and you just say, “Hey, if you get a chance to knock it out, do it. So again, delegation means to assign someone that will be held accountable to specific action items that are to be completed in a certain manner by a certain time, or there will be consequences. Or there will be consequences.

Again, that’s the part people don’t like to do, but you have to have it done by a certain time or there will be consequences. Abdication though means to assign someone or a group of people vague action items that are to be completed if the other parties find time or if they feel like it. So Andy Grove, one of the top CEOs of all time, he’s the co-founder of Intel, okay? The Intel company, the microprocessors for computers. He says, “Only the conspiracy theorists survive.” So when you follow up, it is only then when you discover who’s honest and hardworking. Only when you follow up will you discover who’s been working when you’re not at work. With the people who work when you’re not watching, that’s the good people. And because Z, here’s the deal, slackers will then say that you’re micromanaging them. You see, when you follow up, people that are slackers will label you and your follow-up as micromanagement.

Micro.

So when you follow up with a diligent person, they say, “Thank you, look, I got it done.” And if you follow up with a slacker, they say, “Look, you’re a micromanager. And the reason why I can’t get it done is because you’re micromanaging me.”

Because you’re on my back man.

Such a jerk. So now that I’ve given the principles and the ideas, see, I just want to make sure, cause somebody’s listening to this show saying, “I just don’t want to have to micromanage. I am the manager. I am the owner manager. I just don’t want to micromanage. I feel like if you have to follow up every day, that just seems so stifling and dream killing to have to follow up every single day.” Z, help free somebody mentally.

Well, what happens is that you’re looking for people that you don’t have to follow and touch. And I don’t mean touch, but I mean follow up on, inspect what you expect every single day. You’re looking for those people. I get it. But just don’t expect that you get it without inspecting it. In other words, until proven otherwise, they’re not a get her done kind of person.

So again, you can only expect what you inspect.

Correct.

You can only expect what you inspect. Now here’s the deal.

And let me finish up my thought here.

Yeah, absolutely.

So you want someone you don’t have to inspect every day.

Every day.

Every hour.

Or day.

Every half a day, whatever your first thing is.

You want people like that.

You want them like that. You want to be able to go to weekly meetings. You want to be able to go to a monthly inspection. You want to be able to go to move it. You kick that can down the road because you’re busy.

You’re busy, baby.

You’ve got lots of businesses now, you’re rolling. Got it figured out. You’ve got to learn the 13 steps. You’ve got it all going on. You’ve got time for if you’re having to expect, inspect every single one of your managers every single day, you don’t have time freedom. And what are we teaching you? So what we’re saying is at first, when you bring them on, you have to be on them like a duck on a June bug.

And you coach them up like a duck on a June bug duck on a June bug comes [inaudible 00:05:20].

I mean, pure a duck. You really like seeing a June bug, by the way. But you have to do that. And then what happens is they build up your, what I call your confidence bug.

Come on. Your confidence.

Your trust bucket.

Trust bucket.

And you say like one of my managers been with me 18 years.

Eight. Are we talking about Kyle?

Yeah.

She’s so good.

I don’t have to check on her daily.

Daily.

I don’t have to call her every day at five o’clock and go, “What’d you do today? Why’d you get down? Tell me [inaudible 00:05:43]”

Point but when she first started 18 years ago.

I was on it. Doggone it. I had to be.

And you followed up until she proved herself that and she got better as a manager.

Bingo.

And now she’s earned the autonomy and time freedom, you don’t give people autonomy by virtue of being born. They have to earn that stuff.

They have to earn that stuff. And so you have to understand now, I’ve made the statement, and I’ve said this before, ultimately if I have to micromanage you, you’re not going to be a manager for me. In other words, what that means is that first I’m going to because I’m going to-

You’re going to win.

I’m going to, yes. And I’m going to make sure you’re the right DNA and the right person for the job. But eventually, if I can’t step away, if I can’t trust you to do the job without me looking over your shoulder 24, 7, then you know what? You’re not my dude.

So here’s the next portion of this. This is a concept because I think a lot of people get this twisted, that they get this screwed up is you then have to measure what you treasure. So again, you could give people these expectations, but if you actually treasure it, you have to measure it until you have a manager strong enough to do it without you doing it. I mean, you have to personally follow up, follow up, follow up until they’re good enough to do it on their own.

Right. That’s why they’re called a manager. You want them to manage something that you don’t want. You want to have the freedom not to have to manage it.

So I want to get Ryan’s take on this thought. You measure what you treasure, and when you abdicate, you’ll always be a dollar short and a day late. So when you just give people broad action items and you don’t follow up, how have you learned that over the years building Tip Top K9? Where have you seen people just totally drop the ball and you’re like, “Man, I probably should follow up more before they’d proven themselves.”

Right. Well, on our boot camps, for instance, where we take people’s dogs and train them, we guarantee them, we say it’s normally within this two to four week timeframe, which requires a certain amount of hours, a lot of time, like every single day, six, seven days a week. So the dogs make a lot of work. So we need to make sure that that work is not trust necessarily, that that work is getting there every day, but verify that it’s actually getting worked every single day. That it’s meeting the goals, that it’s on the right schedule, that it’s getting enough work done. Or do we need to assign extra hours? So that has to be followed up with constantly.

Constantly.

Constantly.

Constantly.

And same with the call center, we need to know what calls came in, what was booked as far as our sales, what was shown and what was sold. And then a percentage of everything. So we know if anything’s going wrong.

I’ve got a dog training question.

Oh, nice.

What do you do with the dog that barks too much?

We teach it quiet.

How do you do that?

It’s a secret move.

Is that a secret move? Can you tell us over the podcast? I mean-

Secret move.

Is that a secret move?

Do you still do the larynx removals?

Yeah. Okay. Have you ever heard a dog that’s doing that? It’s horrible. It’s like-

No, I would not.

It’s almost don’t. It doesn’t fix the problem. It makes it more annoying.

Do you throw punch them every time they bark? I don’t even know. I don’t know.

No, you have to-

I was joking. That’s a thing people do that?

Yeah, no, they do it.

But I’m sorry for having an imagination. I didn’t know there’s a-

Two dogs. It’s awful.

Its just sad dog.

Don’t ever apologize for having an imagination.

I’m just saying somebody, I had an imagination too and had that idea like, well, we’ll just remove it’s larynx. Kitchen gross.

Okay, so that’s a secret move. But you can do that.

Yeah.

Any bad habit.

We have to be able to redirect the dog’s attention. His name is jumping or anything else. I need to be able to redirect the dog and put them on something else.

Okay, there you go. Okay.

All right.

Fair enough. I like giving Ryan on because I have dog training questions and a curious mind wants to know.

Now, Chup.

Yeah.

I want you to get your take on this as a business coach, there’s so many clients we’ve worked with that have learned how to successfully follow up and now they’re free. Where do you see people getting it wrong though, before they get it right.

Well, it’s that whole concept of consistently measuring. So they’ve got their management in place that everything’s are up in orbit, like we’ve talked about in past. You just got to get those thrusters going in the right directions. But if you don’t consistently follow up with those managers, you can’t just do it once every three months and then it’s every three weeks. It’s got to be the consistency. So that that is built into the culture. It’s baked into the Cake.

Thrive Nation. When we do our next podcast, we’re going to be covering a topic that so many people get in trouble with. It’s where you act as a bank, but you’re not a bank. You are not a bank, but yet you’re extending credit to each and every one of your customers. And you’re not a third party lender, you’re not a bank. So how do you get out of that cycle if you’re a contractor or a business owner used to extending credit to your customers when you in fact do not have the means to extend consumer credit? We always want to end the show with a boom Z. So here we go. 3, 3, 2, 1, go.

From the sitter of the universe, presenting the world’s only business school without the BS, with optometrist and entrepreneur, Dr. Robert Zelner and USSBA entrepreneur of the year, Clay Clark. Get ready to enter the Thrive Time Show on Talk radio 1170.

All right, thrive Nation, welcome back to another fabulous podcast edition of a Thrive Time Show on your podcast download. Now see, the podcast edition gives us the ability to go maybe more intensely, maybe more in depth. We can be more pragmatic because we don’t have to adhere to the rules of a radio show.

You know what it’s like? Sorry to cut you off.

What’s it like?

But it’s kind of like, I’m going to get crazy going commando

Chup. That’s what podcasts are like. Are you going commando?

No, I’m not. But yeah, this is a going commando version of a radio show.

I appreciate that analogy and I rebuke the visuals that came to my mind. And so Z the question that we get asked from a lot of entrepreneurs as it relates to human resources, HR 101 is how do you find good people? And then they kind of get into that mindset of there’s not enough good people out there. So I’m not going to recruit right now. I’m not going to expand because there’s not enough good people. And I would just tell every entrepreneur listening, nothing works unless your people do. Nothing works at all unless your people do. And so here are the steps for finding the good people. And I want to get Z’s take on this because these are the man cave sessions. If you were sitting with Dr. Z in the man cave, which very few people get the pleasure of doing, the privilege of doing this is the real and raw stuff he would say.

So here we go. Never stop posting for available jobs on Craigslist. Indeed. Recruiting at restaurants. I mean, you just never stop recruiting. Never. But Z, most people stop recruiting once they feel like they have a good team and then somebody quits and now they’re screwed again. It’s a cycle of up and down, up and down. We’re so successful. We’re going to be great. We have a great team. Oh, they’re moving. Oh, she got pregnant. Oh, she quit. Now everything’s falling apart. I have to do everything myself. Z help us stop the jackassry of always being overstaffed, understaffed, over staffed.

Back in the day, and when I train now, my people that do the hiring, I only hire at certain levels now. But back when I was doing all the hiring, every time I talked to someone, I interviewed them for a job. That was my mindset. Every time I talk to someone-

Anybody.

Anybody.

Yes.

Doing anything, parking my car, serving me a hamburger, anybody.

Because you know that ultimately you can hire character and train skill. You know this as an optometrist. You can-

Patients, every eye exam. I turned into a interview.

Everyone?

Everyone. I was sizing them up every single one. And I hired a couple of great early on. I got some of my best employees because they had come in and they were patients of mine.

But there’s people who will say it’s time to stop advertising because we’re already fully staffed. They already have a full staff. Why should I advertise? Why should I interview? Why should I do interviews this week when in fact I already have the people I need? Why should I even go through the process of doing interviews and posting for jobs and I already have all the people I need Z?

Because those people are going to, on their time schedule, leave you when it’s best for them. And you don’t have any idea when that’s going to be.

Now Ryan here with Tip Top K9 is building a great organization. Just in the past week they opened up a location in Owosso and in Boise, Idaho and in Twin Falls. So you went from one location to four?

Yep.

For anybody listening to this podcast, can you explain what will happen if you don’t do a job post, or if you don’t do job posts every week and interview every week? What’ll eventually happen? Because you’ve been a business owner for over a decade, what’ll happen?

Well, your guy and then your backup guy will both no call, no show and not show up and you will not have anyone.

Has that happened to you before.

It does. It did happen. And then we had a group interview, and so I had actually three people waiting. So my first two did know call Nosha and we fired them on the spot. And then I had a third guy.

Can you explain to me the worst moment in your HR career where you had people that you thought you could count on and they just started leveraging with you saying, they started using their leverage, realizing you don’t have a backup plan going, well, I need to be paid more or I may quit, or, they just didn’t show up. Or what’s the worst HR nightmare that you’ve ever experienced as a result of not recruiting every week previous to knowing this information?

Well, before I did that, we had a guy and he didn’t want to follow all the systems and he was one of our top guys. And at the time I did not have a replacement.

He shocking.

Yeah.

Shock con.

Okay.

So that sucks, right? So then what am I supposed to do? Be like, okay, I’m going to do all of my job and do that too. Do his job completely?

He didn’t want to follow the systems, he didn’t have a backup plan.

Right.

Chup, where did people get stuck here man, you see it every day as a business coach, I want to help heal somebody. There’s somebody out there right now, I can just feel it. There’s somebody listening to show a right now. There’s somebody I need somebody need somebody help. There’s somebody out there listening to who says, but my industry, it’s different.

It’s not different.

Need to recruit every week. It’s harder in my industry. I have a higher optometrist. You couldn’t possibly understand the profundity of my job.

The key thing of what you just said is the two words every week, every week, you have to keep that interview going every week. If there’s a unicorn employee out there, somebody who’s an A player, you better be hiring that week that their boss fires them for whatever has to lay them off or that they’re fed up with that person and they quit. If they decide to do that on the three weeks out of the month that you’re not interviewing people, you’re going to miss out on that person. So you have to do it every single week.

Now, Joel David, a good friend of mine, he’s a jeweler in town. Every once in a while he has somebody and he doesn’t need another hire right now. Or I have somebody that is a good fit, but I don’t need a hire right now. And guess what I do? I refer a good person to my friend because I know that my good friends are also looking to hire people of character and trained skill. Now Z, the power of doing a group interview at the same time every week is if you do meet somebody at a restaurant, you can always say, “Hey, Wednesday at five we’re interviewing.”

Oh, absolutely. And I always like stealing employees.

Oh.

I do. I just-

The pirate, I always like it.

I like sniping them. Do you ever go snipe hunting?

Snipe hunting?

Yeah. I need to take you snipe hunting, you know you go deep in the woods.

Is that a North Korean move?

It’s an elusive bird called snipe. They taste delicious and you have-

They tastes like swamp.

Beaters, and then you have catchers, and so you drive the snipe into the nets. But I like the word sniping. So I like to-

You drive the snipe into the nets?

To catchers. And so you’d go out there and you’d set up, and then I would drive the snipes towards you.

I want to read the definition of a sniper.

Okay.

It’s a waiting bird of marshes and wet meadows with brown camouflaged plumage. Plumage. A long straight bill, and typically a drumming display flight.

Huh?

Okay.

Well there you go. So I guess when I fly, have a drumming display.

Or the word snipe means to shoot at someone from a hiding place, a specialist, especially accurately.

That’s the way-

Long range.

… you’re describing it.

Yeah, exactly. Well, and then we do that to our competitors too. We snipe them, but sometimes, you can find great people that are unemployed. But I have found over the years-

Over the years.

I find more great people that are actually employed.

Check it out. This is what Reid Hoffman talks about this. Reid Hoffman talks about this. There’s a Tim Ferris podcast recently where he talked with Mr. Metcalf, famous from Metcalf’s Law for creating the ethernet, not the internet, but the ethernet. And he talks about hiring today. It’s not hiring, it’s recruiting. Hiring is where somebody is just coming to you going, I just need a job. Please for the love, but if you’re going to grow a big company, you got to recruit baby, you got to recruit top talent.

What am I moves?

Oh, tell us.

That I did is I was open seven days a week. And that’s hard to find people that want work on weekends. So I would go where people are working on weekends, I come to the mall, they have later hours and they work seven days a week there. Of course, their schedules go back and forth. They don’t work seven days in the week, but they’ll have to, somebody has to work the Saturday Sundays. So I would go to the mall and just go store to store.

Oh, store to store.

And just see what happens.

Are you serious? You used to do this?

Absolutely.

Store to store.

I’d go sometimes early in the day because a lot of times you catch the full-timers, they’re the nine to fivers. And then the kids come in the afternoon to come work for them, like one to nine or something like that. So I would go in, I would just walk in the store and see what happens. And if they were sharp and they were on their game and they approached me and they greeted me well and I felt like, and I’d watch them a little bit because-

They’re used to working on nights on the weekends.

Bingo. And so then I could-

Bingo.

Bingo. So I would evaluate them on my five A’s quickly as much as I could, and then I would hired several great people out of the mall.

Now what are you looking for when you hire great people? That’s the next question I get asked. What are you looking for? Well, Jack Welch wrote the book called Winning, which is the number one management book in the history of the planet. And he identifies the four Es. Don’t over-complicate this homes, there’s just four Es, or you have Dr. Z’s five A’s either way, I’m going to give them to you. Okay? Here are the Es from Mr. Jack Welch, and then we’ll go into Dr. Z’s As, okay, so here are the ease from Jack Welch. One, you look with people with good energy. If somebody’s not energetic and they yawn all the time, he is not curious about what makes them yawn, nor is he going to sit around and motivate them to stop yawning. If you’re that kind of an a-hole that you yawn during an interview, you’re not going to get a job. When I say a-hole, I mean an amazing whole person who doesn’t deserve a job for Mr. Jack. Welch.

Of course, that’s what you mean.

Two. Edge. Will this person make the tough call when they have all the facts? People who say, well, I don’t want to throw somebody under the bus, but I think someone is stealing. If they even have that mindset, if you work for a company, the company is the bus, and if you are working for the company, you are on the bus and the wheels on the bus go round and round, even though idiots get in the way. Third, execute. You got to get your job done. You could have a great attitude, you could be on fire, but if you can’t code and your job is to code, then you’re going to make the code explode. If your job is to sell and you can’t sell, then so you got to find people that can get the job done. And the final is energized. This is a rare bird, but somebody who cares about pumping up the people around them.

This is the Ray Lewis office linebacker. This is the Tim Tebow effect. This is Joe Montana. This is people who can motivate the people around them and make them better. That’s tough, that’s rare. Hard to find the four Es. Sometimes you settle for three, sometimes you settle for two. But in a perfect world, I realize we don’t live in a perfect world. You want to get the four Es, but Dr. Z thought about this. He’s a small business owner, been a small business owner for years, and he thought about his As and he wrote them down, he documented them. These are the five As from Dr. Z. Dr. Z, hit it.

Well, the first one’s appearance. I mean, self-evident, are they well-dressed? Are they look like they’ve slept on their clothes for three days? You’d be surprised how many people go to an interview or you see them at work and you go, oh my gosh.

And you’re not going to try to fix somebody who dresses like that. You’re just done.

Yeah, I’m out. Attitude. How is their attitude? I mean, they have a great attitude or they a negative person are, they’re a positive person. I want to surround myself and have my employees be positive people. I don’t want the glass to be half full.

Somebody’s listening, going though. But I want to find somebody and fix them.

Well then God bless you.

God bless you.

Have fun.

God will probably bless you because you will not get any blessings on earth.

Because you can find careers a life coaching.

Hopefully you get those in heaven.

You can take them to church, but don’t hire them, right?

Yes. Get them out of your office.

Another one is attendance. Are they showing up? It’s hard to do your job if you’re not there.

I can’t be here today because my car won’t start.

You’d be surprised-

[inaudible 00:22:19] swing behind.

Clay. You’d be surprised. And ChUp, you guys would be surprised at how many people want money, but they don’t want to have to show up and work. It’s amazing.

Well, I wanted KU to work, but if we having music, I had to get my cell phone reset up there. I had to read your new one.

The fourth, A is accuracy. Can they do their job? Are they accurate? I mean, when we have, a lot of our problems go back to sloppiness and inaccuracy of texts. And so if you’re not accurate, it can cause a domino effect of problems that just I don’t want to do it.

I forgot to write down how they heard about it. I forgot to write down-

What they said a plus, and I put a minus. Oops.

I forgot to put in the right credit card number.

And then the fifth thing is above and beyond. And this really what separates your B, which your B players are probably about your 80% of your employees.

Yes.

With that eight percentile kind of bell curve in the middle right there. This is what separates and lets them be an A player when they go above and beyond when they’re doing more than what you’re paying them to do, that’s a mindset that just separates them. And if you can’t get at least two or three out of these five out of me, then that puts them as a C category and we try to replace them as quick as possible.

And if you’re never done recruiting, you can be selective. This is how this works. Now the next move is once you find someone that you like, this is my move. I like to have them shadow me for an hour or two. I’m not legalistic. I want you to shadow me just for an hour, maybe two or somebody I respect because I want to see if you are the real deal. So many people say, oh man, I’m awesome at sales. I say, here’s the deal. Great. Come on in tomorrow, let’s do some sales. Baby. Hey, I’m great at coding. Cool, let’s have you sit down and do some coat. Let’s code it baby, I’m awesome at cutting hair. Cool, let’s do a demo haircut. Cut my mop. Let’s do this thing. Somebody says, oh, but I don’t typically cut under pressure.

Ding, ding, ding.

I typically don’t do sales I mean right now?

Right now I’m not-

I typically code better when I’m alone. I typically dunk the basketball better and play people aren’t watching. It’s just my how, my style. So this is what happens is if you can’t embrace these rules, Sam Walton says this, there’s only one boss, the customer, and he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down simply by spending his money somewhere else. So I know Ryan at Tip Top is fastidious about his quality, but have you ever had a customer say back in the day, 10 years ago, eight years ago, that they weren’t happy with the quality and they went to somebody else. Has this ever happened? I know for me it’s happened in my life. Has it ever happened for you?

Yeah.

And when it happens, do they go, well, is the person who failed to deliver a good person? Because if they are a good person and they’re going through something their personal life, that’s cool. Or do they just move on?

They tend to just move on.

Yes. Because the customer does not care about your virtuous worldview to keep people around and to coach them and to matriculate them into becoming perfect people. They say, “Hey, you know what? That person who’s going through something, I care not, I just wanted your Starbucks to be open on time, so I’ll go on down the road to another coffee place.” That’s how that works. So what happens is, Jack Welch says, one thing you could do to let the whole team know what’s acceptable or not is you could fire somebody publicly, which is one of my favorite things to do. So what you’ll do is Jack Welch calls the public hanging. He says, public hangings are teaching moments. Every company has to do it. A teaching moment is worth a thousand CEO’s speeches. CEOs can talk and blab about the culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name them for you. It’s just cultural.

People just don’t want to do it. Jack Welch. So I’ll give you an example. I had a door back in the day at the Thrive offices at the Riverwalk, and I said, “Here’s the deal guys. I don’t want you going out that door because if you go out that door, what’s going to happen is you’re going to leave it unlocked and something’s going to get broken into. And we’ve had this discussion, don’t do it again. The next person that does, I want to be clear, if you do it again, one that’s not even a main entrance or exit you being squarely, if you go out the door again, I’m going to fire you.” And we had a key team member decided just to do it just to see what would happen. I watched them do it on purpose. And so I just said in a group meeting, everybody was there. I said, “Hey everybody, this person, we’ve known them for a couple years, they’re fired.”

Bye-bye.

And everyone’s like-

But they’ve been here for two years. I’m like-

And they’re fired.

And they’re fired.

And then what happens is all of a sudden people quit going out that door. And I couldn’t do that because we’re never done interviewing. But if I hadn’t done that one day I would come to work, the door would be unlocked and I would be robbed. And I have been robbed in the past in businesses where people have broken in and stole our things and Z not locking the door is a big deal.

Not locking the door is a very big deal. Well, I just had one in my business just this week try to get broke into.

Really?

Yeah, but they weren’t successful.

Did your mote get them or the lava? Did the lava get-

No, the alligators.

The gators.

The gators.

Do you get them on camera?

Yeah. No, we got impaled on the spikes outside those-

Joe David got Hotard, Joe David, one of our clients got broken into this week and it was like during the middle of the day and they asked of one of the salespeople to see the ring. So she showed the guy the ring and he just grabbed it out of her hand and took off crystal clear camera midday. Busted.

Busted.

Awesome.

What do people think? I mean the cameras they’re everywhere. I mean, it’s kind of like really?

So the moral of the stories, how do you find good people? Never stop recruiting. Ever. Never ever. See, never.

Never.

Ever.

Ever.

Whenever.

Ever.

Then once you have really good people, if you find a person, you keep a letter grade next to the name of each and every team member, mark them as A, B or C, the As are your top 10%. The Bs are the middle and the Cs are the bottom 10. Well, what if they know that I’m ranking them? What if my own employees know that I do this show and they listen to it? Because they do. Then they would need to know right now, Mr. Employee listening, Mrs. Employee listening. Are you an A, a B or a C? Because if I find an A, I’m going to first go, you know what? I have an A and I’ve got to C. It’s an easy call.

Easy call.

Sometimes it’s a less easy call, but I’ll do it too. I have a B, I say, and this is a good B. I’ve talked to them numerous times about what they could do to become an A. They’ve chosen not to become an A, so I’ve decided to fire them today.

Bingo. And you know what? I went through seasons where we would have the busy times and the slow times we get to the slow times, I would ask my managers, call them in and say, “Hey, who’s your worst employee?”

Who is it?

And they’ve learned, they better have an answer and they do now and then say, fire them. And they’re like-

What really?

Yes.

It’s time for some pruning.

I know it sounds mean, but you know what?

It’s the man cave sessions?

It’s the man cave sessions.

In the man cave sessions. We just tell you how it is.

Real and raw.

It’s more like a mean cave session.

Chup, you know what? On the next Man Cave Session, we’re going to be talking about time management 101 and freeing up your time to work on stuff that actually matters. But we like to end the show with a three and a two and a one and a boom. So Z Are you ready?

Absolutely.

Chup, are you ready?

I’m ready.

Ryan, are you emotionally ready?

Oh, yeah.

Okay, with any further ado, 3, 2, 1. Boom.

Right bud, they said it couldn’t be done. They said you couldn’t fill up to be okay sooner.

They said it was I possible, but yet if you look, it appears to be full.

Oh, we’re making America boom again.

Very full.

Very full. Lots of marketing courtesy of John Kelly and Devin and Darlin-

And this mind.

And this mind and this hat. So there it is [inaudible 00:29:35], sold out baby.

My name is Taylor Hall. I’m the general manager of the Tulsa Oilers Professional Hockey Team. Our goal every night here at the BOK Center is to try to fill the seats with lots of people and create an exciting environment so when somebody comes to a game, they want to come back. Working with Clay and the staff at Thrive, they’ve really helped us in many, many ways. Website and graphic design and video production and a lot of things that go along and a lot of businesses, including ours, doesn’t have a staff for a full-time videographer or a graphic designer. But the biggest thing that we noticed was the needle mover, more sales, more attendance, more successes in business.

We had a record year last season working with Clay for the first time. Our average attendance is higher than it’s ever been, so there was a lot of really cool things that we did and they worked. That’s the nice thing about working with Clay and the team over there. It’s just not one person. You get the entire team if you need video design and editing and production, they’ve got that. If you need graphic design, if you need some coaching, your sales people and call scripts, PR, they offer all that. Clay was instrumental in helping guiding us and getting us on the right track so that we could really raise the bar and become ultra successful. So it is been an amazing experience for us.

Hello, my name is Charles Colo with Colo Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clarke and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clarke has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations and seven years and then franchise and Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy’s just an amazing, he’s key. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crockwell, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members he’s friends with like Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours on the day-to-day.

He does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers and graphic designers and web developers, and they run 160 companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. So in the weekly, he’s running 160 companies every six to eight weeks, he’s doing Reawaken America tours every six to eight weeks, weeks. He’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13 step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. So he’s seen guys from startups go from startup to being multimillionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, or organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable scalable business.

One of his businesses has 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So amazing guy, Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes a socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much when I say that Clay is like he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. And that’s what I like him most about. He’s like, he’s a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best of you and Clay has been a amazing business coach. Through the course of that, we became friends. I was really most impressed with him is when I was shadowing him one time, we went into a business deal and listened to it.

I got to shadow and listen to it and when we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. And he told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it. I’m going to turn it down. Because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run, and the guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right and anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate anytime I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns because our clubs were all closed for three months and you have $350,000 of bills you’ve got to pay and we have no accounts receivable.

He helped us navigate that and of course we were conservative enough that we could afford to take that on for a period of time, but he anyways, great man. I’m very impressed with him. So Clay, thank you for everything you’re doing and I encourage you, if you haven’t ever worked with Clay, work with Clay, he’s going to help magnify you. And there’s nobody I have ever met that has the ability to work as hard as he does. He probably sleeps four, maybe six hours a day and literally the rest of the time he’s working and he can outwork everybody in the room every single day and he loves it. So anyways, this is Charles Colo with Colo Fitness. Thank you Clay. And anybody out there that’s wanting to work with Clay, it’s a great opportunity to ever work with him. So you guys have a blessed one. This is Charles Colo. We’ll see you guys. Bye-bye.

Hi, I’m Aaron Antis with Shaw Homes. I first heard about Clay through a mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them, and I actually noticed he was driving a Lamborghini all of a sudden, so I was willing to listen. In my career, I’ve sold a little over $800 million in real estate, so honestly, I thought I knew everything about marketing and homes and then I met Clay and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed after doing $800 million in sales over a 15-year career. I really thought I knew what I was doing. I’ve been managing a large team of sales people for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes and I mean we’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years. We’ve become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area, and that was without Clay.

So when I came to know Clay, I really thought, man, there’s not much more I need to know, but I’m willing to listen. The interesting thing is our internet leads from our website has actually in a four-month period of time has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 leads in a month to 180 internet leads in a month. Just from the few things that he’s shown us how to implement that I honestly probably never would’ve come up with on my own. So I got a lot of good things to say about the system that Clay put in place with us and it’s just been an incredible experience. I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with Clay. So the interaction with the team and with Clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening. One of the things that I love about Clay’s perspective on things is that he doesn’t come from my industry.

He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry. I’ve listened to all the experts in my field. Our company has paid for me to go to seminars, international builders shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the experts in my industry. But the thing that I’ve found working with Clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do. I’m not paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing, and Clay really brings that perspective for me. It is very valuable time every week when I get that hour with him. From my perspective, the reason that any business owner who’s thinking about hooking up with Thrive needs to definitely consider it is because the results that we’ve gotten in a very short period of time are honestly monumental.

It has really exceeded my wildest expectation of what he might be able to do. I came in skeptical because I’m very pragmatic and as I’ve gone through the process over just a few months, I’ve realized it’s probably one of the best moves we’ve ever made. I think a lot of people probably feel like they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because they maybe are a little bit prideful and like to think they know everything. I know that’s how I felt coming in. I mean, we’re a big company that’s definitely one of the largest in town, and so we felt like we knew what we were doing and I think for a lot of people, they let their ego get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs. I would just really encourage you, if you’re thinking about working with Clay, I mean the thing is it’s month to month.

Go give it a try and see what happens. I think in the 35-year history of Shaw Homes, this is probably the best thing that’s happened to us, and I know if you give him a shot, I think you’ll feel the same way. I know for me, the thing I would’ve missed out on if I didn’t work with Clay is I would’ve missed out on literally an 1800% increase in our internet leads going from 10 a month to 180 a month. That would’ve been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot. I would absolutely recommend Clay Clark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing. I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about and I would go straight to Clay and his team. I guarantee you’re not going to regret it because we sure haven’t.

My name is Danielle Sprik, and I am the founder of D Sprik Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After being a stay-at-home mom for 12 years and my three kids started school and they were in school full time, I was at a crossroads and trying to decide what do I want to do? My degree and my background is in education, but after being a mom and staying home and all of that, I just didn’t have a passion for it like I once did. My husband suggested real estate, he’s a home builder, so real estate and home building go hand in hand and we just rolled with it. I love people. I love working with people. I love building relationships, but one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things, the processes and the advertising and marketing. I knew that I did not have what I needed to make that what it should should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time and he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand.

Help market, our business, our agents, the homes that we represent. Everything that we do is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us. We launched our real estate brokerage eight months ago, and in that time we’ve gone from myself and one other agent to just this week. We signed on our 16th agent, we have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million impending transactions. Three years ago, I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in today building a business, having 16 agents, but I have to give credit where credit’s due and Clay and his team and the business coaching that they’ve offered us has been huge. It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing. Don’t ever limit your vision. When you dream big, big things happen.

I started a business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way. I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient. I don’t answer in insurance companies. I don’t answer to large corporate organizations. I answer to my patient and that’s it. My thought when I opened my clinic was I can do this all myself. I don’t need additional outside help in many ways. I went to medical school, I can figure this out, but it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic, I had a $63,000 embezzlement. I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just a lot of people experienced, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan.

He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult. He helped me in securing the business loans. He helped me with web development and search engine optimization, and we’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered. Everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic.

The Thrive Time Show. Today, interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13 point business systems that Dr. Zelner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. I mean, we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. Now we’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital, how to get a small business loan. We teach you everything you need to know here during a two day 15 hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems. So now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve.

You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I’ve built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this, and because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down real estate Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter Bunny, but inside of it was a hollow nothingness and I wanted the knowledge and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell at every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get rich quick walk on hot Kohl’s product.

It’s literally, we teach you the brass tack, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. And I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying and I want you to Google the Z 66 auto auction. I want you to Google Elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zelner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same system that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever and we even give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you and we’re excited to see you.