Entrepreneur | 4 Reasons That Executive Recruiting Services Can Change the Game for Business Owners

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrive Time Show. Good look at the father of five. That’s what I’m about. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them how it’s up on your radio. Now, three, two, one. Here we go. Boom, boom. Welcome back into the room. It’s the Thrive Time Show on your radio. My name is Clay Clark, the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year, the father of five human kids. How is that possible? How could a man like that have five kids? Well, let me tell you what, my wife is a jewel, she’s an angel, she’s the best, and I am a man-bear pig, and that’s why we have a radio show and not a TV show. You wouldn’t wanna look at me. And I’m gonna tell you what, if I’ve been able to achieve success in business, I know that you can too, but you have to believe it. And so every show, what we do is we try to gather inside the box that rocks real people, real entrepreneurs who had this vision, who had this idea, and they went out and turned their idea into an actual business. And so today you are in for a special treat. I’m talking about a treat that my kids, my five kids would love. My kids are always begging me to go to Andy’s, you know, ice cream, and they want to get like the, you know, they want the, it’s like a $7 something. You have to get like a home equity line to feed these kids. They want to get the, hey dad, can we get the Andes? It’s only $14 for a medium. And so we go to Andes, we cash out all the equity of the house, we get them some Andes. And the thing is, is that that’s the kind of treat you’re in for today. So we have Stacey Purcell on the show today. Stacey, check it, that’s Purcell. And she is what we would call, what I might call, I might be calling her this incorrectly, I’ll let her correct me, but she is a kind of a tip-top recruiter. She is, if you are looking for, you know, a great quality employee, if you’re looking for a key person, a key executive, somebody who’s just like the linchpin, you know, like the cornerstone of the organization, this is who you call. So, Stacey, am I getting that wrong? I mean, what exactly do you do? Can you kind of explain to the people out there who don’t know what you do, what exactly is it that you do? I’m an executive recruiter or executive search consultant. Headhunter is the slang term. Headhunter, yes. Sounds kind of dangerous. My company recruits top talent for organizations. Now, with your organization, how long have you been doing this whole recruiting thing? I mean, you’ve been doing this for a long time, remember, has it? 20 years. Wow, okay, okay. Now, inside the box that rocks today, we also have a business coach by the name of Robert Redmond. For those of you who have yet to hear Robert, he’s been on the show a couple times now. What Robert does is Robert basically works with business owners that are really good people and they just need a little help. Let me give you an example of people that need some help. Everybody. What happens is, before I built DJ Connection to be a large company, I couldn’t afford a graphic designer. It was like $3,000 a month for a good one, $4,000 minimum. Then you got to, oh by the way, provide an office for them. You got to motivate them. You got to train them. You got to do a handbook. You got to deduct taxes. You got to celebrate their birthday. And it’s just like, oh my gosh, that’s too much. So I hired a company. And the company I hired, I paid them typically $6,000 to $8,000 a month to do graphic design. Well, they need a video for your website. You got to hire somebody. And then because video people are pretty proud of their videos, they’re like, well, for $3,000, I’ll make a video. And I’m like, yeah, hey, meanwhile, that’s more than I made this month, right? And then they’ve got to go out there and hire a search engine optimization expert who wants a 12-month contract at $4,000 a month. And then pretty soon, you realize, I need some PR. And then all of a sudden, you go, I can’t afford all this stuff. And so Robert kind of is like a project manager. He basically manages the team that supports entrepreneurs like Dr. Z and I. So once we grew our businesses to a certain point, we had a full-time team. And now we let our full-time team help you with your business. And so Robert helps clients. He’s a business coach, helping businesses execute the theory, turning the theory into results. So Robert, this week I want to ask you, what sort of a client you’re working with right now or this week where you had an ultimate highlight, something that was just wow, that was profound? What was a big wow this week? Well, first of all, I think before I get into the big wow, I think that this is a real special show because what we’re getting is the best of both worlds because I actually used to be in recruiting. Before you got fired, right? Before you got fired and your career ended in employment, right? Right, right. Crash and burn, you know, just, just, just at the end of employment. No, you did well, you did well, you did well, but we have somebody who did more well than you. Stacy did more well than you. She actually knew Stacy because we were both in the industry before I came here to Thrive. She individually did better than our entire organization. I will tell you this. I thought it was kind of embarrassing. I don’t know if you ever told Stacy, but one day you left your man journal here and I was reading through it because I wanted to make sure it was yours. I couldn’t tell with the handwriting. After page 77, I wasn’t sure if it was yours or yours. I wasn’t sure if it was Robert’s or Robby’s. And I went through it, and one of the things you wrote on every page was, I want to be like Stacy someday. And I thought that was sort of disturbing, maybe kind of awkward to tell her now on the air. But I literally asked you not to bring that up just five minutes ago. So what’s a client win? What’s a client win? So there’s this one client I’m working with. They’re actually a local client here. It’s a contractor, a concrete contractor. Nice. And one of the biggest issues for them has been finding quality workers. They got enough work. They’re booked out for the year. For the year? For the entire year. Business is good. Business is great. It’s Trumptastic. We’re making concrete a boom again. Oh, wow. Nice. Nice. Well, if you can build a wall, why you’re at it, right? With concrete, actually. And so, one of the biggest issues has been, you know, they’ve been in business for 20 years now, over 20 years. And one of the biggest issues that they’ve consistently had was finding the right hires. So they said, hey, we try to find guys, they’re not good, they don’t show up for the job. It’s hard to retain guys because they leave and they try to start their own, then we can’t find a guy. And I’m going to pile on right here. You know, the Fast Company did a study on this. Forbes has done a study. All the thrivers should research this. On concrete contractors. Well, on just employees in general. And the majority of companies in America right now, they say the biggest thing limiting their growth is being able to find quality people. And so here’s where we start our discussion today. So if you’re listening today and you go, I find it easy to find quality people. There’s no stress in the game for me. I’ve got a line of people wrapping around my door, high quality people. They always show up on time, they get their work done, they never call in sick. I mean, these people are healthy, they get stuff done, they’re just awesome. There’s no drama, then maybe this show’s not for you. But if you need some help finding high quality people, then maybe this show is for you. And so here’s the deal. We’re talking about these four different, we’re talking about these different steps, these different points. And point number one is, why organizations work with search firms to fill openings. You may be asking yourself, why in the world would I hire a search firm to fill job openings? So Stacey, if we flip it to you here, why do organizations work with search firms to fill those job openings? Can I ask what a man journal is though? Because I heard man journal, Robert, and I don’t know what that is. Well, a man journal is like, and it’s probably, it could just be called a journal, but I was not aware. No, it’s a man journal. Mine is specifically a man journal You can go to like but Barnes & Noble about a moleskin book You know where you write your epiphanies and your notes and Roberts a reader. He studied theology in college You know so he’s he’s got these whole books We got you know 12 12 journals devoted just to his his epiphanies about Proverbs anyway So he carries around this little journal, and I’m just messing with him, but he he does hold you in high regard He knows your success in the industry. You’re sort of well-known, you know, you’re sort of like a myth, you know what I mean? You’re sort of mythological and it’s great we’ve got you inside the box at Rox because you are a top performer, my friend. Well, I exist, I’m not a myth. I’m a real person standing here. But I think your question was about why organizations hire search firms. Yeah, why? Well, they hire search firms when they want the very best person for the position, not the best person that’s looking for a job. Now, you had some statistics here that you’re throwing at us. This is from Career Builder, and they had a report that said 60% of job seekers quit in the middle of filling out online applications. What are you talking about here, Stacy? What does this mean? Well, I talk to people all the time that see jobs posted online that they’re interested in, but they think that it’s too much trouble to fill out the application. If you’ve ever tried to do that with some of these companies, it’s, you know, for example, I was working with a doctor. The person had a doctorate degree and they were on this company’s website trying to fill out this job application. And he said, I’m probably going to have to get a second degree to figure out how to navigate this process because it just went on forever. There were 30 pages of questions that he had to fill out. And he said, I have a job. I don’t have time to fill this form out. Yeah, I will say this. We help Thrivers all the time. And in our next workshop on, when is it, Robert? April? It’s April 21st and April 22nd. 15 hours of Friday and Saturday, April 21st and April 22nd. The world’s best business workshop. It is unbelievable. It’s interactive. We worked with a Thriver at the last workshop. And his issue, you know what his issue was there, Robert, as it relates to online forms? What’s that? He only had one out of every 300 people who visited his site who ever filled out his form. And so we took time during the lunch break to show him. And when you reduce the amount of questions on the landing pages and you make the pages more visually appealing, you can increase that quite a bit. But a lot of companies say, you know, I’m so busy growing my business. It just makes more sense to hire an executive recruiter like Stacy to get it done because she has all the connections. Her job is finding people who are looking for jobs, or even those who aren’t looking for jobs at all, but they’re the top at what they do. And she goes out there and finds these people. Now, Stacey, you wrote here that organizations need recruiters to identify the best candidates and to recruit those candidates. What are you talking about here? Well, to the point you just made, I mean, the company business owners, they’re busy focusing on their business. They’re running their business day in and day out. And executive search consultants or recruiters like myself, we spend all day long in the trenches hunting for the best candidates, like I said before, not the best candidates that are looking for jobs or applying for jobs online, but the best candidates period period. And those individuals are typically employed somewhere else. They might be employed by your competitor. So my job is to go out and first of all identify who the top talent is and then recruit the top talent and convince them to come work for my client’s organizations. You know, one thing that’s kind of interesting is I remember years ago when I won the Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the Small Business Administration. First off, you submit, they say you’ve been nominated. So you’re filling all these forms, you’ve got to show proof of income, and you’ve got to show your P&L, and you’ve got to show all this stuff. You know, they want to verify that you’re the real deal or maybe you’re not the real deal. You feel all that and they call you. You’re almost bitter when you fill out the packet. You’re just like, come on, I got nominated. What I have to do all this work. And then when you win, they say, oh, hey, could you give a talk? And I had never done speaking before. So I gave what I believe to be a subpar or a C minus talk to a group of people. And Carlton Pearson taught me The audience doesn’t owe you anything. You have to earn their right to clap. They don’t owe you anything. And I realized, oh my gosh, my talk was terrible. It was awful, and you know why? Because it wasn’t my core competency. So then when I kept getting asked to speak, not because I was a good speaker, but because I’d won some awards, I thought, you know what, either A, I’m going to be a bad speaker, or B, I need to hire a specialist who knows speaking. And so I’ve invested a lot of time with Carlton Pearson and other people who’ve taught me speaking. I mean you know that Oral Roberts taught Carlton Pearson directly how to become a public speaker? And did you know that Napoleon Hill taught Oral Roberts? Were those guys good speakers? These are the best! And did you know that Andrew Carnegie taught Napoleon Hill? So you think about it, it goes from the world’s wealthiest man to Napoleon Hill to Napoleon Hill to Oral Roberts to Oral Roberts, to… And I say all that to say, when you’re out there looking for somebody to improve your… You know, if you want to become a great speaker, or you want to hire a great talent, you don’t want to hire someone who’s doing this part-time or on the side, or you don’t even want to really do it as a part-time thing in your own company. You want a full-time guru devoted to this. So I want to ask you this here, Stacey. I mean, you obviously have the experience, the expertise, and you have the time. I mean, you’ve invested the time to do this. Can you kind of walk me through how having experience and the time to do this allows you to be very successful in finding top talent? Sure, absolutely. I mean, the very first thing that I do is to talk to my client to identify exactly what their needs are in terms of what exactly this person is going to be doing and what qualifications they need to have in order to do this role. And then what I do is I identify who the best players are in the marketplace, and then I go and talk to them and see what my client can do to convince them to come work for their client’s organization or actually to come and just interview for my client. So with my 20 years of experience, I have had thousands and thousands of thousands of conversations with executives and professionals, and most of the people that I approach are not looking for a position. I find out what they like about their current job, what they don’t like. Let me give you an example. It’s probably the best thing to do here. A few weeks ago, one of my clients reached out to me and said, Stacy, we have this need for this scientist and it’s urgent. I filled that position in three days. Three days? Three days. Now, we come back, Thriver. Stacy’s going to unpack for us how she was able to do it in three days. It almost sounds unbelievable. Stay tuned for the rest of the story about how Stacey found a top level talent in three days. My name is Newt Wright. I am from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I’m with Farmers Insurance. I heard it through my mentor and coach, Clay Stairs. I’ve learned so far the different systems to implement in my business and how systems that are scripted can really be repeatable and learned by anybody. I would describe the overall Thrive workshop as an excellent experience with the knowledge that Clay possesses and the ability to interact during the workshop to where we’ll be able to take it back to our business and be able to implement it. It is a different world than anything that you’ve probably experienced. It’s upbeat. It has a different energy that really is contagious, and it’s just an experience that has to be witnessed. Clay’s teaching style is one of humor and knowledge. He really likes to state the facts and where he obtains those facts and he gives examples throughout of where it has worked in different businesses and how he’s implemented them and they’ve become tried and true. The interaction level is just you’re able to, you’re very engaged with him. He brings you into the teachings and it’s where it’s almost like you’re the only one there that he’s teaching. You’re missing the systems. It’s ideas that aren’t new but it’s ways to implement them into your business. He just puts it in a way that you feel like you can be confident coming out of here and knowing that you’re going to be able to accomplish whatever you’d like to accomplish in your business. Clay doesn’t try to upsell anything. He’s, you can, by the end of it you believe that he is really just trying to help you grow your business. You feel like he is part of your business because that’s his main goal is to help you out and that’s kind of how you kind of what you take away from this workshop is someone that is really trying to make your goals a reality. I would recommend it because it’s just a unique experience and one that you really feel like you’re going to gain something out of it. It’s going to help you reach your goals. Alright, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. I know you the listener are made of steel and it’s always easy for you to find top talent, but for many of us, many of us mere mortals, it is hard to find top talent. I mean, you have a business out there, you know, the majority of businesses that we’ve coached tell me consistently, they say, my real estate company would be huge. This is the cycle typically for a startup when they call us. They say, I need graphic design, I need a website, I need a print piece, I need marketing, I need sales, I need leads, I need ah! And then when they get the leads and the sales and the marketing, then Robert, they start to say what in the mean? They start to say, what company is now growing tremendously? I can’t keep up. I can’t keep up with all this. I got to find good quality people to be able to keep up with all the success I’m having. And there’s been times where companies get so successful that they sometimes implode because they’re not able to keep up with the work because they don’t have the great people in the organization. And here’s what I find. I find that a lot of companies, what they’ll do is they’ll just sort of settle for mediocrity, and mediocrity becomes their normal. So I’ll give you an example. Robert, have you been in the man cave yet? Have you walked inside the man cave? I have not had the pleasure, but I think there’s going to be a man cave trip planned for this Sunday morning at 5 a.m. You invite to be over? Yeah, 5 a.m. Early time, right before church. And here’s the deal. At 5 a.m. we’re going to be doing, we’re going to be working on some projects here at Thrivers. And I’ve got to spend time with the kids, got to go to church, got a lot of obligations, a lot of things I want to do, and so 5 a.m. is a great time. No one’s up, my kids won’t miss me, but the point is when you walk in that room, it’s always 60. And Robert, do you know why it’s always 60 degrees in the man cave? Because you love the 60 degree temperature? I’m a man bear pig. Oh, of course. It’s just a thing. It’s got to be, men always think it’s too hot, women think it’s too cold. It’s a general rule, it’s a sexist rule. And so what happens is, is that my temperature, I’m so used to it being 60 degrees, occasionally my wife will walk into the man cave, she’s a great woman, and she’ll walk in there You know and she’ll go go. It’s kind of cool. Do you know just like to six like something offensive like 62? Oh, and I’m going someone’s been in my man cave It feels so hot and you’re like sweating and I say all this to say my norm. I’m used to 60 That’s my normal now Stacey Purcell our incredible guest inside the box that rocks. She’s used to finding great people every day That’s what she does every day. She finds great people. So she’s used to finding great people. So for her it’s like a world of abundance. She’s going, hey, calm down there. Calm down, business owner. I’ve got tons of contacts. I find great people every day. It’s not so hard because she’s an expert. And she just told us before we went to the break, she said there was one company that was looking for a top level employee and you found that person in three days. And so many thrivers are going, how is that even possible? That’s like 72 hours on average. So Stacey, how did you do it? Walk us through the story. How did you find a top level talent in three days? Well, not only did I find him, but the person interviewed got an offer, accepted and resigned from their current job all in three days. Oh, that’s the money. So you win. So my client said, Stacey, is that the fastest placement that you’ve ever made? And I said, well, actually, that placement didn’t start in three days. I said, I have had years of contact with this individual. I’ve talked to this person numerous times over the years. I already knew their qualifications. I knew the career path they were on. I knew what they were looking for. I knew the timing of when they were ready to make a move. So I had already had knowledge of this person. So when my client reached out and said, we have this critical need because my firm does quite a bit of work in the life sciences space. My client needed a scientist. I reached out to this individual, got him on the phone with my client on a Thursday. My client talked with him. By 6 o’clock that evening, this person was on an airplane going halfway across the country for the interview that was to take place on Friday. He didn’t even have a chance to go home and pack a bag. He got to the airport, interviewed the next morning, went back home, and then my client made him an offer. He resigned and all that happened in three days. You know what’s happening here, Robert, for the listeners? Some of the listeners who’ve been struggling to find people for a long time, you know what’s starting to happen in the minds of some of our listeners here? They’re getting nauseous. They’re getting sick. They’re going, how is this possible? Oh, I feel so nauseous. How is it possible? You almost feel bad. You know if you’re ever into a basketball game, like an NBA game. Yeah. And you think you’re pretty good because you can jump up and touch the rim, you know, or when I was in high school, you know, I could, you know, if the ball caromed right, you could dunk it and you’re like, oh man, I could jump like 30 inches. Oh man, I’m a genius. I’m a six foot, you know, guy I can dunk. And then you go see a guy who’s like six foot who can just dunk with two hands and just when you just feel decimated, you feel almost depressed. I think a lot of thrivers are just feeling kind of bad about themselves, thinking about how good she is at recruiting. Stacey, pick him up a little bit. What would you say to the thriver out there, to the listener out there who says, I’m struggling to find top talent. Please help. What would you say to them? Well, I would say, you know, sometimes business owners might be a little hesitant to invest in an executive recruiter services because they might think, well, this is a bit pricey, it’s expensive, I’ll do it on my own, but the reality of the situation is sometimes having that vacant position open is more expensive than investing in an executive recruiter. Like the story I just talked about, I found the person in three days. If my client had tried to do that on his own, he would still be looking for somebody. Well, you know, Thrivers, here’s a deep thought here for you. Do you have anybody in your organization who’s an underperformer? I mean, do you have anybody at all in your company who’s just a complete sloth? I’m talking about a carp. I’m talking about, this is the kind of person you can find at the bottom of the lake, right there by the dam where all the plankton’s down there, you know, there’s this carp, you know. This is, do you have an underperformer? Perhaps you do. Perhaps, or perhaps maybe you’re trying to hire somebody, but you don’t want to tell the whole world you’re trying to hire somebody. You want to hire somebody, but you don’t want to tell the whole world. So Stacy, if I’m listening, and I have an underperformer on my team, this person is at the bottom of the barrel. They are not good in terms of performance. How can you help? Well, I just did that for one of our clients. I had a client that had an individual in a very senior level leadership role who was not meeting expectations. So my client reached out to me and said, we’ve got to find a replacement for this person, but we don’t want to let them go until we identify the replacement. So they hired me, and what I did is under the radar, so this ad, I didn’t place ads, I couldn’t publicly make this position known, but I confidentially reached out to people on the phone and made sure they were qualified, talked to them about my client’s opportunity, identified people that were qualified and interested, sent them to my client. My client went through an interview process, they made an offer, they hired somebody, all that was done. Contract was signed, person accepted the offer, and then my client had to let the person go. Oh, well, Thrivers, I’m telling you what, Stacy can help you. Now, Stacy, what is the website where Tulsa can get in touch with you, where the people in Nashville listening can get in touch with you, the people listening in Toronto can get in touch with you. We have Thrivers in Singapore, all over the planet. I mean, where can people get in touch with you? What’s the website? What’s the phone number? It’s thepurcellgroup.com, with an S so it’s the Purcell P-U-R-S-E-L-L group dot com. Our phone number is nine one eight four eight eight three nine zero zero. And there’s about two people out there that still want to use a fax machine because they like that sound. I just love that. There’s something magical Robert about that sound. If they want to fax you, do you have a fax number now or just just a website and phone number? Well, I do have a fax number, but because we’re all automated, we don’t have a way to store fax resumes. If you fax your resume, we’ll probably never find you again. Or if you’re an employer… That’s the first time I’ve ever heard it on the radio. Hey, can you give everyone your fax number? In case someone wants to send a fax, let’s get the fax number for you. Robert, Thrivers now can text any question to 918-851-6920. 918-851-6920. And the Thrivers are kind of now just discovering this idea. And so we had a Thriver who texted us a question today that blew my mind, okay? They said, what is the first step that I should take when creating a checklist for certain positions in my company? This is a Thriver in Florida. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is a great question that we could ask the staffing wizard and we’d have a little bit of fun with it. So when we come back, we’re going to answer the question from a Thriver who text us at 918-851-6920 wanting to know what’s the first step to make a checklist for hiring new staff. It’s going to be incredible. It’s going to be awesome. It could change your life. Stay tuned. It’s the Thrive Time Show on your radio. My name is Nikki Warren and I’m from Tulsa, Oklahoma. The name of my business is the Mocha Butterfly and I’m a fashion designer. I heard about the Thrive Time Business Workshops through a dear friend of mine and I got a chance to meet with Clay and Dr. Z. And as I talked to them a little bit more, I loved what they were doing and it just made me more intrigued because I really wanted to grow my business. Well, what I’ve learned is that for my business in particular, marketing is needing to be, you know, getting, I need to step it up a lot more and the, just focusing in on some key things to get that really going is going to really get me where I want to go with my goals. I think it’s fun, it’s a fun atmosphere, which most business-oriented, you know, I’m an artistic, you know, artsy person, and I tend to lose interest very quickly if I don’t have something to keep me engaged. And, you know, the humor, the real life experience, and the casualness of it is just really engaging for me, and it’s just very relatable. And so, for me, I am having a ball. Like, I was so excited to come yesterday. I had butterflies, literally, butterflies in my stomach and I’m just really excited to be here. Well, it’s an interesting place. It’s got a lot of words of affirmation and quotes and things like that. Very positive environment. The people here are very nice and friendly and I love the way the room is set up. It’s very open space type of a model and like I said, it’s more of a casual environment. It’s not stuffy and professional. It’s professional, but it’s not stuffy professional. There is a difference, and so it’s very warm and inviting here. Love the teaching style, love the presentation, very organized and easy to follow, and like I said, the real-life experience and the humor just adds that much more to it. I know people who go to different workshops and you know I’m not sure if they’re grasping all of what’s being presented there, but I am almost 100% sure that if they come to a workshop like this one, they will get some great golden information that’s going to help them meet their goals if they’re willing to apply what they hear. There’s no upselling here, which that wasn’t really a big concern for me, but if I were talking to someone who’s very concerned about upselling, I would tell them that they have no worries here and that, like I, you know, I think that this environment is very relaxed, inviting, warm, and engaging. And so even, it does actually, makes you wonder, like, what else, what else is there? I won’t lie about that. So it’s kind of more of an independent intrigue rather than someone pushing you into the intrigue of what else is offered. I recommend coming to this workshop because it is intimate, an intimate setting, great people. I’ve met some really cool people doing some cool businesses and the teaching style and the presentation is awesome. Welcome back to the conversation. This is the Thrive Time Show on the radio. It’s finally business school without the BS. And Robert, today I went into a deep dive. You know, I went into this deep dive. You know, a lot of times I dwell on things, I focus on things. You do more deep dive than an Olympian and a diving competition every day. Oh, nice, nice. I’m kind of like the Jacques Clousteau of deep diving. Yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking, the Jacques Clousteau of deep diving. Now, can you explain to the thrivers who don’t maybe know me, who aren’t around me, when we say deep dive, or I’m going to work on that in my meta time, can you kind of explain to the thrivers what that means? Yeah, sure. So something that I see you do a lot of times is you have your daily to-do list, it’s printed out every day, and there’s some issues that come out in the daily to-do list. It’s like, you know what? I’m so busy throughout the day having to manage so many different things. I have to set a time aside, set time aside to really think, to marinate, to think deeply. And so when I understand deep dive, that really just means to marinate or to think very deeply about something specifically. And typically, when do I have time to dive? I mean, I have five kids, you know, you see the schedule. I mean, typically, when do I weave in my deep dive time? Usually, from what I know about you, it’s between about like 3 a.m. to 9 a.m. typically, 3 a.m. to 9 a.m. And by the way, diving, to-do list, all this that we’re talking about, we cover all of that at our upcoming two-day workshops. What do you mean? When is it? It’s April 21st and April 22nd. I know some people might say, that’s insane. You get up at 3 a.m., deep dive. I go to bed at 9. To-do list, how do you do it all? You got five kids? Well, that’s something that we actually cover is scheduling and time blocking and prioritization and time management at our two-day workshops is April 21st and 22nd. It’s a Friday, Saturday, 15 hours. You got to be there. Now, Rob, when’s our coaching meeting? You know, we have a coaching meeting every Friday. When does that meeting start? The coaching meeting on Friday starts at 5 a.m. 5 a.m.? We have a meeting at 5 a.m.? The meeting begins at 5 a.m. So what time do you have to wake up? Between 3.30 and 4 a.m. Oh, so you see, that’s when you find time because the problem is we’re always booked out We never can keep we have more clients to reach out to us than what we can keep up with So we have to find time and so we’ve decided to do as a coaching unit as a team is we’re now Having you text in any business questions that you have to nine one eight eight five one six nine two zero Someone says can you bring it back? I’ll bring it back like an old-school DJ detail. What is the first step that I should take when creating a checklist for certain positions in my company? Well, I’m going to start off and I want Stacey to kind of chime in. We’ll kind of work on it. She’s the backseat driver. She can do it better than I did. Okay. So here’s the deal. What you want to do when you’re creating a checklist for certain positions is you want to first off block off two hours of time to do nothing but to think about it. And then you want to ask yourself, what are all the things that this employee needs to do as part of their job? And you want to go, what are all the, you keep saying it. I encourage you to say it out loud and I encourage you to stand up while asking yourself this question. Say it out loud, stand up. Yeah, you actually, your brain works better when you stand up and you just walk around, you pace around. What are all the things that an employee needs to do, you know, to, in this position? And you get on a clipboard and you write it down and you go, do you really talk to yourself? Yeah, you know, only only crazy people like Albert Einstein, you know, and Steven Spielberg, you know, and Jim Stovall, you know, people like that are known to actually positively affirm themselves, you know, talk to themselves, deeply question. That’s a weird idea. Only only successful people do that. So if you don’t, if you don’t want to be successful, that’s OK, you don’t have to do it. But the thing about it is eccentric people, you know, centric means most people, and most people, according to Time Magazine, have less than $400 saved, and you as the thriver are not most people. So what you wanna do is you wanna have $400 saved. You wanna be eccentric, you wanna get ahead of the game. So to get ahead of the game, you have to block out time, two hours. And then when you block out those two hours, you wanna ask yourself, what are all the things that employees need to do, that that position needs to do? And then here comes the stuff where Stacey comes in, I mean, because she knows all this stuff, but you gotta have all the forms, all the government forms. You’ve got to have the non-compete contract, the handbook. You’ve got to have an I-9. You’ve got to have a right to work document. Stacy, there’s a lot of documents you have to have in place when you’re hiring people. I think that’s maybe one of the advantages of a staffing company is you kind of have the whole process of hiring people nailed down, don’t you? Well, what I do is a little bit different from a staffing company, though, because, and I can explain that in a minute, but just to go back to your checklist, because the first thing, like you said, Clay, is to identify what the person is gonna do exactly in the job, and then identify what your expectations of them are, both your short and long-term goals. So what do you want them to have done in their first 30, 60, 90 days in 12 months? The next thing that you need to do is talk to the people that are gonna be working with this person. Who are they gonna be reporting to, who are they going to be working with, are they going to be managing people and get feedback from the group of people that they’re going to be interacting with and find out from those people what they think this position looks like too and make sure everybody’s on the same page. And then what you need to do is identify exactly what qualifications this person needs to have in order to be hired. Now back to my point, what my firm does, we do executive search and recruiting, which is different than staffing. When I think of staffing, I think of people walking in the door, they’re looking for positions, and then the company that’s a staffing company, they put them on their payroll. What I do is a little different. I do direct hire placement, so my clients are hiring these people, they’re on their payroll and I don’t actually have to deal with any of those government forms. You don’t deal with the government. So you help find top talent. Now, for anybody who’s listening, who says, okay, what’s the difference between a staffing company and an executive recruiter? I mean, for someone who goes, okay, I kind of get it, but what makes you different from a typical, quote unquote, staffing company? Well, executive search and recruiting is, I do more of the direct hire placement. So companies hire me to find top talent, and these are people that are usually not looking for a job. I have to go and hunt them and recruit them for my client. When I think of a staffing company, I think people are coming in, they’re applying for positions, and then the staffing company sends them out. A lot of times it’s on temporary assignments or temp to perm. And some of these people are actively looking for a position versus they have a job and they’re being recruited. But with staffing companies, a lot of times the staffing company, the person is the employee of the staffing company. Where in my line of work, I don’t employ the people that I’m recruiting for my client. I recruit them for my client. My client hires them and employs them and they’re the ones that pay them. Now Thrivers, Thrivers, when we come back, okay, after this next break here, Stacey’s going to break it down. She’s going to be talking about the value that recruiters and search firms bring to the hiring process. And I’m telling you what, during this lunch break, you could be doing several things, Robert. I mean, you could be, right now, the Thrivers, they have many options. I mean, they could go inside, outside, they could get in their car. They could go to Oklahoma Joe’s and get some baked beans. And it is a game changer if you do it. And so I’m telling you, if you want to invest $9 in getting one step closer to a perfect life, I encourage you to go over to Oklahoma Joe’s. It’s not just because they’re a sponsor of the show and I’m a shameless homer for the I’m not it’s not like I just talk positively about people who put their money where my mouth is you said I just said it’s not like I just talk positively about the people who put their money where my mouth is it’s because I really do my son and I we go there on our mandates we go to Oklahoma Joe’s we always get the baked beans they’re a game-changer and I’m took my daughter now like some Havana like some I got one of my other daughters that likes them. So I’ve got two daughters of the four that like them. I mean, it’s a game to have two daughters. And if they were on the show, you’d be talking to these five-year-olds going, hey, girls, do you like Oklahoma Joes? And they go, no, because they don’t have taste buds that are fully developed. Right, of course. So also, Robert, during the break, people could go to Thrivetimeshow.com and learn more about our in-person workshop that Tulsa’s talking about. Can you tell the Thrivers what the in-person workshop is all about and when it is? Yeah, so the workshops, they’re coming up April 21st, 22nd. It’s the only business workshop, two days, 15 hours, intensive business coaching where you’re going to actually learn the systems that will build and grow your business. It’s not motivation. It’s hard, fact-based learning to grow your business. Some of the things I’ve learned about starting my business through Thrive is making sure I’m spending my money on the things I need to spend it on. For instance, like my search engine optimization, my marketing, constantly reviewing the content that I have on my website, and that’s just a few of the things. The overall experience I’ve had from the Thrive Time workshop has been wonderful. I love how everything that we learn is practical. It’s not based off of book knowledge. It’s not based off of someone else’s ideas. It’s based off things that have actually worked and have been tried and true. When you walk in, I mean, we came in to a smell of wood burning. There’s a chimney outside, so we walked to the building and when you get inside you almost feel like there’s like a, I don’t know if it’s like a pub slash club slash work environment, it just feels really good. You have music blaring, friendly faces, people saying hello and then when you sit down in your seat you have nice comfortable chairs, a wooden desk to work on and everything looks modern so it’s a really refreshing feeling. Clay’s presentation and teaching style is very efficient, effective. It’s also endearing though, because he’s very comical. He’ll talk about different things he’s been through and they’re all very funny, but he also hits the exact points he needs to hit at the right time. You never feel like, man, is he ever gonna stop talking? You always wanna keep listening and then when it’s bathroom break time, you’re surprised it’s already there. So I like how he talks about these practical experiences and it’s very enjoyable. The interaction of the workshop is mostly Clay will give you information that you need to know, but then he also opens it up for questions so there’s always this question and response type of situation. And then there’s certain things where he’ll direct you to do things and it’s because he knows that’s the way to go. You might question it, but I highly encourage you just to listen and do. To jump into a business and think that you know everything is the most prideful, arrogant thing you could ever do. But to come here and to speak to someone who’s already done this many times, has directed several businesses, and can give you wisdom and information. I think it’s wonderful. And I think you can never do anything on your own. You have to have other people around you to help you. And he’s definitely helpful. The experience I’ve had coming to Thrive Time workshops is I was never upsold anything. I mean, I come in, they do exactly what they said they’re going to do, and they leave it up to you to follow up and do the work. And I think that’s the way it should be. So it’s very straightforward and they do what they say. I recommend that everybody should check out Thrivetime Workshop because there’s so much knowledge and information there that you can use to help you run your business. And like I said before, I don’t think you can do anything completely on your own. And when you have so much resource and knowledge in one area, you can use all of that and get exactly what you need. Livetime show. Livetime show. Livetime show is where you go to get your daily mojo. And it’s the place where many of you have now found business school without the BS. And I did some deep research over the break, and I just want to share with you what I have. And again, Robert, you went to Oral Roberts University. And how many years were you there? Four solid years at ORU. Did you live on the dorms or did you live off campus? I did. I lived on the greatest floor at ORU. It was called MOG. It was 5 South. Did you compete in intramural sports? Oh yeah. Sounds a little normal. So can I just say, one sport we competed in, it was called basketball. We played C League basketball. We had a team called the Mog Fowlers. The Mog Fowlers. We had the Mog Fowlers. And do you know what our goal was for each game? To foul out. Foul out. If every single player would try to get six fouls per game, and if any player got six fouls, they got an award, they got a prize. And one time, we actually made it to double digit points one game, and we walked away from the game celebrating in the middle of the game. We all cheered, because we’d never gotten double digits. We’d never scored past nine points before. So we scored 11 points one game. And so, yeah, that’s the kind of intramurals I play. Okay. Well, you, you had a few math classes, I’m sure at college, right? Maybe one or two. Yeah. Math and society. Still don’t know what that means, but yeah, I had math and society. Do you have algebra at all? Or do you already have that in high school? College algebra. Yeah. Okay. So I want you to do the math on this. Okay. I want you to break it down. Write down these numbers, do the math here. I was on the University of Tulsa website, you know, just looking around there, kind of nosing around. And I found that to go to school there, business college, business school, it’s about $53,000 a year. $53,000. Five, three. Now, I’m not sure how the value of money, what that means to you Thrivers, but I was thinking about $53,000. And then I was thinking about our business school, Thrive. And I was thinking, it’s a dollar. Thrive’s a dollar. It’s a dollar. I mean, if you go to thrive15.com, I mean, what’s a dollar? You’re going too fast, Clay. I got to get, so it says you had $53,000. Yeah, $53,000. And he said, we charge a dollar. And I was thinking to myself, well, if you take $53,000, you minus the one. And I was like, well, actually, it’s actually $20 after the first month. The first month is a dollar. So I thought, well, you do $20 a month for 12 months, in a typical standard year. Right. 12 months. So it’s like $240. So you take $53,000 minus $240. I was just trying to figure out the math there. Is that less, is $53,000 more or less than $240? I just want to get some clarification from a college graduate like yourself. So I was a college graduate. I was a theology major, right? I was a theology major, so there wasn’t a lot of math that I did, but if I was taking true-false tests. Yeah, yeah, which you did in college. And if you’re asking me is $53,000 greater than $240,000? Yeah, just round that upper down. I would assume true. That’s my best guess, true. How much was college at ORU when you went there, by the way? Was it $7 a year? Was it $1,000 a year? $10,000? How much was it when you were going to Oral Roberts University? So I think it was above $100,000. To go there for four years? For four years. Wow. And you know what, Thrivers, that, look this up, I encourage you. You know that most small businesses in america today since nineteen ninety five sixty five percent of all of the jobs were created by small businesses i repeat since nineteen ninety five sixty five percent of all jobs have been created by small businesses and for the doubting thomas out there i thought i was a good go good and google that what i just told you in the forbes sixty five percent of all just jobs been created by small businesses, Forbes. There you’ll find a Forbes magazine article that supports this idea. And did you know that the majority of small businesses were started for less than $50,000? And so you start to go, oh, my gosh, oh, no, oh, no. This, if this trend continues, perhaps, well, then you say, well, you know what? Those are outliers. And so I made a list of people that, I don’t want to be sacrilegious, but you might want to put them on your prayer list, or at least your… Robert, does your mom put stuff on the refrigerator, someone you’re thinking about, someone you need to keep in your prayers, or someone you need to think about? A giant picture of her favorite son, me. So these are people who are struggling to make it, or who struggled to make it because they didn’t have a degree. I’m going to read off the names, and then just add them to the refrigerator, okay, Thrivers? So here we go. These people didn’t have a degree, so they just struggled through life, or they’re still struggling. Abraham Lincoln. I mean, that guy was one tremendous failure. I mean, A.P. Giannini, the guy who started Bank of America? Is Bank of America going to work? Is that idea going to work? I mean, I’ve heard of the startup. Andrew Carnegie, you know, the founder of the steel industry. I don’t know if it’s going to work out. I mean, you know, I don’t know. Maybe Benjamin Franklin. I mean, I don’t know. Did Benjamin Franklin do anything outside of the bifocals and the, you know, helping us secure, you know, kind of that partnership with France that kind of beat the other guys and inventing electricity, something like Bill Gates. Is it going to work out for Bill Gates or is it going to happen? Is he going to make it? I don’t know. Dave Thomas from, you know, Wendy’s. I mean, I don’t know. David Green from Hobby Lobby. Just keep Hobby Lobby. You know, he started Hobby Lobby for six hundred dollars. Did you know that? Which is I think is less than one hundred thousand dollars if you round it up. And Clay, I’m seeing another name on this list that you forgot to mention. Clay Clark. Oh, yeah. Well, he didn’t turn out very well. He just had one radio show. I’m hoping it’s going to work out. I’m stuck on doing stuff like a radio show and running companies. But if I could just go back and get the validation and that college experience that I missed out on, because I really haven’t had a good life. It’s been a struggle. I haven’t met any new people. I haven’t enjoyed life since I’ve missed out on it. And you missed out on the mock foulers. I mean, just think, you could be paying $100,000 to be on a C-League basketball team fouling out. Okay. So today we are talking today, Thrivers, we are talking about helping you. Because whether you graduated or not, you found yourself in a place where you either own a business or you want to. And one thing you’re going to struggle with quickly, if you’re good at selling something, is you’re going to struggle to find good people, unless you have kind of a secret weapon. And Robert, you know what I, you know, Tulsa’s secret weapon is for executive recruiting? Not staffing, but executive recruiting, finding the top people. Do you know who it is? I’m going to take a wild guess. Miss Stacey Purcell. Stacey Purcell, she’s on the show. Stacey, for anyone just tuning in, how are you? Doing great. I’m glad to be here, Clay. Hey, what’s your website? I mean, what’s your website? What’s your phone number? Website is www.thepurcellgroup.com, and that’s with an S. P-U-R-S-E, I’m sorry, it’s a V-T-H-E P-U-R-S-E-L-L group dot com. Our phone number is 918-488-3900. And here we go, Thrivers. This is the next point we’re talking about when it comes to recruiting top people. The value that recruiters and search firms bring to the hiring process. So if I’m a doubter, if I’m listening going, whatever, I don’t believe you Stacy. What value do recruiters and search firms actually bring to the hiring process? Well the first value that we bring to the hiring process is to find the best talent for the position, the most qualified person, not just any person or the best person looking for a position. But then secondly, we save the employer time, money, energy, and effort. Break that down. You said time. How do you save them time? Because it’s what we do all day long on a daily basis while you’re running your business. We’re in the trenches talking to hundreds of candidates a week. We’re interviewing them, qualifying them, and distinguishing top talent from those who are not top talent. How do you save people money? I mean, don’t you get paid to do what you do? How do you save people money? Save them money by them not making a hiring mistake and not hiring the wrong person for the position, but we help them to get the best person for the position. So you’re saying you help people save time, you help them save money. What else do you help them do? Well, they’re able to focus on running their business and not taking time off. Plus, a lot of business owners don’t know how to conduct a search. They don’t know the first step, where to go and find the top talent. That’s what we do for a living. Just like if you had a messed up sink in your house, most people wouldn’t try to fix it themselves. They’d call a plumber or if you needed a heart surgeon to fix your heart, you’re not going to try to do it yourself. You’re going to hire a professional heart surgeon to do it. I try to do it myself. Oh wow, yeah, nice, nice. We’ll see how that works for me. As a theologian, he believes strongly in heaven and he wants to get there quickly. The laying on of hands. So here is the deal. According to a study that was done by Deloitte, a 2016 millennial survey said that 66% of the tattooed, indifferent wanderers through life called Millennials, these people, 66% of these people, they’re looking to go to a different organization by the year 2020, which means that’s different goals. As an example, if you’re a Millennial, your name’s probably Skyler. You’d probably talk to people and say, how are you doing? He’d say, I’m doing fine. You say, so let me ask you, what are your political views? He’d say, well, whatever, you know, whatever, my name’s Skyler. And then if you’re somebody who owns a business, let’s say you’re in your 60s, your name’s probably Ralph. It’s probably a Ralph or a Robert. You’re kind of an old school name. You’re kind of an old soul, my man. I know, but I’m, you’re talking about my people here, the millennials. There’s a lot of Williams out there that own a business trying to hire a Schuyler. You know, that’s my middle name, by the way, Robert William. You know, there’s a lot of young ladies out there named Hamilton right now. Hamilton or Madison, a name that could be either or. It’s kind of a very, it’s just a whole new naming system. Now we name kids Hamilton and Madison and Schuyler. Yeah, there’s all these names like Lily. Lily’s a new name. Old school, though, would be like, you know, Mabel, you know Mabel Now mate, so if you’re listening right now and your name is Mabel and you’re trying to hire Skyler or if your name is William and you’re trying to hire, you know somebody you got even want to hire millennial But you have to because they know coding and you’re going kids today will never use the people people in the future will never use The website and then you realize wait a minute Everyone’s starting to use the Google that Google thing people are on that. Wait a minute. No one will ever use that book face website, that face snapchat thing. No one’s going to use that YouTube. No one’s going to use that stuff. Then you realize, oh no, everyone’s using that stuff. So now you have to hire a millennial. When we come back, Stacey’s going to talk to you a little bit about, a little bit about again, how she and her staffing company, her daughter’s staffing, her executive recruiting company, which is not a staffing company, how they can help you find top talent. Robert, I’m excited. You’re excited. I think we’re all pretty excited Robert you excited I am stoked! Watch out, Thrivetimeshow.com I’m Sam Parker. I’m Karina Parker. We live here in town. We’re looking to be in the food industry. Thrivetime workshops we’ve learned about advertising and what we need to do to get our name out there what we need to do to get to the top of Google, you know, the necessary steps that we need to take right now to get to where we want to be. The Thrive Time Workshop experience is really encouraging and it’s great hands-on information and stuff that we can relate to because we’re able to talk to people here that are going through the same stuff that we are. There’s motivation everywhere. If you don’t feel motivated, then something’s wrong with you. He’s very upbeat. All over the walls. He’s very funny, like a comedian, but at the same time he wants you to learn. And so if you have any questions, he’s willing to help you and talk you through any questions that you have, but at the same time making it fun and encouraging for you. He’s also very candid. He doesn’t hold anything back that most people are like, ooh, maybe I shouldn’t say that because it’s offensive. Yeah, you can tell he’s being real. He doesn’t care about offending people. No, he just wants to help you. So I heard an advertisement that said to leave your wallet at home. And I mean that’s what it’s been the whole time. It hasn’t been like, oh, make sure you stop by our table in the back and buy ten books and sign up for a two-year subscription with us. It was just like, hey, you know, what we do offer, there wasn’t pressure and it’s a month-to-month thing. It’s not like you’re signing your life away. I used to believe we were burning on the edge of something beautiful, something beautiful. Selling a dream, smoking mirrors keep us waiting on a miracle, on a miracle. Stay tuned to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. My name is Clay Clark and I’m telling you what, this is the show where we go deep into things that you can control. Let me explain this to you. Let me explain this idea to you. Robert, I’m going to talk politics for just a minute. This is not a political show, but I’m just going to give you an example. I happen to be a libertarian, which means that I want government to basically get out of my way and let me just do life, right? And you the listener might be a moderate, you might be a liberal, you might be a conservative, you might be a liberal, you might be a conservative, you might have all these different world views, but the thing is, is that I, as a libertarian, I want a flat tax. So I want there just to be a flat tax. You know what I mean? I want it like everything I buy, I want it to cost like 20% except for food and shelter. Work with me. So that way, if I buy a bunch of stuff I wanna buy like a boat or a car or a bunch of neat accoutrements, you know, I have to pay more taxes because I spend more money. And then people who are struggling to afford the ability for food and shelter, they don’t pay much taxes at all. That would be my system. It could be a consumption tax. And if you run the math and you look it all up, it kind of makes sense. But at the end of the day, it probably will never happen. And you know why it won’t ever happen, Robert? Why is that? Because I have years ago I ran for mayor and I did. I did the American dream. I ran for mayor and lost the American dream running for mayor. Losing. Yes. What happened was I had sold a business, had a ton of time freedom, really didn’t need to ever work again. Someone says, hey, you know, Kathy Taylor is going to run unopposed. Mayor Taylor is going to run unopposed. You should go for it. And I’m like, so I called the likely candidates and they said they’re not running, so I go for it. And I met all the politicians. I met, and it was an exception of Randy Brogdon, Tom Coburn, and just a handful of people. I discovered that people on the Republican side of the ticket didn’t give a crap at all about the state of the country. And do you know what their number one goal was, Robert? What’s that? I met all these people. It was amazing. I mean, there’s a few good people out there, but as a general rule, it was kind of like somebody vomited and I found a few kernels of corn. Kind of gross. And so what happened is I discovered that these people, their goal was to get reelected. And so they didn’t care. So as an example, let’s just say that I was elected in a weird twist of events. I was elected to be president. Okay. Okay. In my job, I said, as a president of the United States, I will immediately balance the budget and we will pay off the deficit. Let’s do step one. Do you know what the national debt is per person right now? Robert, roughly? Per person? It’s like $69,000. Okay? So I would say step number one, let’s issue a bill to everyone for $69,000 immediately. And then let’s charge penalties if it’s late. Move number two is we’re going to put all the expenses on the screen. I’m going to do my presidential address. You know the State of the Union? Yeah. I’m going to say, hello America, I’m your new president. This is my whiteboard. And what I’m going to do today is on the left I’ve listed all the expenses. And on the right I’ve put all the income. And what I’m going to do today on national TV is I’m going to go ahead and balance the budget. So am I going to cut schools? Am I going to cut the military? Am I going to cut medical, social security? Who do I even know? It’s going to be an awesome game show. And because I’m good at the hooks, because I have a radio show, you want to stay tuned as we come back. We’re going to find out what’s going to get cut. And then I’ll have a little band playing on my show will be the most entertaining episode of C-SPAN ever. And I’ll say, what’s going to get cut? Who’s going to get cut? So then that’d be my move, right? And then what would happen is to balance the budget, I would eventually have to irritate half of the people. Because if you cut schools, like, oh, you’d hate schools. If you said, I love schools, I’m going to cut military. You hate the military. You have to make somebody mad because the goal of an elected official is to make the majority of people happy. Nothing will ever get done. Why am I talking about this? I’m talking about this because this is why political shows have their place, but in my mind, they’re about as valuable, in my mind, for many, many political shows are about as valuable as watching Jeopardy. You know what I mean? Because you watch Jeopardy, if someone wins, someone loses, wheel of fortune, but at the end of the day, how does that affect your life? You know what I mean? So I encourage you, this is a show we listen to where if you want to learn how to grow a business, which by the way can impact your life, then this is the show for you. Because I know many people who are poor no matter who the president is. President Obama, they’re like, oh man, with Obama, all the laws, I can’t make any money. And then it switches over to Trump. They’re like, with Trump, I can’t make any money with Trump. He’s too chaotic. With Bush, oh my gosh, he keeps changing all the rules. And with Clinton, I couldn’t ever make money with Clinton. No, it’s you. It’s up to you. Nobody cares about your success more than you, right? So Proverbs 10, 4, which I believe is a universal law that supersedes our government law, Proverbs 10, 4 says that God blesses the hand of the diligent and punishes the slackered, aka if you don’t sow seeds, nothing will grow, aka Skylar. Skylar. And so on today’s show, we’re talking about things that you can actually apply. Actionable. This is the whole show is about actionable solutions. So if you’re listening right now and you have ever said, I cannot find good people, I’m struggling to find good people. If that’s you, put your hand up and then put it down because it’s kind of weird, you’re listening to a radio show but if you can’t find good people, put your hand up then put it down immediately because it’s kind of weird. But the thing is, if you struggle to find good people, Stacy, I mean, help the thrivers out there. If when you talk to business owners, if you had to guess, I mean, do the majority of business owners struggle to find good people or is it just weird people that struggle to find good people? I mean, what you know, the majority of businesses struggle to find top talent. I think the majority of businesses struggle to find top talent. I think top talent is becoming more challenging to find. Why is that your mind? If you had to, I mean, this isn’t like a political show, but I just want to ask you, why do you think it’s hard to find? I mean, it has always been hard to find top talent or is this kind of a new thing? What’s going on? Well, the baby boomers are retiring. The millennials are changing jobs. Millennials will change jobs four times in their first 10 years out of college. So if you’re a business owner, you need to constantly be looking for talent because those millennials in your organization are probably not going to be there in a couple of years. One thing I thought about, I thought about this the other day and I thought about doing it and I said, No, Robert, I’m not going to do it. I thought about doing it, but I’m not going to do it. I thought about it, you know, when babies are born, you know, babies are young. Have you ever been around a young baby, Robert? One or two times. I have seen a young baby. I do know about young babies. So yeah, I think I’m following you. So I thought about one day just yelling at a baby, just comes to the baby and saying, young baby, you millennial mindset, you’re you’re depleting America. And I thought, No, wait a minute. You can’t yell at a baby. You should probably yell at the parents who trained the baby to become an indifferent drifter. Right? Just a thought. Just a thought. So, Stacey, if I’m listening right now and I’m struggling to find good people, okay, we were talking about how the value that recruiters and search firms bring to the hiring process is you’re saving people time, you’re saving them money. What other value do you bring to the recruiting and hiring process? Well, besides saving them time and money, we save them effort, energy, and then we help them to make sure they hire the right person for the position, not just the best person that’s looking for a position. A lot of times, what an employer will do when they have an open position, the first thing they’ll do is just go and post a job out on their website. Well, people that are gainfully employed are typically not looking on your website to see what jobs you have available because they have a job. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, you, because you’re like a, you are like a wizard of recruitment. You just said the top people who already have a job are probably not looking for a job. What did you, what do you mean by that? Well the top five or ten percent of people in the marketplace are those that are highly regarded, they have a good job, they’re being compensated well, they’re not looking for a job, so they’re not reading that job ad on your website. So they have to be sought out, they have to be identified, sought out, and recruited away from the organization they’re employed with today. You know, one time, Robert, I got suckered into an Oklahoma City Thunder game. You want to hear the story? Robert, do you want to hear the time I got suckered into an Oklahoma City Thunder game? You got suckered? What do you mean suckered? I got a call, I sold the DJ business, you know, and a person calls me and goes, hey I’ve been thinking about you. I’ve been thinking about you. And I’m going, really, it feels great to be thinking about you. So the first thing I think about is that song. I’ve been thinking about you. And so, but then the next thing I thought about was, okay, why are you inviting me to a Thunder game? This is a person who does HR at a big oil and gas company. You know what I mean? Yeah. What would be going through your mind? Because you know how the recruitment game is, right? What do you think is probably happen? They they probably I’ve been thinking about you want to hang out with you because they know that you’re a huge lover of Kevin Durant RIP and the Oklahoma City Thunder, but Kevin Durant played during that time. Okay, so this is what happened is they They reached out to me because they knew that I had sold the business and they needed somebody who could do ongoing staff training. You know? And they thought, okay, you could probably, because you own a business, and you’ve owned businesses and you’ve trained a lot of people, I bet you’d be great. So I got offered this really sweet deal, and I wasn’t applying for a job. And it sounds to me that’s what you do as an executive recruiter. You’re finding people that already are good at what they do, and you’re trying to convince them that there’s other opportunities out there. Is that right, Stacey? That’s exactly right. You know, the other day I was having lunch with, my firm works a lot in the life science space, so I was having lunch with a doctor the other day and he worked in private practice in a clinical in medicine. And he said that one of the drug companies, one of the pharmaceutical companies invited him to lunch and said, we have a position in our organization. And he said, well, I’m not looking for a job. In fact, he owns his medical practice. And they kept approaching him and having conversations with him and finally recruited him and convinced him to leave his clinical practice and come work for this pharmaceutical company. So you see, that’s how it’s done. So if you’re listening right now and you’re struggling to find top talent, there’s people who spend their entire working hours doing this. Robert, you’ve worked in the field. I mean, what does a day typically look like as an executive recruiter? Talking to a lot of people on the phone, never staying off the phone, and that’s something that Stacey has touched on. But background in recruiting, and Stacey’s kind of getting into it, and I want to get into it a little bit more here before our next segment. What she’s getting into is the value of a passive candidate, someone who’s not actively looking. And that was a real hot selling point when I was in recruiting is we’re able to provide you passive candidates. And I wanted you to break that down, Stacey. What do people mean when they say passive candidate and the value of a passive candidate? Well, the opposite of a passive candidate is an active candidate. So an active candidate is somebody who is actively in the job market. They’re sending out resumes, they’re going to job fairs, they’re spending their time looking for another job. The passive candidate is somebody that is not actively looking for a position. They have a good job now, but they’re curious. They want to see what else is out there. And if somebody offered them a better opportunity than the one that they have now, they would be open to listening about it and they might be open to leaving their job for that better opportunity. Now, Robert, I hate to interrupt you guys. Yeah, we now have a feature where Thrivers can text in to 918-851-6920. 918-851-6920. They can text in from all over the planet. And we have a text that came in the other day, and I want to make sure we get to it here. This is a text from a Thriver who’s in Connecticut. Now, Connecticut, if you’re geographically speaking, that’s not connected to Tulsa. It’s false advertising. Connect to kit, it’s not connected. It’s a separate place, right? So we have Thrivers from Tulsa. We have Thrivers in Boston who are listening now to the Thrivers show. All the way through the last workshop, we had Thrivers from Boston here. Yeah, Derek Benjamin. We’ve got people driving 17 hours to be here. I mean, it’s kind of a fun event there. And Robert, when is our next workshop, our next in-person, two-day, interactive workshop? April 21st and 22nd. I want you, if you’re driving, if you’re at work, to just stop, and even if you can’t commit to it right now, put it in your calendar, April 21st and 22nd, it’s a Friday and Saturday, it will be the best decision you make all year, if you’re a business owner. And if you don’t believe me, read the 100, I think we’re at 136 Google reviews today. And we have one guy that gave us a four star, and he was explaining that the hotel accommodations weren’t that great. And I want to clarify, we have a great, we have an unbelievable experience, it’s like a Disneyland for entrepreneurs. We have flat screens, you know, as you can see everything nice and clear. We have almost like an executive-sized desk you can sit at. You’re not smashed between someone else. We have a coffee bar. I mean, we’ve got the whole setup. It’s really neat. It’s located up next to the river. It’s on the Riverwalk here in Jinx, America. It’s the thrive15.com world headquarters. Go to YouTube, you can check out Thrive 15 world headquarters, you can see our 20,000 square foot facility, or you can go to thrivetimeshow.com to learn more, but we are not in the hotel industry yet. So if you had a bad hotel experience, I apologize to you. But we have a Thriver who texted in this question, and they said, what’s the best way to gather Google reviews? You know, reviews in Google. And when we come back, Robert’s gonna break it down like fractions about why Google reviews matter, how to get those Google reviews, and then we’re going to get back into some staffing talk. I’m excited, Robert. My brain might explode with anticipation. This is this might be I know Dr. Z’s not here. This might be the second best Thrive Time show yet. Oh, beautiful. My name is Sean Lohman and I’m from here in Tulsa, actually Owasso. I own a residential redevelopment company, so I buy properties and then I fix them up and then I sell them for a profit. Well Thrive is very non-industry specific, so when we come here there’s business owners from all different aspects of business. You know, they’re doing all different industries and he’s teaching us how to look at it from that angle because he’s he owns nine businesses. Clay Clark owns nine businesses so he’s he knows what’s in common with all of them. So he’s teaching these big principles things like just the backbone of how a sales conversation should look or specifically what your your marketing campaign needs to look like in order to make it be sustainable. Those are some of the biggest things that I’m going to take away and implement immediately. It’s an intimate environment. There’s less than 30 people here, business owners, so you get a chance to ask questions. And it’s just really informative and inspiring. Oh, this place is cool. There’s a lot going on in here. There’s a lot to look at. There’s a lot of inspiring and motivational things on the walls, and lots of accomplishments, and just a very cool yet productive atmosphere. I’m coming in here yesterday and you know, there’s a sales team in here, it was Friday. So you know, they’re ringing appointment bells and hitting gongs when they’re making sales and it’s just a really motivating environment to be in to see how business is done basically. Clay’s presentation style is really great. This is kind of a no BS, very direct sort of style, but he’ll also get non-specific with what he’s teaching and then he’ll get very specific and he’ll use stories throughout the process to really help it connect to you and make it implementable. Consistently, he’s offered an opportunity to ask questions at the end of each workshop and so that’s really where the learning takes place, is asking those questions and getting those direct answers so that we can take those action items away from that. I don’t see enough questions being asked and sometimes that’s just natural, but if people are missing out on the opportunity to ask questions, they’re missing out on the opportunity to learn. And so if there’s anything that’s going to stop you from learning and growing, it’s you. If you’re here, you’re going to learn and grow as long as you’re motivated to do that. And these other seminars that I’ve went to, I went to six actually in the last year, so of these six, at every single opportunity, you know, at the end, there’s always a back of the room thing. Hey, you can spend a little money here and get this or that or this. And although those things are helpful, that’s not always necessarily the best feeling we want to get. So he wants us all to know, and he’s very clear about the fact that he’s not trying to upsell us anything. His motivations are different. He’s not trying to sell us, he’s trying to help us. He’s trying to mentor us. And he’s very open about it, so I’d say it’s awesome, that aspect of it’s awesome. We need more people who are motivated in this world. We need more people who are willing to become entrepreneurs, who are willing to create jobs. We need more of that. There’s not enough of it. So that’s, to me, the message. That’s the goal, is mentor a million people is this company’s idea. And it’s a beautiful idea, and I’m behind it 100%. So I want to contribute in any way I can as I move forward. This is just awesome. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, we must have been stoned crazy. Oh, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation. Remember this old school jam, I’ve Been Thinking About You, Robert? You remember the song, I’ve Been Thinking About You? This is a little bit before my time. How old are you? 25. Oh, wow, 25. 1991, what up? We have a lot of people who are 40 right now, 45, 50, 55. They’re saying, turn it up. And I said, okay, I’ll turn it up. I’ll do it for you. I’ll do just a little bit. I want to be prudent. I want to be prudent. I want to be prudent, just like George Bush. George Bush was the president when this song was hot. And here’s the deal. Here’s the deal. HW? Yeah. But this is original. Yeah. Ah, now, Thrivers, we’ve been thinking about you during the break. You’re on my mind. Thrivers, we’ve been thinking about you. You know why? Because you can text us, 918-851-6920. So here you go, Thrivers. You can text us, 918-851-6920. And we’ll be right back. So here you go, Thrivers. You can text us 918-851-6920. That’s the number to text when you have a business question, and we’ll answer it for you right here on the air. And so we have a Thriver from Connecticut, which is not connected to Tulsa. It is a separate… This is Boston, okay? This is not a small, remote outpost in western Oklahoma. And the Thriver text us, he says, what is the best way to get Google reviews? So Robert, first let’s talk about step one. What is a Google review and who cares? So whenever you list your business on Google, there is an option to leave a review. To leave a review, you can rate from one to five stars, leave a little comment. The reason why that’s so important is because, this is the 21st century people. We have the internet, thanks to Al Gore, right? People are now looking for your business on Google. They’re typing in. They want to find your product or service. As an example, you might be told, right now, Robert, just to kind of take the test with Robert. Robert’s going through this. Just to give you a visual example. If you Google Tulsa men’s haircuts, as approximately 1,100 people per month do, you shall find one of my businesses top in Google. Am I top in Google, Robert, because I’m a nice man? No, you’re a very mean man. Oh, okay. Am I top in Google because I have five kids? No, I don’t believe that’s it. Am I top in Google because God has a purpose for my life? Is that why I’m top in Google? Despite His wonderful purpose for your life, no. So, why am I top in Google there, and how does this relate to the Google reviews? Because you have the most reviews. How do I? What? And how do I get the most reviews? Well, there’s a number of different techniques. So Google ends up serving the searchers, right? And so whoever has the most Google reviews, they’ll come up for the top of that search term, like you said, Tulsa men’s haircut. The most real reviews. So you can’t get fake reviews, right? So Google, if you’ve signed up a bunch of fake Google accounts and write yourself reviews, busted, you’ll be off the Google map. And so something that you do, Clay, is you, and something actually one of my clients has done, one of my clients has done, is they incentivize their team members to get Google reviews. Because to be quite frank, the only people that are going to leave a review for you usually are those people who had a bad experience. Controls are in control. That’s right. So you gotta be proactive about getting those positive reviews. When someone says, oh my gosh, I had a great experience, or your product is awesome, say, hey, can you just real quickly take out your phone, look up our business on Google My Business, and can you write us a review? And one client did this. It’s a telecommunications contractor in Owasso. In Owasso? He’s a client of ours. He came to a workshop. He was totally floored by the laser show. He saw, which by the way, the next conference is April 21st and 22nd. We will deep dive into the importance of search engine optimization. What’s that? We’ll tell you exactly what it is at the workshop. We’ll tell you how to get Google reviews. We’ll tell you about sales and marketing. April 21st, 22nd, put it in your calendar now. But this guy, so he implemented an incentivization program to incentivize, to reward his staff for getting Google reviews. I kid you not. He kid you not. I kid you not. In less than four weeks, this guy got over 100 Google reviews. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, It was one of these months where it had like, you know, 30 days or a month with 31 days, one of those week months that didn’t even have 30 days. I mean, how many days were in that month? It was a month with 31 days, but I met with him today and today’s the 30th and he had 103. Okay. So no excuses. Okay. Now, Robert, I want to ask you this now. How many reviews did he get again? 103, and he is now the top in Google for the search term Owasso Security Systems and Owasso For any of you thrivers out there, one of the things that Robert has, he has an infinite grasp of how to grow a business, but he has no grasp of the space and time continuum because it’s definitely April and Robert has just drifted into a different time zone. He’s so fixated on that day. He just occasionally gets locked in that rut, but no, but seriously, so these guys, he’s to the top of Google and the thing is you want to incent, you can’t tell someone write a good review, but you can say it would mean the world to me if you would write a review and whoever has the most reviews gets to come up top and you know why that is because Google wants you to use Google. So if we all used Google and everybody who came up top in Google had no reviews, you would quit using it after you’d gone to your 18th bad restaurant. That’s right. So you’ll just start using Bing or Yahoo or Yelp. If every time you Googled a restaurant it was bad you would quit using it So you’d quit trusting it so because now whoever has the most reviews gets to be top. That’s how that works And so mr. Thrive are listening there. How do you do it one you want to incentivize your staff you want to say staff? Every time you gather a sincere Review from a client good or bad. I will pay you X amount of dollars do it or two you can yell a lot That’s a good move. Just yell and scream make empty threats. No, but seriously, you want to incentivize the team, hold them accountable, you can make it happen, it’ll change the game. And one more success story before I hit Stacy up with more recruitment questions. We have a thriver, I’m not gonna mention the name of his company right now because I didn’t have permission to do it, but this guy, he’s a tutor, and he’s gone from school teacher to $17,000 a month of profit over the last nine months as a result of this strategy and others. So this move could be worth not a million dollars to you, but it could be worth, you know, $17,000 a month. And I’m sure for you, Mr. Thriver, Mrs. Thriver, that doesn’t matter because you have so much money, you burn money to heat your home. You’re not sure what to do with the extra money. And so don’t worry about that move. Now move number three, as it relates to recruiting, is the best practices for working with a recruiter for employers and professionals. So again, if you’re struggling to find good talent, Stacey, you are an executive recruiter. Talk to me about the best practices for working with a recruiter for employers and professionals. So for employers, the best practices are to work with one search firm. If you’re working with more than one search firm, they’re stepping all over each other probably. The second thing is to let them do their job. You know, sometimes employers will hire an executive recruiting firm and then they’ll tell them how to do their job. It’s best to let the professional do their job because they know what they’re doing. The third thing is to communicate, be transparent, let them know exactly what’s going on. If you know, don’t say that this is a new position. If you just had to let somebody go, you know, given the true history of the situation. Wait a second. You’re making my brain explode with the vast knowledge. You’ve been doing this for so long. It’s just easy for you. It’s just common sense at this point. So I want to ask you this here. You’re saying, and you’re saying here that if I am looking for a top-level talent, I need to focus on using just one executive recruitment firm? Why do I have to use just one and not seven? Can you kind of explain the logic? Well part of what an executive recruiter is doing is public relations on your company. They’re telling a story about your organization. And if you’re working with multiple recruiting firms, they’re probably not going to all be consistent in the story that they’re telling about your organization. Secondly, they’re likely reaching out to all of the same people and then it sends confusing messages when people get calls from multiple recruiters, they might think that you’re desperate or that there’s something wrong with your position if you have to have multiple recruiters calling the same candidates about it. Here we go Thrive Nation. We come back, everything you’ve ever wanted to know about executive recruiting. Stay tuned. My name is Tyler Schultz with Witness Security from here in Tulsa. Well, I actually started listening to Thrive on the radio, 1170, and then I got my dad into listening to the show. And then it actually turned into Clay gave us a call and we started actually working with Clay on a weekly basis. He’s helped us drastically when it comes to the sales and the employee side of things. It’s going to help our business drastically. Very intuitive, just pulling you in to break down each part of your business. employee process. If an employee’s not working out, let them go. It’s a drastic experience. You just have to come and check it out. I mean there’s so many things that they can help you with. Clay’s a funny guy. He just wants to get into each and every person’s business and help you out. I know I’ve asked a couple of questions and he’s broken down that question and answered it in several different ways. There are so many different things. The SEO, first and foremost, he will help you get the more business coming in. And then once that is coming in, then he helps you with the employee process of, do I need to hire more people? Do I need, what do I need to put in place? And he gets you there. You hear of all the other different type conferences, and I myself have never been to one, but the walking on coals and all that stuff, that just seems like a bunch of hype that isn’t really needed. And I know of several people that have gone to those type conferences, and yet they haven’t, because there’s no actionable deals, you really don’t have any moving forward steps. It’s just hype and it’s not needed. Well, just the cost in and of itself versus $6,000 for one conference and no actionable steps versus $1,500 and there is actionable steps. You can’t beat it. ♪ Down for you ♪ It’s a great day. One, two, two and then three. Guess what? On the microphone, it is me. He is I and I is him. The man with the flat bill, Brim. My name is Clay Clark, former USSBA Entrepreneur of the Year, sent here on a mission to get you in a great financial position. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re here. USSBA Entrepreneur of the Year sent here on a mission to get you in a great financial position. I know many of you have struggled year after year and what you’re doing is you’re starting to say things like, well, maybe it’s the economy, maybe I don’t have what it takes, maybe it’s luck. I’m sensing that somebody here, I feel that somebody listening right now, you’ve had people tell you it’s probably not gonna work out. Maybe this will build your faith because I believe in you I know you have what it takes but you know Walt Disney lost it all at the age of 36 again He ran out of money again at the age of 36, you know Ray Kroc the guy who’s known the movie founder just came out that shows you his Rise to prominence as the guy who took the McDonald’s restaurants and took it into a national franchise called McDonald’s This man didn’t have any success in those 50s. You know, Colonel Sanders had no success until he looked like Colonel Sanders. That’s why the, that’s why the, you know, the, the drawing of Colonel Sanders for KFC, he doesn’t look like a young whippersnapper. He looks like Colonel Sanders because that’s when he started the business and had success. He looked like Colonel Sanders. And then 70s. Yeah. So I’m just telling you, many of you listening out there need to know that Google didn’t produce a dime of profit for over four years. I mean, many of you don’t even realize that Facebook took three years of struggling to make it. A lot of you don’t know that Airbnb was always a week away from going out of existence. These guys at Airbnb, they had no money, so they actually took cereal, this is crazy, they went to the store and they bought boxes of cereal, and they took those boxes of cereal, they pulled the cereal out of the box, they kept it in the plastic bag it was in, and then they made, because they had a kind of a graphic design background. They made their own cereal called Obama O’s and they took the cereal from other cereal boxes and they stuffed it inside a their own box called Obama O’s and they started selling them on the street in San Francisco, which is a largely liberal city and they sold out and that’s what they made payroll every week was by selling Obama O’s cereal. Where can you read that? You can go on Pando daily and watch the interview with the founder. If you just Google Airbnb Pando Daily, you can watch the interview where he explains that. Did they also have Captain McCain? They had Captain McCain’s, yeah, they had. I mean, that’s what they did. They had Captain McCain’s, they had Obama O’s. And I’m just telling you, and then they ran out of even more money, so they started renting out their own apartment and sleeping in a closet. So I’m saying, I don’t care where you’re at right now, you qualify for success. You know, if you’re in a garage, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, a lot of people started somewhere. You know, Steve Jobs started in a garage, right? The garage mahal. Hewlett Packard started in a garage. Henry Ford started in a garage. Oh, I don’t have an office. Well, you know, you can start in a garage, okay? Now, if you are in business and you’re struggling to find good people, then you can say, well, I just can’t find good people. And that can be your story forever. Or you can decide, you know what? This is my day to make it. This is when I decide to thrive. This is my year and I’m gonna make it happen. And so some of you are going to take the step today and reach out to an executive recruiter who’s going to help you find the top talent that has you stuck. That is what has you stuck. You need to take the next step and reach out to Stacey Purcell, an executive recruiting guru. And I asked you before the break a little bit, but once you find a talent that you like and you feel like they’re the top talent for the position, do you do any background checks or do you just say, well, it looks good, you’re hired. I mean, what do you do to make sure that people are vetted? Well, keep in mind that the people that I am looking for are people that are gainfully employed. So we have to be really careful not to jeopardize our current situation because these are people that are not unemployed. And you know, people that are unemployed may not care if you’re contacting their former employers, but people that are employed, they don’t want to jeopardize that. So we have to be really careful. So what we do is we validate by people that have worked with the individual. So when we’re recruiting on a position in a niche industry, we will ask people in the industry, who do you know in the industry that’s the very best person doing A, B, and C? And we’ll have hundreds of conversations with people, and you’ll hear that same person’s name mentioned over and over and over again. So anyway, we go through the interview process and the person is selected. We outsource our background checks to a company called HireRight and then sometimes our clients prefer to do their own background checks. But like I said, we’re looking for that top 5 to 10% in the marketplace and those are people that already have jobs, so we don’t want to jeopardize that. Now, Thrivers, many of us are not doing background checks. Why are we not doing background checks? I’ll tell you why. Because we have never hired a lot of people before. If you’re struggling to find a tip-top talent, the very best of the best, you need to reach out to an executive recruiter like Stacey. Move number four, step number four, question number four, point number four, someone should write this down. How working with a recruiter gives you an edge in your job search and in hiring talent? How does working with a recruiter give you, give the listener, an edge in their job search and in hiring talent? Well, confidentiality. So when you are somebody that is gainfully employed and you don’t want to jeopardize your current situation, you would work through an executive, search consultant, or recruiter because they can confidentially help you find a new position under the radar versus you posting your ad all over the internet and blasting it out to a large number of employers. You don’t do that if you’re employed. And from the employer’s standpoint, you know, we have a lot of times employers are wanting to hire somebody on a confidential basis. We had a client that wanted to build an entire sales organization from the ground floor, and they did not want their competition to know what they were doing because they did not want their competition to know that they were entering a new segment of the marketplace. So they hired our firm to confidentially reach out to salespeople that had the experience they were looking for and recruit them for our client’s organization. All these interviews were done behind the scenes and it was not announced that the company was hiring or had hired this sales force. I’d say confidentiality is the number one reason on both the employer and the candidate side. Now, if you’re listening right now, Robert, and they’re saying, I want to take the next step. I want to get started. I want to start that business that I’ve been thinking about I’ve been dreaming about I want to be I’m a startup You know I’m not an existing business. I’m thinking about starting Maybe you have a business, and you want to grow it. Can you explain first off? Where are the thrive 15 workshops? Located where are the thrive time workshops you got to explain the dojo of mojo? Yeah, so you can look up our building first of all There’s some people out there that we like to call charlatans. Ooh, charlatans. People who put on a good smoke screen, right, but there’s no really substance behind what they say or where they are. Tai Lopez, aka, try looking up his address. Do you remember Tai Lopez’s address? Yeah, he actually has an address that his business is located. If you follow it, it’s listed on his site. If you follow it, you go to Google Maps, it’s like an abandoned warehouse in the UK. Tai Lopez is 67 steps to scamming, is what I would call it. But check it out. So go to Google, type in Thrive 15 Jinx, Thrive 15 Jinx or Thrive 15 Conference, and there you’ll see our address. So we’re here in Jinx, our 20,000 square foot facility. And the great thing about these conferences, like you’re talking about, Clay, is when you’re starting a business, a lot of times when you’re starting up, you don’t know where to start. When you’re starting up, you don’t know where to start. I mean, there’s systems and processes, there’s sales, there’s marketing, branding, logos, priority management, print pieces, human resources, hiring people, pricing. And it’s like, where do I begin? Websites. And how do I do this stuff? How do I do it? I’ve got a great idea. I’m able to solve a need that people are wanting to pay me for to solve for them But but how do I do all this other stuff? Well, the great thing about these two day 15 hour workshops It’s a Friday and Saturday April 21st and 22nd is We’ll show you what to do and it’s a linear system. There’s got to be an upsell in the back of the room No, no upsells. I read on the website. It’s $500 for free, but it would be coffee We won’t even charge you for the coffee. It’s $500 and I know I can bring three or four people with me if I want to, but what if I can’t afford it? What if I can’t afford the $500? What then do you have for me, Wise Wizard? Thanks to some wealthy investors, we actually do have some scholarships available. So you say, hey, I really want to come, but I’m a startup. I don’t have a lot of cash right now. Give us a call. Go to thrive15.com, fill out a form, and we can tell you a little bit more about our scholarships options I will never somebody who has a successful company like Stacy over here with the Purcell group You know, I’m Stacy. Can you just kind of ask you this question? I don’t want to put you on the spot, but you obviously have a very successful company now You’re kind of known as the leader and executive recruitment now Was it a little stressful when you started the business like day one? Was it a little crazy a little stressful or did you just start off with a bang? Immediately because you’re obviously known as kind of a legend now of executive recruiting. Was it a little bit tough? I mean yes yes and no. I mean I had been doing executive search and recruiting for seven and a half years before I started my own firm. So when I did start I did have some knowledge but I hadn’t been a business owner so that was the unknown for me. That was the intimidating part is that I had worked for somebody else doing executive search and recruiting but you know when you own your own company there’s a lot of things that you deal with that you don’t deal with when you’re working for somebody else. So that was the scary part. You know, for me, the hardest thing to learn was not selling, not branding, not marketing. Dr. Z taught me so many things. My hardest thing was the emotional aspects of managing a team. I mean, the elephant in the room the other day, we had a team meeting where all the employees showed up and I’m going, if they wanted to, there’s like 80 of these people and there’s one of me. Even if I was a skilled ninja, it would be tough to take out all 80 of them. They could gang up on you. Managing a team, leading a team, holding the team accountable, training a team, staffing for the team, finding top talent. Stacy, if someone is struggling to find top talent, what’s your website and what is your phone number? Our website is www.thepursellgroup.com. That’s T-H-E-P-U-R-S-E-L-L-G-R-O-U-P dot com. Our phone number is 918-488-3900. Now, if you are looking for a one-on-one business coach, you’re looking for an in-person workshop, you’re looking for the podcast, you’re looking for the world’s best business school, check out thethelifetimeshow.com. And as always, 3-2-1, boom! This is my wife Jensen Watts. She has a photography business that we’re trying to get up and growing. So I listen to talk radio. I drive a lot for work and got tired of listening to radio all the time and I can’t plug my phone into my truck. It’s too old. And so, you know, one day the Thrive show was just in place of the talk show I normally listen to, and it was definitely more entertaining than most radio shows. So that’s, you know, it took about a week or two before I actually looked more into it. I think it’s wonderful. It’s been great. It’s a great environment. I love the feel in here, and I really love how entertaining I feel I can be as well. I am so grateful to be here and I’ve loved just learning everything. I’m learning a lot about branding and how to market my business because that’s kind of where I’ve had a hard time is I can take pictures, I’m good at it, I have my prices and everything but it’s hard to get the clientele so learning about the marketing has really helped me and I can’t wait to implement it into my own business after this because it’s been so great we’re so grateful to be here. I think I can go home and like I have it written out the steps that I need to take in and everything it’s very practical. Yeah a big thing that’s helped me you know even without business stuff is just you know a mental attitude aspect that I can apply to my current job and current life. I love it. I am laughing a lot of the time, and it’s so entertaining. And I just love being here. It’s awesome. I really like the smaller class group. So it is more of an interaction. Even if it isn’t a constant, raise my hand, here’s the question, here’s the answer. It’s just that kind of feel, just a smaller, small part. They haven’t tried to upsell us anything. It has all just been very knowledgeable, and they are just teaching you how to grow your business. Buddy’s been very giving with his time, his knowledge, his balance. At work, when I was telling people about this, they’re like, I hope you’re not joining some get-rich-games. Even if it is, he’s not going to charge me for it. So I’d recommend it. I mean, I would even love to come again. Thrive Nation, welcome back to the Conversations Business School without the BS. And yes, my name is Clay Clark. I’m a former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year. And many people say, what does that stand for? SBA, SBA, SBA? No, it stands for Small Business Administration. So if you’ve ever applied for a loan, typically they’re gonna say, well, let’s see if you qualify for an SBA loan, a Small Business Administration loan. And so what happens is the bank is more likely to lend money if the loan is a Small Business Administration compliant loan because the government guarantees the majority of the loan. So should you not be able to pay back the loan, the government will take care of it. Now the thing is, the bank doesn’t wanna have too many bad loans because if they do, then you’re not gonna be able to write any loans. So they don’t wanna just lend to anybody, but it diminishes the risk factor quite a bit. And so the Small Business Administration is the organization responsible for the majority of the small business loans. And since 1995, 65% of all the small businesses have been created by small, or all the jobs have been created by small businesses. Again, since 1995, 65% of all of the jobs have been created by small businesses. And Robert, did you know there’s one city in the world right now that has been named a couple times by Forbes just recently as being the number one city in the world to start a small business. And do you want to speculate? Do you want to guess what city that may be? Yes. Shanghai, China. No. Not only is that you’re not in the United States, that’s a good guess. It was in the world. So that fall into that core tie. You want to take a second guess? It’s not. You want to kind of stick with America, OK? Because we’re, you know, we have a very American bias here. Not Shanghai, China. What’s another guess? Take a swing. Portland, Oregon. Not Portland, Oregon. I’ll tell you what, by the way, if you’re on the left coast or the right coast, a place where there’s been a lot of government rules that have been passed, your economy’s not doing so well. Just throwing that out there. But in the middle of the country, as a general rule, that’s where the cost of living is less, that’s where there’s less regulation. That’s why people always move from the coasts into the middle of the country because you can’t afford to live there because it takes you a year and a half to get a Permit my uncle took him a year and a half to get a permit to build a house in San Diego true story Ridiculous and Tulsa you get that permit in a couple weeks or a month Anyway, the point is Tulsa is the number one city according to Forbes to start a small business It’s happened numerous times look that up Forbes Tulsa number one city in the world to start a business And so we’re talking today about small business and business issues. And I’m telling you what, there’s never been a greater time in American history to start a business than right now. And the first struggle you’re gonna have is, how do I sell things? And at our in-person two-day workshop, we focus at least a third of the program on how to sell, marketing, branding. I mean, but in my mind, sales, marketing, and branding is really easy. It’s more of an emotional issue. If you just implement the system, it works. But then the second part, in my mind, this is harder than sales and marketing. Now you’re selling so well, you’ve got to staff people to actually do the job. You’ve got to find people who can actually fulfill what you just sold. And then a lot of people just throw up their hands and go, I can’t find good people. You can’t find anybody. It’s impossible. Robert, if you’re going to a client and tell you, it’s just impossible to find good people. You don’t know if I haven’t had a client tell me that. You know Dr. Robert Zellner, he’s actually an optometrist, which he jokes around and says he’s kind of a faux doctor, you know, because he doesn’t actually see patients anymore. But it’s hard for a lot of people to find good optometrists, but he doesn’t. And you know why? Because he has a proven system. And I’ll tell you somebody who has a proven system to recruit great people. It is Stacey Purcell. And you want to say, well, who’s Stacey Purcell? Who is this executive recruiting wizard? Who is this wizard woman? Who is she? Find her. I need her help. I’m looking for somebody like this who can find good people. Give me her number. Just, where is she? And I’m going to tell you, you’re lucky if you’re just sitting in, because she is inside the box that rocks. It’s like Santa is here. As a kid, you’re always trying to find Santa. Mrs. Claus, she’s here. Stacey Purcell, how are you doing, my friend? Well, I’m doing great, Clay, and I am kind of like Santa because I deliver the best talent and I deliver the best jobs. Now, so if somebody is listening right now and they’re saying, okay, what are the best practices for working with a recruiter for employees, for employers and professionals? What would you say? Well, for the employers, like we talked about a little bit before, work with one firm, let them do their job, communicate, be transparent, keep them in the loop. For professionals, it would be, be honest about your qualifications. Don’t misstate your qualifications when talking to an executive recruiter or lie or inflate your resume. Be upfront about your motivation for wanting to look at other opportunities. Communicate, be transparent. I have a really funny story for you. I’m sure what I did was illegal, but I think it’s a funny story. We had a person who worked in our building for three years. You haven’t met this person, Robert, so don’t guess. Don’t even look him in the eyes and guess. But he worked here for three years, and one day I noticed there was kind of, I walked by the computer and he minimized his screen. You ever seen that happen where someone minimizes their screen when you walk by and you’re kind of going, what were they looking at? Sam just did it just now. Oh, come on. So what I did, and our executive producer is a great guy. But seriously, you need to quit minimizing your screen, Robert. But the thing is, is that what we did is I put a thing called a keystroke recorder on the computer, because I’m that kind of guy. So I had teamed up with a spy in my office to do it. Well, when you capture someone’s keystrokes, when you record their history, basically you can see what they’re doing. And this guy, what he was doing during the day was trying to download things he shouldn’t be downloading. He was sending emails he shouldn’t be sending. And so I had the conversation like, hey, I know what’s going on. You need to go ahead and get it together. This is like the first, second, and third strike. This is the final time. So he began to look for a job. And he didn’t find a job. And so he just became a bad performer. Didn’t show up, showed up late, kept claiming he was going to jury duty court, had things going on. He was jury duty, undescribable illnesses, personal days, just doing an awful job costing me at least on average $1,700 a week of non productivity. So I decided I’m gonna let the guy go. Let him go. Told him, Hey, I’m gonna let you go. After we let the guy go, he did some crazy stuff, right? So the other day I get a call from Dallas and Dallas has called me. There’s an executive recruiter calling me saying, Hey, we’ve interviewed this candidate and they’ve stated this and that and basically they’re God’s gift to employment. They’ve got this unbelievable resume and they put you down as a reference because they said you loved them and you promoted them to top leadership and they were the head of this and the head of that. Do you want to guess, Robert, what I said? I’m going to assume that you said something slightly negative. Stacy, what can I say? What can I say when asked these questions? What am I allowed to say? What can you say on the radio? Yeah, well, I’ll say what I want to say on the radio, but what am I allowed to say? Do you know? Well, you know, my background is actually not in HR. It’s in executive search and recruiting, but I know a lot of times as an executive recruiter, and I do call and do reference checks in some companies, all they’re allowed to say is just the dates of employment, and they won’t say anything else, but, you know, when you are giving a reference, it’s important to be, you know, truthful and to be honest, of course. And I asked this person, this is what I said, these are the words I said, I’m paraphrasing a little bit because I can’t remember exactly, but I basically said, so do you want to take the company to the bottom, the one that you’re hiring for? Do you want them to go down to the bottom like a submarine? I mean, do you want them to just bottom out and just crash and burn and have a horrible gossip-filled office with just terrible non-productivity? Is that what you’re looking for? And they go, no, we’re looking for a guy who does coding and PHP. And I said, oh, because if you’re looking for someone to take your company to the bottom, you should hire that person. They are the worst. And I am passionate about you hiring the worst. And I’m being serious. And what happens is, is that I was transparent about it, right, and this person inflated their resume. But when executive recruiters like yourself, you check resumes. I mean, you do your research, you do your diligence. When we get your due diligence, when we come back, I want to pick your brain just a little bit about the level of detail and due diligence, kind of the background checks, some of the things that you do, because you have a record, you have a history of finding really, really top talent, and the top talent has been known to stick around. Like, these people will actually find the job, and then they stick around. I mean, they make a big impact on the companies, and so you have to have been doing some intense levels of background checking and references and that whole thing. So I’m excited. Robert, I’m excited, and you’re excited to know more about this. Are we not excited? I am elated. I’m jumping. I’m literally jumping. Calm down. Calm down, Rob. Stay tuned. Thriveshimeshow.com on your radio. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma. We have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. What we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now. I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex, they’re both $1.3 billion dollar companies. They both have 2,000 to 3,000 pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually nonexistent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has, by being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on what they’re listing or ranking there with Google. And also we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, asking our customers for reviews. And now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pest and Lawn company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. Okay. So 411% we’re up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now, our closing rate is about 85%, and that’s largely due to, first of all, our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process. And that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah, so here’s a big one for you. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. We actually booked more deals, more new customers last year than we did the first five months, or I’m sorry, we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year from before we worked with Thrive. So again, we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. It’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success is by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews. That way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists. Everything gets done and it gets done right. It creates accountability. We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly, both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned that has really, really contributed to our success. But that, like I said, the diligence and consistency in doing those in that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives. And also, you know, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten the success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business. We were in a rut. We didn’t know- Okay. The last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah. We didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. Thrive helped us with that. They implemented those systems, they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year, but we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut, and if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it, do the action, and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s gonna take in order to really succeed. So we just want to give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore. I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month. And overall, our average is running about 40 to 42% increase month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing the use of services, you’re choosing to use a proven turnkey marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you are looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983, and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark 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 in seven years and then franchise. Clay has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with like 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 is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with like Lee Crocker, 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. 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 I’ve seen guys from startups go from startup to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. Like one of his businesses has like 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 as 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 him. He’s like 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 you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. My most impressive thing 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. When we walked out I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. 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, you know, 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. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9 and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys, I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys. We appreciate you and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. Right? This is where we used to live a few years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing. And this is our old team and by team I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from four to fourteen and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman, so we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts, and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grew to 13 grams for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month, and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, times a thousand. The Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops because we teach you what you need to know to grow. You can learn the proven 13-point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. 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. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you 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 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, 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-coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner 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 drives the same business. And I encourage you to do that. I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner 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 drives the same business. And I encourage you to do that. I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner 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 systems 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’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money, so if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person two-day interactive business workshop, all you gotta do is go to thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. affordable for you. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for