Entrepreneur | Don’t Get Stuck- How To Avoid Being Forgotten – 3 Principles to Stand out & Get Promoted

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrive Time Show! Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re on the top. Teaching you the systems too, kid. What we got coming, Dixon’s on the hooks. I’ve written the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As the father of five, that’s what I’m about. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s C and Z up on your radio. And now 3, 2, 1, here we go. We started from the bottom, now we hit it. Started from the bottom, and that’s what we gotta do. Hey, how you doing? Hey, how you doing? We’re talking about not being forgotten, but you, I don’t know, you just completely slipped my mind. Have you been sitting here for a while? Yeah, if you actually will take fish oil, research has shown that it could help improve your memory. Okay, I might have to do that. This is strange, but we’re talking about not getting stuck, you know? Yeah. And not being forgotten. True. And so, I don’t know, should you be the one teaching this? You’re like, you’re so pale, your pale skin sometimes blends in. Do people forget you or do you stand out or how do you do that? I actually have a pair of camo shorts that I wear when I travel. You’ve seen them? Yeah, I’ve seen them. They’re kind of a digital. Yeah. And one shorts, you can get them at Walmart for like six bucks. Okay. I wear like four of those pairs. And I wear those and sometimes I can just disappear in that because of the camel look. But that’s a tip for you. Now one thing that’s interesting is that you cannot disappear when you’re in your Hummer. Oh, that’s true. Why does that stand out so much? Well, Kim Jong-un is on it. Kim Jong-un, let’s just not pass over that. You have a massive, three massive pictures of Kim Jong-un on your Hummer. Yeah, and it says, actually I think it was four. Oh, four. But it says, see why Kim Jong-un hates thrive15.com and it is a it is a just a really a magnet of the energy. People love it or hate it. There’s a picture of an eagle you know a bald eagle with money in his talons. Yeah. It’s pretty epic. It’s a game-changer. It’s not something you can forget. That’s true. So that’s what we’re talking about today though. We’re talking about don’t get stuck how to avoid being forgotten. And what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to be spending a ton of time in the real life MBA book that Jack Welch wrote. Yeah. Jack Welch, he’s the CEO, former CEO of GE. Absolutely. They had some big successes there while he was running it. He took the growth of, if you guys get a chance to Google this and look this up, it blows your mind, but the rate of growth at GE during his tenure, the company was growing at pretty much, you know, annual 3% growth rate. And he took that and took the company and not only grew it but he like doubled it and doubled it and doubled it. I think he grew the size of the value of the company over four times five times larger than it was. Just it’s profound how successful he was as the CEO of GE. So here’s the big problem though. A lot of people today feel stuck in their careers okay and they feel undervalued they feel like they can’t advance. Yeah, actually I found a statistic that that actually said this is from the American Psychological Association so more than 50% of employees say they aren’t paid adequately and 41% of employees feel stuck in their organization So a huge number of people feel like they can’t even advance and even larger number feel like hey I’m not making enough money. And this is something that we’re touching on, okay? We’re going to talk about how not to get stuck and how to move beyond this. But in your mind, you’ve traveled a lot. You do workshops for huge companies, you worked with UPS and Farmers Insurance. Is this something that’s actually that common, people feeling stuck? Yeah, well, I’ve worked with people on the leadership side and then the people who are on the employee side. And on the employee side, you see people saying, well, I’m stuck, I’m not paid enough, I’m not getting promoted. And you see the leadership side saying I can’t get a single person to step up and take leadership And then you talk to the employee they say well I would step up and be a leader if you paid me more right so you deal with that thing what I can say is We’re gonna approach it today from the employee side from the team member side and trying to help you Specifically learn the action items that you can learn to move up from where you are right now to where you want to be quickly. All right, let’s dive on in here, OK? Like scuba divers, just kind of diving on in. What we’re talking about are three principles, OK? The first one is understand why your career is stuck. That’s the first one. Second, determine your grade, OK? And the third here is four steps of action to gain career traction, OK? So the first one, as we dive in, first principle is understand why your career is stuck. And I have a little notable quotable, like I said, from our main man, Jack Welch. Chicken, chicken, Jack Welch. This is what Jack says. Generally speaking, careers only stall for a few reasons. First, careers can stall when your company does not have a position for you to grow into. There’s a blocker above you, usually your boss, who’s doing a fine job and has no plans to retire, change industries, or to move to Toledo. In this assessment, you also need to consider your standing within the company. If a promotion becomes available are you likely to get it? Have you been getting A plus performance reviews or only in the B range? So what’s he talking about here as far as advancing in your career, having a blocker, you know a boss in the way and and having a grade for your performance whether it’s B or A level? We’re gonna say here one is no business growth. That’s problem area number one. OK, that’s the first problem is there’s no business growth. Two is you have a blocker. OK. And three is that you are bad at your job. So if you look at this first area, no business growth. If you work at a company that’s not growing or is not profitable, there’s no way to promote you. OK, so that’s the first thing you assess. So I would say, no matter who you are and what level of the business you work at, I would say that you need to do whatever you can do to help your company increase their sales. Okay. And I will tell you this, I’ve met people who started at the bottom of a company, they have moved all the way up to the top, and they’ll all tell you everyone is in sales. If you’re in customer service, find a way to increase the company’s bottom line. Figure out a way to cut costs or to bring in more money. If you’re in accounting, find a way to cut costs of bringing more money. If you’re in sales, find a way to cut costs of bringing more money. If you’re in production, find a way to cut costs of bringing more money. If you’re in management, find a way to cut costs of bringing more money. At the end of the day, focus… Can I say one thing to you right here? Jack Welch actually started to where he was at GE making $10,500 a year. That was his salary, okay? And he was working as a chemical engineer. And he eventually moved up, became the youngest CEO that GE ever had. I mean this is the man preaching it right here. Yeah I mean this is huge. I just want you to get, I just encourage you to do your research after this because it’s unbelievable how big he grew this company. Now the thing is is that then you have the blocker. The blocker is where you have somebody who’s in the job who is awesome. So let’s say you’re on a baseball team. This would be like the guy, you’re on a team and you’re really, really good at playing left field, and you can just hit the ball, and you are really good. But guess what? Guess who’s starting ahead of you? Barry Bonds. Let’s say that you’re in the basketball team, and you are a really, really good player, but you just happen to be on the team and on the bench behind LeBron James. That’s tough. Well, you’re not. I mean, good luck trying to get LeBron’s job. So what you’d want to do if you’re on LeBron’s team is you’d want to figure out how can I facilitate him maybe switch to a different position. And so, sorry to give you sports knowledge if you’re not into sports, so let me give you another example. That’s like if you work at a job though and your manager is just the best the company’s ever had. You either have to decide am I going to switch positions to get good at a different position to move up? Or am I gonna have to just stay here? So I’m just trying to give you the reality. I’m not trying to give you the unicorns and the… I’m not trying to give you a false… You’re our broda here. I’m not giving you false hope here. And the other one is, if you had an opportunity, let’s say you didn’t have LeBron James ahead of you, let’s say you didn’t have Barry Bonds ahead of you, let’s say you didn’t have an awesome manager ahead of you, let’s say that there’s a guy who’s ahead of you who’s not as good as you. Yeah. Or not very good. The question is, what is your letter grade in the company? If your boss, honestly, if you would ask yourself right now, if my boss were to give me a review, would he say that I’m an A player? Do I get to work early? Do I stay late? Do I get the job done? Am I a B player doing just enough? Or am I somebody who needs to be fired. And I’ll be honest with you, very few people are A players. They can be A. Everyone can be an A player. You can be an A player. I know I’ve worked at many jobs when I was first starting out where I was a hardcore B or C. You can’t promote a B player. You can’t promote a guy who doesn’t get there early and stay late to be the manager. You can’t promote a lady who doesn’t get her own job done to the next level. So figure out why you’re stuck first. Just take the moment right now, take a second, figure out is there no business growth, is there a blocker, or am I bad at my job? Why am I stuck? So as far as the evaluation for if you’re bad at your job or good at your job, haven’t you seen though as you’re working with these companies that most people feel like they are doing a good job? How do we figure out where we truly stand in our boss’s eyes? That’s the power of Thrive. Okay. You’re at a seminar and you ask somebody, how many people in the room right now would honestly say that on a scale of A to C, that you are an A player. Every hand goes up, I’m an A player! Woo! Yeah! You know, then you go talk to the bosses. How many of you guys would recommend that everyone in this room is an A player? Bosses are, ah! You know? Well, then you go back, you get away from the seminar. You get away from the crowds, you get into the real talk. You get into the brain. You like start talking to the boss? Well you start, you put a mind probe on the boss. You reach over and you say, boss, boss, and you can hear his thoughts. And you say, is this person an A player? What is the boss saying to you? And I go, wow, you think that? Yep. Now we’re having real talk. Now if I go to the employees and I go, wait a minute, I’m a mind reader. I want you to rate your own performance. I’m going to read your thoughts, how you feel honestly that you are at your job, and I oh gosh Then what happens is I begin to realize that you just said that well secretly I’m horrible at my job Oh wow, so what we want to do is we want to be real, okay? We got to get past the BS. Let’s come on to the realness. Yes, it’s a BS is a it’s a it’s a it’s a bachelor’s of science Don’t I understand that was almost a miscommunication thing you were trying to read my mind. You’re in my mind wrong. I apologize I apologize. We all did I think we all read it wrong everybody, but here’s the deal. Here’s the deal I want to know you said that is the action item to do this evaluation of yourself and your Position in your company’s that kind of that that and to ask yourself the action item. What is it? What do you go to your boss? Okay right now? This is the action item yes go to your boss and say boss and by the way I have about one person every year who does this. Oh, wow. Ever. Wow. Go to the boss and say, and at Thrive, it’s a little different of a culture because we have recruited all these A players on purpose. But at different companies I’ve run over the years or consulted with, I mean, you see like one person a year that will do this. Right. And they’ll come to you, just go up to your boss and say, boss, in what areas of my job can I improve the most. Well that’s like the boss is like, hmm, well, your lateness is a problem, your lack of preparation is an issue, your, and they feel liberty to now tell you. So you’re saying the action item is we go to our boss and ask, where can I improve? Yeah, and I’ll tell you that’s what Jack Welch did during his career. He was famous for doing that to his higher ups. Then ask him, hey, what am I doing the best? Yeah. And then ask him, to get promoted, what do you think I need to do? No one asked those questions. Right. We’re just playing the guessing game. I love it. That’s huge. The second principle here, this is the second principle. It kind of plays right into what we’re talking about. Principle number two is determine your grade. OK, determine your grade. This is huge. This gets its own principle. This is another notable quotable here from Jack Welch. And by the way, the statistics on this guy, he actually grew GE from $12 billion dollars. Let’s do it. $12 billion dollars. Billion. To $280 billion dollars. If he would have grown to $290 billion, I’d be impressed. Wow. I mean, you’re $280 billion, you’re like, I mean, LeBron, I mean, LeBron, how many championships has LeBron won as of 2015? Two? Yeah, I think so. Win 20, and I’ll tell you. 20? Yeah, win 20, win 24, and then I’ll be wowed. That’s beautiful. Thank you. I’m so glad. We really do care about your opinion. So thank you for sharing that. I’ll have a runaway championship every year until he’s 64. The notable quotable here, the notable quotable is, this is what he says, okay, this is what he says. Some information is hard to swallow at first. And yes, bad news often hurts. But soon enough, like all knowledge, it’s power. In fact, it’s liberating. When you know where you stand, you can control your own destiny. And what’s more fair than that? So this plays in perfectly. You already touched on this a little bit. But he’s saying why this is so important. And maybe it’s like a band-aid. Maybe it hurts at first. You rip it off. But now you can identify where you’re at and move on. Is that what he’s saying here with this quote? This is the best way to distill this knowledge. All I can say, just to pile on, is you’ve got to know where you stand. And I’m being honest with you. Don’t get into this deal where you say, well, my boss never tells me where I stand. I see a lot of people go, well, my boss just never tells me where I stand. I would actually be improved, but he never tells me where I stand. Well, one, you need to quit talking in that weird voice. Yeah, that’s the first action I do, probably. The second thing is, you just got to understand that you can’t wait for your boss to tell you. You have to be the change you want to see. Go get it. Yeah, that’s huge. Have you, I guess, if we were to do a little story time here, and you were to think back on an employee you had, or maybe it was somebody you worked with, where you saw, like this person was definitely not an A player, maybe not a C player, maybe it was a solid B player. Oh yeah. And you saw him determined, after hearing from a boss where he stood, or he or she, to just make a switch. Yeah. Accelerate into this A player situation. Talk to that person. I worked at a call center where I was coaching some people. It’s a consulting deal. And I had a person who was an immigrant from another country. And hard worker, diligent, great, had a really thick accent that screamed, I’m not from this country. Nothing wrong with that. Yeah. This person comes to me and says, hey, how can I improve? I mean, do you think my accent is an issue? I remember them saying that. And I said, yeah, I do think it affects your sales. And they’re going, what do you think I should do? And I said, when you call, say, hey, is this such and such? They say, yeah. They say, my name is such and such. I actually am a foreign exchange student from such and such. And I’m calling on behalf of such and such university to share with you about our program. But by telling people candidly, instead of just calling and saying, hey, my name is John, and I’m calling on behalf of such and such university, he says, hey, my name is John. I’m actually a foreign exchange student at such and such university. By doing that, he began to have more and more people instantly like him and trust him because they realized that he wasn’t calling from an outsourced call center. He was actually calling from the school and he was at the school and he meant he owned it. And then he went on to say, hey, and just so you know, I’m actually a freshman here at such and such university and I’m so honored to talk with you. But he mentioned what year he was in school, he mentioned where he was from, and I’m not exaggerating, this person was literally able to double the amount of revenue they were able to bring in during this call campaign. Wow. And, but I, you know, as a boss, you don’t feel comfortable telling somebody, because you don’t want to be judgmental, right? You want to be kind and if somebody is sincerely the hardest working person on your call campaign and they have an accent, I mean I have an accent too yeah so if I were to go and make cold calls on behalf of another nation people would right away see that dude’s from Oklahoma so you’re saying though that this was a B player just in terms of his performance because of something that was holding him back absolutely but because he was willing to come to you he was able to start performing on this A level. That’s huge. Literally doubled the production. That’s huge. I love that. And he wouldn’t have been able to get that knowledge without being willing to humble himself and come to you first. And candidly, I wasn’t going to tell him because I was so impressed with the work ethic, I was so impressed with their attitude, their appearance, everything about the person was awesome. But their sales were being hurt because of an elephant in the room. And a lot of times as an employee, you have to bring it up to your boss. Well, and a big thing, too, though, is if you’re in this employee position, you’ve got to be willing to hear the tough news, hear, hey, this is kind of your area of weakness. This is where you need to improve. Jack Welch, again, for quoting this wonderful, incredibly brilliant man, he says, face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be. That’s huge, and that applies perfectly to this story. Well, you know, and I ran one of my businesses, I remember we were working with customers and customers were not telling me their feedback. And I used to be like, what is the deal with people? They just, people weren’t honest. Yeah. We were talking to my wife saying, if customers would just be honest, we could do a better job. Right. My wife’s just like, what am I doing now? Well anyway, I read a case study, a Harvard case study called the Service Profit Chain. Yep. Where it said that people who are unhappy will tell like four or five people, and people who are happy will tell a few people, but people who are unhappy don’t tell the person who’s causing the problem. People who are unhappy don’t go to the restaurant and go, hey, just so you know, I’ve switched my allegiance from your restaurant to another one because your salads are not very good. They just don’t go back. So I started putting in surveys, asking my customers sincerely, we want to know from you. What can we do to improve? And I would call customers and say, hey, I don’t want you to tell me just awesome stuff. I want to know what can we have done better. And when you seek criticism, all of a sudden I realized a mountain of issues the customers were experiencing. Everything from the decor we were using to the presentation, to the appearance of our people, to the attitudes they had, to our follow-up systems, to our delivering of the service. I’m not exaggerating. We probably ran into well over 100. I remember it was like three or four pages of specific action items I immediately employed to fix. But you didn’t even know. Yeah, after just a month of surveying, I discovered 100 actionable improvement points. That’s huge. So what do we do here? The Thriver’s Watching, action item for the Thriver Watching. What is the action item that comes from this? Determine your grade principle. Well, after you’ve gone to your boss, the first step was to go to your boss and talk to ask him these things. The second is write down that grade. Own it. If you’re a B right now, put it down. Write it on paper. I’m a B. That’s the first. That’s the action. Own it. Be aware of just not, don’t, don’t dodge it. Don’t justify. Be real with reality. And I’ll tell you this, the smarter we are, the more we can justify anything. Truth Canon, why is it so hard, like Truth Canon, just roll that out here. Why is it so hard to face reality sometimes? Okay, well example, like I have a large forehead. My forehead is large. It’s a big forehead. My forehead is bigger than most people. I have a hat. Well, to buy a hat, I basically have to go to a normal hat store. And then I get a hat that’s massive. And it is so big that other people who put it on, it dwarfs over their ears. It’s like when I’m buying a hat, it’s almost like I’m buying an RV. That’s how big of a thing I buy. I put it on my large cranium. And it’s just like you can feel the Earth’s gravitational pull tilt. I’ve got a large melon. It’s a huge gourd. I’m a pale guy. I’m pale. I am more pale than Kevin McHale. You are owning it. I am saying that’s real talk. I have no coordination. I just I don’t have any coordination. But because I don’t have coordination, because I’m pale, because I have a massive forehead that the earth just can’t… I realize the chances for me to be a pro athlete or a male model, outside of being a hand model… My hand modeling career is fabulous. But outside of that, I shouldn’t seek a career… You know what I’m saying? I accept reality. I own it. I’m okay with that. But it’s ridiculous. I see people who are terrible singers. I’m talking about terrible. There was a guy, really, he asked me to come watch him perform at a coffeehouse, and I don’t know that I’ve ever heard worse professional singing. He’s a professional. That’s what he does for a job. Well, customers pay for results, so not getting paid too much. But it was rough. We’re sitting there watching him play and you’re just like… and you’re kind of like, good job. People can’t face reality. For some reason he thinks he’s awesome. Have you ever watched The Voice or American Idol? You ever seen these people try out who are just awful? Yeah, it’s pretty funny. How come they don’t know? Well, it’s funny for you because it’s obvious to everyone but them. I’m just saying be obvious. Be honest with yourself. Own that. Face reality. Get that grade and know that’s my grade and figure out how to improve it. And focus on the stuff you can fix, fix that stuff. Okay, so principle number three here, okay, this principle number three. This principle is the four steps of action to gain career traction. Yep. You know, I know you love rhyming. Well, I was a… What’s your passion about that? Well, because I used to own a wedding entertainment service. You rhymed all the time. And you never want to be nervous. You want to get up there and you just want to bring the energy. You want to bring that mojo. So nervous, that’s good. You want to bring the mojo. You want to create, kind of like your DJ station needs to become your dojo. You just got to let it flow. You got to get the no. You got to bring it. You are our broda. Here we go, broda. This is what we’re talking about. We’ve got a little notable quotable here from Larry Page. Larry Page is actually the co-founder of a little company, Google. Google? Are people using that? I’ve heard it mentioned a few times. Google. Never heard of it. So he’s a co-founder of Google. This is what he says. Always deliver more than expected. Always deliver more than expected. Okay. Clay, the first action item that we’re touching on here is begin to wow now. What does that mean? Why is it so important? And how do we actually apply that? One that’s kind of fun to say. Begin to wow now. Wow now. Wow now. Brown cow wow now. You want to start to wow now because no one does it. Right. I’ll just give you an example. You and I parked our car the other day at Enterprise rental car. Actually we rented a car from Enterprise rental car at the airport in Houston. Both of us were wowed. Let’s take a story a step back. We literally, there was a miscommunication with scheduling everything. We scheduled a rental car with a different company that shall not be named. It rhymes with space. Okay so it’s a different one. Clay saw that on the sheet and said, nope, we’re not, they can keep my money. I’m not going to go to space. I’m going to go to a different place. They can keep my money. They can keep my money, they can’t take my land. They kept the money and said, we’re going to Enterprise. Now tell us about this experience, it was incredible. First off, I remember it was kind of a William Wallace moment. You can take my money, but you can’t take my land. So I’m like, I’m not going to go to this place. Because I realized how bad it was. We go to Enterprise. Homeboy pulls up. He’s got an unbelievable jacket on. He’s got khaki pants. He is sharp. Smiling at us. Super nice guy. Well, hey guys, how can I help you? I literally, from the time I walked up to the front desk to the time that we got a key, was like, what, two minutes? Oh, it was amazing. Everyone else is like an hour. It was seamless. They pass you to this person to that person. They say, Mr. Clark, welcome. There’s a car in a place in San Diego that takes a nuclear half life to get your car. It’s just brutal. But anyway, nuclear half life. Think that. Think about that. That’s a long time. I don’t even know how long that is. That’s because that’s that nonpractical knowledge I used to connect. Hopefully one person got that. But the point is, I went ahead and paid for the car rental and it was so awesome. Yeah. And it was more expensive by twenty, thirty bucks than the other guys. But it was awesome. They got us the keys. They smiled. They took care of us. But they wowed you. They wowed us. And we were talking about it. We got in a car. And that’s the kind of thing, that’s what the Southwest Airlines of the world are doing. So that first action item, wow now, how do I do that? Practically, I’m the Thriver watching, how do I wow now? What does that look like? If you’re going to start to wow now, you just want to think about what are the expectations of my job? Write it down. What are my job expectations? What am I supposed to do? Just write down the five bullet points of what you’re supposed to do in your job. What are my job expectations? Yeah, just put it down. And then try to do it better by 15%. Example, if you’re a secretary right now, I’ve worked as an assistant for someone. You’ve probably done it. Everyone starts at different places. Maybe that’s your career calling. But if you’re an assistant and you work with a boss and you’re supposed to be there every day at 9, get there at 845 and show up with your boss’s favorite beverage. I guarantee you, you’re going to score more points. At the end of the day, before you leave, say, hey, boss, can I help with anything else? And the boss, he says, yeah, I’m actually swamped right now. You go, well, let me help you with that. Guess what? You will get promoted. You will get noticed. That is how it works. Whatever it is. Sure. Action item two here. This is the second action item. It says, bring well-researched ideas for improvement and increased profitability to the table. Yep. Now, that was weird because there’s no rhyming there. But that’s OK. It’s still good. It’s still a good one. Bring well-researched ideas for improvement and increased profitability to the table. Why is this an action item that we have to do if we don’t want to be stuck or we want to be remembered? Well, actually, I don’t know if you missed it, but it actually says, it’s not a fable. In order to be career stable, bring well-researched ideas for improvement and increased profitability to the table. Because you’re able. Whoa. Bam. Anyway. Can you say that again? Is that possible? I could, but I don’t want to like, you know, it’s a deal where you’re aware of how much talent you have. You don’t want to like, blow someone’s mind with my humbleness. This is the most humble man in the world. I have more humbleness than most people. But the point is, you want to go out there and do that research, and you want to come to the boss and say, I’ll give you an example. My assistant, unbelievable what she did. She came to me and said, hey, every time we travel, I mean, we are members of the media. We film media. That’s what we do. We work with the media. We’re recording free content for the military. All we need to do is get our media pass. Why do we not have a media pass? And I’m like, media pass, media smash. And she goes, no, I researched it and we can save like $400 per trip each way Minimum if we make a media pass. Well, what does a media pass cost? I said, what does it cost? She’s like, oh, they’re like five dollars a person So you mean for five dollars a person we’re gonna Okay, let’s do it. But she had researchers saying you got a well researched well researched Lizbeth I was thinking about how to improve the company. Yep. That’s what we can do, you’re saying, make sure you don’t get stuck in the position. That’s how you do it. No one does that, though. I remember years ago, I had a guy came to me, he said, hey, every wedding that we do, we are refunding a certain number of weddings per year. Not a ton, but 2% or 3%, because we’re having a speaker problem. When you add that up, this is how much it costs. So why don’t we require that every event we go to, we include two amplifiers? So that way, if one goes out, we have a backup. And he can buy those other amplifiers for this much. It’ll save us this much to do this. He had researched it all. And you’re going, OK, so what amp? Right. And he goes, this amp. How much does it cost? This is how much it costs. How much do we save? This is how much we save. Now, I’ll give you an example of what you don’t do. What you don’t do is you go, hey, boss, we could save a lot of money if we just get serious about managing travel costs. Thank you, Captain Obvious. I mean, it’s just like, boss, we could make a lot more money if we didn’t have to refund people. Thank you. Right. People, I mean, that’s kind of the general, you want to have specific, detailed, well-researched ideas. Boom. Boom. Action item number three. Number three here. Build bridges, not enemies. Build bridges, not enemies. How do we do this? What does this look like practically? Why does this apply to not being forgotten and to not being stuck? Okay, everybody has a boss or someone in your department who you think is an idiot. Sure. Um, maybe you think they’re actually a… or a… maybe you actually mentally you’re going, that person is a… I just read your mind. Maybe you wanna, you know, or you might sometimes see them in the hall and you’re like, you… Okay, we got you, you mentally are thinking those thoughts, but you’re like, hey, Greg, how are you doing? Did you have a near-death experience this weekend? You want to do skydiving? There’s a fun place out there that you can go without a parachute. The thing is, we all think that. There’s always one guy in the office. But the problem is, everybody has relationships. And so you’re working, remember, to make a reputation, to gain a practical education, learning certain skills, reputation, education. And then what you’re doing is that will grow your compensation. So yes, you do it though. But the thing is, you have to be able to keep that mindset so when that person next to you is driving you crazy, you want to kill them with kindness. You just want to love them. You want to do a deal where the person next to you, you’re like, hey Greg, I realized that I maybe came across wrong. I wanted to let you know. I went ahead and got you some new highlighters. And Greg’s like, you did? No, Greg’s the guy who’s, you know, mean. Right. Well, the next week you come to the office and Greg’s like, I am tired of you Tamra, I swear that I’ll… and you’re like, okay, next day you come to work again with something nice for Greg. Pretty soon Greg’s like, I hate you because… and then pretty soon he, hi Tamra, how you doing? I’m sorry. But that’s how you win, people overage. You over time, you wear them down with kindness. Why does it matter though? Why is that worth the effort? Because everyone knows somebody. And if you go out there and pop off and talk back and create problems and blow up everyone who ever comes across you, pretty soon you begin to have a reputation that’s big for being difficult to work with. And that’s hard because you’re people that will limit your people. You become a high talent person with low potential. Okay, high talent. High talent, low potential. It happens a lot. You see it in professional sports, where a team’s like, look, you’re such a diva that we don’t want to have you on the team anymore. So like Terrell Owens was still catching 80 passes a year, still performing well, but he was so difficult and so surly that people were like, I just, I don’t want you around. Dennis Rodman’s perhaps the best rebounder in the history of basketball, but no NBA teams want to have him near them. They don’t want to have him as a coach. They don’t want him as an assistant. They don’t want him to talk to the players because he’s just so difficult. You don’t want to be that person who’s got high talent, low potential. Remember, people with high talent will be beat all the time with people with very, very low potential and great reputation. Okay, I love it. Principle or action item number four here says do hard stuff. Yeah, Lee Cockrell says if you do the hard things, life gets easier. Okay, so do the hard things, life comes easier. Absolutely. And that’s tough because, you know, we all want to do easy things. We’re all trying to get the workout where you don’t actually get sweaty but you lose the weight. There’s new machines that allow you to burn fat, it allows you to just kind of melt the fat cells. We’re all trying to do that, we’re all trying to do liposuction, we’re all trying to do these little moves where we get, you know, we were all trying to go, gosh, I want to have the success, but I don’t want to… Real quick, I just want you to know, there wouldn’t be a huge, almost a, you know, wouldn’t be a billion dollar industry around get rich quick if there wasn’t people who actually wanted to get rich quick. Right, that’s true. So people are like, I want to get rich quick! Well, okay, let’s think about the world’s most successful people. Disney went bankrupt twice. Henry Ford lost it all five times. Rockefeller. These people built their wealth fastidiously in a detailed, diligent way over time. You’ve always described Thrive as the get-rich-slow program. Yeah, it is. I mean, but it’s the real way. We’re gonna teach you step-by-step how the most powerful, successful people got their wealth. Well, that’s the statistic. That’s the statistic that’s in Entrepreneur Magazine about over, it was 80, 88%? Is it, it’s over 80%, right? Of people that are reading, or what do you say? Yeah, 80% of successful people. Oh, 88% of successful people, the most wealthy people in the world, spend 30 minutes reading. There it is, 88%. 30% of poor people do that. 88% of the world’s most successful people are spending time, 30 minutes a day reading or studying their job to get better. And 2% of people below the poverty line are doing this. I mean, that’s just the reality. So I say this is because that’s a hard thing. Caleb, you know it. We flew in last night and we got home at like 9 or 10. I wanted to hit on my wife. I wanted to marinate in an ethical way for hours. And then you have to also get up and prepare your outlines. You got to get ready for, we had to be here today at what, 6? Yeah, start at 6. Yeah, so I mean I got up at 3 and went to bed at, that’s a hard thing. But you do it because you want the result. You want to help people. You want to do some big things. So what does that look like? What does this action item number four, do hard stuff, look like? Go ahead and make a list of all the things you’re procrastinating to do. The things you’re not wanting to do. The things that you’ve been putting off that you need to do. Go ahead and make a list. It can be personal and in business. Write a list of all those things. Maybe you’re supposed to get your office organized, but you’re not. Maybe you’re supposed to go ahead and make that workflow tighter, but you didn’t. Maybe you’re supposed to go ahead and fix that script, but you didn’t. Maybe you’re going, you know, I really need to sit down and organize my finances, but you’re not. Maybe you really need to call your mom and repair that relationship, but you didn’t. Maybe you need to tell Greg, hey Greg, I said that I wanted you to off yourself. I didn’t actually mean it. What I meant to say is I wanted to take you out to eat. Okay, so you’ve got to write down exactly those things you’ve been putting off that need to get done, the hard things. I love it. I want you to know that there are some things that they’ve made the shortcuts for that are very helpful, like tanning. Like if you don’t, I know the natural, long, hard ways to sit out in the sun, which scares you a little bit, but you can just go to a tanning salon. Okay, I wanna get real, I wanna get personal for just a second. Oh, whoa. Because you need to hear this. You need to hear my heart. Okay, speak to me. I go out and I put on SPF like 4 million. They have ones for keynotes. Like for the people who are, hello, my name is Fabio, I want to get in great shape, and I’m so naked and I’m just like running around the beach with my mantong on. That guy, he’s wearing like SPF 5. He’s like dark, he’s just, hello, how are you, you know, and all the women are like, oh my gosh, he’s like, and then there’s the next level of the guy who puts on like SPF 30, and he can tan, he gets kind of a bright, you know, that kind of guy. And then there is me. When I go outside, I can put on SPF 90, 900, this stuff for babies. Look at the cute little baby, look at the baby. And I put it on, I put it on, and I literally just turn red. When I’m out there in the sun, my skin turns red and then it peels off. So I want you, on behalf of all the pale people around the world, all the gingers, all the people out there who are playing basketball for the Mavericks named Dirk Nowitzki, all the people named Kevin McHale, all the Ukrainians, all the Russians, all of us that don’t have pigment. I want to take you out to eat. America, America. I feel like I might have pitched a sensitive topic there. No. I hear you. And I respectfully, I would like to go out today. Absolutely. Let’s do that. We’ll see that in a little bit, though. What we talked about today, just in summary, I know that you just, whew, that was big. In summary, what we talked about is understand why your career is stuck. That’s the first part, right? Understand why. Second is determine your grade. Figure out what your grade is, and then own that grade. Live in reality. The third is the four steps of action to gain career traction, which was one, begin to wow now. Two, you know, you rhymed for us. I didn’t write that down, but you’ve got the rhyming version, which was, you know, bring well-researched ideas of improvement to increase profitability to the table. Three, build bridges, not enemies. And then four, do the hard stuff. You’ve given us action items everywhere in this lesson. Now it’s just time to actually apply those to our life. What’s the last thing you’d say to the Thrivers? We’re kind of wrapping this up as you’re saying the capstone thought here to make sure that you’re not forgotten and you’re not stuck in your career. Have you ever been tempted to call a friend Whitey, Spackle, Kevin McHale, Casper, the ghost, the snowman? Sure. Have you ever been tempted to call someone that? Don’t, because it hurts. It hurts. And I just I own it, though. Yeah, you do. I just take it. And I wear I just I know where I’m at. Yeah. And I think you’ve reminded me that every day. I appreciate you and your pale skin, my friend. All right, J.T., so hypothetically, in your mind, what is the purpose of having a business to get you to your goals? So it’s a vehicle to get you to your destination. And would you need profits to get there? I mean, when you have a business that’s successful, in your expert opinion, would you need profits to get you to your goals? Yeah, because if you have a $15 million business, but you have $15 million of expenses, it’s kind of pointless. Holy crap! All right, so the question I would have here for you, if you could take, like, I don’t know, 10 minutes or less, and see if you could save $3,000 a year by reducing your credit card fees, would you do it? Yes, absolutely. Holy crap! Why would somebody out there who’s listening right now, who has a sane mind, why would they not go to Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card, Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card to schedule a 10 minute consultation to see if they can reduce their credit card fees by at least three thousand bucks a year. Why would they not do it? Yeah, why would they not do it? Maybe because they didn’t understand how you said the website. This tree is a symbol of the spirit of the Griswold family Christmas. No, that’s clear. Okay, so that can be true. So I encourage everybody to check out thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card. Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card what would be another reason why someone would not be willing to take ten minutes to compare rates to see if they can save three thousand dollars or more on credit card fees maybe they think it is a waste of time and that it won’t it’s not possible there’s somebody out there that’s make it more than three thousand dollars every ten minutes and they’re like nah that’s not worth my time There’s probably some someone out there. Okay. Well I’ll just tell you folks, if you’re out there today and you’re making less than $3,000 per 10 minutes, I would highly recommend that you go to thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash hard. Because you can compare rates, you can save money, and you know the big goal in my opinion of building a business is to create time, freedom, and financial freedom. And in order to do that, you have to maximize your profits. Holy crap! Now, one way to maximize your profits is to increase your revenue. Another way to do it is to decrease your expenses. It’s a profit deal! Takes the pressure off. JT, is there any other reason why somebody would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they could save a total of $3,000 a year on average I Am at a loss. I cannot see you banana. Yeah, who is better. I go on first and clean the hair Is better I need to hair silky and smooth. Oh really fool, really! Huh, huh, huh, huh, huh! Hm? Stop looking at me, swan! Well, let me tell you a good story here, real quick. I actually, years ago, compared rates with this company here called IPS. It’s Integrated Payment Services. And I scheduled a consultation. I don’t know if I was skeptical. I just thought, whatever. I’ll take ten minutes. I’ll compare rates. I can’t tell. You can tell me I’m a doctor. No, I mean, I’m just not sure. Or can’t you take a guess? Well, not for another two hours. You can’t take a guess for another two hours? And in my case, in my case, my particular case, I save over $20,000 a year. Holy crap! Wow. Which is like groceries when my wife goes to the organic stores. Find everything you need today? Yeah. Great. Okay. Oh, God. Everything okay, ma’am? It’s just that you’ve only scanned a few items and it’s already 60 bucks. I’m so scared. Okay, I’m a trained professional, ma’am. I’ve scanned a lot of groceries. I need you to stay with me. It’s just that my in-laws are in town and they want a charcuterie board. This isn’t going to be easy so I need you to be brave alright? What’s your name? Patricia. Patricia alright I need you to take a deep breath we’re about to do the cheese. You know that’s the difference between eating organic and not organic. So because my wife eats organic I had to take the ten minutes needed to compare rates to save the twenty thousand dollars a year on credit card fees just for one of my companies. One question what’s the brand name of the clock? The brand name of the clock Rod, do we have it? The name of the clock, it’s an elegant from Ridgeway, it’s from Ridgeway. Let’s buy the clock and sell the fireplace. I encourage everybody out there, go to thrive time show dot com forward slash credit dash card, you schedule a free consultation, request information, a member of our team will call you, they’ll schedule a free consultation, it should take you ten minutes or less and they’re going to compare rates and see if they can’t save you more than $3,000 a year off of your credit card processing. You were hoping what? I wouldn’t owe you money at the end of the day. No, you don’t owe us money. Because at the end of the day, at the end of the day, the goal of the business is to create time, freedom and financial freedom and in order to do that you need to create additional profits. 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. And we have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah. So, 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, Terminix, they’re both $1.3 billion 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 and 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 Pessimon 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, like 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. And 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 an implemented checklist that when everything gets done, and it gets done, right, we 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 been a big blessing in our lives. And also, you know, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten a success from following those systems. So, before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business. And we were in a rut, and we didn’t know… 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, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But 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’re 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. You’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s going to take in order to really succeed. So I 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 percent 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 to use the services, you’re choosing to use a proof-and-turn-key marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you’re 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 checklist, 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 Lee Crockerill, head of Disney, with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with 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. Every 6 to 8 weeks he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every 6 to 8 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, organizing everything in their head to building into a franchisable, scalable business. One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. 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. And Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that, we became friends. My most impressive thing was 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. 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 any time I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. 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. 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 4 to 14, and I took this vehicle 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 grossed 13 grand 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 highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13 point business systems 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 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 loan. We built this facility for you and we’re excited to see you. If we go back eight years ago, think about the number of clients you had back then versus the number of clients you have now. As a percentage, what has been the growth over the past eight years, do you think? We’ve got to inspire somebody out there who just doesn’t have the time to listen to your call. Well, okay, so Clay, it’s like I would go up and down from about $10,000 a month up to about $40,000, but it’s up and down roller coaster. And so now we’ve got it to where we’re in excess of 100 clients. That’s awesome. And so I would have anywhere from 5 clients to 20 clients on my own with networking, but I had no control over it. Without the systems, you’re going to be victimized by your own business. For somebody out there who struggles with math, if you would say that your average number of clients was 30 and you go to 100, as a percentage, what is that? I have doubled every year since working with you. So I’ve doubled in clients, I’ve doubled in revenue every year. That’s a hundred percent growth every year I’ve worked with. Now so, so I’m looking, we’ve been good friends seven, eight years and I’ve got doubled five times. Which is just incredible. I mean the first time you do it, that’s one thing, but when you do it repeatedly, I mean that’s unbelievable. We’re working our blessed assurance off this year to double. We’re planning on doubling again. We’re incorporating some new things in there to really help us do it, but we are going to double again this year. I started coaching, but it would go up and down, Clay. That’s when I came to you, as I was going up and down, and I wanted to go up and up instead of up and down. That’s when I needed a system. Creating a system is you have nailed down specific steps that you’re going to take, no matter how you feel, no matter the results, you lean into them and you do them regardless of what’s happening. You lean into them and it will give you X number of leads. You follow up with those leads, it turns into sales. I tell you, if you don’t have a script and you don’t have a system, then every day is a whole new creation. You’re creating a lot of energy just to figure out what are you going to do. Right. And the best executives, Peter Drucker is a father of modern management, he said, the most effective executives make one decision a year. What you do is you make a decision, what is your system and then you work like the Dickens to make sure you follow that system. And so that’s really what it’s all about. So with a script here, I, you know, I, we have a brand new gal that just came in working for us. She nailed down the script and she’s been nailing down appointments. Usually we try to get one appointment for every hundred calls a day per rep. Right. And she’s been nailing down five and eight appointments a day. Somebody out there’s having a hard time. On that script. So she’s making how many calls a day? She’s making between two and three hundred calls a day. And our relationship is weird in that we we do. If someone were to buy an Apple computer today and or let’s say about a personal computer, a PC, the computer is made by, let’s say, Dell. But then the software in the computer would be Microsoft, let’s say, or Adobe or whatever that is. So I basically make the systems, and you’re like the computer and I’m like the software. It’s kind of how I would describe our relationship. Tim, I want to ask you this. When you and I reconnected, I think it was in the year 2000 and, what was it, maybe 2010? Is that right? 2011 maybe? Or maybe even further down the road maybe 2013 2012 okay, so 2012 and at that time I had five years removed from the deep from the DJ business And you were how many years removed from tax and accounting software. It was about 10 11 years we met How did we remeet? What was the first interaction or some interaction where you and I first connected? I just remember that somehow you and I went to hideaway pizza. But do you remember when we first reconnected? Yeah, well, we had that speaking thing that- Oh, there it was. So it’s Victory Christian Center. I was speaking there. My name is Robert Redman. I actually first met Clay almost three years ago to the day. I don’t know if he remembers it or not, but I wasn’t working with him at the time. I asked to see him and just ask him some questions to help direct my life, to get some mentorship. But I’ve been working with Clay for now just over a year. The role I play here is a business coach, business consultant, I work with different businesses implementing best practice processes and systems that I have learned here by working with Clay. The experience working here has, to put it real plainly, has been just life changing. I have not only learned new things and have gained new knowledge, but I have gained a whole new mindset that I believe, wherever I end up, will serve me well throughout the rest of my life. Since working with Clay, I have learned so much. I mean, I would like to say it was everything about business in terms of the different categories. I haven’t learned it all, but I’ve learned all about marketing. I’ve learned about advertising. I’ve learned about branding. I’ve learned how to create a sales process for organizations in any industry. I’ve learned how to sell. I’ve learned how to create repeatable systems and processes and hold people accountable. How to hire people. It’s almost like every aspect of a business you can learn. I have learned a lot in those different categories. And then, again, the mindset that I’ve gained here has been huge. You know, working here, you can’t be a mediocre person. You are a call to a higher standard of excellence, and then as you’re called to that standard here, you begin to see those outcomes in every area of your life, that standard of excellence that you want to implement, no matter what you’re involved in. I would like to describe the other people that work with Clay are people that are going somewhere with their life. Marshall in the group interview talks about how, you know, the best fits for this organization are the people that are goal-oriented. So they’re on their own trajectory, and we’re on our own trajectory. And the best fits are those people where there can be a mutually beneficial relationship that as we pursue our goals, and we help the business pursue those goals, the business helps us pursue our goals as well. So I say people that are driven, people that want to make something of their lives, people that are goal-oriented, they’re focused, and they’re committed to overcoming any adversity that may come their way. Clay’s passion for helping business owners grow their businesses is, it’s unique in that I don’t know if there’s anyone else that can be as passionate. You know, whenever a business starts working with Clay, it’s almost as like Clay is running that business in the sense that he has something at stake. You know, he’s just serving them. They’re one of his clients, but it’s as if he is actively involved in the business. Whenever they have a win, he’s posting it all over his social media. He’s shouting it across the room here at Thrive. You know, he’s sending people encouraging messages. He can kind of be that life coach and business coach in terms of being that motivator and that champion for people’s businesses. It’s again unique because there’s no one else I’ve seen get so excited about and passionate about other people’s businesses. The kind of people that wouldn’t like working with Clay are people that are satisfied with mediocrity, people that want to get through life by just doing enough, by just getting by, people who are not looking to develop themselves, people who are not coachable, people who think that they know it all and they’re unwilling to change. I would say those are the type of people, and in short, anyone that’s content with mediocrity would not like working with Clay. So if you’re meeting Clay for the first time, the advice I’d give you is definitely come ready to take tons of notes. Every time Clay speaks he gives you a wealth of knowledge that you don’t want to miss. I remember the first time that I met Clay. I literally carried a notebook with me all around. I was looking at this notebook the other day, actually. I carried a notebook with me all around and I just took tons of notes. I filled the entire notebook in about about three or four months just from being around Clay, following him and learning from him. And then I would say come coachable. Be open to learning something new. Be open to challenging yourself. Be open to learning and something new. Be open to challenging yourself. Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted.