Entrepreneur | Part 1 – 8 Secrets To Manage In A Dumb, Dishonest, And Distracted America

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re on the top. Teaching you the systems to hear what we got. Cullen 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 where I’mma dive. 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’re here. We started from the bottom, and that’s what we’re gonna do. How are you, my friend? I’m doing well. Honestly, I got to be serious with this. We’ll take it to a deep, kind of take it down. We always are so pumped up here. I know let’s have a sincere moment. It’s like so much energy Yeah, I want to you are just looking great today. Thanks. Yeah, it’s not a lighting trick. It’s just wow Yeah, well, I feel like the Thrivers know they’ve seen plenty of episodes now They know you they know that you’re the self-proclaimed most humble man in the world. Well. Yeah, I gave myself a trophy last year It’s awesome. I mean I feel like today though you look extra humble and you can tell me if that’s a compliment or not, I don’t know, but you look extra, extra humble. I’m humbled by you telling me that. There you go. Okay. There you go. So today we’re talking about the eight secrets to manage in a dumb, dishonest, and distracted America. Yeah. This is all gonna be based off of Clay’s book. This is, I got it right here. Ooh. The Will Not Work for Food book. The Will Not Work for Food, right here. And this book is all about management, okay? And I know that right here we this is titled managing in that dumb dishonest and distracted America Yeah but talk to us about it because I know that your heart in this is really to Equip us with the tools we need to succeed and not to bash on a certain. Yeah What is it right now? What you have in our country is we’ve never had a time before where everybody Let’s go back 40 years in American history Everybody at work didn’t have their own personal communication device. So if you owned a factory or a retail shop or a restaurant, every employee didn’t have their own phone line. It would be insane to think about it. All these people with phones. Yeah. Hey, what’s up? What’s up, dude? Hey, what’s up, man? Everyone had their own phones. You couldn’t. It was a corded. It was a big phone. It was a… Nobody had their own personal mail courier coming to their… Imagine going to an old school restaurant in the 50s, and every employee has their own phone, and a mail courier is bringing messages back and forth all day. Hey, speedy delivery. Speedy delivery. Hey, you got a delivery. Message for you. Hey, this just in. And then people are like, hey, there’s a movie. There’s a movie that just came out. You should see this movie. Hey, LOL, OMG. So it’s a bit more of a distracting world. And now you have this world where people are constantly distracted. There’s data out there, and a lot of it’s in this book, so I don’t want to get his stats wrong But the amount of time the average person spends per week now on Facebook or social media It’s almost like when would they when would they have time to focus? Well, let me just tell you real quick It magazine says the 20 to 29 year olds waste on average 2.1 hours per day in a normal eight and a half hour Work day. Yeah, so there you go. So this is 2.1 hours per day. 2.1 hours. So one-fourth of the day. You’re paying them for eight and a half hours. Is doing nothing. Yeah. A lot of times I’ll walk by staff at businesses I work with and I’ll, what are you working on? And they’re like, what? And they’ll put down on your phone. Oh, I was just texting my daughter because she’s, I care about my daughter and I, you know, I, you want me to care about my daughter, right? Like the quick minimizing the window. Oh. Whoa, whoa, whoa. It was so quick. It was so quick. That was way too fast. That was too fast. Well, the thing is, though, is what happens is, is that people are used to that. It’s become acceptable behavior. There’s no rules, unless you’re the owner of the business and you say, hey, no cell phones at work. Okay. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to go through some of the stats in your book. You have tons. You believe in backing everything up with fact. Yeah. I’m going to go through some of them to paint this picture of probably the people you’re managing. We’re talking about the majority of your employees and men. While you’re reading them off, I’m going to draw a picture. Oh, okay. That’s nice. I don’t know how that helps, but I like it. According to Fox News, a study they did showed that nearly 25% of average Americans’ work day is wasted. 25%. I’m glad that you’re drawing, but you’re listening, right? Yeah. Oh, good. Okay, good. New York Times bestselling author Ken Blanchard, you want to tell us a little bit about Ken? He did the one, he did the management expert guy, right? One hour manager. Yeah, let me throw this out here for you. What’s happening is, is when I was, right now you were talking. Yeah. I’m just doing this to prove a point. While you’re talking, I would say, excuse me, what was that? Yeah. Because I don’t know what you said. Oh, that’s tough. Because I was distracted. It hurts my feelings. See, I was distracted. I see, I see. And this is what’s going on every day in business. So can you repeat it again please? Yeah, Ken Blanchard. I was about to just quote something that you pointed out. Oh, were you? Sorry, I was just texting Mike. Talk to us about Ken Blanchard, the management expert. Yeah. He’s a guy who wrote One Minute Manager. He’s sort of a Yoda of management. And his whole thing is he teaches very specific steps on how to manage people. And he also spends a ton of time and energy researching companies and employees to see trends that are occurring. So one of these surveys that he did, he surveyed 1,300 people and he found that only 59% of that time is actually productive time spent at work. Do you know how crazy that is? That’s like, again, you’re trying to do an interview here and I’m drawing a picture of this guy. Albeit a good guy, I’m like, no, I was just trying to text my wife. I want to see how she’s doing. According to a study by the US Chamber of Commerce, and it was actually published on Inc. Magazine, one third of all business bankruptcies are a result of theft in the workplace. One third. Think about that. So you’re talking about people that aren’t paying attention, but when they are, they’re stealing stuff. Yeah. So if I’m a manager, I’m watching this, I’ve probably experienced some of this. How can I even feel good about walking out of the office, going on vacation, anything like that? Well, here’s what I did. I learned this phrase that was taught to me by a guy named Carlton Pearson. Carlton Pearson had a big evangelistic, you know, big events he would organize. They were for people of all different denominations. He was like, I’m so tired of hearing you people argue about your denominations. I’m going to start my own thing. It was called ASUSA. I think it was, you know, if the fact check, I put it on the screen, it was A-S-U-Z-A, ASUSA. I met this guy, and I’m like, how do you manage thousands of people, Carlton? And he says, well, one, whatever you don’t inspect, your employees will begin to expect. And I’m like, oh. And he says, whatever you accept, whatever you accept, whatever you tolerate, whatever you accept, will become what they expect. So you’ll start to begin to create a culture where people think, well, he won’t actually check the drawer every night to see if the cash balance is out. He won’t actually see if I follow up. So if you’re watching this, they start to say, if he doesn’t actually I had one employee This is a great story if you’re watching this Fabulous former employees. I’m glad that you’re learning but this happened He went on and he said hey boss. I made a hundred calls to this. That’s awesome I I’m amazed that you made a hundred calls. It’s so great. Yeah And I said, okay Next day I made a hundred calls in our office you had to make like 75 calls a day at this particular position. Like, that’s great! Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, you were saying we’re going to get that bonus. If we made 100 calls a day, the first one to do it gets the bonus. I just want you to know, I’m so motivated by it. Awesome! Third day, I made, I said, you, you, you. Let’s go. And he’s like, what, what? And I’m like, you can see that he knows. Yeah. I found out that you’ve been calling the city, our local city government, and hanging up about 100 times a day. No. Not knowing that I can see a stamp on where you call. I can see the number. Wow. Furthermore, when you do call, you wait on hold so you can get the call numbers there. And I have a camera system. And on my camera system, I can watch when you’re physically here, because it only turns on when there’s movement. And guess who I saw move out of the office before 6 p.m. and didn’t stay till 7, like one would claim? Me and, oh, oh, oh, and I’m not done yet. And I went through, I had all these things that I checked, and he realized, like, uh-oh, and I said, so you, my friend, are fired. He’s like, fired, like fired, fired, fired, done. Bam. What happened is all the other employees realized, dude just got fired. If we do said behavior again, we’re going to get fired. And then I started, you know, then it became, it was my fault previous to that though, for not inspecting. When did all of this kind of click for you as far as your management style? Because I know I’ve heard some of the stories. 2005. Okay. 2005. Because you often explain to all the thrivers, hey, when I started my business, I had to learn a lot of this stuff. This is probably six years in. Okay. Carlton, we sat down, we had a salad. We had a salad at this restaurant. It was awesome. It was one of these soup and salad places. That’s beautiful. Yeah. And I’m sitting there, he’s eating croutons, he’s trying to just enjoy his meal, and I’m like, how do you make sure that all 1,000 employees get their job done? Right. How do you make sure no one steals? How do you make sure, and he’s like, if you don’t inspect, people will accept, they’ll begin to think that you expect that. Right. I’m just like, man, that’s crazy. And then whatever, Clay, whatever you accept, people again, they begin to believe that, okay, well this is what you expect. So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to jump into a couple notable quotables, and then we’re going to go into those eight secrets. Okay. Yeah. So this first notable quotable is from your book, Will Not Work for Food. You said, nearly 30 percent of all the people you meet will be dumb, dishonest, or distracted. On a positive note, you can win simply by getting them out of your office and into your competition’s office. Now, I know I’ve heard you say in your book and you’ve talked about it, you’ve seen businesses triple in a year just by moving these poor employees out and bringing in good ones. Talk to me about that. Why is that so difficult to do? Well, first off, if you’re watching this, let’s make sure that you are operating at the highest level of performance that you can possibly be operating at before you begin judging other people. Nothing is worse than having the boss. There’s one guy I worked with a while back and it blows my mind. He’s losing his mind every day that people are late to work. He never showed up to work within 20 minutes of when he wanted this. Meeting starts at 9 he says. He shows up at 930. Well you can’t freak out when your staff is perpetually late when you are setting the pace and you’re perpetually late. The staff never follows the checklists. He doesn’t follow the checklist. The staff’s never positive. Well if you come to work mopey, they’re gonna be mopey. So that’s what you start with. So you have to start making sure that you have your stuff together. And if you have your stuff together, again, nobody who’s a hard worker is going to want to work for a guy who’s a sloth. So if you are a hard worker, then people will want to come work with you. So real quick, if you’re like, nobody who works here is a hard worker, look in the mirror real quick. Because you may be attracting, you attract what you are. So you might be attracting people, because I used to attract idiots to my business, because I was an idiot. I would attract people that were dumb because I was dumb. Right. So I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have a call script, didn’t have any system. So I love people who love no systems and love to have just craziness and disorganization. They love the work. I have a feeling this is going to be pretty spiritual. It’s going to be a spiritual episode. It’s going to have some candor. It’s going to be intense. All right. So before we get into it, Sam Walton, we have a notable quotable from Sam Walton. Started Walmart. Kind of a big deal. Yeah. He said there’s only one boss, the customer. Love it. And he can fire anybody in the company from the chairman on down simply by spending his money somewhere else. I think this is a good notable quotable for us to keep in mind as we go throughout this episode and dive into some of these hard topics. I hear so many business owners who are like, I’m so tired of this customer’s call all the time with questions. Yeah. That’s like your boss calling all the time with questions. That’s your, who’s paying you? Yeah. Who’s paying you? Look at the food chain. Where does your money come from? There you go. All right. So the first secret here, this is that first secret we promised of the management secrets. First secret is hire only A and B players. Yep. Hire only A and B players. So the idea of the A, B and C players, it came from Jack Welch, CEO of GE. He had this system, the differentiation system. We’ll dive into it deep in a little bit, but let’s talk about these players, the A, B, and C players. Let’s start with the C players. Okay, C players are the bottom 10% of your company. Bottom 10%. C players do not ever show up on time, and they barely ever meet the minimums or they miss the minimums. That’s the key part. Your book says, as you’re quoting and kind of summarizing Jack Welch, noticed that C players are consistently pessimistic, easily offended, chronically late, always ready with a fresh batch of excuses for why they couldn’t get their job done. Yeah. That’s C players. The C players, I’m just telling you, they’re easily offended. They’re always like, oh, yeah, I would have done it, but you can’t talk to me that way. It’s always about how you talk to them. So they didn’t do their job and you follow up, but it’s like, well, you can’t talk to me that way. Right. They’re pessimistic. The boss says, when we get to this goal, we’re going to give everybody bonuses. Yeah, they don’t ever have them. They’re, we’ll never get a bonus. We’re just, this is his company. This is just, he’s always trying to screw up. Yeah. It’s just that sort of mentality. And they’re, they’re, they’re never on time. They just can’t figure out how to string together two days in a row of being on time. It’s always the weather, the traffic, the alarm. So that’s the C player for you. That’s the C player. The B player for you. This is what you said a B player is, you can add to it. From your book, you said a B player. B players make up about 80% of every good workplace. They value being a part of a team and love being consistent. They love showing up on time and leaving on time. They’re not interested in staying late, nor are they very excited about anything that requires change. So B players are the majority of my people at work? I’m going to be honest with you. My son even plays the hockey thing. I know, yeah, the hockey game. I’m a B player. I’m an A player for my son. I want my son to do well. But I’m not going to get there early. I’m not going to stay late. I’m not going to volunteer to raise money in the off season. I just want to do the bare minimum. As far as the hockey parents go, you’re the B hockey player. Yeah, B. Strong B. Strong B. Because I just want to do the minimum and let my son just have fun on the ice. Good. Now, there’s other parents who I admire. You can’t be an A player in every area of your life, but there’s some parents who are like, I’ll be the first one at the ice rink. I talked to a guy the other day. He literally was like, I’m always the first parent there. I want to help set up the rink. I want to do this. I’m going to be doing a fundraiser this weekend. I’m selling pies. And I’m like, what? So you’ve got to choose where you’re going to be an A player, where you’re gonna be a B player, where you’re gonna be a C player. And the last one is the A players. This is your definition of the book. An A player loves getting things done. They love wowing customers. They love results. They are purpose-driven and they view mediocrity as a source of evil. Now this is this this last little line. I’m gonna go through each one because I want to make sure you don’t miss anything. They love getting things done. An A player loves getting stuff done. They love the idea that they said they were going to do something and they did it. They love getting the boom! I got something done! Boom! They love that thing. They love results. They love like, man, I actually did this. It’s great. They love having tasks. But this is the final thing. And this is how you know if somebody right here is an A player. Is they view mediocrity as a source of evil. Now, there’s a lot of good players out there, but if someone’s like, well, you know, someone’s just, you know, mailing it in. So, this guy, who’s the hockey guy I was talking about, he is mad at me that I also am not trying to sell as many pies as possible for hockey. I love this guy. I mean, he doesn’t like me, but I love the passion. Like, this guy’s just, ah! The reason we’re going through this and defining what an A, B and C player looks like is because we’re trying to help you become a more effective manager and you can’t manage the people if you don’t know if you have A players, B players or C players on the team. Quick action item here. Go. If you’re watching this you want to ask yourself you want to ask yourself you want to say who are my A players, who are my B players, who are my C players. Write their names down. If you’re self-employed I met a guy about a year and a half ago, and it was funny, I met him at a speaking event, and we were having this conversation, and he was like, I think I’m a C player. Like, he’s the boss of his own company. That could be true. And at one time I was too. We’ve all been a C player or a B player. We can improve. You’ve got to be real. And you’ve got to let people know where they stand. Right. You know? So I wouldn’t go up to people and go, you’re a C player, and then they have to come to work tomorrow. Right. But I would know in your mind, okay, this is where we’re at. And I begin to tell them, like, hey, I really need you to perform at this higher level. And you as a business owner have a duty to your customers, who are your boss, to not deliver a C-level performance. So you need to get them out of there or get them to improve. So when you’ve asked yourself this question now, you’ve heard the definition of what an A player looks like, a B and a C player. But here’s how you use to kind of grade your employees, and it all comes from Jack Welch’s differentiation system. He uses the four E’s. Oh, I love it. You love the four E’s. I do love the four E’s. The four E’s are energy, energize, execute and edge. Yep. Talk to me about energy. What does that look like when I’m grading my employees to figure out if they’re an A, B or C player? What is energy? Well, you know my views on yawning. Yeah. Even if I ever yawn myself, I usually slap myself or something. It’s true. Taser. You know, I really do though. But the thing about energy is energy is where you come into the room and you’re creating this vivaciousness, this alacrity. Alacrity, that’s a word. A-L-A-C-R-I-T. Why? Because you’re awesome. Alacrity is an eagerness to learn. It’s an eagerness to go. If you have this alacrity, this vivaciousness, this optimism, people want to work with you. Energy. But if you’re like, well, I just had a long night. Who cares? Notify your face, Holmes. You’re excited. As you’re trying to decide if you have A or C players, ask, do they have energy? Yeah, do they have energy? Well, I’m just going through. What does their energy level look like? We’re at a brim right now. Energy. Energize. How is that different from energy? Energize means you can energize those around you. We used to have a guy in our office. We’ll just call him Special K. This one’s for you. And he doesn’t work with us anymore, but this is what he used to do. He used to be in the office and he would go, all right, all right. And everyone in the room was like, what is he doing? All right, all right, all right. And people were like, people used to start clapping too. Because they were like, what’s he doing? And they’re all, all right, all right. He’s like, who’s going to sell something? And everyone’s like, well, I want to sell something. I want to sell something. He would just get everybody in this like, pump. And he would go to bridal shows. And he would get intoxicated after the show. He would be intoxicated probably before the show, but at the show he would deliver, and he would bring so much energy that people were just pumped to be pumped. They didn’t even know why they were pumped. He could just do it. And I pulled the guy aside and I said, listen, you have a superpower to energize other people. If you’ll just execute, get stuff done, then you’ll be a good superstar. So that’s energized. We can all have it, but you’ve got to get other people pumped. OK, so you grade your employee on the energy they bring and how they can energize other people. Oh, man, I’m getting pumped. The next one is execute. So this energizer didn’t have the execution in it? Yeah, execute means you have to get something done. So a lot of people are like, what we’re going to do is I’m going to send out this press release. We’re going to get millions of people who do this. We’re going to sell this. Oh, I’m excited. Recently, I was at a speaking event, and there’s a guy who got up and spoke before me. A lot of times as a speaker you get a chance to see people speak before you. And he got up and made vast, bold, generic declarations about the success the company would have that were not even possible. He sold a tangible good with declining annual sales that you couldn’t possibly increase because of the power of the internet. His product is going the way of the dinosaur. And he’s like, we’re gonna push sales 20%! And everyone’s like, okay. Who wants to push them 20%? Everyone’s pumped, but the reality is they couldn’t pump them 20% because it wasn’t possible. So if you have a bunch of energy and you can energize other people, but you’re going nowhere, you’re not getting stuff done. Yeah. All right, so for this last one, talk to me about edge. What does edge mean? Edge is the willingness to put the purpose of the company. Let me explain it to you this way. There’s a three-legged stool in business, okay? Andrew Carnegie explained it this way. One leg is the customer. One leg is the actual ownership. The other leg is the employee. You want to keep everybody, all three legs equally supported because they need each other for it to work. But if there’s no customers, then there’s no need for ownership and there’s no need for employees. So you have to put the focus on making sure that the customer is always taken care of, that’s the top priority. Then the second priority is whatever your company’s defined, but you have to be willing to have the edge, like a sword, to make those cuts, those hard decisions, those combat, those painful. You got to have that willingness to go. You got to set, as a little example, I was working with a small business owner recently, and she has a business where they have they produce products 24 hours a day and On the night shift no one gets their job done. Hmm So she had to tell this person You’re not doing your job at night Well that you think it for you watching that might be easy to do that, right? If you’re thinking about this person, you’re like, why couldn’t she just say something, right? Well, let’s add the human element, right? Maybe this person she’s talking to you is her friend. Maybe this person’s family, small business, a lot of times it’s friends and family. So she has to have the edge to say, hey, you’re not doing your job and I need you to do your job and if you don’t you can’t work here. So the edge is kind of doing the tough part of your job, doing something uncomfortable. Making the tough call. Okay. Making them have those awkward conversations. So the energy, energize, execute an edge. That’s how you grade your employees to figure out if they are a B or C player. Yeah, it’s awesome. I love it Well, we’ve got a little ask yourself though If you’re a customer ask yourself this if if I was a customer would I appreciate receiving a service from my current employees? I feel like that some business owners don’t always ask themselves. I’ll say this on thrive right now. I can be on I’m totally transparent with this. Yeah, every single person who works in my office, I would 100% be there for them in a heartbeat to help them. Because they’re the kind of people that I want to have around. We’ve fired a lot of people. We’ve let people go that didn’t need to be here. And there’s one guy who just was negligent. And I was like, I wouldn’t want him watching my kids. I wouldn’t want him coming to my family events. I wouldn’t want him talking to my customers. He’s got to go. Now, I’m not somebody who’s saying that he’s a bad person. I’m just saying at this point in his life, for whatever reason, he can’t be on time, he can’t honor his commitments, and he can’t stay drug-free. So he’s got to make the cut. And remember, this first secret is hire only A and B players. We had to define what those looked like. But now, how as a business owner do I actually only hire A and B players? Maybe I need to get rid of the C players I have. If you’re a small business owner, let’s just be real, you’re going to have to do a group interview or a lot of interviews. You’re going to have to interview a ton of candidates as a group every week, or you’re going to have to interview a ton of candidates so you can be selective as to which one you want. You can’t wait around for the perfect candidate to show up. You’re going to have to interview more candidates to find the right one. So as an example, our business for Thrive, we were bringing on the video editor team. I think we interviewed like 70 people to find like six or seven guys I liked. Well, if I would have just waited for the perfect one, I see, if you’re watching this and you’re a small business owner, this might be you. I see small business owners all the time who literally it takes them six months to fill a position. You’ve just got to do more interviews, man. You’ve got to interview more people so you can be selective. And that means you’re not being overly selective when you see the resume you’re just getting them in a group interview. Yeah I mean you what you’re doing is you want to make sure people can do the core competency you need to do. Sure. But yeah you want to get people into an interview as quickly as possible as many people in. Good well I love it that’s the first secret I think that’s a big secret I’m excited for those next seven but I feel like I’ve flipped through here. I’ve looked at the secrets. You have a management secret you use. It’s for your secret power. That’s your jersey, right? Is that a management secret, or is that just a Clay secret? What this is, is this right here. I feel like you weren’t going to share that with us. This right here is David Robinson’s limited dream team edition jersey I’m wearing today. So that’s another secret we have on Thrive. Clay actually wears a jersey every single day of his life. Yeah, because a basketball game might break out any time. I’m ready to go. Always ready. Ready to go. I love that secret. Right now, we could do it. If you want to go, I’m like, sure. He’s ready. I’ve eaten recently, but… So we’ve got two secrets on the table. One’s applicable, one’s worthless. The second applicable secret is inspire the people you hire, okay? So we’re hiring only A and B players. Now you have to inspire the ones you hire. Why is this important? Okay, I don’t do this very well sometimes. About every month I have a way, a unique ability, to upset my wife. Because I am a man-bear pig and I try to say, I want to do a good job, but I don’t have a lot of time. I’m like, I want to do a good job, go look in the mirror, do a good job today, you can do it, you can do it, you can be a decent man. And I do it for like 28 days or 29 days. That’s a lot of days. It’s not the 30th day. If it’s a long month, some months have 30 days. Yeah, they do. And I just screw it up. And then, you know, and then she says stuff like, you’re a jerk today. And I’m like, so true. Regroup team. So then I, you know, that’s how it is. As a business owner, you’ve got to bring it every day. Or I guess only on the days you want your team to work hard. Okay. So if you’re like, I’m just tired. I talked to an employer. This is a funny story. I talked to this lady and she says it was funny like you want to cry but funny. Oh crying funny. I met her at a speaking event on the east coast and she says my employees just aren’t motivated. I was like, well what time do you get to work? Well I get there at the same time they do. I just I’ve been leaving early cuz it’s so stressful Whoa, I’m like, do you typically like do you look how you look right now around your employees? So what do you mean? I think you look like you’re just depressed and flush frustrated and yeah, you look I mean, do you? Well, I mean, I just did so I gotta be honest. I just honest with my employees. No, you’re an actor Hmm, you’re an acting an actor. What do you axe? Your job is it’s only you’re an actor cuz you have to inspire every single day. You’re on you’re on stage You’re a cast member to quote Lee Cockerell at Disney World You are a cast member and the role you’ve been cast to play is the upbeat always inspired person who they who you’re the Person who’s always inspired right who they work for right and you better bring it every day And let me just tell you right now clay. I know you know you’ve probably only seen him on camera You’re probably amazed by his pale skin, his incredible beauty. He’s a real person. And exactly how he is on camera is how he is off camera. You bring that energy every single day. He’s been incredibly sick. You’ve seen he’s just got a thing of DayQuil. He just goes around sipping DayQuil all day. But you’ll notice I do. But you always bring the energy. But you’ll notice that I can fall asleep in 10 seconds. It’s incredible. It’s a super. And here’s the thing, though. If you don’t sleep, you’ll have that power, too. Wow. So what you do is, like, today, we’re getting ready for today’s thing. Set my alarm, you know, and I think today I slept into like five. Wow. Yesterday I got up like at 2 a.m. because we had a road trip. You know, I have to bring it. I can’t be here and be like, well, I’m confused, what was that question? Oh, sorry guys, I had an early morning, so. You know, you can’t hear me, so Caleb, sorry. So here’s a notable quotable from you in your book. You say, without inspiration, your great new hires, whose heads were once filled with those thoughts of motivation will soon turn into disgruntled employees who are overwhelmed with thoughts of frustration. Did I say that? You said it. It’s well said. Well done. Do you have anything to add to this beautifully worded? I just want to marinate on it because I obviously didn’t say it. It must have been like an outer body experience. Why is it important for business owners? Because they don’t have much time. Why do we have to spend time doing this? What I notice a lot of times is that we hire a new employee, and we go, if I hire this new guy, and I’ll give you an example. Do you remember when we hired you? I do. And you came on, and you were pumped. I was pumped. And then we went through the tough years, a tough month or two. Why? Because we’re building the world’s best online education platform. And we’re having struggles, challenges, we’re learning new software, we’re developing things. And you saw the team morale. People were like, we’re never gonna figure out how to do it because no one’s ever done it before. Then people start asking just jackass questions in meetings. What has anyone else ever done? No one’s ever done it! We’re inventing something! So then you have to be like, listen, we’re gonna do the same thing that Thomas Edison did when he was inventing the light bulb. And some of you who are saying he stole it from Tesla, okay, we’ll switch. The same thing Thomas Edison was doing when he was inventing recorded audio. He’s like, just keep failing until we succeed. Let’s go. And now that Thrive is like the best thing since sliced bread and it’s catching on, there’s this momentum and everyone’s like, I want to be a part of the team. I’ve had to stay consistent and just bang that drum all day. And this is, we employ many employers, and I used to be like this. I used to think, if I can just hire a new employee, the culture will be better if I get a new guy. Screw that, you’re your own culture. Gotta inspire them. Honestly, if there’s not a party everywhere you’re at, then you’re not bringing the culture. You gotta create your own culture, man. Bring your own party. All right, so if the business owners right now they’re listening you’ve convinced them they want to inspire their team I know you have six moves that you use to inspire people so we’re gonna go through them okay I’m gonna list them off and then we’ll dissect each one these are the six moves to inspire your team the first one is merge philanthropic goals with your profitability goals. Okay here’s the deal. Should I list them all first? I want to say this real quick here. Let’s do one by one. One by one. You got this. You know what? I’m a rude human. It’s name bear pig. We’ve established it. Okay. The thing, I just want to say this. On the philanthropic goals, this is big because if you ever read the book Atlas Shrugged, if you haven’t read the book Atlas Shrugged, just look for the… I know. Yeah. There you go. What happens is if you’ll look up her writings or you look up the Fountainhead, the idea in her books is that eventually these successful people are taxed so much that they’re like, what’s the point of creating jobs? I quit. As an owner, I know how hard you work. I know that no one ever tells you thank you. I know that the only time you get a thank you is when you go to the bank and you thank yourself. You’re like, thank you, self. That’s what I do a lot. I’m like, just spike it. You go to the bank and you just spike the check. Yeah! Woo! In-zone dance. Thank yourself. Yeah, thank yourself. But a lot of times you don’t get that outside encouragement. But your staff, all they see is he must be making bank. Right. He must be making… must be nice. He drives a nice car. Yeah. He drives a nice car. Would be nice. Would be nice. I’d work hard too, but a car like that… Right. So you get some of that hater-aid going on. So how does this first move help inspire? What you do is you come up with a philanthropic goal to help other people that’s big, that your team’s inspired by. So an example. At Thrive, we’ll do three examples. Tom’s Shoes. Every time you buy a shoe, they give a pair away. It is absolutely true they make a profit and a big profit. It’s absolutely true Starbucks makes a profit and a big profit. They take a percentage of the money and they do fresh water, they dig wells in third world countries. Tom gives away the shoes. At Thrive, every time that you are on this site, you’re giving a hand up to a military member where they have access to Thrive absolutely free because you’re helping yourself, you help them too. So the thing about it is you have to find something where your team is like, that’s awesome! I feel good about it. And even though we’re making profit, I feel good that we’re helping somebody else. Does buying a bunch of shoes for my wife count as a philanthropic goal? Because I do that a ton already. So it’s kind of like a buy a pair, like you buy a pair. And then I buy another pair. You buy another pair. No, you have this. You buy her a pair and then you give her another pair. That’s how it is. Is that a philanthropic goal? I would say so. I mean, think about this. Happy wife. Oh, happy life. And then so really, what’s happened is you are helping yourself by helping her get some shoes. What some action steps for me as a business owner here, I want to have this philanthropic goal you talked about. How do I do it? What do I do right now as I’m watching, I’m going to give you a bunch of them. One is you want to write down some philanthropic goals that you have. So define your passion about. Second is you can figure out what percentage of your revenue you’d like to give away forever to this cost. Is that just your profits you’re giving away? Where does this come from? Percentages of profits or gross revenue, whatever you feel is appropriate. I can just say this, I can’t fake the funk. I really love America. You probably hear me say, you’re a great American, I love America, I talk about eagles all the time, I wear red, white, and blue. I love America. Now if you’re watching this from South Korea, I’m a big fan of yours too and I might become a huge South Korean fan. I’m serious. I love these people almost as much as America right now. Wow. Because they’re starting to bring that American funk to South Korea. Wow. Yeah, seriously. It’s a, look it up. Unbelievable growth there. Awesome. So the thing is, is that like, I can’t get a, if you were like, well, hey, we’ll take a percentage of all of our money and recycle. I’m like, guys, we’re going to take a percentage of all our money and recycle. What was that, boss? Recycle. What? I’m sure recycling is important, but for me I’m not pumped. What kind of car do you drive? I’m trying to remember. A Hummer. Oh, a Hummer. Yeah, what I do is I’m supporting the oil and gas industry. That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. I’m helping people in the industry. That’s good. Okay. Do you have any other action items? Yeah, next thing, you want to share these goals with your customers and your employees. Okay. Customers, we’re trying to help provide shoes for the world. Employees, every time someone buys a shoe, this is what we’re going to do. That’s the deal. The next thing is you want to physically put your logo and your cause everywhere. Anytime someone sees your logo, they should see your cause. Really? So on my business card, on my website, everywhere? Yeah. So like on Thrive, as we do all the business cards and all the print materials, you’ll see it more and more. It’s just a deal of like, I want people to know that when you’re subscribing to Thrive, you’re helping somebody. I mean this for someone going, I’m going to just get on my soapbox for a second. But you can’t have a free country without a, we have a free market without a free country. So the people who have made the country free, they’re the ones who are making entrepreneurship possible. So we all need to buy the guy a beer. We need to give him a free subscription. We need to do something to say thank you. Well and this is one thing that I love about this point is you talk about how recycling isn’t really your thing. It’s a thing for somebody though. Exactly so you have found a cause that you are passionate about, surrounded your team with people who are passionate about that cause, that’s why it’s effective right? Yep. So everybody’s cause might look different but as long as you have some kind of goal like this that’s big it can be a motivation for your team and inspiration. Yeah and this is another example for you real quick. Years ago, when I had the DJ business, we did a wedding free for a guy who was in the military. And occasionally, you find out the people who serve in the military don’t come back. You know what I mean? And so if you do a free wedding for someone and you hear the story from the wife years later that thank you for doing this because he’s no longer with us, if it was something I didn’t care about, I wouldn’t be emotional when I talked to her about it. I’m like, thank you for sharing. We’re so excited we could do that for you. And when I did the wedding for free, I was like, I’m doing the wedding for free, and I wanted to do it for free. And I remember the Golf Club of Oklahoma doing the wedding for free and being pumped up to do it. And I didn’t get frustrated. I didn’t care if I was getting paid. And they wanted to tip me, and I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Now, recycling, I would be like, you are going to have to pay me. Right. But for somebody else, that could be their thing. Yeah, but if you’re watching this, recycling is your thing, or shoes, or anything, whatever is going to make it. Write down what that goal is. Has to be an irrationally emotional, white-hot fire that you’re pumped up about in a way that doesn’t make sense. So what’s the last action? We got one more here? Yeah. You want to dedicate time each month to celebrate the success of this cause. Okay. So on Thrive, as we begin to get out of beta and done fixing coding problems and making it work, every time that we have a military guy that signs up, you’re going to see more flags and American pageantry and you’ll probably have a bald eagle running around our office taking your pin. I would love that. You know? It’s going to be awesome. That’s wild. Because it’s something I care about. I know. You know? So someone’s like, I don’t like America very much. Well, then you go work somewhere else We’re free in America all the time. And that’s one thing you already do right now every meeting We’ve got the weekly meetings and you’re good about sharing with us these stories where we’re listening to the phone calls or we’re hearing the Testimonials from people who’s who have already experienced life-changing results from thrive But you’re gonna have to get to quote TD Jake should be get ready get ready to get ready to get ready soon because when you start to see when I’m just telling you we’ve got guys and I talked to a gentleman in the military unbelievable this guy’s on the site he’s got he’s got the ability he’s gone to formal education yeah to the level he’s got he’s got enough formal education where he can literally power up a nuclear submarine he’s a nuclear engineer and he’s going I’m learning stuff on thrive that I didn’t know. That stuff, that story needs to be heard throughout the hallways of your business. I want to give you one final example to blow your mind. The guy who started Hobby Lobby, if you like him or not, either way, politically, no matter where you fall on this, hear me out for this. David Green. Every time that he makes a certain amount of profit, he builds an orphanage for kids in third world countries. And he doesn’t talk about the profitability of his company, he always talks about how many orphanages they’re opening up. And I don’t care if you agree with his faith or not, his hallways, I’m not exaggerating, Oklahoma City, this is a treat, if you can see it, it’s unbelievable. The hallways of this massive warehouse are lined with the pictures of orphanages. And every single time he does a picture of all the kids in front, these kids who don’t have parents, in front of an orphanage, he takes the picture and puts it on the wall. And he wants all of his employees to get anywhere, you have to walk past them. That’s cool. And he talks about it all of the time. But he’s made these hallways so you have to walk by them. So if you’re at Hobby Lobby and you’re working there and you’re thinking, gosh, you know, I really don’t know if I want to get this graphic design done on time. All you got to do is go to the bathroom and you walk by all the orphanages and you realize I got to shut up and do my job. I’m supporting something bigger than myself. I love it. So that’s what it’s all about. It’s a galvanizing thing. It brings a group together. I love it. So that’s the first move to inspire your team. The second move is set ambitious goals that stretch people. So again we’ve talked about why you need to inspire your team. Now we’re talking about how to do it. Set ambitious goals. Why is this important? I always tell people that they are one-tenth of one percent of one-tenth of one percent of one-tenth of a percent of where They’re gonna be so then they get confused. Well, what happens is people will even people a lot of times will have success Yeah, but their boss will say you’re awesome. And we begin to like treat somebody almost like they’re superhuman Yeah, I don’t do that to myself though. Every year. I ask myself self. What am I terrible at? I remember sitting down with Bill Shafte on Thursdays, Thursdays with Bill. And I’m talking about online education and trying to formulate the ideas that would become the genesis of Thrive. And he is ripping me apart, Bill, thank you. And Bill’s like, well, you know, I don’t really. And he’s like asking me these hard questions. And he’s like, well, Clay, have you thought about this? Or that’s not a wise choice, he would say. I’m just like, God, he’s pushing me every week to become better and better and better and better. Well, then I should expect at least the same. Again, I should expect my employees to want to get better, better, better. But if the employees see that I don’t want to get better, why should they want to get better? If I’m the same person this year as I was last year, we have problems. I need to get better every year. This is a notable quotable here from your book. You said, If you have goals that are small and weak, no A players are going to want to come work for you. What does this mean? Here’s the story. I thought these guys, they were in the home remodeling business. Two brothers, home remodeling business. And they, in a staff meeting, told their staff, they said, These are guys who wanted to hire me for consulting and I just ended up not doing it because they’re bizarre creatures. But they were like, we want to make $100,000 a year. And so one of the employees is like, well, we’re already doing, boss, like a million bucks a year gross revenue. He’s like, no, I want to make $100,000 a year. So I’m not going to stop until I, and he kept talking about his goal. And employees are thinking, well, if he makes $100,000, if that’s his goal, I’ll probably make like $30,000. You’re watching these people do the math. The goal’s got to be something that inspires people. Yeah. It can’t be a goal where like, you see small businesses all over America who somehow take pride in being small. Stop it! If that’s you, stop! Well, that’s those people who think if you’re small, then you can give high quality. If you get big, you lose the quality. Quality and quantity are opposite. No. Mercedes, last time I checked, made more automobiles on an annual basis. They’re pretty nice. Typical small business owners only produce X numbers of products and services. Last time I checked, Mercedes does a lot more volume than typical small business. And their quality is pretty high. I mean, you might be able to hand make your own car better than the Germans over there, but I’m saying it’s pretty high. Disney World sees millions of people. Some people say, well, yeah, the quality’s gone down since they got big I doubt it right So that’s the big thing if you don’t have big goals You’re not going to track the right players the a what kind of smart person would want to come know in a small business I’m gonna praise you for a second drivers. I’d hate to be hate to praise them if you do just we’re gonna edit this So no you You’ll get to watch it. We can’t watch this for what him is what he’s saying Well, I’m saying though is this man over here. He’s got big goals with his life. He wants to change the lives of people, make a difference, wants to do something, inspire people. Therefore, if I had a company that I was building that had stupid, small, piddly, depressing, weak goals, you wouldn’t want to be here. Well, my goal is to hopefully sell two or three things this week. I think I’m going to go permanently. Thank you. So you have to have, I mean, I’m telling you, here’s a little, here’s a little deep thought. If your company’s not growing, check it, your A players will be going. Oh, I knew what you were going to do. That was, yeah, a wrap on the time. Wow. So what do I do? What are my action steps now? If I want to set up this big goal that attracts A players, what do I do now? Ask yourself right now, what do I need to do this year to double the size of my business. What do I need to do this year to double the size of my business? This is the difference between A players again. I’m just throwing it out here for you. Gosh, I hate to do this, but if I don’t give you personal examples, I think you’re going to feel like I’m being vague. Yeah, like you’re preaching from up high or anything like that. Talk to a girl a while back. She said, I said, I want to double the size of this business. She’s like, well, I kind of like to leave early though on Thursdays because there’s a show I like. I’m like, oh, you want to leave early on Thursdays because there’s a show? Yeah. We’re trying to do it. It just you got to have a goal that’s big and a big goal will force people to decide whether they’re in or they’re out. OK. You have in it to win it or I’m out. So the first action item is just to define what that goal looks like. Oh, make a big goal. Okay, and then what do we do? We’ve made the big goal, then what do we do next? What’s the next thing? Now that we’ve made the big goal, what we’re going to do is we’re going to basically dedicate the time each month to evaluate the progress of where we are versus where we want to be. So we need to break that goal into 52 small parts. And so each week, you want to make sure that you’re getting, you know, two percent of the way there. So you got to take your big goal, break it into weekly, into small parts. And each month, look at all the data. Neat story. This morning, I did a conference call with a guy. And we discovered that his business did a 17% increase in profit in the last six months. Oh, man. That’s pretty cool. That’s awesome. So his business is about three months away from franchising in terms of revenue. So if he can stream together three more months of consistent growth, he can start franchising all over the world. That’s pretty cool. But just saying every month, like I want to grow, I want to be big time, right? Stupid. But instead we say if we sell 15 memberships a week, 15 gift cards a week, and we get the occupancy of this business up to 60% occupancy, 60% full, then you’re going to get to your goal. Every week you have to sell 15, 15 and 15 per location. Can you do it? 15 and 15. So you define the big goal and then you break it down and make sure that you measure how you’re doing to reach that goal on a monthly, weekly basis, you’re saying? Yes. You want to break it down like the old school guys, like in the 80s. There’s a song. I would like to cue up the song if we can real quick. These are the breaks by Curtis Blow. Oh, thank you. These are the breaks. Turn it up, turn it up, turn it up. He got the linoleum, he threw out that linoleum, and the guy starts break dancing, and he starts doing the move, and he says, that’s what we’re gonna break it down like that. That’s good, that’s move number two. Move number three here is to commit to creating incredible products that wow your customers. Absolutely. Again, we’re talking about how to inspire your team. Why is creating an incredible product can inspire my team better? There’s a book called The Service Profit Chain. It was written by Harvard, it’s a case study. And one of the companies they study is USAA. They’re an insurance company. They study Southwest Airlines. They study top-level companies. The thing about it though is when FedEx came out with the system where they could deliver something overnight, it just blew people away. Like what? You can actually get something overnight? Anybody’s ever been to Walt Disney World? Especially, you know, if you’ve been there with a family, you’re like, man, this place is awesome. Every bathroom is so clean. It’s a great experience. When you make something that’s awesome, people can’t help but share it. The movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, it didn’t have a big budget, but it hit home with so many people that they couldn’t help but share it. So you’re going to find that a budget will be dwarfed by an incredible a big advertisement budget can get beat every time by a great product Okay, the great budget gets beat by the great product people want to work for something that’s producing those great products Apple like the products are insanely great And so when Steve Jobs was there, but they attracted great people because they wanted to be a part of something great, right? Well, here’s the the quote from your book here. Okay, this is again quoting you from your Will Not Work For Food book. You said, top people want to work where the best and most incredible products on the planet are designed, produced, and sold. Mediocre people are those that are offended by the accountability that is required to produce great products and services. Yeah, I mean, ultimately, you have to be accountable if you wanna make something great. And so I will just tell you this, on Thrive, we listen to the feedback of our Thrivers and a lot of them have said, hey, I’d like a training on this. I’d like a training on that. Hey, could you make a training on this subject? Well, if I’m annoyed by it and I’m like, you don’t need a training on that, or geez, these people want… all they want is more trainings. But if I’m excited and I want to make an insanely great product, then I’m energized by the feedback. The thing is, you want to seek criticism, not praise. You want to seek criticism, not praise. Only top-level people will do that. And as an employee, I love working for something where I can say, hey, did you see Thrive? Check out those videos. They’re top-notch. They’re funny. There’s a ridiculous-looking pale guy on it. It’s fun to be able to refer people and feel good about the product. Absolutely. So if I’m watching this, I’m ready to inspire my team. And I want to inspire them by producing a good product, what are my action steps? I’m going to give you a few here. One is you want to let your employees know right now, here and now, that you will no longer tolerate anything less than great products. You will no longer tolerate subpar products and services. No matter what I’ve been doing in the past? No matter what you’ve been doing. It’s time to move the past with the past, we’re moving into the future. Tell them, moving forward, I’m not going to accept any subpar anything. The next thing you want to do is you want to select somebody on your team to be like your quality guard. Okay. So they need to be able to, anytime you get feedback on social media, quality control surveys, mystery shoppers, people just say something. Yeah. Anytime that you catch something being less than awesome, they need to be able to be the kind of whistleblower. Okay. The next thing is you want to schedule weekly meetings to inspect the quality of your products or services. Okay. Every week? Every week. Every week you want to have a quality control meeting. You have to have a weekly meeting. Okay. If you don’t have a weekly meeting, you’re not, it’s going to be too far. You can’t have a bi-weekly, you can’t have a monthly, you can’t have a daily, just do it weekly. Every week, just adjust and say, are we making the products that are as great as we want to be? These are huge, by the way. This is what we’re talking about. This is not the theory, this is the, hey, practical, do this today to improve the quality of your product. Here’s the part about a startup that stinks. We’re building Thrive. Everything is urgent. Yeah. Building the website, raise the capital, make the training, shoot the videos, build out the office, hire the guys, fire that guy. Who’s that guy? Everything’s urgent. Right. But as your business begins to grow, now we have the luxury of saying, every week we’re going to have a meeting to talk about this. That’s the scheduling the meeting. Okay, perfect. Yep. Now the next one is you want to create a quality control system that requires the signature of at least two people to verify that something is incredible before it goes out. This sounds exhausting. Yeah. Is it important? It’s huge. Well, the thing is you want to have a thing. W. Edwards Deming, if you get a chance to read any of his stuff, we’ll talk about it on Thrive, too. He developed the quality control circle and became big in Japan. But people don’t realize this. America made cars forever, right? And all of a sudden the Japanese became great at making cars. Who taught them this? W. Edwards Deming. And what he came up with was a quality control circle where the whole idea is if I write a paper, I shouldn’t be the only one who edits the paper. If I make the product, I shouldn’t be the only one who quality controls the product. There needs to be a system of accountability. So that’s what you’re doing by setting up two different people who have to sign off on something. Yep. That’s doing that. OK. And ultimately, it’ll save you time in the end. That’s what’s funny, is it seems like it’s a lot of time. And it’ll inspire your employees. Absolutely. Now, the next thing is you want to set up a program that aggressively solicits feedback from your customers. What does that look like? You want to have mystery shoppers. OK. Action item one, you’re going to have mystery shoppers Two is you want to do surveys incentivize the surveys tell us how we’re doing and win a free iPad Yeah, something and for your companies you always do this on a one to ten scale right on a scale of one to ten Rate our performance. Okay, anybody I always get my employees bonuses based on how highly people review us Yeah, so if you got a ten multiple tens in a row or whatnot Yeah back with one of my businesses if the customer gives the perfect ten the person who delivered the service always got the bonus. Cool. And the final thing is you want to set up a system that allows your team to see the raw feedback from customers, good or bad. They have to see it every week. We had an email that came in today from a Thriver, and he had some very, very, very just awesome positive things to say. But then he had some critiques about the functionality. I love it. And we’re pushing the updates that are coming out with, you know, we’re getting out of the beta version. And all of the issues that he brought up we’re dealing with. And I felt good to know that like, hey, he caught it. Right. And he told us. But at first, when we, before we knew there was those problems, the only way we knew is these people were telling us. So you want to let people know, hey, I appreciate your feedback. Yeah. Don’t try to justify. But you’re saying don’t keep that to yourself as the owner. Share it with the whole team. Share it with the whole team. Yeah. I love it. So that’s the secret. That’s the super move number three here. Super move number three. The move number four to inspire your team here is implement a merit-based pay system. We touched on it here. This is kind of your notable quotable from your book. You said, put in a merit-based pay system and watch as the poor performers get irritated and leave, and while the top performers become more and more eager to come to work every day in an environment that pays them well for what they do, for what they’re worth. I recently worked with a business that did, we’ll just say they did, they basically helped beautify people’s homes. And they put in a system where at the end of the service, they would walk up to someone like my wife, let’s say, and they would say, rate our service on a scale of 1 to 10 in this area, on a scale of 1 to 10 in this area. And then any, it’s at the end, if there’s any thing we can do better, or yada yada, email here and you’ll get 150 off your bill. So the customer is now like, well I want to save 150, I might as well fill it out. They don’t do it, they didn’t fill it out in front of the, the customer didn’t fill it out in front of the employees. Yeah. The service provider would walk up to the customer and would say, hey, if you’ll fill out this survey on your own time, send it in, we’ll take $150 off your bill. Just send it in the next seven days. Well, the customers started filling them out. Now, before they weren’t incentivized. Before they just asked them to. That’s what you mean by aggressively solicit feedback. Yes. And what happens is the customer wrote, one of the individuals urinated in my lawn every single day. So I thought, so I talked to the owners. That seems like a negative thing. True story. Talked to the owners and they’re like, where else are they going to go? And I’m going, well, maybe to a competitor? Wow. So I said that to them. I said, to a competitor. Look man, we’re not, you know, and I’m okay. Next customer gets a survey. Says one of the employees peed on our toilet seat. I guess they have carpeting on their, on their toilet. You know, like there’s decorative carpeting on the toilet seat or something. And they apparently left human fecal matter on the carpeting of their, you know, toilet. And so they didn’t get a big bonus or how did that? Well, the owners said, well, where else are we going to go? So even though they had a merit-based system, even though they were topping Google, even though their phones were ringing off the hook, they were peeing on people’s lawns and defecating on their stuff in their house. So the merit-based pay system then wasn’t dramatic enough to… Well, I’m saying the owner didn’t believe in it. Oh, he didn’t have enough expenses. So he was just saying God… Not only was he not making a big deal, he was justifying it. Then another example, worked recently with a guy in the medical care profession. Every single time that a customer would have to wait for more than an hour and a half, he would send them an email chastising them for complaining. Like, that’s insane. So, real quick, I want to hammer this out. So, you have these in here. Then you look at a company like Quick Trip. That is a place that serves as a convenience store. They’re like the Taj Mahal of gasoline convenience stores. Or you look at Disney World. Based on the survey of the customer, that actually determines how much you make. So if the customers are really happy, then you as the employee are very happy. You make more money. So the best practice is I would make sure that fully 1 3rd to 1 quarter of the entire employee’s paycheck is based on customer feedback. One third to one fourth of the paycheck is completely reliant on the feedback. So right now, if you’re watching this and you’re paying your employees $20 an hour, then I would cut their pay immediately to $15 an hour and give them a bonus to $25 an hour. So I’d say, if you do a bad job, you shall make $15. And if you do a great job, you shall make $25. Do I need to implement this or can I implement this with every kind of business or only so I would find a way to implement this In any kind of business except for are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Unless you’re a tenured college that doesn’t give a crap about Quality, which is probably most of them interesting. Yeah, so real quick. I was at one college recently Yeah, where they had tenured professors who are terrible awful and the head of the school says to me, well, you can’t fire them because they’re tenured. And so we really don’t do a lot of survey. We don’t survey the students because they’re tenured. So you’re telling the student is the customer. And you’re saying, we don’t want their feedback because the teachers we have here can’t be fired. So did you always have a merit-based pay system with all your companies? I did not until I met with a one Chet Kadjo. Chet Kadjo is the CEO, the president of Quick Trip. I believe he’s the president of Quick Trip is his actual title. And I met him and breakfast with Chet. I wrote about it in my book, Make Your Life Epic. And the breakfast was just epic. We didn’t eat anything. We just talked about business. And that’s when you started implementing. And I’m like, how do you do this? I mean, you’ve got thousands of locations. How do you make it awesome every day? How do you keep every bathroom clean? How do you make sure that the, you know, when someone pumps gas out of the big gas truck that doesn’t explode, how do you make sure that the place is always clean? How do all your employees always say hi to new customers? He’s like, my man, we have mystery shoppers. They come in every day, no one knows who they are, and then when they get back in their car, they write reviews, and if the review is favorable, the person who’s working gets a bonus, and if not, they get a pay dock of some kind. So is that the action item? What’s the first action item in your mind here? Is it setting up the secret shoppers? One is you’ve got to decide, are you going to tolerate this or are you going to make a change? Okay, commit to it. Because I’m just saying this, I mean, it’s so funny. There’s a school that I know that has massive funds and then there’s David Robinson school. So the Carver Academy that David started. This school is one of the top in the country. David had never been in education but he understood the value of merit-based pay. David, and this is crazy, David was the top player in the NBA and then at a certain point they drafted the best basketball player in the country for college for the same position as him. So they drafted somebody who was going to be his replacement. But he understands merit-based, he understands, you know what, they’re going to draft somebody to take my position so I have an opportunity to either help this guy become great or to get bitter. And he decided to basically make the guy great and to mentor the guy. Well, David then takes that same mentality because in the prose, once you get to a certain age and you can’t perform, David was getting a little bit older, he was no longer the top option. So he decided to bow out gracefully and realized I can no longer perform at the level that I used to, so I’m ready to move on. In I think his 14 seasons he decided to do that. Incredible success. Yeah. Now, David brought that same attitude though to teaching. And he says at Carver Academy we are going to completely change the lives of the students. We’re going to make sure that these kids who are all coming from mostly impoverished areas, we’re going to make sure they get the best education in the state regardless of their ability to pay. And you, it all starts with you as a teacher. And so you as a teacher have to be the best teacher in the state. People are like, well, other people get paid more at this school or that school or they get… I don’t care about that. We’re talking about having the best education in the state. So for him he committed to this merit-based pay system and not tolerating… And I don’t know all the mechanics of the… Sure, sure. But I can say that non… people who are non-performers… He didn’t put up with that. He did not put up with it. Okay. Now, take that real quick though. Take that to other schools. I recently volunteered. I’m old enough where I say recently when I mean years ago. Of course. Anyway, so the last time I volunteered was like maybe 2008, 2009, but I was working with a group called Junior Achievement. Yeah. And I would go teach at this local public school and there were some of the worst teachers I’ve ever seen. Yeah. And I talked to some of the teachers who were good teachers. I remember talking to Ms. Blanton and Ms. Farquhar. I’m talking to them and I’m like, is this teacher, I mean, is he always this bad? Yeah. And it’s like, well, you know, they’re just, they can’t really, you know, if they have tenure, you know, they’re a good person, they have tenure. What does that mean? They can’t be fired. If some of your employees feel like that, it’s a dangerous place. Cause guess who can fire you? The customer. Simply by taking their dollars somewhere else. So get serious. Are you going to tolerate it, or are you going to make a change? So that’s the first action item, is commit to not tolerating that kind of performance. I mean, this is a huge thing. I could talk about this for three weeks in a row, but you have to decide that right now, because almost no one does. Almost nobody makes that decision. Are you going to do it? Are there other action items that you would highlight here for this section? Yeah, yeah. What you’re going to do is you want to develop a secret shopper program. Okay. Right now. Right now. You want to have people that are on your site, in your store, in your office, wherever it is, where they can somehow test your product, your quality, and your quality of your product and service, and the employees who work with you cannot know they’re a secret shopper. And then the merit-based pay can be attached to that. Yes. And so if they receive a good review, you know, 10 out of 10, that’s when they get this bonus. Yeah, a little quick on Thrive, we have some mystery shoppers. Yeah. And a couple of them. And what’s funny is that when people tell me, I fixed all the errors. No, you didn’t. How could you possibly know? Have you watched every single video? Actually, I have. And people are paid to find problems. So, yes. I love it. Is that all the action items there is there a secret shopper one? Okay, see you shopper mirror base pays to you might have a system where people you reward people doing a great job You penalize them doing a bad job. And the final thing is you want to post everyone’s secret shopper reviews In a place where everyone can see it. That’s not private. Nope. Hmm. You suck. Everyone should know you’re great Everyone should know good employee of the month gets to park in the nice place. Good. Idiot of the month doesn’t work here. Exactly. So that’s the fourth move here, as far as inspiring employees. The fifth one is creating an environment where A players are celebrated, and B players are appreciated, and C players are shunned the door. Hey, here’s the door. You’re promoted to customer status. The door’s right there. You’re a new customer. That’s wonderful. You can be a customer as much as you want. That’s wonderful. Jack Welch, this is kind of where we start getting into his differentiation system. I know he gets really emotional about this, so I’m sorry if there are tears that are shed. When you were referencing Jack Welch’s differentiation system, you said, at the core of the differentiation system is a belief that everyone in every company should know where they stand in terms of their performance at all times. Okay? Everyone should know where they stand at all times. Let me tell you something, Maul, real quick. Yeah. My wife, Angel. Hovers around the earth. Wow. Yeah, they’re just amazing. It’s hard to get in the plane, though, because the wings, they don’t fit. Right. It’s awkward. Sorry, Maul, she’s got some wings. But the thing about my wife is that she just will tell me stuff. So sometimes I’ll get in the car and she’ll say something like, well, you didn’t do whatever. And I can’t even argue it. I’m just like, well, this is what you perceive. This is true. And I’m an idiot. Because I’m glad that I know. I mean, what happens if she didn’t tell me? Then I’d just be an idiot every day. Yeah. And right now, I’m down to where I’m only an idiot once a month or twice a month. I mean, sometimes eight times a month. But it’s not every day. Maybe every other day. You know what I mean? But you want to know where you stand, right? So real quick, if anybody here got a bad review, if you’re watching this and you got a bad review, wouldn’t you want to know? Yeah. Wouldn’t you want to know, hey, if you have a restaurant and the food wasn’t great, wouldn’t you want to know the food wasn’t great? If you, God forbid, forgot to pay something, wouldn’t it be nice if the IRS would call you and say, hey, Sherry, I don’t know if you’re aware, but you know you missed the payment. Do you want to go ahead and make a payment? Don’t we all hate when we get the letter that says you owe this much and here’s a penalty? We all want a little bit of grace. So give them the ability to understand where they stand. You want to care about people enough to be candid. False kindness is a form of lying. If you’re telling people, you’re great, you’re a good person, what does that mean? We say this all the time as a country. We say it all around the world, I’m sure. I’m not sure how they say it in like South Korea, but they’re gonna say it. The point is though, people are like, you know, he’s a good person. What does it mean? He has a heart. Right. This is such a stupid statement. He has a good heart. What does that mean? It works? Come on. He’s got good intestines. They work. Just stop it. Don’t compliment people for being alive. Right. It doesn’t even feel good when you get complimented. Hey, you have beautiful eyes. Well, great, I worked hard for them. Shut up. Compliment me on something I actually have done. And so when you’re grading them, we’ve gone over it, but it’s the edge, the energy, the energize, and the execute at the beginning of this episode. I know you also touch on just kind of the core job task, and you’re saying it’s important to evaluate them on that as well. Yeah. I know. For example, we have a guy in our office right now I had a great conversation with. Yeah. Hardest working guy I know. He greatly cares about people, but his performance was terrible. Yeah. He did a crappy job. He just sucked at his job, but he’s one of the greatest guys I know. He’s just a champion of freedom. Yeah. So I pull him aside and I said, hey, are you aware that your task you did was just wrong? Right. Like not just wrong but wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong? But you know how much I like you, right? But you’re, it’s like a tornado. Positive kick and hug. Kick and hug. Kick and hug. A swirl of that’s how you do this. Yeah, I literally like worst, you couldn’t have done worse if you tried, but you’re one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. So it’s not false kindness because I’ve seen you do this. It’s the kick and hug hug method. I literally said, I said, do you, are you aware that you did this or is this totally like you’re like, I had no idea. And he’s like, honestly, I had, I had no idea. And I’m like, really? And he’s like, I didn’t know you wanted it that way. And I was like, I’m like, well, I’m like, Hey, you’re not in trouble. You know, I’ll get you, we’ll buy you lunch today. So you, we, you don’t feel awkward about this, but we got to stop doing this. We got to move forward. So you’re super candid. All the time. But it’s a kick and hug. Absolutely. I love it. So what’s some action steps for me now then if I’m using this differentiation system to inspire my employees? I’m so sorry, I just want to, I don’t want to forget this. If you don’t kick and hug, you don’t love. Throwing that out there for you. Wow. Be real, if you don’t. If you’re going to just tell people like, you know, you’re great, you’re a good person. If every single staff meeting is, well, you’re a good person, you’re a good guy. No. People are like, he’s to me. How would you feel if you worked in an organization where everyone was told they’re a good person and you’re truly the best? Yeah. If everybody is average, then nobody is great. Well, that’s why we’re discussing this. It’s how to motivate your team. You’ll lose A players that way extremely fast. I’ll do you an example. I had a guy I told this feedback to, and we know the guy. We know the guy. We know the guy. And the guy’s like, so you’re saying my performance Isn’t great. Yes, right. Well, what do I need to do get better? And he became like what can I do to get? Yeah, that was awesome. Yeah, but I had to motivate him and sometimes Motivating people requires to quote Colin Powell. We’ll make sure you put this on the screen Colin Powell Secretary of State, you know decorated military hero, he said Sometimes leadership requires pissing people off. Wow. Wow. And it requires hugging people. So if you’re not a hugger, deal with it. There you go. Okay, let’s go back. I’m sorry, I just like to add that. No, that’s fine. I just wanted, now it’s the action items. Okay. Because you’ve convinced me it’s important to let all my employees know where they stand. Yep. How do I do that on a regular basis there? One, you want to go ahead and develop a system that ranks every employee on a level from one to C. Okay. Or from A to C, I mean. From one to C would be tough. 1 to C, 1 to… I wouldn’t know how to do that really. Yeah, I’m sorry. That’s okay. Well, if you’re going to make fun of me, I will… I want to know what you have to say here. I think we’re being candid. I rate you a C. Not enough hugging. I don’t know where that is. Is that after 3 or after 4? Moving on. Okay. It’s in the past. So we develop a system that ranks every employee on an A to C level so they know where they’re at. And you really… And then what you would do is you go through and you rate them on those four E’s we talked about, okay? But you also need to make sure every single employee knows their core task. What is it that you expect me to do? And you want to let them know how good they are at it. And then you want to rank them on a level from A to C on these areas of edge, energy, energize, and execute. And you’re saying, actually, tell them? Oh my gosh. Yes. And you probably have to use scheduled time to do that on a regular basis. Yeah. And here’s the thing, this is, God, this is going to offend so many people. Are they ready? They’re ready. You’re ready. Whenever you’re ready. If someone says, well, I don’t even know how to rate somebody, then they, in fact, are a C or a B player. Anyone who can’t make a judgment call on someone else’s performance right away is a B or a C player. Right. Well, Andy, you can just rewind this episode. I’m just being real. If you’re like, well, I don’t even know where to rate my people, I don’t. Be your C player. Never met a top leader who’s like, I don’t know. I have no clue at all. I guess we’re everyone’s a B? No, they know. Either we’re hitting our big goals or we’re not. Either we’re doubling the company or we’re not. Next thing is you want to schedule a time to let the employee know where they stand. Like you said, you schedule a specific time. It can’t be like in the hallway, like, hey, Greg, you’re a C player all right see you later no it’s like gotta be a real deal hey hey Amanda you’re an A player you know what I mean? yeah so you gotta set up a time to do it. Is my boss hitting on me? It’s weird. Next thing is you want to develop a system to publicly celebrate A and B players. Okay. Now real quick you’re saying Clay celebrate B players I thought you’re supposed to view them as the enemy. Hear me. There’s a certain concept you have to do you have to understand here if There was not if there was not a foundation of that 70 to 80 percent of your employees who are dependable on time and who liked to be a Part of a team, but didn’t want to lead there would be no one to lead. And a lot of people are leaders not at work. They’re leaders at home. So this guy I met at hockey, he is probably one of the top dads I’ve ever met. Awesome. I’m talking to this guy, and he’s just obsessed about his kid can put on his own uniform by himself. He can get ready for the game by himself. He’s a freaking genius. He gets there first. They practice all the time. His kid is self-sufficient. Well, that’s a guy who’s obsessed with that sport. Based upon the amount of time he’s spending with his kid practicing a sport, it would probably indicate he’s not doing that at work. So he’s probably maybe a B player at work, but an A player at home. It just depends what you’re doing. So you need those B players. You’ve got to appreciate them. Celebrate those A players. And then the next thing is you want to let the C players know where they stand. In my mind, in a small business, I would give them two weeks to improve. Yeah, and if somebody can’t get it together, then you need to help them find a transition to another place where they can be successful. It doesn’t mean you… I can honestly say this, I have never, ever, ever, ever blindsided someone with firing them, ever. And even the people I fired, unless they did something that was like a crime against the company, like if someone’s stealing our customers or stealing things or lying consistently, I’m not going to help them. But anybody who got fired for not performing, I’ve always helped them find another job where they could be successful every time. Beautiful. Those are the action items right there for the fifth move of how to inspire your team. The sixth move on how to inspire your team is create a fun workplace environment where employees share in the overall profitability of the company. What does this look like? What are you talking about here? Well, there’s a thing called an ESOP. It’s called an Employee Stock Ownership Program. Look forward to more trainings on those. But Quick Trip is an ESOP, an Employee Stock Ownership Program. UPS is an ESOP, again, an Employee Stock Ownership Program. You guys said Southwest Airlines. You’ve got… Then there’s companies like Outback that have a managing partner. And so the manager, if they do a good job for a long enough period of time, they ultimately get to buy in and they get to buy a percentage of the gross revenue for the gross profit from the store. So they get to make a percentage of the profits if they’ve been there long enough and they do certain things. And Chick-fil-A allows you, if you’ve been there long enough and done a good job, you can actually buy your own franchise. This is how you described it in your book. You were talking about Southwest. You said Southwest consistently turns out a profit because they have an employee ownership program that gives their employees a sense of ownership that is very real. When the company does well financially, the employees do well financially. When the company struggles, the employees struggle. What’s the benefit here to actually giving this kind of ownership to your employees? I’ll tell you this. When we’ve had more and more thrivers all over the world this morning, we had Myrtle Beach. Where you at? Myrtle Beach. Whoa, we had Shanghai. Shanghai in the house. We’ve had that. We’ve had London. We’ve had Canada. We’ve had, what else did we have? We have some Australia. I thought we had an Australia. I think we did have an Australia. We had a Costa Rican. We had a guy in, a lady in Baraboo. Baraboo, of course. Baraboo, Wisconsin. Of course, Baraboo. Well, when people are signing up, if you have an ESOP or some kind of profit sharing or somewhere where everyone wins, people are like, yes, Baraboo, woo! But if not, you as the owner are like, Baraboo, woo! And then everyone’s like, yeah. So you’re like, let’s go, let’s, and everyone’s like, what’s he excited about? You want everyone engaged. Everybody can be motivated, they’ll work harder if they’re buying into this. Put up the Gallup stat. Dan, kind of look at me if I’m wrong here, but I think the Gallup stat was it was 13% of employees are engaged. Is that correct? So Gallup, the Gallup poll research group, you can put it on the screen. 13% reports that 13% of employees are engaged, AKA give a crap about the company’s results. And you’re saying if the employees have an option, an opportunity to profit from the success of the company, they’ll be more engaged. I have met a Southwest employee recently who was engaged. Like you’re talking about, they were, they cared about the profitability and they were pumped about they were talking about the profitability of the company there was like it was their company because it is alright so the first action said because talked about you touched on he said look at the stop attorneys is that the first one you call that I find an attorney who can help you for many stop this is what you want to do and what it is that you essentially are selling your company to your employees okay and you’re allowing them to all have a percentage of it. And you can buy it back if they’re not performing or whatever, but the idea is they’re all sharing in the profitability. There’s a lot of legal nuances that I won’t spend time here getting into. It’s very important that you’d hire one. Okay, do you have any other action items there as far as those go? Yeah, well, the next thing you’d want to do is you’d like to meet with the attorney and explain to them your vision for growing the company. And they might say, no, an ESOP isn’t right for you. Maybe just a strict profit share would. Or maybe they’d say a managing partner system. Or maybe a franchise. So meet with one of these guys. Yeah, but I mean if everyone’s working really hard, maybe say in the future you can open your own restaurant. That’s how franchises and stuff work. So there’s all different ways you can do it, but you have to find a way to share the success. Otherwise you won’t end up being the right culture. If I’m entertaining this as an option for a business, do you have a book that you would recommend as far as the knowledge on this topic? The Service Profit Chain is the best book, Harvard case study, because it just explains so many examples of how great companies do this. I know that book dives into a lot of these companies, Southwest and whatnot, and how they got to where they are. I feel like this would be a good time to ask yourself, did these companies get to where they are by already having these systems in place or did they create them once they made it? Because I think you probably hear this a lot, right? I’m gonna do that once I get big but right now… You hear a lot of business owners and as a consultant I see it, you see them where their business has stayed the same size for seven years. Yeah. So I had an employee of ours who talked to me, I was driving home the other day and the photography business were involved and I think we’re up 13 percent for the year or something is that 13 percent 50 percent somewhere that and he’s like we’re up 13 percent for the year And I’m like that sucks You know say why like because it’s not our stated goal now just so the thrivers understand this Wedding photography is somewhat of a limited world Yeah, because there’s only so many girls that get married, and we don’t want to travel and so it’s sort of a limited market Yeah, but still it’s not the stated goal. So I’m like, come on, baby. We’ve got one month left. Push it. Now, I’m pumped. And the guy on the phone, though, I can tell that he was pumped, but not as pumped as I was. Because in that particular business, we don’t have an employee stock ownership program, any kind of profit share set up. And the company doesn’t have big, big goals to do that. So I started thinking there’s got to be some ways to engage him more so that he cares more, even though the company isn’t one that’s going to grow really quickly. Right. So if you’re watching this and you have a business like that where you have market share, you don’t have a lot of desire to grow. Yeah. Then you’re really not a thriver, honestly. Yeah. Because you’re not trying to thrive, you’re just trying to survive. Then there’s probably a website for you, survive15.com. You just do the minimum and get by. But I’m saying, if you have a business where you want to grow and grow people, you need to learn how to find somebody who can set a big goal for your company to either grow or make an increased profit, some way to share that profit. Okay. And again, that was the sixth move to inspire your employees because inspiring, that’s the second secret of management. And so we actually taught you why it’s important to inspire and then practically how to do those six moves. So now, we get to go to the third secret of management. Come on. We did the first two. The third secret here is accept that common sense is no longer common. That’s the secret, huh? Yeah, and I don’t know that it ever was common, but especially now, it’s not common. Well, what do you mean by that? What do you mean? I like, OK, I don’t know how to use my phone very well. So Dan, the judger, he’s on like Evernote. He’s just on Evernote like, well, I’ll just save a little note here and tweet myself and send myself a text. He tweets himself all the time. I’ll tweet myself again. I just tweeted myself again. Whoa, I kind of liked how that felt when I tweeted myself. But anyway, he understands that. Well, for me, it’s not common sense because there’s a mindset difference. Like the tweeter. You’ve heard of the tweeter? Yeah, the tweeter. Do you use the tweeter? I heard people are tweeting. Yeah? Yeah. So the thing is that now you have another guy who might be really into smart phones and computers, but he can’t carry on a conversation with a human. That’s common sense. Look them in the eye. Shake their hand properly. What’s wrong with you? Yeah. Nothing’s common. The world is too fragmented for it to be common sense. So I’ve got a notable quotable. This is from you. It’s from your book here. And it was actually in all caps. So I got the impression you thought it was important. I don’t know. This is what you said. You must not ever think that anything is common sense. I understand that we need to think this. Why is it so important, though? What is the damage of starting to think that common sense is common sense? Okay, well example, when you wash your hands before making food, how long do you think that you should wash your hands? I’m trying to put you on the spot. It’s like that. It’s like the alphabet, right? Now you did it. It’s like the A, B, C, D. Okay, so in Oklahoma, you’re supposed to sing happy birthday twice. Okay, well let’s sing the two and see which one’s the longest. I’m just kidding, that’d be terrible. Just kidding, I’m just kidding. So you’re supposed to do that though, right? And you’re supposed to have soap and it’s supposed to be warm water. You’re supposed to do this process. Then, when you open the door, are you supposed to open the door with the hands you just washed? No, I use different hands. You actually take a paper towel? Yeah. Oh, you take a paper towel. Okay, gotcha. Paper towel. Yeah. So anyway, so what we’ll do is we would then use puppets. So you’re going to open up the door with a towel. The paper towel. And then you’re going to go back into the food and serve the food. We’re going to put gloves on. OK. You have a hearing aid on. There’s a process. Right. So I went to one restaurant recently. I was helping these people make a training video. And I go there, and we’re teaching how to wash hands. And this is in the video where this person’s trying to teach the staff. And he’s like, hey, come on over here and wash your hands. And we’ll film you, and then I’ll narrate. So she’s narrating. Well, this is how we wash hands. What we do is we, and this person washes their hands and immediately grabs the handle to the bathroom and walks in and then begins to put the hands in the food. And I’m like, time out. That’s on camera. We’ve just defeated the purpose of not common sense. And it was. And that’ll have huge impacts as a manager and for your business. If that were to happen and you got busted, that was all time. I’m going to. Yeah. And I do and I do dark, dark, dark acts of jackassery all the time. I do things that baffle myself. And so when I do things that are stupid, it was out of checklist and a system we all default to our level of preparation. Right. So if I haven’t prepared for that moment, that trip, I’ll travel halfway across the world without any shoes. I’ll show up for a speaking event without a shirt. Right. I’ll just leave my bag, my wallet. I did a speaking event recently and I left my bag and my wallet and everything I valued in the world right there on the stage of the speaking event. Stupid! No common sense there. And I didn’t have a checklist to default to. I didn’t have a way to go back to my default level of preparation. Had I done that, I’d have been like, well, do I have this? Do I have that? No, I don’t. But instead, I left everything. I didn’t leave it all at one time. I left little things. So I would leave ten minutes down the road. I’m like, I got to go back. I think I forgot my wallet. I go back. So that’s the manager’s job though. I got almost back from St. Louis, Broseph, and I got back and I freaking, no, it’s Kansas City. Yeah, you’re driving. And I left a bag of everything. I got like four hours, it took me like six hours of driving just to make up for my stupidness. So that’s what a manager does though. You have to assume that there’s no common sense. And make a checklist. Checklist, checklist, checklist. Make a checklist. You can flip here to this next page, because what I wanted to do is you shared with us some stories. I want to see if we can take a little trip down memory lane here. There were a few stories that I thought were funny. You don’t have to go through all of them here. Pick a couple of these. They might be long, but they were stories that had me laughing. I’m going to give it to you fast. We used to run a wedding entertainment company. Father of the bride walks up to one of the DJs and he says… This is stuff that you would assume is common sense. Yeah. Walks up to one of the DJs and he says, hey, do you need any help? The DJ says, sure. Could you help me take down all the equipment on the dance floor? It’s been a long night. DJ goes and sits in his car, hangs out while the father of the bride in a tuxedo is moving a dance floor. He loaded everything back up. Swear to you. Another example. Had a DJ tell a couple at the wedding, he says. Like the people getting married there. Yeah. So they’re getting married and he’s hopping the mic and he’s like, Oh folks, let’s hear it for the couple, we’re so excited for them today. And you know love doesn’t last. And I’m telling you, and he just hops on the mic, Love doesn’t last. And I just got a divorce, but I’m excited they’re here and at least they can enjoy it while it lasts. It’s not common sense. Yeah. How is that not common sense? So how do I fix these two? One is I made a policy that after the wedding, you would get paid based on the feedback of the customer. So if they were happy, gave you a great review, you made more money. Magically, people quit asking the father of the bride to move crap. Stop talking about the divorce. The second one, well that one I had to script the announcements and put them on a sheet of paper that everyone had to say in practice. So everyone said, ladies and gentlemen, up next, the cutting of the cake. Once again, folks, it’s the cutting of the cake. We’ve got a bride, we’ve got a groom, we’ve got a knife, it should be exciting, and that kind of thing. And everyone had to say the same thing every time. There you go. Because any time they could insert their own narrative, it was crazy. Third, the DJ was meeting with the brides in the dark. This is a weird one. Okay, we had a DJ who… A real human. A real human. This is a weird thing. We had a DJ who, after the wedding, he asked the bride’s daughter, who was 16, on a date. Date ends up going longer than expected. Nighttime, bad deal. So you had to say you can’t date anyone related to the bride and they can’t be underage right? Weird systems. Moving on. Yeah, employees we had employees in the office that would look at adult content while on the phone with customers. So my wife and I worked in a house and we would walk down the whole hallway. You kidding me? No, I had work. Yeah, all the time. They thought it was funny. They would leave crazy pictures on each other’s screensavers, to be funny. Forgetting that my wife lived in this house at the time. And then you have other people. This is one of my favorite ones. We had an employee who applied for a job at a call center, and then when I hired him day one, they said, I don’t really want to make calls. I’m more of a face-to-face. This is a call center, a center where calls are made. The whole point is we call. Why would you not? Well, I’m more face to face. I really am looking to be more of a manager. So what did they think when they saw the job like, you know, posts that described. I don’t think they did. AKA common sense. Interesting. All right, so you’ve convinced me common sense is not common. Yeah. What do I do as a thriver that’s watching here? I’m managing people, I’m a business owner, I’ve got my team. Four thunder moves real quick. Go. Create an employee handbook. Oh man. Put everything in there that you could possibly need to cover about how you do business. And if you want an example of a great employee handbook, one you can get, I highly recommend that you think about all of the problems that you have on a daily basis, and you begin to write those down in terms of policies. But to save yourself time, look for a GOAT, greatest of all time. Find a friend of yours who owns a successful franchise, or finds one who owns a successful franchise, and see if you can get a copy of their handbook. See if you can go to a successful company, get a copy of their handbook. Just find one, and then basically try to make one that’s in line with it. I mean, give me a handbook that was… If you were basing yours off of the Starbucks handbook, guess what? They’ve done pretty well. So, you know, do that kind of thing. The next thing here is require all your employees to read the handbook. Oh, that seems important. Yeah, and have them sign off on it. So then the third is you want to create a test that proves they’ve actually read the handbook and have passed the test. Create the handbook by finding a goat, require them to read it, and then test if they’ve actually read it. Yeah, so like right now if you work at Thrive, there’s a video you have to watch by Steve Jobs that explains the future of education. And we had a young man we just brought on on Monday, and he watched the video and he calls me. I love this company. Like, that’s 100% dead on. True story, I’ve had other people watch it, and they’re like, I don’t know if I agree. Yeah. Then don’t work here. Right. I mean, it’s not like you have to. Yeah. Work somewhere else, okay? And then the next thing is you wanna have all your employees sign a work agreement that states that they have read the handbook and that they agree to work under what you deem to be common sense. Right. Let’s talk about some of the not common sense that other companies are doing that’s awesome. Starbucks, they always want to have you refer to the products as not small, medium, large. Like Grande, was it Venti, Tall, you have different names. Starbucks are called baristas. You can’t be like, hey coffee person, help me out here. It’s baristas. They have a system. Chipotle, they take all their stuff. It’s supposed to be basic organic. Free-range chickens, that kind of thing. It’s supposed to be healthy chicken. Like they’ve been pet 30 minutes each day. Yeah, each chicken has a name. He’s been pet. He found his goals. They’ve coached him through life. But, so, like, the thing is, if you’re going to work at Chipotle, you better understand these things. And you shouldn’t be, like, suggesting, like, you know what? We can make a lot more money if we start selling burgers. Stop. You’re at Chipotle. There you go. Go make it fresh. So those are the action items right now to implement today. And you know this. The handbook’s a big one, but it’ll have a huge impact. Handbook is a big, horrible, painful thing. But I will tell you, if you’re watching this right now and you’re like, I don’t know where to start, just look for a GOAT, the greatest of all time, someone in your community who’s really doing it big. Ask them to see their handbook, or if you can meet with them about it. And you need to construct a magical document. And once you make it, you’re never done. You’re always going to tweak it and make it better each week. So that was the third secret, you know, to manage at a high level. That’s the common sense. You give all the secrets away. Alright JT, 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 could reduce their credit card fees by at least $3,000 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. That’s clear. Okay, so that could be true. So I would 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 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they could save $3,000 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 making more than $3,000 every 10 minutes and they’re like, nah, that’s not worth my time. We getting that right, buddy. We getting that right, buddy. 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! It 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 and I cannot think of any other. Shampoo is better. I go on first and clean the hair. Conditioner is better. I leave the hair silky and smooth. Oh really fool, really. Stop looking at me, swan! 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, you know, 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, all right? What’s your name? Patricia. Patricia, all right. 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 10 minutes needed to compare rates to save the $20,000 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 brand name of the clock. It’s an elegant from Ridgway. It’s from Ridgway. Let’s buy the clock and sell the fireplace. I encourage everybody out there, go to thrivetimeshow.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 10 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 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 and 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 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 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. You know, 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 wanna 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 to use the 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’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 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 Lee Crocker, the 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, 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 6-8 weeks he’s doing reawaken America tours. Every 6-8 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. I’ve seen guys from start ups go from start up to being multi millionaires teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical It’s a critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building it 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. 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, 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. 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 of 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. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right. And anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. Anytime I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns. 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 van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from four to 14 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 ten locations in only a year in October 2016 we grow 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. When 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, and 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. If you 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 their call. OK, 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. So now we’ve got it to where we’re in excess of 100 clients. That’s awesome. 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 100% growth every year. 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. And so that’s when it needed a system. So 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. Well 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. That’s really what it’s all about. With a script here, 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 100 calls. We make 200 to 300 calls a day per rep. She’s been nailing down five and eight appointments a day on that script. Somebody out there is having a hard time. 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 do, if someone were to buy an Apple computer today, and or let’s say you buy 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. 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 was five years removed 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 meet? What was the first interaction? There was 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 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, you know, 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, a 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. 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 wanna 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. And so I’d 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. 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 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 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 adjusting parts about you Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted.