How Do You Know If You Are Doing the Right Work or Just Wasting Time? – Ask Clay Anything

Audio Transcription

Do you have questions? America’s number one business coach has answers. It’s your brought up from Minnesota. Here’s another edition of ask clay. Anything on the thrive time business coach radio show?

On today’s edition of be asked, clay, anything, ask me anything additional. The thrive time show we have a thriver out there by the name of Derrick who emailed in a question that I wish more people would ask. And so Andrew, without any further ado, what is. What is the question? All right, so he says, quick question I hear on the podcast all the time and everyone else talking about putting time in your business. That is correct, sir. Continue. My question is, how do you know when you’re actually putting in legitimate time into your business or you’re just doing busy work? Are you ready? I’m ready. Okay. I’m going to go through. There are five, five moves. I’ve got four of them on the show notes. Okay. Well, let’s go ahead and add the fifth one here real quick. Okay? Okay. So here are the.

Here are the first four moves. Then we’ll get into the fifth move. And Andrew, I know it’s tough to do public type and keep up with the show notes, but we’re going to do it. Here we go. The first way you know whether you’re doing, you know, meaningful work or just wasting your time is you have to know your why. Why are you doing this and is doing this activity is doing this activity, getting you closer to your goals. That’s really is complicated as it is. So I’m going to give you an example today that I think is a good example. We had a thriver in the past week reach out to me with an opportunity to serve as sort of like a c, e, o Coo role of an existing company, a company. It’s very big, big company, right? And they said we need somebody to help manage the day to day operations.

It’s a big company to north of $20,000,000 and they offered me a pretty intense amount of money to help them and I’m not gonna do it. And do you know why Andrew? I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to entertain it. I’m not gonna. The Guy said, could you meet for lunch? I’d like to discuss it. I know the guy. He’s bonafide. Could you meet for lunch? You know why I said I respect that. Thank you, but I don’t want to meet for lunch. Yeah, because your goals don’t exactly align with his goals. My goals are to mentor millions and to be the best husband and dad possible. That’s all I got. Yup. That’s. That’s all. I got. Mentor millions to be the best husband and dad possible. So you ask yourself why it is what I’m doing right now. Getting me closer to my goal as an example.

I see a lot of people going back to school and again out of school, but they are still a fool economically speaking, so they’re like, I need to go back to school because I need to get educated. I need to learn things. I need to get a degree. I got to complete my degree. Well, if the degree does not get you closer to your goals, then the degree is an epic waste of time. Now, if the degree does get you closer to your goals and goal should not be to get a degree, your goal should be able to make time and financial freedom. That’s the goal. Your goal shouldn’t be just to earn another degree. If you want to learn more about history, watch the history channel. Go to a library to sit in on a class, audit a class to let you do it so you might not need a degree or you might need a degree, but it isn’t getting closer to your goals.

Ask Yourself, what is my why? The difference between business in business as a business has an I in it, a business exists to serve you. Again, the difference between a business and business is a business has the letter I in it, in a business exists to serve you, Aka I now buisiness has a y in it, and the difference is in it. In addition to the spelling is the people who are just busy don’t know their why. So you’ve gotta find your why and make sure you’re going in the right direction. Now the next, the next way you can know if you’re doing the right work, meaningful work, or just wasting your time is you got to know your rp eyes and I hate acronyms, abbreviations, but it’s, it’s, it’s just you need to know this. Okay? People common commonly referred to these things as Rpi, so you just need to know what they are.

They’re revenue producing revenue. It’s revenue per RPA, sorry, revenue producing activities, revenue producing activities. You have to know your rp as your revenue producing activities are a certain rate. The activities that you can do that produce revenue. So let’s give an example. If I owned an Amazon business and I was near the top of the Amazon listings, do you know it would be a high revenue producing activity for me? If I had a listing about a product that was near the top of my category or at the top, do you know what a revenue producing activity would be? There’ll be a huge benefit for me. I want to get some reviews right from buyers, so I’d be obsessing over getting reviews. Oh yeah. Now another thing I would do if I had a product on Amazon and I was trying to grow it massively, I would create a dream, 1000 list of influencers.

Now I’d be reaching out to people like Brittany Spears or oprah or you know, whoever you can think of and trying to get them to try my product, use my product because that is, that will change the games. I would be constantly getting reviews, constantly reaching out to my dream, 1000 and I would be constantly running my ads so those three things are happening all the time, running my ads, dream 1000 getting reviews, and then I just want to make sure that my product gets a little bit better every single day. That’s revenue producing activities. Now the next, the next way, the next filter that you can run your life through to determine whether you’re wasting time are headed in the right direction is kpis. That stands for key performance indicators. So you want to have a set quota. You say, you know what? My Amazon online company, I need to get at least two reviews a day and you hold yourself accountable to those numbers.

I need to get 20 a day and you hold yourself accountable to those numbers. If you’re making sales calls, I commit to making 100 calls a day. If you do sales, stopped by some people call them calls, but you’re going to businesses and presenting. You want to hold yourself accountable to a set number. It’s just unbelievable how well it works. Andrew, there’s a fitness guy we’ve worked with and I won’t mention his, his particular business, but you’ve seen his agenda right, and the guys growing and what kinds of things are on his agenda that he needs to be doing every single week on his agenda there is get reviews. How many reviews do you remember? 10 bleed for week. I think it’s five or 10, but yeah, so he’s on his list. Get five reviews a week. What else in podcast? He’s got to do a podcast every day.

And what else? Yup. So reviews podcast is one more baby and then. Oh, here, I’ll get a video review of dream 100 2100. There you go. He’s got it. He’s got to do now again, Andrew. Correct. We got to get five reviews a week, but five of them need to be video fiber. Google. So a total of 10. That’s correct. We also need to never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever stopped what? Say it one more time. We got to stop. Never stopped getting the reviews. Yep. What else? Never stopped calling and dream 100. Yup. Never stopped getting reviews and never stopped podcasting. Right? That’s it. And he has a set number one podcast today, five video reviews a week, five google reviews. This is what we do and if you just never stop, it’s amazing the level of success you can have, but when you start and stop a new strategy every week, that doesn’t work.

Also, when you start a new strategy every week, it’s confusing. Also. You don’t have time to get it all done, so you just got to hold yourself accountable to your daily key performance indicators. Andrew, how much of your check are you saving as a percentage? Twenty five percent. That would be an example of a key performance indicator. You know that 25 percent of what you earn, you are savings or you’re saving. Now, the next variable we want to think about is multiplied. What are you doing today that’s going to allow you to simplify and multiply? Everyday you ask yourself, what can I do to simplify my workflow or my process, my systems, my checklist so that I can multiply? Because complexity scales and simplicity. Think about this. Simplicity I misphrased. Simplicity scales, complexity fails. Simplicity. Again, simple things, simplicity that scales, but complexity fails, so you want to ask yourself on a daily basis, what are the things that I am doing that are allowing me to scale my company?

How can I simplify the business? What do I need to do today to remove a step or simplify a process so that you can scale something so you ask yourself again, how do I know if I’m the stuff I’m working on right now is meaningful, or if I’m just wasting time? You go through the why is it getting me closer to my goals, right, to the revenue producing activities. You say, uh, are these activities producing money? Right? Because without. I’ll get to my final point here, so revenue producing activities. You’ve got to have your revenue producing activities. You got to have those defined. Now your key performance indicators. You’ve got to know those because the key performance indicators hold you accountable to a set quota everyday. A set quota, a set amount of output. You want to hold yourself accountable to this many calls a day.

This many times you’re going to show your ad. This many people, you’re going to interview a day, there’s gotta be a quota. You have to set a quota. Step four, you want to think about how can I multiply? How can I remove a step? Because I know that simplicity scales and complexity fails in the final. The final thing here, final, final question here is if I would be dead in a year, would I be doing this? Aka scheduled time for what matters? So you could be working all the time selling your awesome watches, selling your awesome cookies, growing your awesome dentistry, but if you neglect your wife or your kids or the things that matter most to you, what was the point? I would say there probably isn’t a point and a lot of people get that twisted. They get confused, they get that, they get discombobulated, they begin to focus on things that don’t matter, that don’t have a a value to them on this planet.

For those of you who believe in eternal life as I do things that are not have eternal value. So my son wants to work on Dj playing music at night, or I could do another sales call. I’m going to choose deejaying at night because that matters to me more than making another buck. You can make another dollar, but you can’t make another day. So I encourage you out there. Just be thinking about these things, thinking about these five things. One more time. Let’s go through them one more time. You’re saying, how do I know if what I’m doing today is just busy work or is it the right activity? Am I making progress? Again, know your why. Know your goals. Know your goals for your faith, know your goals for your family, your fitness, your friendships or funder. If you’re getting your family, your faith, your fitness, your friendship, your fun.

No those goals know the goals for your f six life. Then then once you know those goals, ask yourself, am I getting closer to doing this or am I completing somebody else’s to do list? Like, okay, my parents want me to have a degree. Really? Is that helping you? Oh, I, you know, my parents want me to have a degree. Oh, you know, the Joneses, the Joneses, they really want me to serve on the Hoa. The homeowner’s association. That Jones is that they really do. Remember Andrew, I told you about my hoa days. I’ve heard a few stories. Okay, let, let me, let me retell them and I liked that. Everytown here. Um, I was in a neighborhood back in the day called Silverwood. It was in Tulsa. One hundred 11, 111th and memorial and the head of the homeowners association. His name was Mike and had an election.

And you how you elect the home owner’s association board. Do you know? Do you know? How do you know how this works? I, I would assume a pretty, pretty normal. I’ve never been in an Hoa before, but all the neighbors would get to vote. Yeah. And they have no idea who the neighbors are. Nice. So it’s basically whoever puts her name on the ballot window. So the neighbor says, hey clay, you’re a young guy. I was like 22. Yeah, you got a successful company, Dude. I’m like, people, people always come by my house and go, Hey, what’s your dad do for a living? This is my house. Stop asking that. So all my neighbors are forties. I’m sure you run into that right now. All your name, Andrew, you’re 20. Most of your neighbors are probably what? Forty, 50 when I wouldn’t be outside. They’re like, where’s your dad?

And I’m like, Nope, this is my house, my house. So the point is, they would always ask me, hey dude, you’re the, you know, you have a good business going, you should run for the Hoa. So I thought, well, I should run for the Hoa. So put my name on the ballot. Next thing you know, I won by default. So I’m like third, like secretary or something. There’s the president, Mike Bruce was the VP. Okay. And then I’m like the treasurer. Nice. So I’m like, what does the treasure you have to do? They said, well you got to make sure you collect the dues for everybody because we got to buy lawn chairs and landscaping and hang Christmas lights up and whenever. And uh, the president moved. So now bruce moves up these vp. Bruce Moves. Yeah. Oh, while you’re talking, you’re right here. You’re looking at.

I was the DP, I was the president of the Hoa. And so as the president of the Hoa, people would call me and say, I’ve got this one, this will be my daily voicemails. So you hit the voice of God. Do you see the red light? He, I’d hit it. You have 14 voicemails. So I hit play A. Yeah, I just want you to know I’m the bushes seemed to be up elephant a bigger than they should be upfront. I want to get those taken care of. Um, call me back right away. Uh, I clay, I’ve got a concern. There’s a car that’s parking a little bit over the uh, the curb and I want to get that dealt with a client. I’m not going to make my hoa dues this month. Come all behind, but I want to see if I can. Boop. Hey, I want to see if we can lower the eighth every day.

Oh Man. I’m going, what am I doing here man? So you know, what I decided to do, which is probably not a move you should do because once you sign up for something you should honor it. And I did not do it, but you don’t have united stated to do. Why did you block everybody? I hit delete and I’d, I’d play the delete, delete game for like a month. Yeah. We had a monthly meeting and they’re going, hey, we called you. He never called us back. And I’m like, oh, I must be not getting those messages. I got to figure out what’s going on. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll use some of the hoa money to switch to a different carrier. There you go. And then I like do a misprint on the brochure, were printed the wrong numbers and I played that game for about six months where I and I never did anything.

It was just total gridlock. If you wanted something done that Hoa, nothing got done. And it was because I didn’t know my why so you have to know your why. Yeah. I was honored for the opportunity. The RPA revenue producing activities are, is what you’re doing today making you money? Is it creating revenue? Three key performance indicators. Do you have a quota for all the things need to be doing like workout for an hour. It’s been two hours with my wife. It’s been. Now we’re on my book multiply. Are you doing things that allow you to scale or to fail? Are you simplifying or complicated? You gotta. To simplify simplicity scales, complexity fails, thrive nation. One more time, simplicity scales, complexity fails. And the final, the final thing you have to do is you have to ask yourself, am I scheduling time for what matters? And that my friend is another edition of ask me anything. If you have any questions, just email me [email protected]. It’s [email protected]. And without any further ado, Andrew, are you ready? I’m ready. Are you ready? So ready. She’s ready. Three, two, one. Excuse me. I had a quick question now. One final question. I know we already did this addition of as clay, anything but I did want to ask, is it possible to do a rendition, a Karaoke version of blaze of glory by Not Bon Jovi? Every time I hear it, it just makes me poker late

on behalf of the entire thrive time show. We apologize for the way today’s show ended, but I have a quick question. Is there any way we could get a little bit of know cowboy whips on the track? I kind of like, just like the, you know, kind of, you know. Can we get a couple of that bubble wrap it up. Well that’s good. I’ll just let it, let it fly. Just Woo. Nice.