How to Hire, Inspire, Train and Retain A-Player Employees | Celebrating the Diligence of Former Clay Clark Employee Captain Carter Watts

Audio Transcription

[Inaudible]

Grabbed the duct tape and mentally prepare yourself for yet another mind expanding knowledge bong from America’s number one business coach, clay Clark.

Harder Watts. Welcome. Welcome back to the thrive time show. How are you sir? Oh, I’m doing great this morning. Hey, you have a not been on my payroll for about a week. You’ve been free of the, of a cage for about a week. How long, how long do you have? You did, did you work with us? Just over two and a half years. And my take and Jason, you, you are here with me on the show today and you, you’ve known Carter for a long time. Yeah, I was actually just telling him I did not know Carter was no longer in the office because I’ve just been like running around. And the other day I’m like, Hey, where’s Carter? And they’re like, Carter works for Roy. And I was like, Hmm, what kind of it was kind of like a little gut punch, but I’m proud of him and I’m adjusting your mic volume real quick here.

I think you’re good now. I think you’re good now. I got it. Okay. Sweet. Screaming. We’ve got some quiet people. Some I’m in Chicago, my gesture, Mike, volume two fence, some quiet people. Then just, just kind of eat that Mike and I think we’re on the same page. Okay, great. So you have worked with us though. You worked for again, how long was it? Like two and a half. Three years. Two and a half, three years. And during those two and a half or three years you never called in late. You never were late. You never were disrespectful. You never had a writeup. You never had anything but just positive things. And when I heard that Roy, one of our long time clients was looking to hire somebody who could be a manager and I recognized that that person could be you.

I felt it was like my duty to refer you to, to Roy, one of my clients because I knew that that was the best thing for your family longterm. Right. But I didn’t want to. So it is that moment where it’s like, I know I need to refer them over there cause we’re always like, I need somebody who’s kind, who’s diligent, who’s detail. I need that kind of guy, you know. So when you’re doing the interviews, the job interviews will let me know if you find that guy, and I’m thinking about it for like, this is all within like 10 seconds, but it seemed like it was hours, but immediately it’s like, it’s like my brain is card and I’m hearing something subliminally in my mind, Carter watch, I’m going, God, are you talking to me? I mean it was seriously like an epiphany thing where I felt like I needed to refer you to Roy, but I didn’t want to because selfishly you do such a great job and I wanted to keep you on our team, but also because we only take on 160 clients, I knew there wasn’t going to be an immediate future to promote you to be a coach unless something changed.

And so it’s kind of this weird deal. But anyway, so we referred you over there. What’s it like the first week over there working with Roy? What’s a, how is it different in terms of, cause you’re on your feet all the, now you’re not writing search engine articles. What’s the first week been like? Oh, funny that you say I never called in sick or anything cause my first week was full of the flu and a [inaudible] infection. So that was an exciting first week. And make sure you eat that microphone real quick. Just gotta be like super close to it. So you’re saying just see your first week you were sick. Yeah, it was terrible. That’s really funny. Okay. So you you’re learning all the systems what kind of systems, how’s it different from what, like what, what kind of tasks are you doing over there?

Yes. So I’m checking people in when, so we work at Roy’s place. It’s a auto repair shop. So we check people in when they come in and like, Hey, I have no idea what’s going on with my car. A bunch of lights here. And it feels weird. So I write up a summary of what the customer tells me. Get a check, then sent over to one of our technicians, one of our mechanics. Then we’ll do a thorough check of everything and as soon as they shoot me back a list of what they found, the problem was I have a cup seven parts, get the customer call and say, Hey, this is what’s going on, what would you like us to do about it? And then we just get that ordered and get working on the car as soon as you can.

So what I’m going to do is I’m going to go through page one 83 of the boom book, this version of the boom book, which everyone can download for free by going to thrive time show.com. It’s thrive time show.com, forward slash free resources that can go there right now and they can download this. But on page a one 83, Steve jobs writes, a small team of a players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. Jason, what in your mind makes Carter in a player? He’s just about the most diligent dude I’ve ever met. I did not talk to Carter much when I first started here, cause like he would come into elephant all the time. Yeah. And it wasn’t till I started shadowing that I realized, Oh, he works up at thrive. And I knew him as he was a chill cat and his man, a few words, always had a smile on his face and just seemed a little quiet.

And then he may not claim this, but I claim we bonded when the office flooded, we ended up having to go out to camp Clark to set up an impromptu SEO row. I remember that. And that was the most I’d ever talked to Carter. And we’re just like trying to figure out how these wires work. On the way back, he showed me his awesome M&M and fraction. So our, our office almost flooded. The water got very close to the Arkansas river banks, huge portions of Tulsa, Oklahoma was flooded and the West Tulsa area. And so we thought about, we hit, we had to move the buildings or move the, the all the equipment, move all the employees. So we evacuated. And we had weed. Steve Currington said we could live or we could office in his building at total lending concepts. And so we moved half the team to total lending concepts. We realized we were at a real estate, so we were going to move the rest of the team into my house. And so you guys met through that process. But I, I think what I want to hammer, I, there’s a lot of things I want to get into, but you and I met at a conference. Carter. Yeah. How did you hear about the conference? At the job I had previously,

I drove a work truck and just was listening to the show one day. And you had mentioned the conference was coming up and what were you doing before? I was working for a built their supply company. Okay. The job I was doing, I was helping out with the service area. I’m doing doors and windows.

Yeah. So you were working at a place where you delivered the things and you were in your car and you heard our radio show correct. And then your wife has a photography company, I believe. And so the idea was you guys would buy a ticket, come to the conference and learn how to grow it. Definitely. Okay. So, well, that’s how we met. And then somehow in that process, I think you came to another conference.

Yeah. About so that was in January on the 1st of May. And then that following August, he came to another conference. And did I offer you a job or did you ask for a job or how did we, how’d that happen? Do you remember? No. it was about a month later, a couple of months later just listening to the podcast again, and you’re talking about how if you don’t really like going to your job, what’s the point? Yeah. I was like, you know what, that’s great. And thrive was really awesome when I was there, so I’m just gonna show up.

Yeah. And so you, you applied and you’re asked if you could work here and I knew right away that you would be a good fit. And Jason, people ask me all the time, well, how do you know if someone’s a good fit? I get that question. Do you, do you get, do people ask you that question? All of my clients, so you guys have like anybody who comes into elephant or they see the thrive team, they’re like, God, your people are the employees I want. How do you find good people? Or how do you make somebody a good person? What do you guys do? Now I’m going to, this is going to sound braggadocious and not positive in any way. And someone’s going to go, I hate this show now, but you’re going to want to keep listening because you know it’s true, but you’re not gonna like it somebody, somebody out there is going to say, I’m not a fan of what you’re saying.

That’s what you’re going to do right now.

One, you have to be the kind of boss that someone would like working for. True. [inaudible] Wise people are not going to work for you. [inaudible] And so I, back in the day, I’ve gone so many companies, and I won’t mention any specific details, but I had a guy back in the day, Oh, this set story car did, you can tell me if you can relate to this. He was very good at his job. So I promoted him and the job he had, and I’m not talking about anybody that you guys would know. This is in the past. Okay. The kind of job that he had, you had all the guys were all required to wear a shirt and tie and dress. You know, it wasn’t a suit, but you had to wear a shirt and tie every day. So the day he gets promoted, he doesn’t wear a tie of course, because he’s now earned the right to no longer dress up.

He says [inaudible] and there’s a weekly huddle we have, we’re not a weekly, but a daily huddle we would have with the business where you’d huddle every day and you’d go over what needs to be done that day and what you know, doesn’t need to be done that day. And he decides this is like the second week of being promoted that he doesn’t need to have the meeting every day, Jason, because all they go over is the stuff. Oh, I’ve heard that. And so he decides he’s going to set up a thing called Slack, which is a it’s like an instant messaging program for to do lists and that kind of thing. That’s an app where I can’t believe that thing is as big as it is. It’s a terrible idea. Yeah. And so he creates Slack and he wants the team of guys he’s managing, he’s managing about 10 people to communicate via Slack and out cause they don’t need to have the meeting because it’s th they just go over the same stuff every day.

Then he decides it blows my mind. Then he decides that they don’t need all keep the same hours because he wants to offer flexibility. So you’ve got people who on our team now, our graphic designer like D a lot of times has to talk to John about changes he needs to make to a file. But then Devin needs to talk to D about the coding of the website. So if darlin if D his name’s D, if Darwin Tucker D designs a print a website, it is Devin who codes the site and those two have to be able to talk and then John manages the whole thing. So if those three are different shifts, nothing would get done. True. So this genius decides to give everybody their own schedule and he decides that he’s going to serve beer. They could bring beer if they want to to work cause he wants to be more of a chill environment.

True. Storic then he allows the employees if they don’t like working cause they’re doing jobs that require, you know, a lot of computer time. If they don’t want to have the lights on in their workplace, they don’t have to. So I come to work one day and I swear to God, the lights are off and there’s two hipsters working. They’re supposed to be eight of them there. There’s two of them. And they’re just, they’re sipping on beer, music’s blaring, all the deadlines are being missed. And the teammates one by one are coming to me saying, dude, I cannot work for this guy. He’s like the worst boss of all time. He’s terrible. Is this the Ramstein story? He says, no, this is a different but very similar. So I pulled the guy’s side and I say, dude we need to talk. He goes, yeah, well, yeah, we need to talk.

You promoted me to be the boss and now you’re going behind my back and talking to the team. It’s really creating bad culture. Long story short, I had to fire the guy and he became a bitter and we don’t speak anymore, but he was a bad boss. Yup. So step one, you’ve got to be a good boss. So Carter, from your perspective, what made working here a good place to work? Because somebody out there says, well, put some meat on that. Tell me what it means to have a, a good place to work. What, what made it enjoyable for you? And I’m going to take notes because there’s somebody out there that needs to know these specific things. Then no matter what you say. Jason’s gonna one up. You okay. So what, what is it like to work in an environment where you actually like your job?

Yeah, I mean, right off the bat we always had the lights on.

Okay. That was great. All right. You can always see where I was going. Okay. So a good atmosphere though. What? Let’s go there. Maybe the, the, the, the, the decor. Does that matter?

Yeah. I mean from day one of walking in this place, it was just that kind of area that you wanted to be like, you don’t even think of it as being an office. It’s just kind of a cool spot to be.

Okay. So create a good atmosphere. If somebody’s out there, somebody out there is trying to hire people today and you know this and Jason, you’ve had a job like this where it’s just cubicles without a soul. I’ve had two jobs like that. Cubicles with no personality. Oh, doesn’t that suck your soul just being there? Yes. That’s fluorescent lighting. So you get that weird that you can’t quite explain and then you’re not allowed to listen to music, but there’s no overhead music. So you have to hear the people across from you with their mouth open and then you’re like, is it legal to murder someone? Have you had that? Have you had a cubicle job like that before Carter? Luckily I haven’t. Oh my gosh. Super tiny office in the corner though. Have you worked in an office? Have you worked at an office where the owner clearly does not care about making it an inviting workplace before? If you’ve seen this Carter. Oh yeah. It’s like whatever they could do to get people not to come in. Yep. So one, let’s start with the atmosphere. Let’s make sure that the sites are, the decor, the lighting. Let’s make it a place where people want to be overhead music. Does that impact the atmosphere Carter?

Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s funny, you’ll notice like a, at the garage we take, you know, your advice for doing overhead music. Yeah. And you know, if the computer’s running slow or something and it pauses for whatever reason, it just like, it seems so weird and then you can’t tell what’s going on and then you’re like, Oh, the music.

Yeah. Yeah. The music does create an intentional playlist. And by the way, if you’re listening right now and you say, I don’t know what good music is, I don’t know. Good music isn’t, I don’t know. You want to go with something with higher beats per minute something which creates a little bit of an upbeat atmosphere. And then if you just go to E I T R lounge.com E I T R lounge.com you can go to EITR, lounge.com stands for elephant in the room, E I T R lounge.com. You can go there and then Jason, they can just stream our playlist. Yup. Clay Clark radio is always live 24, seven. You can play it right there and now we pay thousands of dollars a month. So you don’t have to, it’s all you gotta do is just click right there. There it is. We licensed the music. You can do it. Now let’s talk about the coworkers for a minute. Carter. Oh yeah. How would you describe the coworkers that you, that, that w that were allowed to stick around here?

Yeah. I mean, even if they hated their job, you would never know, like no one complains here. And that was probably my favorite part. You know, no negativity.

So hiring quality coworkers was a big thing. Oh yeah. Jason, if you worked in places before where the coworkers didn’t want to be there. Oh, absolutely. Again, the cubicle jobs I had. And what’s funny you bring this up is like you introduced Charles to the team yesterday who was just kicking butt, but you said, Hey, you know, you moved five hours away from your home where you knew nobody to work here. So, you know, welcome. That’s awesome. And so I went up to him, I’m like, Hey, you don’t know anybody in Tulsa. I don’t hang out with anybody in Tulsa because I hate most people in Tulsa. So if you ever want, if you ever want to grab a beer, then just you’ve got my phone number. He’s like, well, I don’t drink. But yeah, and I would gladly hang out with him or Carter or anybody else in this building outside of work.

But my previous jobs, and it was okay, if we’re going to the bar after work and I’m like, I’m going home, I’m not going to hang out with you guys. So again, you want to create a good atmosphere, decor, lighting. That’s step one to create an intentional playlist so it’s not weird in the office and three higher quality coworkers and band complaining, gossiping. I’m sure Carter, that we’ve w during your tenure working here, you probably saw somebody complain and I’m sure you thought to yourself, John or clay is, but do you ever have that thought? Yeah, I was just counting the days. And what’s it like to working in an environment where you know that people that gossip and complain are going to be fired? It’s so nice because I don’t have to worry about it. The nice thing about working here, I was like, I never had a day or I was like, ah, I, I do not want to go to work today.

I never felt that way. Now this is what’s interesting for me is, and by the way for anybody out there that wants to know, and I was telling Carter this, if you ever want to come back, you know, you certainly can if that’s something that’s the right for you and your family. I just know for me, I I remember working one time job at Applebee’s now, let now wasn’t all out there. If you are out there listening to this show and you are heterosexual or homosexual or transsexual or some sort of sexual, maybe you’re an amoeba, maybe you have no sexual preferences at all. I’m not saying this to offend you. I’m saying this to just get, get it out there. Okay. I worked at Applebee’s and when I worked at Applebee’s. Jason, do you ever, you ever been around a an aggressive heterosexual man who constantly is talking about his sexual conquests worked around this person?

Oh yeah. So again, so you worked in the food industry. I was a server and a sushi chef at one point. I don’t know what it is about the restaurant industry, but you see the people who are overly heterosexual who wanted to talk about the conquest and then you also have the guys who are on the opposite end of the playing field and that, you know, you’re not, they’re like, Oh, I can get you. I worked construction years ago and there’s one guy on the crew and we’ll just, I’ll make up a name from call Mike wag. He used to get to the crew and get, get to the construction side. It’s like, you know, five in the morning, six in the morning and you’re wearing your construction, your steel toe boots. You got your jeans on. It’s, you’re working in the mud all day doing concrete.

It’s cold. It’s in Minnesota. And this guy, we’ll call him Mike. He used to, he’d say, I’ll try to edit cause I can’t say what he would say, but you get in the work truck and we would drive from the cynics. There’s this local gas station we met at like five in the morning at the local Cenex. We all hop into an [inaudible] of three 50 and we drive 40 minutes to the work site. And the whole time we’re listening to Howard stern because that’s what he wanted to listen to you. He made you listen to Howard stern and Howard stern. If you ever listened to Howard stern, he would do just crazy sexual stuff. So we’d then that would, he loved, he just, Howard stern is all about shocking you with sexual humor and this is what this boss was like, so that he would say, clay ever had sex?

I’m like, Nope. And he’s like, really? You’re 18 years old? What the hell is wrong with you? And I’m like, well I’m you know, my game plan, it’s not have sex until I’m married. That’s my plan. That’s my goal was it was it, was it a religious thing or what’s wrong with here? Are you gay? And I, you know, and again, if you’re out there being offended right now, calm down. This is what I’m just telling you what he said. And I said, no, I’m not gay. He’s like, well, if you weren’t gay I’d be gay with you. I mean, I mean, you know, and he would just constantly like, it’s just weird, you know, and then you’d be working on concrete. You’re out there, you’re pouring concrete, you’re putting up the forms, you’re trying to do your job. He would go clay, put that pin in, that wedge right there, put the, put the, put the pin in the way, put the pin in there, hammer it home hammer.

That’s what she said, right? I’m gonna just right, right. And I’m like, no. And he’s like a 40 year old guy and I’m like 18. And he’s like clay Tibor tape at the time that I really just hammered that all night and I go hammered what? He’s like, well, I met her back in this bar out in Milwaukee and frankly, didn’t know her name, but anyway, the whole day like stream of consciousness would be talking to you about having sex with random people in the Locky. And then I’m like, dude, you got to stop. And he’s like, I can’t, I’m so good. So then like the next day you’d go to one true story, you’d go go to work. The next week we get in his van or his truck and there’d be like ladies underwear sitting in his in the passenger seat up guys, sorry, I forgot to tell her to take the stuff out of the car.

You know what I mean? Right. And you’re going, no stop. You know, just gross. Definitely planted it this. Oh yeah, I was about to say that was his whole, his whole thing though is this whole move his butt back before smart phones and stuff. But he was always like, well guys, if I ever showed you my photo gallery of all my former girlfriends, and we’re like, no. And he’s like, well, let me indirect style. He just, that was his whole, he lived there in that world. Well then I worked at Applebee’s and again, this guy was like as out of control, alpha, heterosexual, heterosexual. Now I worked at out at Applebee’s and my boss was a recruiter for the homosexual team. And so he would say, clay after work, what are you doing? And I’m like, I’m going to go home and see my wife.

He’s like, well dad, what? I mean, what are you doing? I’m not going to go see my wife. He’s like, well, if you want me to do you, I’ll be here. And I’m the first time I talked to him, I didn’t know cause he didn’t come across as in a feminine man and I’m going, all right, that’s good to know. Thanks. He’s like, no, seriously. I mean I’m, I’m ready. You know? And by the way, I don’t if you know this, but most of the guys who work here are gay too. We’re, we’re, you know, and he’s like, are you a picture or a catcher? And I’m like, what? And I’m new to this world. I don’t know what he’s talking about. Top or bottom. Yeah, there you go. Tell us. So over time I realized like I’d go, go home and I’d tell my wife I’m being like harass all day.

These guys are recruiting for the team and I’ve worked, I’m sorry, I’ve worked at Applebee’s and in construction where those two cultures were there. Then I worked at target one time. There was no weird sexual stuff, but my boss at target, he was the laziest man of all time and he was always late, always lazy, never had a plan and I couldn’t work for him either. And the pay was pretty decent for that age and that, you know, job target is a good company, but I think someone needs to write this down. People don’t quit jobs. They usually quit managers. So what’s it like Carter to work with? John having Jonathan Kelly as your, as your manager or direct boss?

Oh, working with Jonathan Kelly was awesome. I mean, he was, he didn’t like, never hounded on you, but he definitely checked in and made sure the job was getting done.

How has it, how’s working for Jonathan Kelly different than working with four other managers?

The biggest thing was just that like he was on top of things. Like he knew what was going on at all times. Whereas most managers, you’re the one trying to check in with them like, Hey, did we have this part for the job yet? Or you know,

So John would follow up until the job is done right now. Jason, you have been a manager before. Yeah. Of people. What is the hard part about being a good manager in your opinion? I think the hardest part of being a good manager is what Jonathan Kelly actually does. Right? So I have yet to work for, and I won’t put you in the equation because I’ve always been managed by somebody else and you’d just been above them. But Jonathan Kelly is the only manager I’ve ever worked with or worked for who is an actual manager. Why Carter was saying he follows up and make sure if something is on the list to do you do it. But everybody, I would say nine times out of 10 and I’ve struggled with this, I’m not perfect by any means. Having the ability to follow up with people until the job gets done regardless of what they feel about you for doing your job.

So I feel like a lot of managers can’t actually manage because they’re like, Oh my God, am I going to make quarter man, if I keep asking him, Hey, you upload those articles yet buddy. Or Oh God, not this is whatever happened. Carter is five minutes late. If I ran him up, he’s going to be pissed. Jonathan Kelly’s like, Hey, this is my job. I’m going to hold you to a higher level because I’m trying to coach you up and make sure the job gets done. So I guess in a short way of answering your question, the hardest part of managing people is managing people. For anybody who has the title of manager. Now I want to make sure we get this idea cause somebody taking notes. Someone needs to get this where as we celebrate the diligence of captain Carter Watts. Corridor is a great a player, but I’m trying to break it down for you.

The specific steps to building a environment that people want to work at. I’m trying to help you build a work environment. So step one, you gotta have a good atmosphere, good decor, good lighting too. You gotta have an intentional playlist. Three, you’ve got a higher quality coworker. Is it coworkers and ban complaining. It’s like a weed gossip. Complaining rumors get ’em outta here. We were just talking about this earlier today, Jason, but we had a member of the team who was a great member of the team and I won’t get into any details. What was a great member of the team for a long time. Yeah. And they said to me, Hey, do you mind if I move on to do something else? And I said, well, I’m not, it’s like a slave or anything. I can’t decide, but do you not want to be here?

He said, okay. I says, he says, no, I want to be here, but do you mind if I go somewhere else? And I said, well, what you’re saying to me is that you want to move on. And he said, you’re right. It was like a man tear hugging moment, you know. And I’m like, Hey, I don’t hate you for wanting to move on. But I just need you to not to, I need you to look me in the eye and tell me you’re not going to steal our current employees or our current customers. I need to know that otherwise I, I can’t move on. I need to know that. And he said, I am definitely going to take the employees and some customers. And I said, okay, I will never speak to you again. And I have not since that time because you’re either for the business or against the business.

True. You can’t be both. And so if you’re out there today and you manage a group of people and they’re gossiping and complaining, that is a distraction. Either it’s moving you closer to the goal or further away. Imagine you’re looking at a line that goes from left to right as we, as we read left to right and taking saying positive things, encouraging people. That’s traction, gossiping and complaining. That’s distraction. So it’s the, if the goal is going from left to right, each gossiping, each complaint that takes you further away from the goal or you go closer towards the goal. When you work in an environment, Jason, if you allow complaining and gossiping to fester, what happens? I mean, same thing that happened to a wound, it just gets worse and worse and worse until it gets gangrenous and your arm falls off. So I had to tell the person, and I didn’t hate him, I just said, if you’re going to go work for somebody and take my customers and coworkers, you cannot be here anymore.

And I accelerated because the person wanted to put in a longer notice. And I’m like, Nope. And in fact, I’m going to pay you to leave a month early and I’ll pay up front, but you can’t, you can’t come back. Cool. And so that’s what you have to do. And that’s hard for a lot of people to do. Cause I think people want to hold onto the nostalgia. Oh yeah. Of the relationship. Do we not want to do that? Oh yeah. Always. Carter, I won’t get you in trouble here, but do you ever have an ex girlfriend? Yeah, he did. Okay. We’ve all had an ex girlfriend. Right. So I’m going to pick on myself. I dated this girl back in the day and I, I, you know, she was a great lady, nice person. And then at one point there was a thing where she said, I want you to do a, B, C, one, two, three with your life.

And I realized no, because I didn’t want, I don’t want that life. I wanted to build my own company. I wanted to get out of Minnesota. I never wanted to live in a small town again. And once she stated that this is what she wanted out of her husband, I realized I’ve got to move on. I’m not the right fit. When you have a years of a relationship go and there’s a certain momentum there. That was tough because it’s like this I have to move on. Right? But here’s where it got crazy is now we’re done with the relationship. Right? We’re done. We’re done. And yet you still get the, we didn’t have text messages, we had phone calls. You’d get a voicemail from the person going, Hey, I hope you’re doing okay. I wanted to talk tonight if we could. I’m like, I’m going, I’m done.

So we’d hop on the phone and then it would rekindle that relationship. And she would say if in the future, I don’t know if you able to come back home during fall break, but I’d love to reconnect and I feel like we had something I feel and it’s just, and I’m like, no. But that’s what happens with bosses. Somebody clearly quit the job emotionally, but they keep showing up. You don’t know what I’m saying. They can’t quit the job emotionally, but they keep showing up. They have the courage to bitch, but not the courage to quit. That’s a tough deal. So a manager has to follow up. Step four manager has to follow up until the job is done right. They don’t just follow up, but until the job is done right now, Elon Musk says this on page one 83 of the boom book he writes, one lesson I learned at PayPal is to fire people faster.

That sounds awful. I think of if someone’s not working out, it’s best to part ways sooner rather than later. Carter, how often did you see somebody on the search engine team lasts less than a week? Oh, I’ll do often. At least 75% of the people who ever get hired for SEO are gone. 75% of people that get hired for search for the search engine team don’t make it more than a week at the group interviews. I don’t know if you guys have ever watched me do that, but the group interview, I get asked this question all the time. What’s your turnover rate? And I cause somehow the morons who teach on most college campuses focus on turnover rate as a bad thing. Well, if you had an NFL team and you had a turnover rate as a national football league team, if you had a turnover rate of zero, you’d have an old ass team that lost a lot.

You’re going to have to have turnover at some point. This geriatric that’s so, so what I, I always tell people is there’s a ton of turnover that first week, but then once people, if they’re a good fit, we keep around for a long time. But you got up, you got to move on. Yeah. Now point number five, this is, this is big for somebody out there. You got to have merit based pay. Carter, what is merit pay? You worked in an environment with merit based pay. Well why do you have to have merit based pay? W what is merit based pay? Yeah. So essentially you’re getting paid for what you do, not just for putting some time in or in most cases, just sitting there and being there. So Jason, how’s that different for most jobs? Oh, so a really good example, I won’t say the company that I worked for, but when I was in customer service, I was on the the email side.

So that was funny. We got enough correspondence where that was your job was to answer complaint emails. So we were lucky we never had to be on the phone unless like the lines are going crazy. But make a long story short so Carter saying you get paid for what you do. Yep. We got a pretty decent deal. We got 12 bucks an hour. Got it. Just to answer emails. And there was one homeboy who would like pretend like he was on a call, but he’d be listening to music and just like kind of talking along the whole time, he would just click delete on all the inboxes and then he’d come in for overtime and like, wow, he’s really clearing out the queue everybody else. And he was feeling a ton. And then all of a sudden, you know, when people realize, Oh, we can go back into the system.

They had paid him an astronomical amount and we had a ton of pissed off customers because they’re paying him to just [inaudible] a, I have a funny story for you guys about this. There’s a guy new, a new back in the day like I can’t, I can’t share a whole lot of details or I’ll get in trouble, but let me just share the details that’ll, that’ll teach the story here. He says, clay, I got this sweet job and this is when I was running DJ connection and it was pretty big at the time. I was like 24 maybe 25 and he says, it’s a sweet job. It’s sweet. You got to come see it. So why is it sweet? Like, Oh, it’s awesome. Now remember this guy I went to college with, he doesn’t understand. I don’t, I haven’t talked to him a lot. I talked to him occasionally, but we have gone mentally to two different places.

I have a whole different set of values and he has, he still works in the mindset of like, I’m going to do as little as possible at work. Yeah. And play a game. I’m going to pretend to work. Right. So, and he worked in a coding it job and so he says I worked. So I go up to his office, it’s a beautiful place, he’s got a big salary, he’s got a big it background. And he goes, dude, let’s go out for some lunch. I’m like, don’t you have to work or something? He goes, no dude, I got it all figured out. It’s awesome. It’s like Ferris Bueller is kind of his mindset. So we get there and he says, here’s the deal. My boss is kind of not that smart and he loves to promote people that show up early and I know that he gets to work at seven so I get to work like at six and I’m here when he gets there.

And he always says, Hey, good job man. Thanks for being here early. Yeah he’s like, and then I leave, cause the guy, he’s like, he never follows up and he says he’s a bullet boss. He has these mantras like if you’re sitting behind your desk you’re not working. So he’s like, he likes if we’re, if we’re moving around cause he got promoted now I remember it cause he got there first to work. Yeah. So now he’s a manager so he says, so he always gets onto you if you’re sitting behind a desk. So I just, I leave the building, I leave and I go work out a lot. He’s like at this point, I mean he’s checked, I work out a lot. And then when I come back from working out at like two, then I’ll you know, send out an email essentially chastising people for not getting things done on time.

And my boss loves it cause he says good employees have to have the edge. True story. And he’s like, and then I’ll leave again to go do whatever I want to do all day. And then my boss likes people who stay late. So I come back about five 30 and he walks out and he goes, man, you’re still here grinding dude. That’s awesome. And I’m like, how long have you been doing these? Like Oh, months. Now let me tell you what’s crazy. He actually was duly employed. I said, what does it mean to be dually employee? He goes, I got another full time job too. Wow. So this is at another it company. So when I leave, I go to this other spot. So I have two full time jobs. Wow. So he was bringing in over 200 grand a year playing the game. And the cause the it world, people don’t know if you’re doing something sometimes.

I mean, if you guys worked in an environment where if someone did not do anything all day, you mentioned one example. Oh yeah. Have you seen this Carter? Yeah. Oh yeah. So, so this is what happens is, so if you’re gonna create an environment where you can hire, inspire, train, and retain a player, employees, you’re going to have to be a 10 X boss. Yup. Now 10 X means you have to be a source of wisdom. Who clearly knows, in my opinion, this should be your goal, that you know 10 times more about the game of life and, or business so that the people who work for you respect you. Now, if you had the opinion that Jonathan Kelly, and I know you don’t, but if you had the opinion that John, if you didn’t respect John because John didn’t know what he’s talking about, or if Jonathan Kelly was chronically late, how long could you Carter, even if you had the overhead music, the, the playlist, a good group of coworkers, how long could you work for a boss that was always late and never got their stuff done?

How long Carter could you handle it? I mean, it’d be just about like all the other jobs I had before, so I probably last a little while because all the extra perks, but eventually I definitely have to move on. Jason, how long could you work for somebody who is a complete moron? Like Carter said before I worked here, I would have just like handled, I would’ve just dealt with it. But after having you and Jonathan Kelly as an example, I would say, you know what, I’m not going to be held to a standard that you’re not going to keep. So I will take your job or I’m going to go find somebody else. Because the main question I’d get from people, all my clients who’ve met John, like how do I hire a Jonathan Kelly? And so which I say, Hey, careful how you, how you phrase that?

Because on the streets that means something else. But Jonathan Kelly and I were going to the downtown elephant in the room shop just to look at some repairs. So I asked him that question like, what should I say back to people? Cause they always ask me that and I don’t really know what to tell them because he’s a unicorn. He goes, we’ll tell them. The reason clay got me was I respected clay. So when they say, Oh, how do I hire, you know a Jonathan will say, well Jonathan Kelly went to work for me. He’s like, so some of your clients, I would say they’re great people, but they don’t have Clay’s passion. So I wouldn’t work for them. No. So this is a real interesting thing. I actually, I actually, somebody should write this down. I had to fire Jonathan Kelly s best friend to promote John because John was on a search engine team and was rocking and he pointed out, Hey boss, I’m running the reports and I found out that my best friend is cheating.

And I said, you’re your best friend’s cheating. He goes, yeah. I said, what is he doing? He says, he’s copying content and before he add it to a website, we checked and there’s a big process for our clients. We make sure that we’re not, we want to make sure our clients are winning. And you know, so this guy was, was cheating. He thought he wouldn’t know. We caught him and I said, well, is your first act as the new manager? You’re going to go fire your former boss and your best friend? And he’s like, so that’s how it started. Yeah. But I’m just telling you, you’ve got to, if you’re out there today and you’re saying, how do I hire, inspire, train and retain a player, employees want, create a good atmosphere, decor, lighting to create an intentional playlist. Three hire coworkers and great coworkers and band and band gossiping and complaining for higher quality managers that follow up until the job is done right.

Five you got installed merit based pay. Jack Welch says if you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier, you almost don’t have to manage them. If you are on the search engine team and you just got a flat base Ray cart, a best base rate, Carter of $10 an hour, how would that impact the productivity of the team? You think if everyone just got a flat base pay as opposed to merit based pay where they get paid based on each article they get done? Yeah. One thing I noticed that working at my other jobs is if you give someone two hours or all day for one job, that’s how long they’re going to take to do it and so you know, if it was a flat $10 you know, why should I write any more than just one article an hour if that?

Hmm. Now let’s think about this for a second. We talked about this, Jason, step number seven, verse six is again, you gotta be a 10 X boss. Step number seven, never stop recruiting. Jason, what if somebody, what if somebody does step one, they got a good atmosphere. Decor, lighting. Step two, great playlist. Woo. Yeah. Three quality coworkers they’ve banned gossiping for. They hire high quality managers that follow up until the job is done right. Five they’ve got the merit based pay. Oh they do step six day they are a 10 X boss. There are a source of wisdom. People want to work for them but step seven they just skip that part. They stop, they, they, they, they do stop recruiting because they feel too confident that their team is so competent. What happens with a, if a business owner stops recruiting good people will they open themselves to potentially losing that person.

And then also when you’re desperate, you’ll take anybody, you bring in there, nobody else. And then you basically start just like what’s the word? Demolishing everything else cause you’re going to bring in somebody else who’s not used to your systems and they’re going to start gossiping, which is gonna. Why do I do the group interview myself and I’ve only delegated it twice in my life? Why do I personally handle the recruiting even though we have hundreds of people? Why do I do you wants to find the people that you want to work for you. Like you wanna find the Carter’s, you wanna find the Jonathans. You are the best example of who you want in your business. So you sort through it yourself. If you guys read a lot of history about Alexander the great, you ever read a lot about that card?

Have you read some Alexander the great sound, but not, not a time. Why don’t you want to fill up as great as his name is? I just, he’s not that great to me. Okay. Did they not teach it in school? They teach it in school, Jason. They do. They just don’t teach it to Mormons. Really? Okay. Let’s say that’s so, so step number eight, you’ve got to create a culture where the people work with you. Oh, you got to create a culture where the people work with you. What you see when Steve jobs was built an Apple, he was the last guy to leave. So when Steve jobs was built Napal, he was the last guy to leave. So when Elon Musk is building Tesla, he’s the last guy to leave. Bill Bellacheck is building the Patriots. He’s the last guy to leave. When Kobe Bryant was building the Laker dynasty, he was the last guy to leave. Think about that. Michael Jordan was built in the bowls. He was the last guy to leave when Oprah was building the Oprah network into the empire. It is today, the first African American billionaire female, she was the last person to leave.

When you think about Dropbox and Airbnb and Reddit and Amazon, all these big companies, the founder was the last guy to leave.

Someone doesn’t like this part. A players will not work for a C player bosses. Period. Yep. So you’ve got a credit culture. I get onto my kids all the time. All the time. If they say, dad, Carter does a great job working for you, I say he works with me. Stop saying that. I attack my kids every time they say it, but why? Why? I’m serious. This is a big thing. Yeah, I attack. I’m always saying no one works for us. They work with us. Now Alexander the great one thing he did, this is what people don’t realize this he before battle often, let’s say men, we’ve got to go into this land. We got to conquer the enemy. I’m going first. Yup. And he would be on that horse out front and he’d ride out and he would go first. What does that do when you see the leader of the army out out first, Jason, what does that do?

Arrows flying in everywhere. [inaudible] Jazz. Jasmine up big. Whoa. Okay, well I’m not going to be sit here, be a little sissy. I’m going out there with them. Cause most of the time you’d have like a, an all the, you know, the great epics, like Braveheart. William Moss was the same way. He’s just charges right out. But if you want to be a leader, you’re like, Hey, I’m going to stay up here while y’all risk your lives. People are going to say, well, what kind of crap deal is that? So the other day we had a customer that was very irate in one of our companies and a young lady who was, she never dealt with an irate customer before. And I said, let me handle it. She goes, what? Pass me the phone. So she takes him off. Hold on. Hi, this is clay. Yeah, how can I help you? Okay. And then I just dealt with it and she saw me do it. She goes, Oh, you really do that? Yeah, that was good. Oh cool. Why is it important though, Carter, that you actually see a guy like Jonathan Kelly, he’ll sit down if he needs to and actually, you know, write an article. You’ve seen him do it. He gets, he’s the first one to work, last guy to leave. Why is that a critical component of building a successful culture?

Oh, well part of it is it helps me understand like what I need to say the next time that situation happens. It also helps just seeing him do it and you know, I’m not, I’m not going to be sitting there thinking, well why should I do it if he’s not gonna do it. It also takes that pressure off of thinking like, Oh this must be a big deal of the manager won’t even do it.

This is my final pro tip for somebody out there and this is going to be a tough one here. Don’t guard friends and family from accountability. You’ve guys have seen this. We’ve seen this at other jobs. It’s true. What happens when you know that your boss is screwing over somebody but he’s given a hall pass cause he’s related to you or related to somebody. It pisses people off, doesn’t it? Oh yeah. When you, and again you see moral depravity, you see people are like, well she is, I’m having an affair with our employees but B, but because we are related, we cannot fire her. She is, you know, she is promoting people based upon their sexual compatibility, but we’re not going to give them a hall pastor. You know, he does show up late to work all the time and he is a crazy person. But because he’s related we cannot fire them. Oh yeah. Oh and you’ve seen it up here because I have fired some, a healthy amount of family. I don’t think you guys have seen most of it. I witnessed Jonathan Kelly do it twice cause you mentioned, you know, he fired his best friend. Oh, he’s fired. Two family members. You have to. But what happens if you have an environment Carter where somebody’s guarded and they can’t be fired and everyone knows it.

Oh everybody hates them. Nothing gets done. It’s ah, I worked for a company that there’s me and one of the guy that we’re the only people that weren’t family and it was just,

It was when you guys were the hardest working people. Their final pro tip point number 10. Don’t focus on religion and political differences. Don’t focus on religious and political differences. Jason, what’s your religion? I don’t have one. And I’m surrounded by people who have differing opinions and I still love being in this fricking room. So let’s talk about that though. Carter, what’s your religion? Yeah, in simple terms, Mormon. Mormon. So again, you believe in the old Testament, correct? LDL, the new Testament and the book of Mormon, correct? Right.

So the church of Jesus Christ of latter day

Saints, that’s the church. A lot of people think that we don’t believe in Christ, but it’s right there in the name. But you have three books. Yup. Now, if we had a Jewish person in the box right now, and we don’t, but if we had a Jewish Jewish person on the show, they would say they just believe in book one, part one. It’s, it’s the, the trilogy, you know, so Rocky one book, one old Testament book, two new Testament. Yes. That would be what you would consider a traditional evangelical Christian. Let’s say they would live in the old Testament, the new Testament, and then you have a Mormons. Or while Mormons refer to themselves as Christians or members of the G, the, the D Jesus the church of latter day saints, would you call it the church? Church of Jesus Christ of latter day, the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints, AKA Mormons.

So you have, they have believe in book three, but we could sit there and spend the rest of our day focusing on political or religious differences. And as long as it doesn’t impede your ability to get the job done, well it doesn’t matter. Yeah. So if we had a guy working for us right now who’s a socialist, as long as he gets his stuff done on time and knocks it out, I’m not going to attack him. But the moment that he comes in here and tries to organize labor and starts picketing in front of the building and says, we deserve more, then we have a problem. And if a guy works for me and he’s not a Christian, I don’t care if a guy’s homosexual, not homosexual straight, I don’t care. But the moment that like you won’t work with the person next to you because they’re not gay too, or because they’re not straight to, now we have a problem.

Right? So as long as it doesn’t impede their ability to get stuff done just don’t focus on religious and political differences. Don’t do it. I, I’ve worked at so many businesses where it’s like, if you’re not a spirit filled Christian, they don’t like you. Or if you’re not a, an atheist, they don’t like you. Or if you’re not, and I’ve worked at places like that and it’s just, it’s, it’s not a good thing. Carter, final 30 seconds here. For anybody out there who’s not worked on our payroll before or worked with us before, what would you tell them? How would you describe your experience working for Jonathan Kelly or working with me?

Oh, it was the best. Just shown up working with a great group of people that actually care about their jobs. Working here. I mean, even if you don’t know exactly what we do here it makes a huge impact on, on everyone’s lives. All the clients even our lives as well. I remember coming in, you know, during the interview process and saying, have a goal to, you know, within the next five years, have a couple more kids, have a house, have a job. I love. And within a year, that year and a half or so that was all happening very quickly.

Well, man, I wanted to get this recorded. I wanted to make this little time capsule happen because you’ve been a huge member of the team, a great asset to the team, and you know, I really do hope it works out well with Roy. He’s a great boss, a great guy, but you’ve never burned a bridge. You can always come back if you need to or want to. And without any further ado, we’d like to in each and every show in the boom. And so here we go. Three, two, one, boom.