How to Overcome the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day – Ask Clay Anything

Audio Transcription

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?

Yes,

yes, yes and yes. Dr Z, we have a hot question in here from be thrive nation. A hot question. Andrew, this is a hot question. It’s hot. Andrew, you don’t have this question is a pretty darn hot. Oh, there we go. Stepping into the business coach, Saunas. Cats, right. Okay. No, here, here. Here’s the question. Why was hot in here? The question from the, the thriver was how do you deal with a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. And how often do you guys have these? So we’re going to go around the horn. We have Paul Hood, a CPA with thousands of clients on the show. We’ve got a, Hey, a Dr z here on the show. We’ve got myself. So let’s go around the whole, let’s go around the horn and let’s talk about it. So Z, how often do you have the things, the, the variables, the bad things happened to you that some would consider to be, you know, you’re a pro, you’re a positive guy so you don’t let it get you down. But how often do things happen to you where it would be easy to say, wow, that was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Short of resetting my watermark is I call it, there was a period of my life that I had a series of very unfortunate things happen to me and my family and my business and that was pretty much my high watermark of stress and bad day. So, you know, what you, what’d you kind of reset that watermark? Pretty high. It was a pretty high one for me that time. Um, everything else, you kind of go, you put in perspective and go wait, you know, period of that day, that’s not so bad. It could be worse, could be worse. It could be worse. Worse in Minnesota, by the way, if you ask anyone how they’re doing, you have about a 40% chance that they will respond with, oh, it could be worse. Good Belvoir no matter what, no matter what’s going on. That’s about the peak of the optimism.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It could be worse, but I, what I do is is a lot of times if depending upon what category it’s in and how to overcome a bad day process it, it’s a, it can be pretty daunting. You’re going to be pretty a debilitating and if you don’t get on top of it with your brain pretty quickly, it can kind of really shut you down for a little while. But when you have a really, really bad day, really bad day. One thing that I like to do is I like to think about all the positives in my life. I like to then I like to pray also and be thankful for all the positive things in my life. I’ll just go through a checklist of all the home runs, all the games. One, you know all those positive memories in your life. Go back home and here you the full size photo of you and go, yeah, well wow, well done.

That’s the only head I know that’s bigger than yours by the way. Um, it was a big, the biggest thing against that vague what my I, my head, I was uh, do I wear a size 14 hat size? Is that when I was 14 and three? One that was 18 and a half. 18 and a half. Okay. Now, well you would like your hats loose. The, you’re right, right. Um, but I think what the key is is that have to understand that if you’re in control of your joy, and this is a word for every listening out there, if you’re in control of your joy, the net that can take it away from you net, that could take away your happiness. If you’re waiting for something to make you happy, you’re doing the wrong thing. And if you let something make you unhappy, you’re doing the wrong thing.

So you need to be control of your joy. You need to be controlled. If it’s a bad day, how are you going to fix it? Is there a problem that needs to be fixed or is it just a bad day? But if there’s a problem it needs to be fixed and I go into problem solving mode. Step one. What do I need to do? Step two, what I need to do. Step three, what I need to do. Oh, by the way, I’m really thankful because I’ve got, you know, three healthy children. I’m really thankful that I’ve got all these things I’m thankful for.

I, uh, I’d like to get Paul’s take on this. Cause Paul, you manage a team of employees. Yes sir. And um, your, your core team at your three offices, how many people approximately are we talking about between the three offices that, because you have other offices and locations, yours expanding, but maybe between a Bartlesville Tulsa, Clermont. How many people are we talking about? Well, we have a total of probably about 40 employees, but my key group, it’s probably 12 or so. So let’s, let’s, let’s think about our 12 is, think about your 12 z. You think about your core 12. I’ll think about my core 12 for a second. It seems as though there’s always something going on in the lives of one of those 12 people, because there’s 12 people there. There’s so many people. There’s always something. Now we know z with a team of like 50, there’s usually two or three bad things happening every day between those, those 50.

Unfortunately with thousands of customers, there seems to be, usually if you have a thousand customers that you provide service for a month, if you’re awesome, you have like a one or 3% complaint rate. So think about that. Elephant in the room, Paul, we have 4,000 members and z. If we make a mistake with somebody’s hair, even only 2% of the time, that’s 80 bonafide complaints a month. Sure. So we had a guy shadowing me, uh, from Minnesota and he, I remember him saying this, he goes, how many complaints do you get a day? Did he say it could have been worse? Well, this is really funny. He goes, how many do you get a day? And I said, like three. He goes, three. I said, yeah, I mean, I’ll let get down and get to me if they’re like next level. But he goes just for that business.

And I said, yeah, so you get like, how many complaints, you know, a month do the math dozens. I mean, you know what I mean? And you start, but he goes, I don’t think I could handle that. And it was very good for him to like know that he emotionally and I said, why not? He goes, I just, I, it bothers me. Like if I get a bad review, it’ll bother me for like a month. Which is unfortunate. Someone asks you this, Paul, with your clients, you do your best to serve your clients. I know you wanna do your best, but if a, you know, for whatever reason, like our haircut business, we make a mistake 2% of the time or if there’s a misunderstanding or whatever. Um, how do you process that when a customer’s frustrated, how do you, how do you emotionally and mentally process it within your business? You know, occasionally misses the mark like my business does. And I think any business does well clay, you know, just like anything, you have to separate real issues with fake issues. You know, you, you have a family member die. That’s something that, that, you know, there’s not a lot of positive

that comes out of that. But most business downturn, you know, issues or complaints or bad things, you know, really what I tried to do is, is embrace that and accept that and appreciate that as a learning experience. Uh, because you know, if you’ve got a, if you’ve got an issue, it’s kind of like, let’s say you’re driving down the road and you have your family in the car and, uh, you know, you, the car starts sputtering and everything and, and you can get really upset. But the reality is, is maybe that’s, that sputtering helps save you from having a wreck. And so the way I look at things as I tried to find the positive in it and, and I, I try not to get real upset and just try to say, well, this is something that strengthening the strengthening my team, it’s a learning opportunity.

It’s an opportunity to fix something. You know, I have, I’m a registered investment advisor and a personal financial specialist and I get audited every year by, you know, a government entity or whatever. And I embrace that because if I’m not doing something to the best of our abilities or missing something, I want to know. I don’t think it’s, and so if I’ve got a client that, that complaints, and honestly, and I don’t say this to be mean, two thirds of the complaints are really not valid, but it doesn’t really matter because marketing to me is top of mind. It’s how that person feels when they walk out of my office and what they’re going to say to other people. And so the old adage, the customer is always right, is kind of right. Um, but I embrace it. I, uh, approach it head on. I personally make the phone call and what can I do to, to solve this to make you feel better, to make you happy. And it doesn’t really matter whether they’re the, it’s a valid complaint or not. It’s a complaint. And so, you know, I was taught a long time ago, do I want to be right or do I want to be rich? So I’d rather be rich than, than, than argue with a client all the time. I just want to make them happy.

I have found for me and Z, I want to get your take on this. I’ve got a few notable quotables I want to read to you. Okay. Um, from the first, the first one will be from that controversial book known as [inaudible],

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in the Bible, Matthew Five, 10. I love that verse. Matthew five 10 says, blessed are those who are persecuted because of their righteousness for theirs is there for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. So blessed are those who are persecuted for being right. All right. So here’s an example. You have an employee that works for UC and you know they’re supposed to be on time and they’re not. So your job is the owner, manager, whatever, is to bring it up. You say, Hey, you know, uh, Doug, I need you to be on time. And Doug Goes, oh, come on, come on. Come on man. Yes. What? And there’s this blow up, you know? Yes. And you would some somebody, people, some people attack you when you call them out for being wrong. You know, you hold them, hold them accountable. Oh, I know, I know. So I think part of it is just embracing that.

If you’re going to hold people accountable, Aka run a business, you just have to get really good with knowing that a lot of people won’t be happy with you all the time. Right. Did we do it? You have to get to a place where you just say, hopefully there’s a reward in heaven because I’m certainly, we didn’t, you know what I mean? Blessed are those who are persecuted because of their righteousness for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. I mean like you have to just go, well, hopefully there’s a reward up there because, whoa, well I like the reward could be the bank statement because all of a sudden you’re cracking the whip and you make your business run better. Right? But for everybody to listen out to, if you’re thinking about, we know 67% of our of you are according to Forbes, art, that is our business bible by the way. And not taking anything away from the actual Bible Business Bible. Oh, what happens is, is that if you go into this owning a business, but the idea that you only get to wear the white hat you are and you only get to be the good cop, you’re going to lose [inaudible] at times. You’ve got to put them on the black hat land. You’ve got to be the bad cop at times. You’ve got to call people out and you’ve got to correct him and you know pruning and correction is is good.

Yeah, please don’t you. Don’t you agree though that it’s Kinda like raising kids. You can be a lazy parent and let them play in the street. Cause you don’t want to upset them and, and, and correct them. The same thing applies with employees. If you hold them accountable, that’s actually good for them. It’s good for your business, it’s good for your other employees, but it’s good for them. When you’re not holding them accountable, you’re accepting their slacker and therefore it’s bad for them and they’ll never going to achieve and reach their, their, their potential.

I think about, um, our office and just people on my team, but there’s a guy on our team named Matt and Matt always says, how can I get better? At least he’s, at least he does that to me. He says, how can I get better? So I give him the same information as I might give somebody else the same coaching. And he says, thank you, thank you. How can I, how can I get better? But I think a lot of bosses feel like they’re being a bad guy, quote unquote. I don’t, I hate to be the bad guy, but just by telling somebody, hey, you need to follow the script. Hey, you need to show up on time. This is what I’m paying you to do and I feel bad. I’m not holding someone accountable cause they’re the bad guy. You’re not the bad guy.

You’re the right guy. You’re the righteous guy. Here’s another thought. Ah, Robert Green, the best selling author of the book, uh, called mastery bestselling book called mastery. He writes, the most effective attitude to adopt is one of supreme acceptance. The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. Some people have really dark qualities that are especially pronounced. You cannot change such a such people at their core, but merely, but, but you must merely avoid becoming their victim. Do you agree with that? Z? Absolutely. People Change. Seldom. It’s one of my core things and if they’re a bad apple, they’re typically going to be a bad apple and instead of worrying about trying to live, coach them into being a good apple, just get them out of your space. You’re the quote that you did z gave me years ago was so good. I love this club and I got high five, this was sent me three of high five.

Oh, this is going to click five. You said to me, you said, clay, unless you’re a life coach, don’t life coach him. Hmm. Whoa, whoa. Because that’s where I was at for a long time. As young as young man, I kept trying to fix everybody. How many businesses have you coached over the years where the owner comes up to you and they’ve got a bad apple working for them and they refused to fire them because they just know they can. It’s, it’s maybe poor management. It’s poor people’s skills on their part. They know that the fee they and they put reflective fall back. I would say it’s two thirds of what prevents businesses from growing. Yeah. It’s the ability of the owner to hold people accountable. The complete refusal to hold people accountable and as we get back into this root topic of to overcome a bad day deal with the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

I’ve got a couple of quick tips here for you and I’m going to give them to you. One is, there was a Joel O’Steen quote from the book called the best life. Now that set me free here. Okay, says live your best life now. He says, do your best and forget the rest and just give God distress. So for me as a Christian, I go, there you go. I did my best. Okay. Uh, God, if you, ah, want me to be like going through this whole job phase in my life right now, if this is like some teaching part of the Bible where I’m getting punished or something and let that happen, if not, whatever. But I used it once. I just realized you, you do your best and forget the rest. That helped me a lot probably because it rhymed for coming out in, you’re right there, but it seriously, it helped me just to know you do your best and forget the rest. And now I really, I don’t care. No, I don’t. I don’t care. I don’t, I don’t care if somebody is not happy and I did my best. I just don’t care. I don’t care. But I used to care a lot.

Don’t you think a lot of that though comes from your core values of what’s important in life? You know, I mean, we make good money. Yeah. And it’s not about the money. You know, I grew up, I’ve lived in trailer parks. I have nobody in my, either side of my family graduated high school besides my mom and I, I can be happy living in a trailer park. Not that there’s anything wrong with the trailer park. The point is it’s not the money and I have confidence in myself to rebuild if, if something falls apart, I’m going to do my best. And if other people can can run along with me, great. And, but you know, the reality is is I’m going to be happy. Regardless

is a, I want you to do right now. This is what I want you to do. This is the action item for all the listeners out there. So here we go. Okay. If somebody’s out there, if you’re having something bad happen to you today, tomorrow and next 10 minutes, whatever, if something bad happens, I want you to do this thing called the five minute rule. This is, this is the rule I live by. All right? I tried to do, I’d say by 99% of time I do it. Okay. Don’t make any decisions ever when mad. Okay, that’s good. Don’t make it. Just don’t make a decision. Just do not make a decision when Matt. Okay. Then during those five minutes, think about the decision you’re going to make. How will it affect you a year from now? Will it affect you? Okay, so as an example, when I went into the other day to a local fast food restaurant and they totally jacked up my order.

You know why I didn’t freak out z cause you did the five minute rule. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter five years from now, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care either. Dad was in the parking lot at it, at woods and a guy comes in. A lot of time at outlook. Well gotta cut me off in the big blue, the big monster truck wheel thing. Oh it gives me the stinkeye and I get out of my car and he’s like following me out. Following into the store with the Stinkeye, you know, I didn’t say anything to them because it doesn’t matter if I say a rule bus or truck and make a decision while I’m mad. I don’t want to get my, I don’t get beat up in the parking lot of Atwood’s so that I can swipe. Don’t give me that shovel I was telling you about.

So next time you get upset, take that. Take, take five minutes. Think about that. If it’s a bigger decision, if it’s a big purchase, if it’s a big, don’t go buy things when you’re angry. Just don’t take big action. When you’re angry. I promise you, your life will be better if you have more of a longterm perspective to everything. And that is how you, how you deal with a no good, terrible day. That if you’re out there today and you’re having something bad in your life, don’t make it worse by making immediate action while angry. Don’t, don’t, don’t make it worse. Yeah. When you find yourself in a hole, you know what they say? See a bell to get that booty active. Lay down a snag. Stop the digging. And now with any further ed, dude, we like to end each and every show with Kate. Boom. So here we go. Three, two,