Making the Tough Call | How to Make the Daily Tough Calls Business Owners Must Make

Audio Transcription

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

Yes, yes,

We’re going to be talking about How to make the daily tough calls business owners must make.

All right, so doctor Breck, uh, you’ve been a chiropractor for how many years? About 15 years. All right, so you at 16 years in, you’ve probably had to make a few tough calls. Yeah, we’ve made a few tough calls. So on today’s show, I’ve made a list of the 17 most common tough calls that business owners have to make on, on a daily basis. And chuck, probably the 17 tough calls that you get asked the most about as a business coach. True. And the ones that I get asked the most about. So let’s go ahead and tee up the notable quotable for Mr. Jack Welch, the CEO who grew GE by 4,000 to percent, arguably the number one CEO in American history. Chuck, what is Jack Welch have to say about making the tough call?

He says, having edge means having the courage to make tough yes or no decisions. Smart people can assess a situation from every angle. But smart people with edge know when to stop assessing and make a tough call even without all the information

right there. That right there could help somebody there. There are some people out there that can’t ever seem to make the tough calls. So this is what they do, Dr Breck, they will say, well, let me go talk to my team about it. Right? So let’s, let’s tee up an example. There was one business owner I worked with years ago. I’ve talked about this on the show. They were, uh, and athletic coaching business based in Dallas. And the owner of the business said to me, clay, my people who are answering my phone are really not closing deals. It’s like if I don’t answer the phone, they only book maybe a third of the leads and turn them into appointments. Right. But when I answered the phone, it’s like nine out of 10. I said, okay, so when you’re on the phone it’s 910 when they’re on the phone, they closed one out of three. He says, exactly. And I said, okay, we got installed. Call recording. So Chucky goes back to the office and he says, guys, we’re going to put in call recording right in right away. Chip, what do you think his team set? Ah, no way.

Everything, you know, they were probably pushing back. They were, you know, he’s an

Oh yeah, never should we do it? Is it okay? She comes back to me. My team has decided they don’t want to do the call recordings or another way to teach my team how to sell effectively. No, no. Okay. So let’s get into this. This first tough call, uh, that a lot of people struggle to make here and jump on it. Your take on it, Dr Brex take on. Here we go. Okay. Making cold calls. Chuck, where do you see entrepreneurs who don’t have the budget big enough to pay someone else to make the calls, but were they are personally afraid of making they look? They’d be literal cold call.

Well, what I found a lot is a, there’s the category of people that, yeah, they’re afraid to make the call, but B once explained to them that it’s

a numbers game. You’re going to get one or two appointments out of a hundred calls. You can see them start doing the math in their head and they’re like, how long is it going to take me? Am I going to have to make hundreds and hundreds of calls? And so I think then they get fear of the time commitment they’re going to have to put in, but it’s the only way to get some traction. If you’re on, if you’re going to make cold calls, I’m just telling you, if you are God’s gift to cold calling, you’re only going to set an appointment usually with three out of 100 calls, right? If you are the best ever [inaudible] you ever had somebody working for you who’s afraid to call customers and to book their next appointment or collect payment or if you ever seen that, that that fear of cold calling.

Yeah, I mean I hear people change their voice entirely when they’re on the phone. Not necessarily in a good way. See their mind. You know they’re stressed. Yeah. Now let’s talk about raising prices. I’m sure nobody out there is ever struggled with this, but if you’re an entrepreneur and let’s, they’re not an entrepreneur, let’s just say you’re a human on the planet earth and you’re going to target, you go into target a chuck yogurts now are not four for a dollar. Are you aware of this? Now? I’m not. You’re not aware of this hate chocolate. You’re not meant to target and a couple of decades or it had been buying yogurt. You don’t buy yogurt. I’m not even talking about your dad. What is something that you know about the price of that has gone up? What is something that you buy consistently where you say, you know what, this just in the price has gone up.

I don’t know. I don’t pay attention. I just couldn’t get what I need you to cooperate. Let’s go in the hot seat. What year were you born? In? 1984 okay, and now what year is it now? 2019 all right sir, with all the tough questions. Whoa. Now what is the gas more than it was then? Oh, for sure. Oh, gas. Once cars are more expensive, more expensive. Houses are more expensive as rate. Why? Uh, inflation, right? Government prints money when they don’t have any money. This is what, when we talked about the government shutdown, just everybody gets this idea, whether it’s Obama or Trump, government runs out of money and the only way they can stay in operation because they’re out of money is to print more money, which is ridiculous. But if, if a president ever says that Obama has done it, Trump has done it.

Other people don’t. They said, you know what? I don’t want to print any more money right now. Then it’s called a government shutdown. Right, right. All right, so at the end of the day, as government prints more money, your money’s worth less because there’s more of it out there. Therefore, prices go up. Now, if you are somebody who refuses to ever raise your prices, Dr Breck, what’s going to happen? You’re going to stay stagnant. You’re, you’re going to lose ground. Have you ever a cost of doing business or going up? Have you ever struggled with raising prices? Yeah, I think it’s always something that, uh, I mean, you don’t want to just willy nilly throw your prices all around the place. But, uh, how’d you get, how’d you get over it? I mean, what was, what was the time where you honestly thought to yourself, oh, well, I just had to crunch the numbers.

I mean, it’s mathematics. Once you realize, you know, we, it takes x to, uh, deliver the service, then you have to affect her in a profit. If you’re going to struggle with raising prices, it hasn’t been a big issue for you. It hasn’t been a huge issue. I mean, we’re still very much affordable. One of the least expensive offices in Tulsa. Um, but at the same time, I called around my competitors to see where is the price point. I don’t like this answer. You know why? Because then I, I made sure that I was, I was affordable. I was there, but at the same time I knew I had to cover my costs. This is why your answer’s not good. Okay. And again, it’s because you said is you did the math. He made a logical decision. Now and then you may say, that’s not what we’re talking about.

We’re talking about people that have done the math, they know the logic, and they’re saying, I can’t do it anyway. Well, I wouldn’t pull the trigger. That’s too logical. That’s why you’re successful. I’m tired of it. I would say that there’s a bigger factor if you’re smelling, you’re scared to open, uh, to raise your prices. Uh, clay, there’s a quote we talk about in the absence of value prices, the only negotiating factor repeated again in the absence of value. Price is the only negotiating factor. Senator, no, no, no, no. Really just letting me, let me, I want to, I want to dwell on those. Let me give you some man Echo, please. Here we go. In the absence of value, price isn’t the only negotiating thing. Whoa, whoa. And so if that’s not your parking spot, if you’re not the Walmart of the group and you’re not getting the lowest prices, you’re a purple cow or your distinguishing factor, then you’ve got to figure out why you’re not providing enough value to the customer to pay a little bit more so you can actually make a profit.

Also, I see a lot of people who just want the customers to say thank you for raising the price. You want that consensus customers, you can’t ask your customers, Hey, um, I’ve been a chiropractor in Tulsa for 20 years. I haven’t raised my prices and all 20 of them. Is it okay with you if we raised prices? Nobody’s going to say yes, no, just get over. Okay, we serve it in and they all said, no. Brett’s there it is. Now we’re moving on to, this is kind of area number three. We have to make the tough call chip, what is it? Promoting somebody and not promoting somebody else. Okay. Recently at one of my businesses, we have a man on our team who is really good, right? And we have a woman on our team who’s really good. However, the wall man never has these emotional breakdowns every 30 days whereas the man does.

So we went ahead and promoted the wall man and chuck. Therefore the man who had been working there longer than the woman said, whoa man, whoa man, since I’ve been here longer. And then you go, that’s really true. Which is actually a problem because if you’ve been here longer and you’re still having this problem, that’s even more reason to not promote you. Right? However, we come back to it next round, you have a chance. There you go. But Chuck, when you promote somebody, doesn’t it always make somebody else upset? Every time life, business, everything is a trade off. So something like that going to happen every single time and you just need to have, you know why you had the decision ready and just just make the decision and go with it. Don’t waffle. That’s what I see a lot of people do and it gets him in trouble is they go, oh well maybe we shouldn’t and we talk about it and it’s too much.

No, I love waffles but I don’t like waffle lean. Where you dissing waffle house? It was, yes. But I do like waffle house. I mean I used to do go there. The circumstances would have to be how many beverages do you have to have to go about 23 years old again. And you two o’clock in the morning stumbling advocacy. No. And you’re like, well waffle houses and that’s where you go get a t bone steak, bacon, walls, brick. Have you ever been to a waffle house? I have. What do you, what are your thoughts about waffle house? Do you think the brand is living up to its legend as awful house? Oh, come on. Just because every time I’ve ever been to one, it’s weird and you got it. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean that it’s not a good brand. You said it man.

All right, we move on now. Now Chuck, this is pushed back area number four, making the tough call when he got here, discontinuing offering a poor performing product or service. This is what I hear. People will say, I’ve worked on it so long and you go, that’s tremor. When we had the photography company and there’s a member of our team who worked on this, this package, this package, they said, if we do this package, brides are going to love it. I said, what’s the package? And I don’t want to mention too many details because I know their mom or cousin will hear this and I’ll get a call. So let’s just say they invented something that was really stupid. I mean, but they had invested a ton of time in it previous to bring it up to me. So they come to me and they say, hey, this is going to be the new move.

And I said, this right here, this is great. This is the new movie. I’ve invested tons of time and I’ve, and I’ve invested $10,000 in buying the apparatuses that make it possible. And I’m like, okay, well here’s what got to do. Then we’ve got to focus on selling photography and video. And then at the bridal show, at the appointment, at the point of sale, we will ask the brides, are you interested in upgrading to ABC? One, two, three, right to the state. And like, I dunno, maybe out of a hundred nobody said yes, that’s not good. And they’re like 200 maybe. No one said yes. And we got to where, you know, we were probably over 300 and the guy’s like attacking our sales team for not trying, but it was a seriously a horrible product. Yeah. And the, the less, um, uh, it’s sold, this person kept wanting to add more features, right?

So they’re like, well, what we can do so we can create a blog and they can log into the site and gather this and that and this and that. It’s going to be huge. And then the, and it kept investing more and more time, more of their time. It’s more emotional. And finally I had to point out, this is never going to work in. The more time you invest in, it doesn’t help. You just got to move on, Matt, and you would’ve thought that I slapped their beautiful new baby. It was just not, it wasn’t good enough ideas. Some of them are going to be bad. Have you ever had an idea, Dr Breck, where you thought this will change the game of Chiropractic care and to only realize, no, no, no. This is not a good move. Yeah. See that he opens. We’ve all had a half day.

I’m going to admit to what it was. Was it with the DJ business? Ah, we had like two or three bride to das for Karaoke at. There were two or three out of like, you know, a hundred and so when he had one guy in our sales team was like, dude, I’m telling you if we introduced karaoke, it’s going to change the wedding. Dj Cape doesn’t want their drunk uncle singing at their wedding. And he’s like, dude, listen, we’re the only DJ company. We would be the only one that offers karaoke weddings. Think about it. Think the only one. No one has taken this niche. Don’t go on. Go on. Okay. So we invested probably $1,000 in buying a karaoke machine. And uh, we had one, the person who wanted it was like, oh, it was awesome. So I bought two more. And then from that point, no one ever wanted it to go for three.

It was terrible. It sucks. Well, you know, you can’t define your identity by the business or the ideas within the business. That’s what I see a lot. So if you’ve invested a bunch of time and something that doesn’t work, you need to unvested sometime and it, cause it’s not personal. If people don’t like it. Are you trying to passively aggressively pitch vest, sales move number five? What is area number five where people struggle to make the tough call? Chip, this is huge. This is a big one. Number five, holding people accountable for performing at high level of being on time, et cetera. Here’s the issue. A lot of times people know what time it is. Most of the time. No, no, no, no, no. Let’s try again. A lot of times people know what time it is but what they’ll say is they’ll say, well what had happened was is I was over, I was headed to work and there were the, there was a familiar in a way and they with like, Hey I need help, I need help, I fun buddy and I’m going okay cause I could have the window cracked a little bit.

I could hear them African wheel I pulled over and the next thing I know with like they have a flat tire. Who am I to leave this lady with a flat path. I helped this lady and I just want to ask you do you want me to help today? It is what do want me to be on time? And you’re like well I don’t think that happened. And then like the next day, it was a lot of details in the next day though was like I was driving to, I was grabbing the in there with a little bit of traffic going on with orange cone youth. Even though the Onco, how many of you have seen an orange cone that fit? He constructed his stupid, right? Right. And they just, they, they just can’t figure out the idea. You know, we have a cheerleading competition coming up here in a week or so.

I got to leave at nine in the morning to get to the Tulsa Convention Center at 10 because my kids perform at 11 now. It only takes 30 minutes to get there. Right? So why am I going to leave with an hour and a half of cushion? Because who knows what’s going to happen out there? It’s a crazy world there. It always happens. It’s the brand. You never know, chuck, this is an unbelievable idea that there’s so many out there and my battery was dead. So luckily I had a cushion of time just like that and had to go buy a new battery and it all worked out. Are you pushing battery sales and vests and waffle house at that time matters. They are really doing a lot of runner, waffle product placement. Hypothetically, if your battery goes out, go to RC auto specialist. Okay, so here’s, here’s the thought. Here’s the thought though, is that you pointing out to someone you have to be on time or you’re fired is not mean.

We’re not the bad guy. You’re just the truth Sayer, right? But that freaks people out. It freaks people out. One other thing I see is that a lot of times I think those people themselves don’t want to be held to the same standard that they’re pushing onto their team and that’s jacked up. Dude. What’s Jack Jackass to read that it and we move on now the next, the next problem area where we struggle as entrepreneurs struggle with making the tough call move number six is what? Asking for the sale. Dr Breck ever struggled with that. When you start, when you were starting out as a chiropractor asking for someone to pay you. Yeah, I did actually. Oh, there we go. Finally he’s a human. Finally we found a weakness. Who Man. Okay. So what kind of struggles did you have asking for the payment? Um, I think going back to what chuck said earlier about the value, um, you know, you’ve got a value of the product and uh, you know, you’ve got to believe in, in what you’re doing, the service, the product and, and then it’s the, the price is the price and you’ve provided the service, you’ve delivered the product, uh, you deserve a reward.

The exchange for your energy, for your time, your investment. I think all of this, even if you had all the value, and even if you, you knew that your product was far superior, right? It all comes down to a human need to not be rejected. I think most people hate being rejected. Now this is what I have found, and I think someone should maybe write this down because this is a big idea. Every entrepreneur that I have interviewed on our podcast who is worth more than a million dollars, every one of them. They actually kind of like rejection. I mean you guys heard these Seth golden honest tea interview. He was talking about driving around in a, in a mercury wasn’t a Saturday, Saturday and driving around asking for people to help him produce his honest tea products bottle it and district has. Previously he was making honest tea when he got the order from whole foods for thousands of cases, he was making it out of his kitchen.

Oh right. Bully. So think about that. And he said he had to ask hundreds of people, hundreds of people. He had to wait and people’s lobby to get their attention of the distributors. He had to push through rejection. He had to raise half a million dollars of investment capital and he had to get rejected over and over and over. And if you want to be successful, you’ve got to learn to like the rejection. Do you feel like some people have an issue with asking for the sale out of just kind of a humble personality as well? I think all of the eye, that’s a factor and they would doctor breakfast. But Dr Brick said is a factor. I mean all of it’s a factor. Yeah. But at the end of that thought pattern, if you don’t actually like rejection, you lose. I’m not talking about just enduring it, but like liking it and like it energizes you.

Let me give a good example. You know the new Teslas? Yeah. How the brakes work when you slowed down the engine works in reverse and the friction actually causes the battery to gain energy charges. The friction charges the energy. Think about that. The car trying to stop actually powers up the engine and that’s how I roll. Like when I get rejected, I actually get more excited. That’s a good, you’re one step closer to the yes. You don’t understand that. That’s a good metaphor for business. I can’t explain this to people because they’re like, you like rejection. Oh yeah. Oh Man. Cause then there’s one more person to prove wrong. Right? You embrace the process. And a lot of times, I mean I probably should stop doing this. I’m 38 but a lot of times when I have a success, I usually will take a photo of, you know, something that’s not gross and like, Oh, I can note, all right, like a handwritten note with a certain, and I’ll send it to the people that have rejected me.

Nice. As a way of just winning. You’re going to do like the hand Turkey, but like it’s missing some feathers. I haven’t done that, but I do a lot of times. Right. Stuff like that. Your face kind of thing. You know it’s written in Hashtag winning. That’s a blood. There we go. All right, so let’s move on to the next area where entrepreneurs struggle to make chuck the tough call. This is a huge one. After you ask for the sale, then you’ve got to ask for the payment. I and I and I, I got nothing here. I don’t know why you would struggle to ask other than you’re fearing rejection or whatever. Like somebody owes you money, you’re performing a service, you provided them a product. Like a doctor. Breck just said, you’ve got to get paid, man. You got to get paid for that.

So ask for the payment. Let me ask you this. You were, you were a construction man. You, you worked in the construction industry, you managed the concrete team. How often did people try to not pay you on time by saying the check’s in the mail? We send that invoice nine out of 10 or 19 out of 20. Maybe. I mean, it was every single time you have to track down your money a doctor Breck if you ever had any insurance company or a customer tried to not pay you. Yes. So what do you do? How do you handle it? I mean, you’ve got to track it down just like you do with a concrete, uh, you know, uh, money. Yeah. I mean, people are people and the situations are the same. You have to be forced. So I cannot tell you how many times we had to threaten to walk off of a job, you know, hey, all right, well, we’ll just shut the entire project down because all the other contractors are waiting on us.

And if you don’t pay, we’re leaving. If you even were relational. So I mean, we don’t want to ruin that relationship, so we do it. Yeah. I mean, we tried to do it kindly, but at the same time, um, you gotta pay your bills. I mean, you don’t go to the electric company and so, you know, I’m not just paying you this month. I will get it. Like if you don’t pay your mortgage, the mortgage company will send you a pretty harsh letter. You do it two or three times. You don’t own the house anymore. Right. If you go to whole foods and you’re like, yeah, I want some honesty. Honesty. Yeah. Okay, well you need to pay for that honesty because they say, well, honestly, I’ll come back. Could you send me an invoice? I mean, it doesn’t work. No. Why the crap does that work? I mean, I see music producers, I see doctors, lawyers, dentists, everybody invoicing people and not charging. You know what, you know, what would you want to ends up happening if you do enough sales that you never get paid for? What’s that? You end up

total eclipse of the heart by Bonnie Tyler. He ended up kind of snuggling up with the cat and then your cats or animals did. They will leave when they’re no longer interested. Your cat within leave you the cowgirl outside. It’s like, yeah, it wants to go outside. So now you’re watching this video by yourself alone, alone and your tears start flowing. Well that ice cream is inspired but might as well slightly melted. And then you start going on Facebook and looking at photos of your ex girlfriends and you’re like kind of looking in there cause you realize you’re still friends on Facebook and you’re commenting on them after three bottles of wine the next day your friends call you and they say, dude, did you comment on the photos of your ex girlfriend? You sick freak for six hours. I haven’t been dating that girl in 20 years. Can you say, look, I ran into ice cream. What am I going to do? What do I, what else? My cat left man. That’s what you are going to get it

living in a van down by the river and this is what’s going to happen if you cannot ask for the payment.

Are you kids are probably seen yourselves, hey, I’m going to go out and I’m going to get the world by the tail and wrap it around and pull it down and put it in my pocket. Well, I’m here to tell you that you’re probably gonna find out as you go out there that you’re not going to amount to Jack Squat.

I don’t know how to tell you that. There’s not an easier way to let that medicine. Is there a, is there a spoonful of sugar out there? She’ll be like, nope. You just got to shut up and ask for the payment. If people won’t pay, get them Outta here. That’s it. Chelates move on to the next move. This is this. Are we on the Oto, the Oto? Nice. Go for it. Asking for feedback from your real ideal and likely buyers. A lot of times, you know you’re getting feedback from like your mom, your dad, your cousins, your friends. They said, dude, that song, that product, that thing. I would buy that. Oh, I would buy that. Yes. So you go out there and you open that restaurant and then you’re going, all right, day one at the restaurant. And I remember we watched elephant in the room.

Everybody I knew said, dude, if you built a place that kind of feels like your man cave for haircuts, I would totally go there. Yes. Yeah. And I go, you would, you would jump for sure it was in your office. Right. And if it was in your office 16th in Boston, I would definitely go. Cause I love that Mojo down there. I’m in what’s like day two and I am not kidding. I’m going to add, I will pay you to get your, I mean that’s what happened. And my dad’s like, okay, I’ll go and heal. Well my dad’s hair cut took like an hour and he’s like a son. I gotta tell you I don’t ever want to get my hair like a relationship with this person. So then I paid a, I’ll ask my friend Kirk Fryer, I said, Kirk will cut your hair for free. Cookery and farmers insurance.

Great Guy. He goes in there and eat comes out and he says it took well over an hour and I never want my hair cut to take over an hour. And I’m going, okay, well then all these people who I knew, I said, hey, can you, you want to come and get your hair cut for free? Nope. Why? Cause you don’t know hair let you knew deejaying but you don’t know. And I said, well I didn’t know photography before I started that business. But that was because once it was good I didn’t mind trying. And I said, well what about the bakery? I had the bakery downtown, the bakery icing on the top. You knew it was good. You knew it was good. You liked this. Yeah, but that was, I was already established the hair, you don’t know here it freaks me out. You hair not going to do it.

So now I have to go out there and advertise Facebook, Google mailers and I’m getting guys coming in one by one. They’re going, this is not a good thing. So I could call him or talk to them face to face and say, good doctor, Breck Mr Eric Chop. What did you not like about your hair cut and how can I make it, how can I make it better? Right. One by one the guys said it has to be under a half hour. I want to get in and out to, there’s cannot be any three. I want like if I’m going to have a premium haircut, I want like a paraffin hand dip or a straight razor something. I want something to beyond just the basic hair cut the music. Why don’t you have any overhead music bro? And these are all epiphany’s I’m getting at one time. Good, good, good, good, good.

And I, and I don’t, my feelings aren’t hurt, I’m just taking notes. And then within like 60 days, all of a sudden it was a totally different experience and it took about six months to nail it and now we have 4,000 members and four locations. We just signed the lease on the fifth location working on the 61. So things are happening. But if I hadn’t been willing to look people right in the eye and say, why do you not like us? Right? It would have never changed. Well, you got to understand that there again, I said this a minute ago, but they’re not attacking you, right? Just because you came up with these ideas and they’re not good ideas. That’s okay. That’s okay. Like this is how Ken Schmidt saved Harley Davidson. That’s how you do it. It’s good enough for Harley. It’s good enough for you. If you’re out there and your business right now is not doing well, but you have some customers ask them, how could we improve our services, our decor, our atmosphere, our product, a list, our service list.

Chupp let’s move on to the next area. And especially the people that you want to multiply, those kinds of customers, your best buyers are best buyers, your best customers, the ones that give you the least problems. Uh, asked them specifically. I mean, how do I replicate what you bring to me, Dr. Brick? Uh, your website is Dr B r e C k.com. If you are a Tulsa is one of Tulsa is highest rated a chiropractor’s Adi, you are the highest rate of chiropractor in Tulsa. You be doing this for a long time. Um, if for any of our listeners out there who want to come in for the first appointment, what all do you offer in that first appointment? I know you’ve listened to your customers and you’ve created a no brainer based on what they want, what, what do you offer? So we make that initial hurdle so low that anybody can clear it.

A Solo like Hon. Yeah. Wow. So you get the consultation, which is just your, your background history, you know, medical history. Get to know what’s going on. Why, why are you coming to see me? The exam? Yup. An extra yep. Therapy and an adjustment all at no cost. No obligation. I can’t make it any more affordable. Well Chubb, you can’t get out of town because it would be outside of the stay in town. Nice. If you’re out of town and coming to town. But seriously, this is a hot deal. And you came up with that deal as a result of listening to your customers, your patients, what do they want? And a lot of people say, I don’t want to go to a chiropractor for the first time and pay a lot of money. What if he’s not good? Right? So you have it. If you can’t help me, that’s the big deal.

Move on to the net. What’s the next tough call entrepreneurs have to make dramatically altering your schedule, letting people know when you are going to be and when you’re not going to be available. I don’t understand why people have such a hard time with this idea, but like I turned my phone off on Friday and I turn it on again on Monday and so many people have questioned my ethics about this. They’re just on me all the time. How can you do to get your priorities straight? Told you on Friday. She did not call me back until Tuesday and I’m like, well, okay. A lot of things that could have been doing. I could been an Atwood’s. It would have been a recording. A show could have been editing. A show, could have Megan’s writing outlines. Yep. Petting are silky chickens could have been procreating.

A lot of things do it, but I definitely not going to be answering my phone. But this idea that we should be at 20 like we’re now at 24, seven call center. Just because somebody invented a smartphone, that makes zero sense. That’s the dumbest idea ever, that everyone should be reachable at all times. It just, to me, I don’t get the idea of being reachable 24, seven. I see people sleeping with their phone on. Yeah. Oh, Hey, are you awake? Well, anxiety’s through the roof. I mean, yeah. Sleep disorders. I mean, you’re, you’re nailing it. You got to turn off that freaking from the average American right now, according to psychology today is interrupted 91 times per day by the phone. Turn the phone off, turn it off.

You know, something else that I see a lot. Um, a lot of people are super responsive to their customers or clients. Right, but they’re also over responsive to their team. They just let their team get ahold of him at all hours of the day, no matter what day it is. And what I found working with all of my clients is that a lot of times if you just give that team member 10 minutes before you call him back or answer that call, they’ll figure it out themselves. But there you train them to just call you immediately instead of letting them figure it out themselves.

So important to have a weekly standing meetings where you can answer any of your employees questions, but you’re not reachable. 24 seven chef. What is the next area where entrepreneurs struggle to make the tough call

not returning calls intentionally.

Yeah. A lot of times people will call me and I’ll run into them at Atwoods guitar center or a, you know, pretty much that a hobby lobby by the meat at research that would just guitar center research. That’s really kind of the, that’s the quad who tries because it’s really the only places I would run into someone and they’ll go, hey, I, I, I ran into a guy that woods probably three or four weeks ago, and he says, I’ve been calling you for a couple of weeks, man, I haven’t returned the call. I was like, I know. And he goes, what do you mean, you know? I said, well, I just, I don’t return your call. I just, it’s, it’s like, it’s not returning your call. Yeah. And he goes, well, why? And I said, well, what do you need to reach me about it? He goes, well, uh, and he tells me these things.

I said, all, I want to make sure we’re clear. You’re not a client, you’ve never been a client. You’re not related to me. And I just don’t return calls to almost anybody unless they are someone in my circle. Yeah. Or they’re a client. Uh, or there’s someone I’m trying to work with. I just, cause I get thousands, literally thousands. Most of our listeners get hundreds of calls as well. Yeah, absolutely. They get thousands of calls from people that you know were offended by a podcast I did two years ago where they liked to radio show I did yesterday or they were upset about a wedding. I had one guy call me and get really irate with me about a wedding reception and a, this is back when I was used to always return calls and my company didn’t even DJ his wedding. I’m sorry. I see what you’re not gonna rant. And then after that I’m like, Hey, are you talking about the right companies? Oh my boy. I bet that happens a lot. So you just gotta like be intentional about the cause you don’t return up, move, move number 11 ship. What does that

not working via consensus.

You just can’t run around and say, hey guys, what do you all think? You cannot ask the team. What do you all think this will waste Dr Breck, what happens when you try to get everybody to agree on everything at Your Business or any business? Well then you’re going to go from, you know, meeting to meeting to meeting. Never getting anything accomplished. You know, I mean, you’re never going to get everybody on the same page going in the same direction, right? Working towards the same goal, unless you’ve got a clear leader who’s painting that picture and setting the course. I mean, there’s one captain on the ship. Let’s say there are five people in your small business right now, okay? And one of them, you say a, sir, what’s your name? Cause it’s a new new company you just bought. This business exists at an existing company and you just bought this company to come to this little five employees before you get there, right?

And he said, what’s your name? Mister employee number one. He says, Donald, you say Donald. Donald Trump. Okay, I think I’ve heard of you. And you go and play number two. What’s your name? Greg flooded were three. Samantha play number four. What’s your name? Uh, Barack. You mean Barack Obama? Yep. Employee number five. And you start asking the employees, but pretty soon you realize you got Barack Obama and Trump and you say, now guys, here’s what we’re gonna do. We are going to do a give back, uh, caught. We’re going to give back to a call of course, because I want our company to show we care about the community, right? And you go to Mr uh, Barack and he says, well, I would like to do a deal where every time that a patient, uh, that every time that we have a customer who buys something from us, what I would like to do is I’ll take some of the profits and give it back to planned parenthood to pay for abortions.

I would like to do that. And they’d go to Mr. Trump Tresor Trump, what do you think? He says, ah, I’d like to kick Barack out of our meeting and I’d like to make it illegal to have an abortion. And you go, okay, well you guys work it out. Let’s have it. Find a consensus. Consensus, some happy medium. Well, you come back an hour later, Trump’s hair has been ripped off. It, Barack suits all mangled. People are crying. There’s a cat and a dog in the meeting now rubber, they’re just fighting. It’s just craziness. And you go, well guys, what do you want to do? At the same time, they both say the opposite thing, right? You could never get a consensus, nope ever. And you can’t get a consensus in almost any area of life ever, ever. If you’re a church, if you’re a business, nobody ever is going to give you consensus.

Consensus does not exists. How does it work out, clay? If you ask your team what time they want to get to work, oh my gosh, this or, or what hours they want to work. Exactly. Or what music they want. Oh, that’s a hot button. And member, remember my team would turned into some great music requests on Friday. They said, I want to add these songs. And they had probably 25 songs they recommended and I bet you six of them are not audio pornography, the 19 audio pornography, but six of them were really good. But in 19 were like, wow. Because I hadn’t heard some of the songs. So I hit play on them and I’m like, well, let’s listen to the lyrics here. Okay. Oh, okay, whoa. And the song is like, I mean, seriously, we had somebody in our office who requested a, the Red Light Special K by, uh, by uh, TLC.

Okay. You can’t play the red light special in the workplace. Right? You can’t do it. It just, it’s not, it’s the wrong atmosphere. Seriously. Uh, we had one guy in our office back in the day. Do you remember the guy he used to watch the game of Thrones nude scenes while working in editing? Those sort of, yeah, I remember the situation. Open environment watching the nude scenes. He bought a third monitor he brought from home and he’s watching like game of Thrones at his workstation. There’s a reason they say not safe for work and he’s watching it and I’m like, hey, hey, hey, you can’t watch movies at work. And Hey, hey. Especially that, not that scene from he’s a black, but I mean these are, these are that you cannot read your editing videos. You can’t watch a video and edit another video on believable.

I’ll move on to push back or the tough call area number 12 number 12 telling a potential employee that they are not the right fit. Yeah, I mean it’s like, you know, if, if Jabba the Hutt applies for a job and he comes in and raw, can you stop eating green gross things and making that laugh? You’re like, seriously, that’s kind of weird. Um, and he’s like, no, we know you. And if you hear it said, well, okay, I’ll hire you. If you hire somebody to on the phones. Seriously, if you hire someone who’s nuts, it’s going to get crazy. I’ve seen small business owners, they hire like the call center version of Smiggle. Thank you for cutting the edit 15 whoa, calm down there. You’re sick. You can’t have like, you know, a Danzig answering your phone in the workplace. It’s just weird. Dr Brick, what happens if you hired the wrong person?

You have all kinds of problems. I mean, depending on what their role is in the organization, I mean, it’s going to bring the rest of the team down. It’s gonna. You know what, you’re going to have all department, all of their problems, all of their program. They’re bringing their problems into your workplace and jacking up your world. Now Chuck, let’s talk about this next push back area in honor of a a number 13, we have anybody who’s ever worn a number 13 and done well in sports. We have anybody out there has worn the number 13 and professional sports we can think of. Oh, you play professional sports, Steven. Okay, you can you keep going. I’m going to find somebody really, we’ve got to put their tenure firing family. Why is that so tough job a well, because one, people feel like it’s going to get awkward.

And again it’s it’s way too personal and tied into their identity. And I think another reason is, uh, you probably feel like you have no other options. And a lot of times that’s why you hired family and the first place, think about this. Number 13 Dan Merino, the Merino Dolphins Fan. How could you possibly, I’ve blocked all of those. So this goes out to the dinner and number Dan, right on number 13. Andy also never won a Superbowl champ. You know you don’t, you’re doing chip. When you start talking about the facts, you take the shore a negative place. I’m feeling a fax machine. That’s what you can call me here we go now or pushing the fax machine sales.

If you don’t fire family, the customer, we’ll fire you. Ooh. So just decide who does the customer fire you or do you fire him? Right? You have to. You have to just, just because they’re your family. If they suck, they still suck. My burrito tastes like wood. Okay, well my, my cousin made it and he was, he works here right now. My cousin’s a viva and he’s back making burritos. I mean Susie tries real hard and very basic level. If you don’t like your Burrito and you go up to the front desk and they say, Hey, I just really don’t like this burrito. Can I get another one? And the guy at the front desk goes, look here, my cousin back there, Lou made the Burrito and I ain’t gonna fire Lou and we ain’t doing it again cause we are like family, right? We stick together right in that right there Lu.

Right. I see people do that. Blood is thicker than burritos. I see this all the time though. It happened almost every time. It’s crazy. It’s blood thicker than Britain. No, that’s all right. Moving on to number 14 chef. What he got here, responding to negative reviews. You’re going to get a negative review if you do anything. If you ever stand out. I’ve seen there’s true story. Uh, this is a gross story, but a funny story that just happened recently. Does it have to do with Burritos and blood? There is a business that I am aware of that is in the fitness industry. Okay. And somebody pooped in the changing room. Not like, not into a toilet. No. I mean somebody is when number two, efficacy and deprecated in the changing room of the business just had a good time. No, I’m speechless. I wasn’t, when I was in college, there was a guy I knew who used to go up to the other halls, the other dorms, the other guys he went to the dormitory is of the other guys and we call them wings.

It’s like a, it’s like a fraternity. He would go into the other fraternity’s, um, rooms and then the, they have the toilets and all the times they have the a, you can shut the door to toilets, what do you call it? The stall stall. And he would hang up there and swing like a monkey and then poop. Oh. And it, wherever it would land, that would be his gift to that floor. And so he became known as the mad pooper. But no one knew who did it. That is no one knew. So people would always, Lord totally do. But throughout the week, people would go to, somebody just dropped a bomb on floor six. The poopless strikes again, we never knew. It wasn’t until his senior year. And now can you, was I going to put him on blast? Right? No, I’m not. Well, but all I’m saying is that it is gross.

But this guy who is, who dropped the bomb the other day and the [inaudible] in the tray and he a changing room. Same Guy. No different guy. The guy who seriously, there’s a guy who who win number two in the changing room of a local business and I, I saw it come online because one of our customers told me about it. Apparently a customer went online and posted on Facebook, hey, if you want to have a blinky experience, go here and everyone’s sharing it and tag you. If you’re the business owner, that’s not funny cause you can’t control that. No. But people were just slamming this company online for having me. What are you going to do if you’re a business owner and you don’t know that’s happening? How can you stop it? So the best way for that owner to respond would be to say something like, uh, hey, we can’t control all of our customers. We apologize and we will do our best to make sure we do get a job right. But I’m just saying you’re going to get jumped or break. Have you ever had a negative review? Chupp if you ever had a negative review, I’d love to say no. But yeah, we’ve had some negative. But when you have a negative review, what do you do? Do you lament? Do you write a poem about it? Do you freak and you go DMX on him? What do you do?

Well, I think you definitely don’t just, uh, go crazy on the, the reviewer. I mean, you know, you don’t, uh, blast them back and listen and see if this is their credibility to the negative negative review. Is there something you need to correct and fix and that situation, there’s something that needs to be fixed and one I would fire the, the member if we can figure out who that is. You need to be out of here. But uh, yeah, I mean you do your best to fix the situation and then we, I’ve always tried to make it right, you know, with, with their negative comments, you know, so it’s like a science fourth, we have a p three environment, but you know, you had a bad experience in our place. Please come back and let us earn your trust and, and we’ll, we’ll prove that we want to do business with you and do it right. I agree with that. Other thing you got to do is not argue that you don’t want to argue because the people that are reading these reviews to see if they want to come to you, you’re the man and the situation. Right. And they’re all going to stay my town. You just come see in petty and so bitter and petty. Exactly. Exactly. Okay.

Hey man,

that’s exactly right. So you just don’t, don’t respond. Just very like documentary. Yeah. Okay. Keep going.

Okay, so now we’ve got Elon Musk. We’re talking about Elon Musk. He describes entrepreneurship like this, and I think chuck, he doesn’t, he’s not harsh enough when he describes it, but please read the notable quotable from Elon Musk above move number six.

Uh, he says being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.

I agree. I agree. No, seriously. If you’ll say, uh, what’s it like running multiple multimillion dollar companies? It’s like playing, you’re playing dodge ball, you know, it’s you versus the other guys and the other guy starts throwing wrenches at, and then you can talk to rich. You can dodge ball, but you’ve got armor on. Right? You know, so, but it’s, it’s painful. It’s, it’s, and it’s like, ah, shirtless paintball is how I describe entrepreneurship. But when you finally get to the flag and there’s a lot of money there, there’s a lot of money, then you get to take your shirt off. That’s always good. Well, it’s like you’re chasing a bag of money. You’re looking for that money. You’re going after that bag of money, but there’s a viking behind you who’s ripping the heads off of anyone he gets in contact with. So keep going.

Just keep going. You gotta keep me on that. That’s what it was like. Now chuckers and another note, notable quotable from a guy worth 1.5 $4 billion. That’s a lot. A man by the name of Mark Pincus, who’s the founder of Zynga. What does he have to say about entrepreneurship? Not having a clear goal leads to death by a thousand compromises. As an example, this show, if you’re listening right now, this show is a, it’s business school without the BS. It’s a real entrepreneur is teaching you how to really grow a successful company. It is not a political show. We don’t spend the entire day debating about the wall, the funding for the wall, the government sequesters, Trump Pelosi, Obama. We don’t, right? Because that’s not what the show’s about. Now, there is a great show that airs after our show and there’s a great show that airs before our show in the markets where we were aired live on radio, right?

That is all about politics, but it never, I never cease to understand. I never get the mindset of somebody out there who is listening to Glenn Beck and his irate that he’s talking conservative politics. Right? There’s another show you know, you can change to a different show. Lots of hobby. You can turn there. Or why would you listen to a business school show show about business business school without the BS? What would you listen to that show if you’re a commie and then be upset that we don’t talk politics. Yeah, and if you’re a communist, I mean I don’t understand why you would listen to the show. Chuck. What is the next area of pushback? A lot of entrepreneurs have to push through when they make the tough call. Dealing with criticism from your peers. Basically when you dominate the market, your competitors will not like you.

If you are remarkable, you’ll be remarked about. Yes, yes, yes. Hey, this happened with a client just a week, week and a half ago. He, um, you know, one of his competitors posted something on social media and it said Hashtag the real bit his business name, right. So he came in and brought me a printout and I said, you got to hang that on your wall. He pulls his phone out on your wall. He pulls his phone out and he’s got a photo of it on his wall in his warehouse already. I was like, yes. Whenever we are a coaching businesses, we only work with one business in every category. True. Unless someone like Steve Currington says, it’s okay, go for it. We have a lot of business owners that say, you know what? Because of where I’m located in town or because of the size of my company.

I don’t care if you work with my competitor, but some people say, yeah, I do. Right. And it’s up to the owner of the business and I, I’d never, I can’t understand why people get irate with me when I call them and say, we can’t work with you because your competitor doesn’t want us to write. Um, makes sense. Right. But there, I don’t feel bad about it. I just move on. But what’s interesting is that people seem to struggle with this idea that your competitor doesn’t want you to do well. Like your competitor doesn’t want to. We’re not all in this together. Right? I mean, and so again, clay, there’s a giant pie out there. What are you not going to get some criticism from your peers, Dr Brick, if you’re doing something right in the chiropractic arena. I mean, if you’re doing something right, you got to expect to, uh, to get some push back.

I mean, you know, you’re not going to get New England and, uh, patriots, yes. Paints on the Steelers, probably the work together. Right. I mean, they’re not going to agree that, you know, hey, let’s let you do well this year and we want to wish you well, we’ll take this year off. And then, I mean, La wants once the Patriots to have a phenomenal year. We want you to win. No, of course not. We want to win the Superbowl. You have a really hard time with players that hug before the game. Yeah. Opposing players. They don’t. Yeah. I mean I remember Michael Jordan, you know, he used to just talking mad trash for the game. Uh, shack used to talk a lot. Trash combing. It seems like there’s a lot of hugging going on. Like what’s up, what’s going on and say, hey man, we should go to Burrito’s after now let’s go to Pema scene.

He goes in a little while. Yeah, I have a hard time with that. I wish there would be more trash talking before the game. New Rule in the NBA. You can’t say anything nice to the opponent. It’s knew of. Your kids were really, if you can’t say anything nice, say nothing at all, you know, reverse that. Reverse that. If you can’t think of anything negative to say, don’t say it. A hug after the game. We’re moving on here chuck. The final two areas of pushback, we’re of entrepreneurs struggle to make the tough call are what I feel like. These are your two favorite maybe as well. So was number 16 saying no to almost everything. So let’s role play shop. Okay. Call me and ask me to do something and I’ll tell ya know and just keep firing off scenarios. Ready? Here we go. This is clay.

Hey Clay. It’s chuck. You want to go duck hunt with me? No. Okay. What do you think this is clay. Hey Clay. It’s chuck. Do you want to go? Uh, do you want to go swimming with me? No. Hey Clay, this is chuck. Do you want to go paint a picture with me? No. Hey Clay, this is chuck. Do you want to read a book together? No. Hey Clay, this is chuck. Do you want to do a radio show? Yeah. Yeah. There is almost there. There’s there, there are other, there are other ones that other people say no to say yes to a lot that I don’t know what other ones you would reasonable to request normal people. Uh, you want to go grab lunch? Let’s go grab coffee today. No, let’s do a brainstorming meeting even at your office. No, no. Uh, let’s, let’s talk about our feelings.

No, never, never get to have it here. So, but again, if you’re somebody out there who you don’t have to do it, I say you don’t have to, you don’t have to say no to what I say no to, right. Just have to say no and figure out what are your goals, what are your roles and what do you need to say no to ordain your time or somebody else will, oh, control your schedule, my friend. You can’t do it, Dr Breck, you gotta say no, right? You gotta say no. I mean, if you don’t say no, then you’re, you’re missing your best. Yes. Saying no. You get to deliver your best. Yes. You save yourself for the things you need to say yes to. I’m going to try a tattoo myself with that quote during the show. Why is it, why is it in culture and offensive idea to sell?

People know. I mean, I, I understand that it is, but I don’t understand why. Like it’s your life, right? I don’t want to go do that. I’m not offending you. I’m not attacking you. I just, I don’t, I don’t want to spend my time doing that. Now I would like to say that there are 18 tough calls that I’ve observed throughout my years as a business coach. But I have to say, no, no, no. There are just 17 and I’ve observed, so this next one is probably the hardest one for entrepreneurs to do. Lucky number seven, we saved it for the developer that we saved the toughest one for last. What do you got there? Tila. Lucky number 17 shout out to mark grace. Former cubs first basement. Oh Wow. I know some people’s. Jersey. None. Gracie. Gracie. All right. Firing poor performers. I, I don’t, I don’t get the idea of keeping poor performers.

On your team. Yeah, it’s wild. And I think what a lot of people do is they want their business to be like their best friends. It’s like they have the lowest standards, which ends up creating a terrorist organization. However, if you hold people accountable to a high standard, you’ll find that eventually you’ll have a team where everyone truly does become friends because everyone is pushing towards that same high standard. So it’s kind of counter intuitive idea, counterintuitive idea, but you have to hold the standard tie. Yup. And fire everybody who doesn’t hit those standards until you have a true team of high standards people. And that’s where those genuine friendships and relationships are created. And you do this by recruiting every week, every week, every week you have to do an interview process, a group interview. That way you are able to fire poor performance because you have people in your pipeline to hire them and replace them with.

And now we’re going to end today’s show with a notable quotable from Jack Welch who writes face reality as it is not as it was or as you wish it to be. Oh yeah. Think about that and what areas is your business not the way you want it to be. Face reality. Ask Yourself, are you stuck and if you are stuck, we’d love to see you at our next in person. Thrive time show workshop. It’s a two day workshop. It objectively currently is the world’s highest and most reviewed business workshop. It takes place on the tech takes place on the west coast, on the west side of the Arkansas River there and our 20,000 square foot facility. It’s a beautiful location. It’s a beautiful event and it’s from 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM both days. If you want to buy a ticket, it’s $250 to buy a ticket, $250 we cover marketing, sales, accounting, management, everything you need to know to grow a business, we cover it there and for some reason you’re in a spot where you can’t afford the two 50 or you just want to save some money.

All you have to do is subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and leave us an objective review or you can leave us in a review, a review on our Google map, take a screenshot of the review on iTunes or the Google map and send it to us to info at thrive time, show.com with your name and phone number. And we will give you a ticket to the conference for as little as $37 which covers the hard cost of serving you. And Eleni is in Los Cabos for both days. So good. The workbooks, all the print on the print materials, Chub, it’s a hot deal. April, not regret, regretted. Oh doctor Brex, Ben Fifth and six. April 5th and six is the next conference. So, uh, iron sharpens iron. You’re going to meet a ton of entrepreneurs that are going through the same things that you are or have just gone through the things that you’re going through and you’re going to get information from the presenters and the people in the audience as well. And that’s one of the things I like about it so much, and we like to end each and every show with a boom. So then he further edge you three, two, one.

Okay.