Should I Continue to Sell a Product That is Not Scalable? – Ask Clay Anything

Audio Transcription

Welcome back to the thrive time show on your business coach podcast download. Now. On today’s show we have an incredible listener by the name of Mr Greg Wild, who’s traveled here all the way from Mississippi while out.

Y’All  to ask Dr z some questions now. Greg, I think you had heard them, one of the shows that you can schedule a shadow and so you decided to come to Tulsa to shadow me in the thrive team, just to see what you can learn about business. Can you explain from your perspective why you would want to come and shadow if we want to build from all over the world, that shadow all the time, but why? Why did you want to come to Tulsa? To shadow myself and the thrive time show?

Hold on. This is the place to learn about business. That came to a conference last year and it was like Disney world for business and a with me and my wife came. We learned so much and then we’ve also been listening to the podcast. Try to listen to just about every one of them and uh, I just had to come learn more. I had to kind of get kind of get baptized and all this stuff, you know.

Well, I appreciate you being here and I want you to know the reason why dr Z and I take time out of our schedule to record the podcast is because both of us appreciate the mentors that we had in her life and we probably wish we would’ve had more mentorship faster. And so both of us, it’s kind of a cathartic thing to give back and help guys like you. So I’m going to, I’m going to tee it up for you, my friend. You could ask dr a dot, any question you want in Z, if the question is too intense, too personal, too, out of bounds. Start crying. You start crying, man. Will immediately change the subject to myself and yeah. Okay. So Greg, what’s your question for Dr? I give some gratitude first. Sure. That I want to thank you all for doing this.

First of all, because I think it was a couple of weeks ago on one of the podcasts, Dr [inaudible] mentioned that entrepreneurship is lonely, it can be lonely and I felt that, you know, because there’s not many people around that share the same interest or passion, you know, as a business and a lot of times you don’t relate to a lot of other business coach people. So just having y’all here, it’s a, it’s a type of mentorship for me, you know, so I get to listen in, you know, I could put my earbuds in my ear and it’s Kinda like having some mentors or buddies right there in my ear to kind of learn some things secret real quick for you. Greg will secret I’m having you here is actually the answer to my prayer.

So I had built a successful company and everybody who was my friend owned a business and I told Vanessa, I said, I don’t relate to most people, but people that are not uncomfortable with the concept of waking up at whatever time it is required to get something done. People that say I’ll be there, I’ll be there. And they get there regardless of whether they’re sick or not. People that take who drink copious amounts of dayquil to honor their commitments like Dr c and myself, they’re in short supply and I need to be able to one, educate folks like that, but two, I need to be able to connect with people like that because I, I literally live a life of almost occlusion because I, I don’t even grasp it. I had a conversation the day at the front desk with a guy who the local grocery store and I would never give coaching or feedback to someone who doesn’t want it.

But I said, how are you doing today man? He goes, I gotta be honest. I’m on break right now. I’m on break right now. And he goes, but I wanted to see if I can be a guest on your under radio show. I listened all the time, but I, I can’t, I have to go on break. I’m not exaggerating. And I go, what? He goes, I have to go on break. So he, he literally put the little lane thing out that says my lane is closed, but he’s a fan of our show and he says, I can’t help because I’m on break. And then he. I said, well, how are you doing? He goes, man, I tell you what, this job just sucks. There’s no future here, man. My boss is just a freaking, I’m not kidding. Then he gets behind me in line with eminem’s and a mountain dew healthy and he talks to me the entire time as someone else’s, as I’m waiting for someone else to check me out about how the job sucks, the economy sucks.

There’s no future at this grocery store. And I’m thinking, is anybody listening to our show? Because I feel like he listens to our show every day, but yet he doesn’t get the core concept of that idea. You, you’re, you’re going to take ownership of your life. And if I feel like if he, if he got it and retained it, he would have greeted me if he punched out off the clock. But he would have helped me out. I had to wait for five to six minutes for the next person to help me out while he complained about his current employer and I just, I, I just see sometimes I feel like I’m in a world where most people don’t get it. So Greg is an answer to our prayer. We’re, we, we, we love having you on the show, man. It’s exciting. So you are a diligent doer.

You drove all the way here from Mississippi to ask Dr. z hard hitting questions, hard hitting question. No softball. You know, how intelligent this guy is. He was telling us before we started recording here that he hadn’t taken a trip in a while. He’s thinking of my own Kayak and what I want to do. And he heard about the opportunity. He’s like [inaudible]. That’s what I’m going to take my personal trip for us. And that’s how I’m gonna use my coupon. Right. So, so greg had your question for Dr Z. Okay. I’ve got um, in the interest of creating a business, not a job, I’m in my business. If something that’s not scalable or or it’s very difficult to scale, should I ditch that thing? Should I get rid of it? Even though it’s even though it does offer some income, can you share with the listeners what you do for living and kind of a little, a little bit of an overview of what you do and what your industry is?

We do custom cabinets and also we sell flooring to but this. This relates more to the custom cabinets. Like in other words, we can produce cabinets. I can get guys in there and train them to produce cabinets because it’s more like manufacturing, but then there’s times where we have to do a custom pieces are more ornate pieces. You know that those things take a little bit more or a lot more training. It’s hard to find someone. Master worker. Yeah, and so we can make money on the cabinets by manufacturing those. We also do bring in income from those custom pieces, but that’s very difficult to train. So I was thinking maybe those are things that we should do less of or or ditch. Absolutely. What you should do is use to say to yourself, you should do an analysis of all your cabinets, of all the work that you’re doing.

What’s the most profitable now, is that also one of the more scalable? So if it scalable and profitable, that’s where all your focus should be put into, you know, all the little side thing. Sometimes helping someone with their business is getting them to do less, but do what they’re doing with business coach excellence. And a lot of times those little ornate pieces, by the time you find a guy, by the time you get it done, by the time you sell it, by the time you know it’s a, you could have done two more sets of, uh, cabinets. You know, something the other day said, why don’t you guys at your optometry clinic? Why don’t you treat glaucoma patients?

I’m glad you brought that up because that’s been asked. And again, I don’t own the optometry clinic. I worked with CSI all the time where we’re partners with who will ask me. They’ll say, hey, how come he doesn’t do this kind of treatment or that treatment? And I said because simplicity scales and complexity fails and at some point we’ll talk about on the show. So you’re saying you could, you have the drive, the technology, you could find somebody that intelligence to treat glaucoma, but you decided not to do that on a daily basis because

why? Because our glasses and contact lens patients, we have so many of them and they’re, they’re so much more profitable for me. And so I’d rather focus on that, send those patients. There’s several doctors in town that specialized in that, that’s all they do. And send them that, that piece of work, if you will, and focus on what we do best and focus on what’s the most prop profitable to us. You know, because got a girl come, a patient could come in and tie up quite a bit of time with the doctor, with the staff, with the extra testing you have to do. Um, and so, you know, at some point you realize, hey, what do I make the most money on?

Just like the elephant in the room, our men’s grooming lounge, we do men’s haircuts. It’s a premium service. It’s like the country club for men’s hair, elephant in the room. That’s e I t r lounge.com. The other day we had a wedding party that called and said, we listened to your show all the time and we would like to schedule our wedding party for your. Well, we don’t do wedding parties because we do men’s grooming for individual men. We don’t book groups of 16 men. Twenty four men even though we could. There’s just so much more that goes into it and wedding parties is not our niche. Does that help you, greg? Is that. Does that answer your question? Yeah, definitely, definitely does. Do you have another hard hitting question for Dr. Zellner, you’ve traveled all the way from Mississippi. You can ask him anything you want about business, about life optimization, about a performance, anything you want to ask him at all, feel free to you. You have the mic, my friend.

Is it ever okay to hold a business back? In other words, if you don’t actually want to get it to grow to where it’s too complicated. Yes. Just kind of hold it down to z. does that actually, there are several reasons why that is applicable that you would want to do that and part of it is to sometimes when you’re. When you’re growing a business, if you don’t have all your processes, if you don’t handle your checklist, if you don’t have everything really in place, sometimes you can do some damage. It’s kind of like opening a restaurant before you’re. Before the food tastes good. You’re like, hey, we’re going to open this restaurant next Tuesday. Right? We haven’t really tested the food. We don’t really know if the foods that good, but by Gosh we’re going to get this restaurant open. Sometimes in life you don’t get that second golden look. Sometimes in life you don’t get that second opportunity. Sometimes doing a bad job or did incorrect is worse than slowing down the business. Doing what you’re doing now with excellence and getting everything in line and keeping it simple and then those processes and checklists in place.

Also, I know this Dr Z at last count, how many kids do you have? Three, and I mean this and I’m just. I’m not just saying this cause he’s on the show, but I’ve been this, he has three kids who speak very highly about him when I’ve been around them and I’m not prompting them. I’m, you know, just talking about life and I’m a bone and bridget, I know that more than the other Blake Blake, but I am saying I know Bo and bridget pretty well, but I don’t, I don’t know Blake Blake and probably half dozen occasions, but I know Boeing bridget very well and you could have expanded your optometry clinic into other states, but you chose to want to be home and in your local city more so you could see both blake and bridget, by the way, are you obsessed with these are what happened there? I was like, it just happened. I don’t know. It wasn’t like I didn’t wake up and go be really be man named after.

What I’m saying is you sung by being. You could have opened up in multiple states, but for the benefit of your family, you chose not to. I would argue with your auto auction, the system is, is very solid now. So you probably could have where you’ve had opportunities to go open up in other states, but you value quality of life probably as much as you value finances or more you, I think you’ve valued, I think he valued time freedom and time to invest with your family more than you value money, but you understand that needed to do that. So I think, I think you, but I think once, I do think you value family time more based upon not what you say, but based on what you do. So I think a lot of times you’ve actually limited the business coach growth of things. I mean, you probably could have opened up your optometry clinic in Oklahoma City and then another one and in different cities. But why did you choose not to do that?

Exactly what you said. And that is that I, I wanted to be there for my kids and that was very important to me. I’m spending time with them and the family. And so I, uh, but now that they’re grown, they’re all three married, right? I have a grandbaby now and another one on the way. Um, so, um, so thinking back on the white right now, Blake Blake has a, his Maria was pregnant with her second job, buddy blake is as a productive, very productive. He’s efficient, they’re very efficient for the most efficient Zelner that I don’t know. Well, rather you go well that you can get them on the show as a guest on the show. How is he so efficient? Okay. So, uh, so then what happens now that now that they’re grown and they’re out of the house and they’ve got their own lives, I mean, I still do, you know, dinners, I still hang out with him on, you know, on occasions like, uh, you know, I have both nights, so do dinner with my son and you know, once a week and bridget and I get together for lunch and you know, and now she’s a doctor in my practice.

So that’s been kind of fun. It’s a whole different kind of dynamic there. But now that I look at it go, I’m going to get some fresh opportunities. I maybe maybe maybe expanding some, some of my businesses outside the confines of Northeast Oklahoma. Are you serious because the sparkle in your eye over there because they are ambitious, are they? I’m just asking is that what’s going on there? That they are they are they ambitious and you’re going, okay, I, I, we should open up beyond beyond Oklahoma.

Is that why not just have some more time now? It’s like, okay, do you know, it’s Kinda like say like now what? What’s the next chapter of my life look like? And I think as an actress it looks like you can argue with me. You can just say you’re an idiot. You’re okay. I think you’re going to hit a billion dollar net worth before you’re 60.

That sounds good. I’ll accept that. I’ll take prophesied that had been prophesied over me many times. Really? Yeah. I, I just feel like if you look at Warren Buffet and you look at his life, if you look at a lot of people who have had massive success, it seems like the latter quarter, latter third of their life, they start to have that exponential growth and you invested a significant sum, at least for you and for most people out there into the, to the founding of or the buying of Regent Bank, which was a bit. It was formally the Bank of no water. Then regent bank, we just hit $500,000,000 in assets. So. Right. And you started in [inaudible] 70. We started at 70 and we bought it like the worst time possible. You know, the crash of the Phi of the. But I mean you invested a lot of money to be a significant owner of that bank and now you just hit $500,000,000 in assets. Correct. And what’s stopping that from going into multiple states? You’re in Springfield, Missouri right now? We, we’re now in multiple states. Oklahoma City? Yes. You’re in Tulsa? Yes.

And now what? What’s what’s, what’s preventing you from going into another state? Nothing. Just time and resources and energy. You know, I, I think you’re going to be a billionaire when you’re 60. You know what prophesied though? Have you ever heard that from anybody else in my. I don’t know. I’ve, I’ve actually heard that from several people. It wouldn’t happened all. They don’t get thrown age out there and sincerely, but. Well I’m just saying when you’re 61, screw it. Do you have to just turn it off? Six eight and you can do it before you’re 60. Greg, any other questions for Dr? Zellner wire on the show today, my friend. I think that I’ll probably kicked myself later, but I think that’s all I’ve got right now. Okay. Well congratulations to buddy. You know, people that here and do is impressive because I’d be able to hear, but they don’t do.

Yeah. Thank y’all. I appreciate you all a whole lot. Can I ask you this? I want to ask you a question, Greg. How has what you’ve learned since listening to the thrive time show? Because you listened to the podcast faithfully, you’ve attended a workshop. How has it impacted you personally at this point? How has it impacted you financially at this business coach point? What have you learned and applied and how has it impacted you thus far? As far as my self discipline and things like that has been life changing. I’m getting a lot more organized financially. I’m just starting to see some of the fruits of that. You haven’t seen a whole lot because it’s actually I compare it, it’s almost like being in business coach waders and like trudging through like I’m moving forward, but it’s a, it’s a daily grind, you know, you just trudging through it, but I have a direction I’m going in and my days are just a lot more proactive instead of reactive.

Yup. So that’s helped a lot because most of my time was always spent just reacting to this phone call or whatever. It was just constantly stayed in constant frustration. Okay. So Greg, if I live in southern Mississippi or is that. You’re from southern Mississippi, right. And you’ve, you’re from popular. We’ll pop Louisville. They have an unpopular bill down in Mississippi. I’m sure they do. Somewhere over there. It’s got some maturity. The right place. You’re the popular popular. Oh. Oh. Oh. They have an unpopular war. The blueberry capital. Well, there you go. I knew you were sweet and someone wants to get some custom cabinets or they want to get some stuff done from you. The cabinet and flooring. You do captains. How do they get ahold of you? What’s the move? They can, uh, they can call us or they can go to our website.

Wilds cabinets.com can find us there. They can do a google search. Find is that way. Wild cabinet. Sorry. I was, I was on facebook. I was on instagram. I was getting text messages. Can you repeat that one more time? I was very distracted. We’re on facebook to wild cabin win ld. Nice. Okay. Z, I appreciate you for answering any of Greg’s questions. Greg. Greg, I appreciate you for interrogating Dr. Z dot and Chubb. I appreciate you being kind of like a mediator here was here. You’ve, you’ve Kinda kept it copacetic. I was breathing. We would like to interview podcast with the three, two, and a one and the boom. So here we go. Three, two, one.