The 4 Steps to Finding Great Employees and How to He was Able to Leave the Wage Cage at the Age of 47 | The Clay Staires Story

Audio Transcription

Speaker 2:
some shows don’t need a celebrity in the writer to introduce the show, but this show does too, man. Eight kids co-created by two different women, 13 moat time, million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the thrive time show

Speaker 1:
what

Speaker 3:
[inaudible] yes, yes, yes and yes. Drive nation on today’s show. It’s a very special occasion because

Speaker 1:
we are joined with the man who makes you stop and stare. Mr. Clay stairs. Welcome onto the thrive time show. How are you sir? Clay? I’m doing fantastic. Thank you very much for having me on the show today. Hey, let’s go. Let’s go ahead and uh, to take the show to a weird place. Ooh, let’s go right there. Oh, stairs. How long have I been? Let me get down. How long have I been knowing you? Probably even known me for. Wow. Wow. Yeah, about eight years now. Eight years. Eight years now. And how did you and I initially meet? Do you remember that? How we met exactly. Yeah. Uh, I was working out at Shepard’s fold ranch, my mom and dad’s ministry that they started back in 1972 and, uh, I was the executive director out there. Uh, we were doing a fundraiser, uh, and I had been speaking to a mutual friend of ours, uh, Jordan Guffman Jordan Guffman. Yeah, yeah. And we were talking about doing a, like a telethon. He goes, well, you’re going to need a phone center to do that. So, uh, he connected me with you and that’s how he met some, almost nine years ago. And I’ll just go ahead and throw this out today. I’m looking at my calendar today. Yeah. Today is my eight year anniversary of starting with you. Really? I actually have it on the calendar. Are you serious today? Today. Today is the day. February 2nd. I did not know that.

Speaker 1:
This is Groundhog day. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Unbelievable. The serendipity of this moment. It’s impressive. So, so now you, um, but before becoming an entrepreneur, now you’re an entrepreneur. You’ve started this company called the leadership initiative. You speak all over the world. That’s cool. Um, you’re coaching a client right now that their, their business is worth more than $200 million. Yes sir. You’re coaching a lot of businesses and totality, the businesses that you’re coaching. I believe we did the math are worth well over $400 million right now. A lot of great things. But you had to start somewhere and I understand that you were regrettably,

Clay Staires:
regrettably the head of the teachers’ union. What in the crap was wrong with you? What were you doing? Well, clay, again, I was a school teacher for 15 years, primarily up in Kansas city. Inner city public school. Uh, well, I, I’m a teacher. I mean I grew up in a teaching thing. I’m a teacher, developer, uh, encourager, trainer. I mean that’s me, a coach that is me at the core. And uh, so when I went to college at OU, my dad, literally, my dad enrolled me my freshman year and just told me one one day, clay, I got you enrolled. Okay. And that was about it. You were a high school, you were a very good high school football player. I played, played ball in high school and went to OU and got to play football. They had a slot receiver in high school. I was a wide receiver, a wide receiver in Barry Switzer’s, wishbone offense.

Clay Staires:
I was never going to see the ball and I was probably 140 pounds with all my pads off. Who hit you the hardest in practice? I would say Thomas Benson. He hit you the hardest Thomas Ben. I can say that immediately because he laid me out. Uh, he went off, he went on to play with the Atlanta Falcons for several years. But uh, he loved land. Oh yeah. I mean I uh, he laid me out and I remember getting up and readjusting my helmet cause the face mask was over around my ear so I couldn’t breathe. But I get back to the huddle and I still can’t breathe and I’m standing there in the huddle going, Oh my, this, welcome to the big boys. You go in the other huddle. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that was our experience there. Do you ever find yourself in the huddle?

Clay Staires:
You know, cause you’re on the practice squad probably, right? Oh completely. Yeah. You ever find yourself talking to the quarterback and in the huddle you’re all huddled around you go, no guys don’t want me to fall over there. Don’t come here. Because being on the scout team, you’re going against the first string or offensive. So Jackie ship, Thomas Benson. Oh yeah. Scott Case as well. Scott Case went on to play with the Atlanta Falcons. I got in a fight early on, probably like probably my third week. You had a death wish I got in a fight, uh, simply because one of the guys, one of the big boys was picking on me, the little freshmen and you know, you have to draw those boundaries. Kind of like going to prison clay [inaudible] guy and take him up. And so here we go. We’re at it. And I was smart enough not to take my helmet off and get in a fight. But uh, yeah, I want to give all those out there and broke up and everything. Uh, a tip, if you, if you are thinking about, um, going to prison or you find yourself listening to this show from a prison, I do want to give you some tips because I think otherwise you might go in and be ill prepared, uh, to, to do life in prison. So here, here are my three tips. If you find yourself going to prison one find or make a shift

Speaker 5:
right away, quickly as possible, make a shift, have a shift to find the male. If you’re, if you’re a male listener out there who’s thinking about going to jail or you are in jail, find a male who is, um, the most, uh, sexually aggressive against other males and quickly join his team and get his affection and get him your man. Yeah, let him know you like him and then you’ll do whatever he wants as long as he won’t do that. Yeah. Three, put the soap on a rope dropping that thing. Okay. Okay. So we continue now that we got those tips out of the way. So you are a, you graduate from college and now you find yourself being a teacher. And I want to ask you sincerely, because you, you are a teacher, are, you were a teacher, how often would other teachers call in sick and not show up

Clay Staires:
for their jobs? Uh, well, of course it’s not necessarily other teachers. It was me personally. I got 15 days off every, every year from, for personal days and I took them. How often did you play videos as a substitute for teaching? Uh, okay. Now, now, Oh, as a substitute. Quite often. Quite often when, uh, when a substitute roll in because I, uh, I was teacher of the year and so I [inaudible] but when I was there, I was on point. I had the dog and pony show going every single day in class because, uh, I was presenting, it wasn’t just I’m here teaching, giving information, but I had the, you know, do you remember the bigs, the big dis, not the little CDs, but the big huge disc that were even bigger than records, uh, for videos and everything. Oh, you have to have those videos.

Clay Staires:
I had posters all over the room. I would be sitting, I had notes on the chalkboard chalk board back in the nights and so I would pretty much be sitting in the high chair with a coffee, just using my laser pointer pointing at the big screen TV pointing at the chalkboard, pointing at the posters on the wall while I taught. So it was a big presentation, but when a substitute would come in, I knew the level of the, the ability of the subs. So I just said, Hey, watch a video. No. What subject were you teaching? I was anatomy and physiology. Yeah. I actually got my degree in exercise fizz coming out of college and, and did that for a little bit, but uh, was not able to up in Boston but wasn’t able to make that work. So it came back

Speaker 5:
then after that you became the director of a camp that your parents started and that’s actually where you met Jordan Guffman. And just for the listeners out there who don’t know, Jordan has done very, very well as a, as a public relations expert. He’s worked with Microsoft and huge companies helping them to do the PR for stuff like the Microsoft surface or other products. But you met Jordan when he was a camper over there at Shepard’s fold camp. What was your role? Shepard’s fold camp?

Clay Staires:
Yeah, I was the executive director there, so I was like the general manager and uh, I answered to a board, which was interesting at that point because I was also the president of the board, you know, so that was kinda interesting. But uh, but that was my role, kind of the daily manager of the camp and clay while I was there, because I didn’t know how to, to run the business of summer camp and discipleship training, I just kind of fell right into my gifts and talents, which was teaching, training, coaching. And so we started a discipleship training program with college kids at that point. So I’d moved from training high school kids now to working with college kids and, uh, it was called the furnace. You can find, uh, the furnace training manual.com online. We developed curriculum and had the whole thing going on out at Shepard’s fold.

Clay Staires:
But really while I was there, I did not know how to grow the business. I didn’t know the accounting and the management. We, you know, we had what, a little over a hundred acres. We had 25 different buildings. We had 20 horses that we had to keep alive. Uh, and it, I just didn’t know how to run all that stuff. So I just kinda kinda went into my safe place of coaching, training and they can’t bridge. You’ve got to keep the campers alive. You’re right. We did find that you do need to keep them. You do need to keep them alive. And uh, uh, we did a lot better at keeping campers alive than we did horses. Sorry. But that is another story. So you, when did you, when, when did it occur to you that you no longer wanted to work in the world of nonprofits or you know, being a teacher, a union job?

Clay Staires:
When did it occur to you? Hey, you know what, I might want to leave the wage cage, the world of a, of a salary where it’s a guaranteed max maximum I can make, when did you decide, you know what, I want to start a business. Yeah. Well, it’s interesting you say it like that to clay because it wasn’t necessarily me having an epiphany that I no longer want to be in the wage cage because my mind was in a place at that time in my life were the wage cage was reality. The wage cage was my future. There wasn’t something other than the wage cage. I just knew that my time at Shepard’s fold was coming to an end. It was time for me to move to the next thing. I met with a live coach actually here in Tulsa named Dave Jewitt. Yep. No way. Really. You love him? Yeah. Dave Jewitt and his great guy. His one degree. So at that point I’m in Tulsa and I’m teaching at Bishop Kelly high school right across the street as a Panera bread. And so I go across the street during my break time and meet with Dave and Dave started at, starts asking me a few questions and literally within 30 minutes I am weeping in the booth at Panera bread and just going, my life is going nowhere.

Clay Staires:
And he just said, play, you’re probably experiencing this. You’re probably feeling this. You’re probably having these thoughts. And I went, yes, how did you know? And he goes, you’re probably like a lift, like upper forties yes, I’m 47 he goes, play, you are right on track. And that’s what broke me right there. I thought I was way behind. I thought the ship had already sailed, but he said, clay, it’s time for you to start your own thing. And that was the first time anybody had ever said something like that to me. I’d always thought that I would, I would have my own ministry, you know? But of course that ministry was going to be the family ministry. I never thought that I would really create my own thing. So when Dave said that, it really broke me. Not in a bad way, but in a very good way for those of you guys broke back mountain kind of not like that, but you know, so I’m just sitting there snots all over the place trying to keep my composure there in Panera and I still have to go back and teach class.

Clay Staires:
But um, but so that started me on the path of, okay, I need to pursue doing my own thing. And again, because my, my natural gifts and talents, my natural wiring is to coach, teach, train, develop, encourage, motivate, inspire. Uh, it was obvious for me to start to something down that path. And when you knew that you would have your own ministry, I’m guessing that you probably never felt like that ministry would be something that would provide for you as well. Ever, ever. Because again, I’ve put together now 25 years of working my butt off and people coming up to me all the time and saying, clay, that was incredible. Clay, what you have done has changed my life. Clay, I’ve never had someone so talented do X, Y, and Z. This has been incredible. But I was never getting paid, but translate that income.

Clay Staires:
I was coach of the year in the state of Missouri for the state of Missouri for three years in a row and my paycheck never went up. What’s crazy is we have a, in our office, you know, 25 year olds, 27 year olds, 30 year olds, all of which who are making more than you made as a teacher of the year. Oh dude, dude. Yeah. I mean that’s wild nonprofit. I mean teaching’s nonprofit and I remember, I mean anybody can do this. You can just go and look at teacher salaries in your, in your state and you can look at the salary schedule, go down into the right. The bottom right corner is the most you will ever make. True. It said $50,000 and I was like doing cartwheels. I was going, yes man. But, but again, up in Kansas city, all of a sudden I’m realizing this vehicle is not going to get me to the life I want. And then in ministry, same thing. I’m good at it. This is really good. I’ve been really enjoying it. But this is not going to get me where we want her

Speaker 1:
old. Were you when you made the jump into being self employed because I was there with you holding your head is mine that jump literally it was like a cliff and uh, you know, you gotta it’s, I, I, the way I would picture it is this is it. There’s a cliff and if you fall off the cliff, there’s about a hundred foot drop. There’s a a hundred foot drop and all you gotta do is jump about two feet to the other side of the cliff. But if you fall in that, in that ravine, you’re going to die and, but you gotta jump. You can’t just sort a baby step your way over. You gotta make the jump, but it’s only two feet. So you’re in the, if everybody can clearly make the jump, but it’s just far enough that you’re scared. Can you talk about making that jump when you decided to make that jump and what that jump was like?

Speaker 1:
Yeah. Well, I was 47 years old. Yup. You know, eight years ago today, 47 years old. And, uh, I remember uh, coming to you talking with you, uh, during that, uh, that fundraiser and saying, Hey, I’m wanting to start my own thing. And, and uh, you said I can help you. And for me, starting a company is super easy cause I’ve done it so many times. And so that’s the one thing that was separating us. Cause I remember, I remember telling you, I’m like, yeah, we can do it. And I remember you, you kinda followed me out of the 1,609 South Boston building. You said, what does that mean we can do, he can do it. And I’m like, well I built businesses all the time, so all we need to do is find a problem and solve it in exchange for money. And you’ve said, but what?

Speaker 1:
It’s like public speaking you, you’re a great speaker. We’ll bump, we’ll get you as a Mo, we’ll monetize the speaking career. And then when you speak and you teach people how to hire people or how to train people or how to lead people or how to optimize the website, they’re going to want ongoing coaching. And you can do that too. And I remember you looking at me like you are, you’re a weird place. I love, I love what you said. There are a couple of things. First of all, you said it was like a two feet gap, two feet. Think for me it was like 40 feet for me. There might not have even have been another side and if there was another side, it was on the other side of a lot of clouds. So I couldn’t see it. And so I was clinging to the ledge that I was on because I didn’t know that there was something else.

Speaker 1:
So when I jumped it was fully trusting you trusting my coach to, to uh, to know that there was something there. And for me, clay, it had taken me 47 years of my life to be in a position to say I’m willing to follow somebody else. What kind of impact do you think that our interaction had on your trajectory? Well, it has changed my life again. I was on the trajectory trajectory of about 50 grand a year, you know, maybe getting the, uh, maybe getting the vacation in once a year on credit cards, you know, and then paying for it for the next five years. Uh, not knowing how to pay for many things in my life, but, uh, clay, since you and I have met, uh, my social circle has expanded exponentially. I’ve watched that. That’s fine with the people that I know, the people that I’ve connected with.

Speaker 1:
Uh, my influence, uh, circle has changed quite a bit. Uh, I’m now a part owner in, in several companies because of your introductions. My financial situation has greatly increased, uh, exponentially in my life. Uh, I, I think even my gifts and talents of teaching and coaching have expanded exponentially since you and I have been together. What practical skills have have you had to learn along the way? Because again, I remember, I remember telling you, I said consulting without the back end is dead. You can’t just go out there and break ups. You’ve seen consultants like this. They show up at your business and they say, what you need to do is you need to optimize your website, right. Hire better people and make a checklist for everything. Yeah. Now go and you go, okay, great. Can you help me? No, I don’t do that. But I do recommend this company.

Speaker 1:
And by the way, you needed video on your website. Can you do that? No, I don’t do that. But what I can recommend is this company, and by the way, we need to fix your books and do you do that? No, but I reckon it’s all of a sudden you have a guy captain obvious running around telling you all the things that’s wrong with your company. Have you ever had this happen to you? Well, yeah, cause in the middle of it, you are in this sense of urgency and there’s all you see as the owner is fires all around you. And so you know the fires exist. What you’re looking for is the extinguisher. You don’t need somebody to point out that there’s additional fire. You just need somebody to help guide you to the extinguisher so that you know, yeah, this is how we put the fires out.

Speaker 1:
Now let’s move on to what’s more important, not just the expedient and Jason, you coach with clients. I’m sure many of your clients that you work with now have had consultants in the past. What I hear consistently is they’ll say, I have spent 5,000 a month with a search engine company or 4,000 a month and they don’t actually do it. They just tell me what I’m supposed to do. Have you heard the same kind of thing all the time? That’s um, so, um, a few of my clients that have been like very, very, like a diligence would say, Hey, you know, beforehand I would meet with somebody and they would just tell me, Oh, this is how you do it. And sent me on my way. It was, but you assign me things and you show me, you like walk me, you walk me through it.

Speaker 1:
And then the next week if I don’t get it done, then it’s like you’re holding me accountable. It’s like, I didn’t like you for that at the beginning, but now I realized you’re showing me everything that actionable. Well, you’re not just saying, Hey, here’s an idea. You’re saying, Hey, here’s what to do. Here’s how to do it. Now do it. So when stairs now I talking, I remember I said, look, you’re going to nail speaking events. We just got to get your leads. That’s called marketing. You know, and Brandon, we’ll get the, we’ll get a great website, we’ll get a great brand. We’re going to get you leads, but you’re going to have to do coaching on the back end. You can’t just tell people what to do that and people cheer. You’re going to have to, you know, follow up and, and coaching the clients down the path is where the wind wind happens next with them, right?

Speaker 1:
When people actually have life change, it’s when it’s not just entertainment, when people actually are implementing what you’re teaching them because you’re holding them accountable, et cetera. Um, do you remember how you got your first 10 customers? Yeah, I think, uh, when it came, comes to uh, the speaking events play, you connected me immediately with a gig mass. Oh yeah. Gig masters baby, which was wonderful. And, and I remember I got a hit immediately from San Antonio. Now, real quick, for anybody out there who’s, who’s thinking about becoming a public speaker, this is how you do it. Okay. One, you want a great website. Okay. Two, you want absolutely great branding. Anything that people can see, make sure it looks great. A great website, a great video on the homepage, beautiful business cards. Everything must look as good. Who as whoever is the best in your industry.

Speaker 1:
So we shot really neat videos with you stairs. We did a sample videos, we did, we had sample speaking events where there was no audience. Oh, empty room rocket. We did all that and it looked, it looked like you were in a world class speaker. And what we did have legitimately going for us is you had been the teacher of the year, you’re a great communicator. And I said, dude, when you sign up for an account on gig masters, the get the goal is to book any lead that comes in at all, at any price, no matter what it is, and then tell the event planner, I really don’t care about the money, although we’re not, although we needed it, but I don’t really care about the money. I care about your audience. I do this to help people. And all I would like to do is come out there and wow, you guys.

Speaker 1:
So how much can you afford? Yeah. You remember those events where you got paid very little and did a ton of work? Well, this one in San Antonio, again, clay, you mentioned a moment ago, which was, for me, it was profound at that time when you said you need to solve a problem in exchange for money. There it is. And that exchange for money was a world that I never knew the solving a problem in exchange for money. I never knew that. I didn’t have that perspective. I didn’t have that mindset because I’d been solving problems for 27 years like nobody else could. Yep. But there was never an exchange for money. It was just I’m solving problems and there was pats on the back and and so this was very different for me. So that first event down in San Antonio, they go in, what is your charge?

Speaker 1:
And I’m, I like freeze up deer in the headlights. I go free. I’ll just come and do it real quick. I wanna make sure we get this because I worked with you. We worked together on a script. Oh yeah. But the moment that the script comes in contact with the first customer, that’s when crazy stuff happens. It comes in contact with the first customer. But the clay for me at that point, what was going on? Is it that it was coming head on head on collision with my mindset of I could never say money because they wouldn’t give it to me. So how about Bri? And so they go, that’s a great, so they brought me down and we did a learning on the river down in San Antonio. They paid for your hotel, your airfare paid for the hotel though. No fee. I said, dude, you’ve got to get reviews.

Speaker 1:
And we did reviews, man. It was a dog and pony act. While I was there, I was controlling the video camera while I was going controlling the music while I was going, I was controlling the slideshow. And then I was also getting, uh, getting video testimonials in during the breaks and everything while I was going. And let’s not forget the chainsaw now real quick. It’s called a purple cow. Seth Godin has written about it in his book, the purple cow. And we talked about this, Jason, but can you explain for the listeners out there who are not familiar with what a purple cow is, what is a purple cow? It’s something that makes you, you stand out. So it’s, um, I don’t know, stairs with this chainsaw or, um, Chick-fil-A and how they use a cow for their chicken based business. It’s something that people see in their life.

Speaker 1:
Huh. That’s extremely interesting. It makes you stand out in a crowded market where everybody’s the exact same. Seth Godin says, if you can eat this 72 ounce steak, it’s free. Right? Seth Godin writes here, he’s, he’s the, he’s the best selling author of the book, the purple cow. He also sold a company called Yoyodyne to Yahoo for $30 million and he says in a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing in a busy marketplace, not standing out as the same as being invisible. If you are remarkable, that’s it, then it’s likely that some people won’t like you. That’s part of the definition of remarkable. Nobody gets unanimous praise ever. The best that timid can hope for is to be unnoticed. Criticism comes to those who stand out, playing it safe, following the rules. They seem like the best ways to avoid failure. Alas, that pattern is awfully dangerous.

Speaker 1:
The current marketing rules will ultimately lead to failure. I said, you need to bring a trait chainsaw because you’re into growth. The logo we designed for the leadership initiative is green. It’s about growth trees. And you were talking about a subject that man, I said, you gotta bring a chainsaw. And I remember the look on your face. You said you want me to bring a chainsaw on a commercial plane and flight down to San Antonio and then fired up in front of a group of [inaudible] that go over. How did that go over? Well, it went over great because I’m always talking about when growth happens, it’s always about concentric circles. Most people, most people think of growth as a linear line that you’re going on, but I’m all about concentric circles. So the, the principle there was growth. Like if you cut a log in half, you’ll see the tree rings. And so I had to actually show them and I had logs that I did take in my suitcase and a chainsaw that I did take on the airplane. And so at one point, and again, I’m controlling the music and everything, the TSA Pat down with that one. Yeah, it was nice. And, and so, no,

Speaker 6:
I’m just happy to see you. [inaudible]

Clay Staires:
then, uh, so we, we end up, you know, they’re in the middle of the talk. I break out the chainsaw and I’ve got this whole thing going on with this Epic music playing while I put on the gloves, the safety goggles, the earplugs and the whole thing. And then I crank that thing up and I have to do a little bit of the Texas chainsaw massacre thing.

Speaker 6:
Throw it through the air, you know? Exactly. And then I’m talking about growth. I’m talking about concentric circles and then all of a sudden here you go. Let me get it. I got it. I got the sound effect. Let me get it. I’m going to get here. How many people are in this audience? This point there’s probably about 70 80 people in the room. 70 80 people in a hotel in a hotel ballroom. And what are you thinking before you turn that chainsaw? What are you thinking? Well, I’m jazzed. I know this thing is going to be awesome. And there are people that are really close to me and when I pull this thing out, they start backing up and as soon as they start backing up, I’m going, I got them, I got their attention, this is awesome. And then it’s all about teeth hitting that wood and shavings going everywhere, man. And it’s hilarious play because I get like five or six seconds into this thing and I’m going, Oh, this is going to take a little longer than I had anticipated. So I’m having to talk and fill in the space, but probably within 30 seconds on through that little log, you know, and I’ve raised, it’s in the hands and everybody’s cheering and yelling and then I pass the log around, I go, this is you the concentric circles. It’s all about growth. And, and uh, they loved it. Oh, they love, they love, they love

Speaker 5:
that. Of course, to this day, I’m sure they’ve never had a chainsaw guy. So let’s talk about this for a second. I like this actionable. Somebody out there is afraid to implement the stuff that we teach. Oh. And they’re, they’re afraid to do it and uh, they reach out to us. Uh, Jason, you see it all the time. Oh yeah. You get to see me on Saturday where we do our 13 point assessments. True. And you’ve seen me recently tell people you’re not a good fit. Yeah. Why do you speculate? Why, why do you think dr breakout would get your take on this? Why do you think that, uh, you know, clay stairs now he’s coaching clients where he’s got, again, that the total value of his clients, their annual revenues, we’re talking about over $400 million a year of revenue. Why don’t you feel like that? I personally have decided to cap our program at 160 clients.

Clay Staires:
Well, I mean, I’ve heard you talk about this before, but also, I mean, it’s really about what you can do properly. So you know your own limits and uh, you know how involved you’re going to be with each client and what that’s going to take. And you know what you want to be able to give up and what you don’t. Um, so the amount of time you want to spend with your family, the amount of money that you want to make, um, the hours that you want to be at the office, all of those factors in to, you know, the number of clients that you feel like you can honestly take and really have an impact for. How many, you know, as we were talking about, uh, you know, getting into the mess. So being their coach, doing the ongoing problem solving, answering the questions, being, being down in the trenches with that person. You can’t do that with thousands and thousands of people. You know, people can charge them. I mean, you couldn’t deliver. Right? And there’s a lot of, I mean, I think it’s about a half a million people that listen to this podcast. I mean, you can give out information, but you cannot be physically one-on-one with 500,000 people. There’s only so much of you that’s available. And so for those 160, you know, few clients, relatively few, um, they get more of you than the 500,000 get.

Speaker 5:
It’s interesting because you, we’ve worked with Tim Redmond for years and you have essentially doubled the size of your practice two years, three years. And before you had been in business for how many years before you worked with Tim? I was in business a 14, 14. So, but the emotional toll on, on Tim and yourself and your teaching an adult who’s been going the wrong way for 12.

Clay Staires:
Oh, I can relate to this chasm that the play is talking about. I mean, you know, it’s, you, you realize the cliff you’re on is not a cliff you want to be on, but you can’t even see the other side of the cliff. It’s like evil Knievel. I mean, but you don’t even have a runway to ramp up.

Speaker 5:
I remember talking to my wife about this because, um, she knows this. Um, most of my clients will tell me that they feel like I am more passionate about their company than they are. I hear that all the time. And I, I told my wife, I said stairs and I had the talk and my wife knows what the talk is. Well, we had the talk, we were at 16th in Boston and the hallway back there by the warehouse. And um, you said, clay, I’ve been talking to Lisa, that’s your wife. And she’s been pointing out to me, I got to start making money. I gotta start making money. And I said, well, um, we got to get your stuff done. That’s the issue. You got to pick up the freaking phone and make a hundred calls a day and you got to quit. It’s on the agenda.

Speaker 5:
It says, make a hundred calls every week. It says it. And I’m like, you know, I’m 15 years younger than you. Um, I’ve, I’ve done this multiple times with clients and I don’t know what, how to make you do it. I don’t know. And then you said to me, you said, you said you looked at me with this, like resolve, like something has just changed. And you said, clay, I don’t need a friend. I need it asked. Man, do you remember that I need an asshole. He remember that I needed someone to, uh, again, being grown up playing football and playing football in college, I responded really well to that, that

Clay Staires:
type of encouragement, right? There were air quotes with that. You didn’t pick up on it, got some air quotes. And so clay, I, you know, we, we then did about three or four months of clay hiring an asshole and all of a sudden I began to respond to that and I had those calls. I the call, I remember the first time that you made a hundred calls, you came into the meeting pumped. Oh dude, I made a hundred calls. I’m like, but again, it was just, I had never done anything like that. Neither had I ever even thought of doing something like that. And so it was completely exhausting to do a hundred phone calls. I did it one day and just wanted to drop the mic and go, I am now done. Thank you very much. Did not realize you even believe that a hundred calls was possible.

Clay Staires:
Oh no, nobody making a hundred. But there’s not a hundred people out there to phone call. So I think in our company we put out about 2,500 phone calls every week now. Right. I got Kindle doing 350 phone calls every day. Unbelievable. So when did you feel like you finally were gaining traction where you thought, you know what, this might work, this just might work. I swear and uh, clay, I think that’s definitely probably about 2017. Got it. Okay. So we’re probably five years in before you felt confident before I started feeling like this thing can work because what we began to do now before that we had been successful. I was, I was making probably double the amount that I was making as a school teacher before that. But at that point I was, the company still relied on me. I was the only one that could do the core competency in the company.

Clay Staires:
And it was at that point, clay, when you started talking to me about, um, about moving away from just doing the live coaching and, and that type of thing that only I could do the life coach and start doing, start focusing more and more and more on business coaching. What’s the difference between, I wrote an article about this for Forbes, but could you explain the difference in your opinion between life coaching and business coaching? Cause I hate life coach. Yes. And I do as well because nobody changes. But he changed it. You become a counselor. People just want to come and talk to somebody. And I don’t like that at all. Uh, my wife and I, at one point we had had, uh, kinda kind of started a church and my whole purpose of starting a church was to train and equip these young 20 year olds to go out into the community and engage and do their own ministry.

Clay Staires:
So we did that for a couple of years and as an all of those 20 year olds actually went out and started doing it. So the only people that we were left with were people that were looking for a meeting each week. And so one Christmas a week we just told everybody, Hey, we’re going to take a break for Christmas and uh, we’ll, we’ll get in touch with you and let you know when we’re going to kick back up. And we just never called. They’re probably still waiting. We just never called everybody back cause I just don’t want to meet with those people. So, so clay making that transition from uh, from having business where

Speaker 5:
I was the only one that, because at that point again, I was probably, what, 52 at that point, 52 at that point. Money’s good. But we’re transitioning now into business coaching and motivational speaking. Yeah, because the other thing of speaking and doing the life coaching, I could never scale that and it’s, and it’s crazy inconsistent. So I will tell you as a, I used to do speaking events and after I sold DJ connection.com I remember in June, first off, let’s, let’s break this down. Jason, where do you think most major conferences are held? Do you see major conferences being held in Des Moines and or Tulsa? What cities do you think they’re in typically? Duluth. Duluth, all don’t you and all. They’re going to be in places like, um, I don’t know. Dallas, Chicago, Phoenix, Phoenix, Vegas, LA, LA. So this is how my schedule looked all the time.

Speaker 5:
It was like, babe, we’re going to go, I’m talking to my wife. I’d say, Hey, we’re going to go. We always went together as a couple. On Tuesday, we’re going to go to Los Angeles to speak. And the first time you’ve been to LA to speak, it’s kind of cool. And I said, we’re going to be staying actually at the Hollywood, the Beverly Hills Hilton there, you know, we’re gonna stay there. And then it’s like, now next week we’re going back to LA. And it’s like, Oh cool. And then I said, now, now the next week though, we’re going to go to LA. And then we have also have an event in San Diego and then we have another one in Colorado. So we need to, so she’s like, so now they’re back to back. Yeah. Okay. Well, what about next week? Wow. I said, well, next week, nothing.

Speaker 5:
But then the next week there’s two. We got one in Toronto, true story, one in Toronto, and I’ve got another one in San Diego in the same week. And then we got to drive to Springfield to do an event there. And then the Cattleman’s association in Nebraska, the governor’s hiring us to come out there and speak to the Cattleman’s association and we’ll need to drive to Nebraska. And then we have another one, uh, at the, uh, it’s like the Knickerbocker hotel in downtown Chicago. We have that one. And then I have another event at the empire hotel across from Julliard in New York. And we have one at the hotels to tie in Miami. And by the way, we have five kids. So it is like a rhythm starts to look the same. Every hotel room looks the same. Every conference room looks the same. And yeah, I’m no doubt lost in all of it.

Speaker 5:
And you don’t really get a chance to explore the city unless you’re intentional about blocking out one day before you get there to do that. And one day after. And then just as a little a sprinkle of, of discouragement from uh, your books. Never get there on time. So you mail your books, your ups amount the week before and ups does a great job, but somehow some guy at the hotel can’t find your books, they misplaced the books and then at the conference you bring 200 books for an audience of 400. And then for some reason only 150 people show up at the conference and now you find yourself wanting to give away your books to anybody at all because it costs more to ship them back than would to sell it. And there’s

Speaker 1:
a lot that we, you can turn speaking into a great career and we do that and we can do that and we can teach you how to do that. But I think you realized, you know what the consistency of working with business coaching could be better, but you had to learn search engine optimization clay. Again, I knew the skill of teaching, coaching, training, developing, but I did not know how to build the business around that thing. I have the the things you had to learn and you learned it fast, but one, you gotta learn how to help clients with the revenue goals. You had to help clients determine their break even point. You had helped clients make a schedule, determine the hours they’re willing to work. The time block. You had to teach clients about branding and creating a unique value proposition. You had to teach your clients a three legged marketing stool.

Speaker 1:
You had to learn about the sales conversion system. Call recording clarity, voice.com how that works. Uh, you had to learn about active tracker, the keystroke recorder. You had to learn about Google optimization, Google map optimization, launching online ads, retargeting ads, social media ads, how to make a video that’s compelling. You had to learn management. You had to learn sustainable and repetitive weekly schedules and all the aspects of hiring and firing and all the legalities of it, all the accounting. You had to learn all of that all while maintaining a revenue. And then somehow as you started doing it more and more and more, people really started responding to the way you taught the group interview. Yes. You know, you, you, you, the group interview is a process that I’ve been teaching for a long, long time, but you put a unique spin on it that’s really resonated with our conference attendees and it’s really connected, um, with our listeners who did they tell me all the time, Hey man, I love that it gets stuck in my head.

Speaker 1:
Can you share with us your process for, um, uh, hiring people? Teach us the moves. Okay. Yeah. Uh, and again, Clay’s, it’s funny you bring all that stuff up. I remember learning all of this and you were saying I had to learn how to teach other people how to do that. And that is true, but I had to learn it first. Right. And I was 47 freaking years old at this point. So technology and all of that stuff was, I mean, the learning curve was very, very steep. And, uh, so, uh, and, and I think that’s something, well, I know that’s something that I encounter a lot with business owners that I work with because they are in their forties or fifties, they’ve been in business for a long time and here, here I come saying, okay, well we need to do this, we need to do that, we need to do this.

Speaker 1:
And these are things that they have never considered before ever. And so, so I think so many times in their minds they’re thinking, Clay’s going to come along and tell me how to do what I’m already doing. Just getting a different result from what I’m already doing. And it’s like, no, we got to do some different things. So almost with every step that you just talked about, there is pushback. It’s like, well, clay, I don’t know if you fully understand my business because you’re a teacher. You’re aware that Albert Einstein was correct when he wants wrote. Everything should be made as simple as possible. Yeah. Yeah. Albert Einstein, I mean, he talks a lot about this, how you want to make things simple. How you, if you can’t teach it to a third grader, you don’t know it. So another thing that, and again this is this is something that you do well, you take all this complicated information and you’ve made it into a very tight four step system for hiring people.

Speaker 1:
And I want to make sure the listeners out there know the mind field that we’re playing in. Okay? Yeah. So we’ve got, first of all, we’ve got to do some sets. So this is going out to any listener that we have out there. This is just going, man, the people that I have working for me are driving me crazy. I just can’t find good employees. They’re hacking me off. I find that I keep doing their work for them. They’ve gone home for the day, but I’m still in the office doing all of their work. They make me mad. I just want to fire everybody. I hate my own business. I made, I am trapped. Could you relate to that? Yeah. I’m trapped in my company and I’m being held hostage. I’m trapped in my company and I’m being held hostage by my own employees. Do you do brick?

Speaker 1:
I mean, have you been there? Well, the worst part was is I was trapped by me and I was my worst employee. That’s even worst place to be, but absolutely. Oh yeah. I mean I had to start with the man in the mirror and start fixing, you know, my own hangups before I could really start working on the other. You were trapped by you. Absolutely. Yeah. I was in that, that mind cage that, you know, you were talking about the doom loop. I was on the edge of the cliff and didn’t know how to get to the other side. Um, but I, I was absolutely my own worst enemy. Jason, you work with many clients, dozens of clients. How many of them say they can’t find good people? I’m actually working right now with one of my clients who’s kind of implementing like a scorched earth tactic.

Speaker 1:
I talked to him two weeks ago and we’re talking about all these systems and everything. He goes, when you were managing an elephant, did you ever walk in and hate everybody that worked there? And I go, um, no. I would realize when we needed to fix something. He goes, yeah, I’m at the point where I don’t like walking into my own business. He goes, I started this thing and every morning I’m on the way. He goes, I take a step in the door, my God, and so what he’s doing is he hired an operations manager. He’s reworking all of his job descriptions and he is grading people. I got him to use your your employee scorecard spreadsheet and he’s just like, this person’s going, this person’s going, this person’s going, by the way, this is Jack Welch. He came up with the scorecard you do is you write down energy, edge, execute, energize, and you rate your employees on a scale of a to C on how well they do it.

Speaker 1:
So you’re an a player. You put an eight, how good are they bringing good energy and a B or a C? How good are they at getting stuff done? A, B, or C, how good are they at each of those variables? Yeah, and then you fire them. You remove the C players, you promote and a shower, the A-players with bonuses. When possible and you coach the B players up. But think about this, and I want stairs to have time to be able to teach the system. 85% of employees according to inc are lying on their resumes. True. 85% and we talk about this, 75% of employees are stealing from the workplace according to the U S chamber of commerce. That’s not a good stat. Over over 80% of Forbes has one, one subset of data. Calip has another. The most conservative data that I can find shows that 70% of people hate their jobs, but they continue to come to work.

Speaker 1:
And 51% of people according to inc magazine are looking for another job while they’re at their current job. And so that’s the mind field we’re playing in. Clay help lead us to the promised land of finding good quality people. Yeah, this is fantastic. And again, that’s the playing field that we have to, so people, I just can’t find good people. It’s like, yeah, they are tough. They are rare to find. But we have found through our system, the group interview, the the system that we use a way to help you look at a lot clay in our company we have found to find a players and again, if you’re a small company and you are looking for people to help you grow your company, you’re going to need a players. Small businesses cannot afford to help you grow. Now if you are already growing and you need people to help you just do and maintain, then you’re looking for great B solid B players and if you’ve got a big company then probably most of your employees will be good solid B players, but those folks that help you grow, you’re looking for A’s and they are very rare.

Speaker 1:
So we’ve got to look at a lot. In our company, we have found that we’ve got to look at about 85 people to find one. A player you, you said 85 to 85 people to find one a player. Now somebody out there just spilled their beer exactly at seven 59 in the morning. That’s what I’m making sure I agree with. Because clay, most people are, most business owners are in a slot where we’ve just kind of, nobody’s been trained how to hire and recruit. Everybody just kind of does what they’ve been, what they’ve experienced. So they put out the feelers, they put out the ad and they have a ton of people respond and then late at night they are pouring through resumes, reading resumes and trying to use this thing. Golly, type of mindset of Ooh, is this, Oh wait a minute. They left out a comma.

Speaker 1:
That person sucks. And you know, they went to, we had one guy from Cornell who applied for a job as a coder. He had a degree in computer science. His name Andy, a no wait, another guy from uh, MIT who had a degree in computer science and we flew them out to Tulsa to demonstrate their PHP and WordPress coding skills. I remember the story and neither one of them could code. I remember the guy I was there because again, clay, 85% of people lie on resumes. So why are we staying up late at night? Pouring through resumes, trying to whittle it down to four people that we’re going to bring into a, uh, an,

Clay Staires:
and then from those four people you choose. Now that’s if you’ve got a great system in place. Most people are just kind of waiting for Bob, you know, their nephew to get old enough so they can hire them or something like that. So they’ll never be able to fire them. Exactly. So here’s what we want to do. We want to put together four steps for you, four steps. So those of you that are, that can relate. You’re sitting there nodding your head. You’re saying, shut up, quit talking. Just give me the steps. All right, well here we go. First of all, step number one starts with a C the letter C. Okay. And it is core values. It is vital for you as a business owner to have a firm grasp of what your core value values are, is what you’re non-negotiables are. It’s the, it’s the atmosphere that you want to create in your company.

Clay Staires:
And it’s, it’s the, uh, the type of people that you want to work with. For me and my company. Our core values are high energy team. Yup. Um, uh, production. If people come to work in Yon, what does that say to you? That is not high energy. So immediately see ya. What if I yawn? Like really like, like operatic. I put some money behind a product. I like that you sing opera, attic operatic. Yeah. It’s still, it’s just, it is just not good, you know, so he made it not, again, you don’t come down and scream at them. You just look at them and go, you’re not going to be a fit and you move on.

Clay Staires:
That’s what I was thinking on the young. But uh, but so identifying those core values, our final fourth one is, uh, is simply being able to, you have a passion for personal development, passion for personal passion for personal development. And uh, and so those are our four. So in, uh, so I am always talking the add that we have out there on, on indeed, I start the entire ad with my core values. I’m using the language of my culture, but most business owners don’t have an idea of what their core values are. This is what they’re putting out there. They’re on their little now hiring posts. It says where yada yada poured Walsh. We’re looking for a good employee who can lift a concrete and we’ll put it, it reads like that. Yeah. An hour mush beyond time. Submit resumes. And it’s like nobody wants to work for that company.

Clay Staires:
Exactly. Exactly. So we start out the whole first page of our ad is all about our culture. And I say three different times on that first page. If you like this language, keep reading. If you don’t like this language, stop and go someplace else. You won’t like me. You know? And just that real, uh, almost, uh, polarizing language right there at the beginning. But most business owners don’t have a grasp, have clarity on what their core values are and they don’t have a compelling vision for people to come, come and be connected to. So you have to have a vision. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
And, and the C stands for core values. C stands for core values. You’ve got to have the core values, so I strongly encourage you to spend some time. Don’t have more than four or five. Don’t go beyond that. We have 47 core values, you know, one, two, three, four, five, right in there as all, any more than that, nobody’s going to remember them. All right? Everyone does restate with me the 47 core values from memory. We’ve all had jobs like that there, haven’t you? Yeah, we’ve all been in a job like that and you’ve got to live this stuff. I mean it’s, it’s really something I, I strongly encourage you to have them up on the wall, but our core value number one is always on time. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so, okay, so now this brings us to number two. Number two, okay. Step number two.

Speaker 1:
Step number one starts with a C core values. Boom. Step number two, just just in step number two, starts with an L. All right ladies, this is, you’ve got to look at a lot. Look at a lot ladies. You’ve got to look at a lot. You’ve got to continually be looking again. So unfortunate that most business owners don’t look for employees until they have to have somebody. I’m sorry I spaced out. I went to a, uh, I was, I was obsessing about how, how difficult it is for the average person to have to find employees and I think I might’ve missed what you just said. Uh, could you repeat that again? Cause I think maybe somebody out there might’ve been lamenting about how hard it is to find people and they’d heard you just say something and, and it was like, it happened so fast.

Speaker 1:
Can you repeat it again? Yeah. You have got to look at a lot and so you can’t wait until you were under pressure. You cannot rely on hiring in a hurry or hiring under pressure. You’ve got to be looking all the time. You’ve got to look at a lot. You’ve got to schedule it every single week. And again, in my company we know that we’ve got to look at 85 people. Yup. Before we find an a player. I have some hot recent examples that I can share with the listeners out there that are true stories. I will try not to provide too much information, Jason, so as to not throw somebody under the bus and break. You can tell me if you relate to this. Absolutely. One person on our team said, I have decided I want to be a stay at home parent and so I no longer went to work.

Speaker 1:
Have you ever had that happen before? But uh, back in August, one of my best a players went back to be a stay at home mom and a homeschool parent. Um, I had this one happened in Jason, you’ve seen this, I’m pregnant. I don’t know who the baby’s daddy is. I’m going to go live with my parents. I told you that in confidence. You’ve seen this before. You’ve seen this before. Absolutely. I mean, it’s not only am I having a baby, but I don’t know who the dad is. I had a similar story. They knew the dad, but otherwise it’s the same story. I need to go live with my parents. And these are people who are solid during the day doing a great job. Um, another person, uh, a fairly recently fell down a series of steps and broke their leg. Um, that happened, right?

Speaker 1:
Um, we’ve had, I mean this is all in the past two weeks. Um, we had another person, um, again, this show will come out like in April and we’re recording this in January, so it’s a little time delay there. But, uh, I’m just thinking of recent ones. We had another person on the team who is passionate about working in the call center and they came to me and said, clay, I just don’t like making calls. Anything else I can do up here? Yeah, seriously, Claire, that sounds like the athletes. When I was a track coach, I’d have kids come out all the time. Why do we have to run all the time? It’s tracked. What did you think? We have a great pipeline of people available, right? So I just fire off a text message to one of the people on the a list. And a list is people that we wanted to hire, but we did not have a spot for it.

Speaker 1:
Right. I reach out to them and a lot of times I’ll find a player and I, um, they’re a great person and they need a job right now. So I’ll refer them to one of my friends or one of my clients. And so, uh, Breck what would you say for someone who’s not interviewing until they’re in a bind? Well, I mean, I’ve got a just this week, I mean, I’ve got a lady that is starting up with this on Tuesday who I had initially interviewed, uh, in a group interview back in August or early September. And, um, you know, she was on that short list of a players. And so when I had a need arise as we did, you know, this last week, um, I just called her up and said, Hey, you know, are you still available? What’s, you know, are you interested in this position?

Speaker 1:
I’d like you to come back in and let’s talk. And, uh, she starts on Tuesday. So, I mean that whole process is expedited by having that short list of people. But again, you have to go through the process of vetting through so that you have that short list. You don’t get to a short list if you don’t see the 85 people to get the single a player. And so, you know, he’s saying he’s doing it consistently. So he’s got four or five a players, uh, that he’s ready to hire when, when there’s a need. Yeah. And so, so what we’ve got clay over the last 14 months. Okay. We’ve had 748 people turn in resumes. Wow. 748 people have turned in resumes. Got it. Through our recruiting of that 748 241 of them said, I will be at the interview, I will be there. And many of them call the day of I’m there.

Speaker 1:
So a third of the people who applied for a job said they’re going to come to the interview a third. And then of the people that said they were going to come, we had 98 people say are actually show up, so half of a third of 241 98 people actually show up and of the 98 people that show up, 19 of them were chosen to go to our next level. How many candidates, so I would say what was the total, what was the big number? Total was 748 really? 748 19 people actually 748 2% 19 people actually show up and have the 19 three people were hired. 2.5% of the people. This is what this one does. This is the phenomenon that I don’t understand. Jason. People will submit the resume and we’ll reply. Yes, we look forward to sweet. Love to interview you this Thursday and then they don’t show up and play.

Speaker 1:
I will get phone calls. I get phone calls from people on their way to me that don’t show up. One of my favorite ones. Yeah, some happened, I don’t know. Last week we had a young lady who shows up and she says, now normally I don’t do this, but um, she’s late by 14 minutes. She’s like, she says she has those, she puts her hand up. I have a question. Yeah. I don’t normally do this, but um, I don’t, I was late. Um, so could you all read to set everything back? I’d love to start from the beginning for the other 40 people that are there. She wants to restart and then she comes up afterwards and she says now, um, when, when can I get started? I’m not kidding. Confidence. No, I’m serious. Like what is that? Yeah, it’s bizarre. I’m telling you, you gotta, you gotta interview a lot.

Speaker 1:
C stands for what? Again, it’s D stands for core values. L stands for look at a lot. That’s why we do the group interview. We schedule it every single week. We never quit. We do it whether we’re hiring or not, we never stop. We set it and forget it. Come on. Always do it every single week, every single week, whether you are hiring or not. What if I don’t want to do it this way because you still do it. Do it every week. You’ve got to do it. Now here’s the key thing. Eventually you as the business owner, you want to be able to turn that over to somebody else. Like I haven’t done a group interview in quite a while. I’ve been able to turn it over to Sean. Now. I’m still a part of the process, but I’m no longer that first step in the group interview.

Speaker 1:
So, and again, you can go to our, go to my [email protected]. Find out a ton more. There’s a form there. If you fill out the form, you will get all of this information to you for free and they’ll have everything scripted out, written out what you want your recruiting to look at, look like, what you want the group interview to look, I want to make sure the listeners don’t hear us, uh, not being on the same page. Um, some of you listeners have heard me talk about the group interview a lot and I wanna make sure everyone gets this idea that the business exists to serve who Jason? Uh, you as the business owner. Yes. So that being said, the reason why I do the group interview is the same reason that clay stairs does not. So let’s explain this. I personally like doing the group interview because I would personally rather do the group interview that almost any other activity.

Speaker 1:
Like, I mean it to me it’s fun. Yeah. I like bringing on new people. I like, it’s fun for me, so I don’t want to do, I don’t like going out to eat, don’t like seeing movies, don’t like going to parties, don’t like, I just like, I like the work stuff. It’s my hobby. It’s my fun. Um, if you interviewed Donald Trump, he was on Larry King and Larry King said, Donald, you know, people have said you are a workaholic. And he says, I will workings what I like to do. Now, if you were to make me go on vacation, that would be work. So for me a vacation would be work. But anyway, all I’m saying is that stairs and he and his wife, um, have agreed on a really cool schedule that they’re in a good flow with and the business exists to serve you guys.

Speaker 1:
And my wife and I are in a flow as well on Thursday night when we do our group interviews, that’s cheer night. So my wife’s at a cheerleading gym, boom watching practice and I would rather be interviewing our people, uh, or doing almost anything but then to be watching a cheer practice. I love watching the competitions. But so again, everybody out there, you don’t, don’t think that you have to do the group interview yourself or that you don’t have to, but somebody needs to do the group buddy’s got to do it. What’s the, what’s the next step? Here is the next step. So the next one again, step number one is core value. Step number two is look at a lot. Step number three starts with an a and it is you want to have alignment, alignment, alignment. You are looking for fit, fit. So for you all about this step of alignment.

Speaker 1:
So for you personally, you personally, you need to write down your definition of what an a player looks like, what a B player looks like, and what a C player looks like. It’s not rocket science, it’s for you personally. What do those, what do, what characteristics do they have? What type of things do they say and what type of things did they do in your company? And then you simply want to hire for that person. Yeah, I have a practicality question in that. What tools do you use to pull out, uh, those people as far as their alignment? Do you utilize some aptitude test or personality? How do you assess if their alignment is in with yours? Well, for us, the very first step is that group interview. We asked them to do three things. Okay? And I strongly encourage you to ask them to do three things when they come to the group interview.

Speaker 1:
We say dress to impress, right? Be on time and bring your resume. You would be amazed at how many people can not put those three things together. They may look nice and they may bring their resume but dad gum, they’re showing up 10 minutes late. I would say this, I mean this cause this is how I do it. Um, I know 90% of the time if someone’s a good fit just by seeing them right on time or not on time, I mean it’s like 90% of the game when I see somebody in there on time and I look them in the eyes without them saying a word, I can usually tell if they’re going to like us or not. Well and I feel like I’ve gotten better as a business owner in this group interview the more I’ve done it. But initially it was very challenging to kind of, you know, sort sorta like reading through the resume and trying to figure out the nuance differences. Now we’re ignoring the resume but it’s like now that the person is in front of me, how do I differentiate between what is in that person and are they really, you know, just trying to feed me what I want to hear, know my core values.

Speaker 5:
This is what I do and this is what I do and I don’t know that what you do, clay is is scalable. Well, for most people that I work with immediately, they don’t know how to look at somebody and go, yes or no. I want to make sure you get this idea. If I want to make sure the listeners out there are going to over spiritualize this, let’s make sure we get it. If people are late, don’t hire them. Okay, think about that. All right. Step two. You’re going to ask them questions, right? I do the unscalable thing, but you can try to do it. I just asked. I say, folks, what I’m going to do is I’m going to be doing the interview tonight and this will be the only interview that you’ll will ever come to where I don’t ask you a single question.

Speaker 5:
What I’m going to have you do is ask me any questions that you want, because I know again, I’m doing the group interview for like four companies at the same time. So like last week we had like 80 people at the group interview. So I made it, it’s a different situation, but I say any questions that you have, feel free to ask me. So that’s what I do. I’ll read off the name number one. Amanda Thompson. How are you? Okay. What questions do you have? Nothing. Okay. Uh, Charles Smith. What question do you have? I’m cool. Uh, Whitney Anderson. What question do you have? Um, I w I was online and I was curious what elephant in their rooms. The goal is like what the vision is. I just want to hear you share the vision of the company cause I want to know and then you tell her and she said, okay, I have one more question.

Speaker 5:
Um, what would the hours be? And she’s just nice and she’s sharp and she takes notes. And then you go to the, okay. Um, we have a Carl Walker. Carla. Carla, are you here? Yeah, I’m here. What’s up? And you say, Carl, um, what questions do you have? I ain’t got any freaking questions. What kind of interview is this? Yeah. And clay, I love the way you’re doing this because really for those of you out there that have this issue of man, how will I know? I think 90% of the time it will be obvious you’re going to, let me just say, and this is the, this is a huge thing that I learned many, many years ago from Benjamin Franklin and he was explaining that a curious mind is the only person who will ever be successful. Yeah. So the person who doesn’t have a question cannot get a job with me.

Speaker 5:
Bingo. Because that’s the kind of non curious person and I’m telling you the last week script interview out of about 80 people. I mean you were there, maybe it was like 70 people. I mean it’s full. The whole place is just full of candidates. There was only about 10 people that had questions and I mean they had great questions, right? Really nice people now stairs his clients. And for the vast majority of our listeners, you’re not going to be interviewing 80 people at one time. So my system has been designed to be super, super crazy efficient cause I’m interviewing 80 people at one time. Whereas the average client who’s listening to this or with stairs and your clients, they’re going to be working with like, you know, six people at the house at six just to tell them what you want, what kind of questions that you typically, so that’s the first thing. Can they do those three? And you’ll be amazed. It will be obvious. People will show up and immediately you’ll see them from 30 feet and go, uh, no. Oh yeah, there’s

Clay Staires:
no, again my smoke. It doesn’t mean that they’re bad people. It doesn’t mean that they aren’t nice people. It just means they’re not a fit for you. And that’s what we’re doing at this step. The step of the a alignment you’re looking for fit. And so we also do for those that do well in the group interview, we do a next step where they come and shadow, right? And they come and spend about four hours with us and so now we’re just like hanging out with them. Again. I’m not taking time out of my day to talk and teach and train. They are just shadowing. I want to know can they keep up with me if there is, you know, can they take notes? I have had many people that have come during the shadow where they’ll, they will break out the phone and start texting.

Clay Staires:
Other people I did not too long ago actually have a gal say, excuse me, I need to take this call and left and went outside to take a phone call. Other people will yawn and you don’t have to keep them there for all four hours. I mean that 30 minutes I had. Thank you so much for coming. Hey, it’s been great. Hey and I always say at each level, Hey, if you are moving to the next step, you will hear from me in the next hour or the next two hours, whatever your timeframe, but don’t do, you’ll hear from me by next week. That’s the worst thing you’re going to hear from me. In the next hour. If you don’t hear from me, don’t worry. We know what we’re looking for. We wish you all the best in the future.

Speaker 5:
We had a guy that group interview that shadowed this week, and again, this show comes out way. The time of his show is not connected to the time of the recording. So if you’re listening to this and you came to interview, I’m not talking about you, but this is funny. This guy, I’m not kidding, he’s true story. He won. I did not schedule him to shadow from the group, but he just walked right up to Andrew and said, yeah, he, you know, I want to go ahead and get scheduled. So he’s a graphic designer guy and I’m like, Hey, are you here to shadow? He says, yes. And I said, what’s your name? He says, Oh. And he tells me his name and uh, this is, this is, this is how we talk. So I’m not kidding. I said, so why are you here? Are you here to shadow you guys?

Speaker 5:
I’m here to shadow. So you’re here to shadow. Okay. Um, uh, what position do you have? A design, what does that mean? Like what, what was it? Graphic design. So he’s like, I’m like a mouse guy. Yeah. So he’s over there sitting with the graphic design guys and I’m like guys hang out with him, meet him, you know, any questions he has and the whole time he’s like, so if you work here, like what do you get paid and then um, do you get paid time off? And he’s like this weird like creeper or kind of weird voice. And he would say like, I don’t really agree with the way you guys are doing the Photoshop. You guys ever thought about using Oh,

Clay Staires:
Oh I love that. In the shadow when they try to T Oh yeah.

Speaker 5:
Apple of final cut. It’s actually more of a stable system. Do you guys use PCs? We’re using Macs. I like to use PCs. PCs are a superior processing unit. The new, I have my own self made computer. I could bring, I like the wizard of Oz. Dude, seriously, you want to use Macs but I don’t, are you open and you’re not open to change? Is this a place where you focus on? He asked us, he asked me this question, are you focused more on production or or or creativity? I’m just like, you gotta get outta here. You got to leave. And he had a smell. The smell again

Clay Staires:
will be obvious. Obvious. It will be obvious. It will really be obvious when you spend a little time. And then the, the last thing that we do in helping to kind of filter those people out on a fit is we do a personal interview and it’s in that personal interview and this is what everybody’s used to. We have very specific questions that we ask. We ask five questions around each of our core values and those five questions. Once again, www dot [inaudible] dot com fill out that form there on the homepage and you will get these five questions folks. I’ll give you the questions, take the questions, enjoy the questions, but you just asked the same five questions around each of your core values and what is it? An old proverb. Okay. Says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, right? So I just try to get people talking and I’m looking to see if they use my type of language. If they can talk about my core values using my language, chances are pretty good. They’re going to be a good fit right now. Again, I’m not personally, I’m not really, really confer, uh, uh, tied up on I have to hire the exact person because if they don’t work, I’m going to move you out and I will have another person coming in a stressful situation. Again, this is one of those big things that business owners, they feel even held hostage by potential and it’s like, okay, you have to be,

Speaker 5:
be the right person. It’s like, no, they don’t. How often do we have hairstylists that apply to cut hair? And by the way, most guys want to get their hair cut when Jason, um, after work for or on the weekend, right? And yesterday. And they’ll say, yeah, this is what they’ll stitch what they’ll say during the interview. I really am excited about working here and I’m just so excited. I’m willing to do anything it takes for this job. I’ve been working right now at the yada yada cuts and we don’t make a lot of money there. And so I heard an elephant in the room, you pay more and you’re busier and it’s a higher end atmosphere. So, um, I just, I cannot work at night or weekends and you’re going, well, that’s when they’re the busiest, you know? Yeah. And I like to bring my own tools. I don’t like to use your tools. And I like my hair to be purple. And you’re like, well, we have to have natural hair color nights and weekends is when you have to work. Well, I, that’s if you want me on your team, that’s what’s going to take. But people feel held hostage. They only have one candidate. Yeah, exactly. And so you feel like you got to bring him in and

Clay Staires:
employee problems, but the employee problems started with your choice to bring in the beginning. So again, core values number one starts with a C. Second one. You got to look at a lot. Starts with an L third one. Alignment starts with an a. You can probably figure out where the last one’s going to be.

Speaker 5:
Okay. It starts with a Y. Alright, so

Clay Staires:
you got clay. We’re spelling clay here. Now the why clay, I had to really stretch on this when I stretch all the way

Speaker 1:
back to my, my family history had to go all the way back to Ireland to find a Y word here. So we’re going to go with the word yay. O. Y. E. O. You can Google it and check it out. But yeah, you know it is an old Gaelic term and it means river river. And so what we do here again is you have to create this river of life so you can consistently flush out the dead.

Speaker 7:
Oh, thank

Speaker 1:
you Harry. For charming. This river of life is you have to do it every single week. Every week. You have to do it every week. Pick a time the same time every single week. And that’s going to be your time. Are you saying that you don’t want a pond scum of a business? You want to, you don’t want like assess pool people that wanted to quit but they keep showing up. People that quit emotionally, there’s still that. You don’t want that. That Kermit the frog one sort of snake environment. Why do you not want the swamp? Because the swamp is no good. I’m not the swamp. I’m a flow man. They’re the river man, the Flowmaster. I’m a river man. I don’t want to surround myself with other flow masters and so we have to do this every single week. You will get people like we do hours Tuesday at five o’clock and you will get people say, Oh, I can’t make it Tuesday at five you know, is there another time, Hey, Wednesday at five and I simply say, sure, let me take a look at my calendar.

Speaker 1:
How about next Tuesday at five? Oh no, that’s not going to work. Let me look. Okay, how about this? The next week, Tuesday at five quick timeout. Want to make sure listeners get this cause I don’t want any of the listeners to sense any type of, uh, wait a minute. You guys aren’t on the same page. The reason why I do my group interview at six there’s many reasons for this. The reason why he does this, five his business exists to serve him. My business exists to serve me. Breck, what are your hours? What days are you [email protected] we’re closed on the weekends. You are? Yeah. We have massage on Saturday, but chiropractically you’re closed on Saturday. And why do you close on Saturday? Because the business exists to serve me. Could you make more money by, by being open seven days a week. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
So some of the listeners out there want to, I just talked to a guy yesterday who likes to do this. You, you funny man who booked the 13 point assessment, this funny man. He says, I heard dr Zellner say that he’s open seven days a week, but yet you have said that a business exists to serve you. What is it? It’s like you’re speaking out of both sides of your mouth and I’m going, well, dr Zellner has an optometry clinic that exists to serve him, right? I have a men’s grooming lounge that exists to serve me. And on a religious level, on a fundamental level, I want to be closed on Sundays. That is a religious decision that I have made. And I also believe that the family, cause she be able to take the time off on the Sunday doctors owner does not share in that belief. And we could spend our entire life focusing on the little things that we don’t agree upon or we could focus on the bast majority of things we do agree upon. And because we’re not partners in the optometry clinic, he can do what he wants and I can do, I want for the same

Speaker 5:
reason I might like this kind of ice cream and he likes that kind of ice cream. So if clay stairs wants to have his group interview at five o’clock that’s fine. Yeah. If I want to have it at six that’s fine. That’s when we’re going to do it. So just pick a time that works for you that your candidates can get to.

Clay Staires:
Yeah. So that’s when we do it again. You’ve got to create this river of life. This, yay. Oh, of life. Okay. And, uh, so that those gins, the four steps, core values or core values, look at a lot alignment. Yup. And the river, the yay, Oh, we’ve got to create the, the river of life. And then it all becomes about, once you bring people in, it all becomes about training, developing. And uh, we went up for another show about that too. Just the onboarding of a new person to get into that. And we have all of that systemized. And uh, but, uh, you know, speaking with Tom Ziglar, a good friend of mine, [inaudible] son, and, uh, we were talking about this process and I loved it on the phone. He was going, clay, this is genius. And I went, Tom, can I quote you on that?

Clay Staires:
Tom Ziglar, Zig Ziglar son, can I quote you on that? He goes, sure. But, uh, but he has a quote that I really love. He said, if you have a dream but don’t have the team, then you either have to give up the dream or build up the team one more time. If you have a dream but don’t have the team, then either you have to give up the dream or build up the team one more time. If, if you have a dream but you do not have a team, then you must talk with me here. You must give up the dream or build up the team. Once you bring your people into your company, that’s now incumbent upon you to move the obstacles that get in your way. Your obstacles is Zack [inaudible].

Speaker 5:
So that’s the move free yourself from the shackles through the obstacles. Yes. If you’re out there today, um, and you are struggling with hiring people, get out to a workshop, we can do a workshop every two months. Clay stairs is there. He’ll teach you the system. You can ask those questions that sort of fill in the gaps, those little, uh, yeah, but I have one question. You know, it’s kind of, you hear it and you go, yeah, but I have one quick question. All that connective tissue can be answered, uh, can be solved. It can be, it can be provided at the workshops. We do them every two months. You can book your tickets at thrive time, show.com it’s thrive time show.com and again to download the show notes for mr stares and to get the extra details of what questions he actually asks during interviews. You can get that by going to clay stares.com clay

Speaker 1:
stairs.com. And we have a, we have five minutes left for a couple of fast questions here. Alright, so Jason, I’m going to have you ask any questions you’d like to ask about the hiring process that your clients would ask. Uh, dr Breck and then we have the founder of complete carpet here with us and I’d like them, have him give him an opportunity to ask as well. So Jason, we’ll start with you. What do you, what question do you think your clients would have for mr? Uh, stairs? Well the main question would be so, um, the fact that, well I guess two part question. One, how did you narrow it down to you have to go through 85 people to get a yes. Cause I think that’s important. A lot of my clients haven’t figured out how many nos they need before they get a yes within two would be how did you basically convince yourself and your team to continually do the same hiring process every single week?

Speaker 1:
Because that’s what I found is people say, Oh, I can do the group interview and I’ll help them build an outline and I’ll help them build the responses and I’ll help them monitor everything where they’re not being super tedious. But I ask them, did you do the group interview? Yeah, it was great. You find anybody? No. All right. Next week, do you do the group interview? Nah. Yeah. Well, so, so what, what was your flow in order to just convince yourself and the people you work for you that this is what, how do you, where does that number one out of 85 come from? And then how do you keep your clients doing it every week? Okay. Well first of all, we track, we track everything in our company. So the number of resumes that come in, we just a number. How many resumes, how many people say they’re going to come to the interview, track that number, how many people actually show up?

Speaker 1:
We track that number. How many people did we hire? We track that number. Okay, how do you keep, how do you convince your clients to do it every week? How do I convince my clients to do it every week? Once again, I go back to their core values and their, their purpose, their F six goals in their company. Because if I just tried to convince them to do something my way without tying it into what they want, true, it’ll never work. So I call that the Jedi mind trick. It has to come back to their desire, what they want out of life. And if you want this, then you need to take this step. Gotcha. So that’s how, that’s how we do that. And stares does a very good job of doing that. And I would just say if you go to thrive time show.com forward slash does it work, thrive time, show.com forward slash does dash it dash work.

Speaker 1:
You will see real clients, hundreds of clients sharing how the group interview has worked for them. And I have found that when people, when you hear enough people doing it and you see that it works, at a certain point we start going, you know, I don’t know how that, I don’t know how that smartphone works at all, but I’m going to use it. Yeah. Well Bobby, are you sure? Do you know how the technology works? No, I don’t understand it, but I believe I can use this phone to T I’ve seen so many testimonies. I’m going to use the phone to dial and smile, almost disbelieving that, that, that, that the phone could connect to a satellite and send a signal to a person in a different place and then you know, your aunt Mabel is scared of technology and thinks the internet is going to kill us all.

Speaker 1:
But meanwhile you’re like, I’m going to pick up this phone. Eventually you see enough proof and you just, you just do it. And it’s fun because many of the testimonials on that video are our clients. Absolutely. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. Okay. Dr Breck, what’s your final question for mr stairs? So, you know, when you’re talking about doing a group interview each and every week, um, and somebody is listening and they’re currently doing an interview, you know, um, five, six times a year, uh, how much, you know, freedom. Have you actually found that this group interview provides you versus those who would say, well I’m, I’m only doing this, you know, big interview process a couple of times a year versus each and every week, uh, are, have you found that it is actually freeing? Oh, it’s completely Frank. Yeah. I’m no longer held hostage by any of the employees.

Speaker 1:
Again, the 14 months that we were talking about, that was back earlier in 2019 I think for the total of 2019 we hired 10 people just got through doing the W2’s, you know, so I think we had 10 people and it was hilarious cause I was looking at those going, who are these people? Because they were only there for like three, four days or couple weeks, you know, but man, they were rocking it. Now they don’t always great until they aren’t. Even after you go through the strainer and do the group interview process, what stares is saying is if someone’s not going to do the job, then they’re going to move on pretty quickly. They’re going to stay loyal to a dysfunctional person all tied up and then, Oh, this person, they’re going to be awesome because I know they’re probably going to be awesome until they’re not right.

Speaker 1:
And then we’re just going to move them out and bring somebody else in. And so every single time that we have moved somebody out, I have immediately been able to replace him most of the time, the very next day. That’s what makes the, uh, Bob stoops, the guy who really took the OU football program to the next level. That’s what makes bill Belicheck great is every three or four years, it’s a whole new team and they have to recruit people while also coaching their current people. Now we have the founder of complete carpet on the show here. Um, Nathan, what questions would you have here for a cluster?

Speaker 6:
Oh, absolutely. The, uh, I want to go back. You’ve got the L, you’ve got the AA, you’ve got the Y but go back to the C yes. At the last conference that are actually quite a few of the conferences. You get up to do the C on your core values and you tell them, well you need to write down three core values. And I look across it cause I at the first conference I was the same person but now that I’ve got a chance, I’ve already written them down. I look at the other people and everyone writes down like friendly, um, happy, smart and you name off some of those things that you can’t put those as your top values. And everyone pretty much puts their pen away and says well then I got nothing. What do you got to help them? Cause I think that’s where a lot of business owners get stuck. Cause it’s not that they don’t find people, it’s that they don’t know the type of people they’re looking for. How do they, how do you get them over that hurdle? Cause for me that was hard. That was hard. Figuring out what is, what is my actual core value because it takes thought

Speaker 1:
and most business owners have, have lost the ability to think because they have been trapped in work. They wake up in the morning and they just work. There’s, there’s people out there that I’m talking to you right

Clay Staires:
now. Okay, just put your hands on the radio, right? Cause I’m talking to you. You have lost the ability to think because you have spent so much time just working. You have had the same problem over and over and over. That is frustrating you. But you continue to just work through it. You continue to just press through it and somehow you’re interpreting that as you being a strong person, you being a strong leader, you being a good business owner because you continue to do the same thing over and over and over, but you’re not getting set free. So I think the first thing Nathan, why people are struggle with that is because they have lost the ability to think. And so it takes time. At the conferences, we don’t have time, I just say so write these things down. But literally this could take you 2040 60 hours to dive in and think, what are my core values?

Clay Staires:
And I’m always a huge proponent and clay taught me this. You want to be careful not to just come up with things of they’re funny, they have a good sense of humor and they can be on top integrity, you know, integrity and trust, you know, it’s like, okay, if you want to have those, those are fine. But one of your core values has got to be around producing results. It’s gotta be around, you can get her done or however you want to say that one of your core values has to be results oriented. And again, for me, coming out of public schools and coming out of ministry that results oriented, you know me and that was really gray. That was really great. As a school teacher, you’re not really judged by the results. You know, you just, you, you,

Speaker 5:
that’s why merit based pay is never appropriate. Never. Uh, teachers are never in favor of it cause they go, well what if my kids are difficult? Oh you gotta be better. Yeah. So be careful on that. I want to cue up an audio clip here. This is a song by sublime called what I got. You were the song Jason. Yeah. This to me is the song, the theme song of the average entrepreneur, the average entrepreneur. Again, according to inc magazine, 96% of business owners fail within 10 years, so this is the official theme song for most entrepreneurs. Let me just keep a little part of it here. Let me get here. These lyrics, listen to these,

Speaker 3:
into the street shoes to reason things went wrong. Got to find the reason why [inaudible]

Speaker 5:
there it is. That’s what they’re doing. They’re getting up, they’re getting in their truck and it might be lighting up a cigarette, putting shoes on their feet and trying to figure out why their money’s all gone. Yeah, maybe requires proactivity to pull the weeds and one of the weeds that’s killing your business as bad people. Nothing unless they do clay stairs. Thank you so much for joining us on today’s show. Again, if you want to get those specific questions that he asks his ideal and likely candidates, you can get those by going to clay stares.com and that’s, uh, that’s again, that’s clay stairs.com. Easy for me to say clay stares.com. It’s S T a, I, R E S clay stairs.com and get those questions today and we’d like to end each and every show with a boom. But I will caution you, these mics are hot. I’ve got to take two steps back and it’s like one giant step for forward for the boom. Man. Here we go.