What’s One Character Trait That’s Allowed You to Succeed That Most People Don’t Have? – Ask Clay Anything

Audio Transcription

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

Yeah, thrive

nation. We are just a few days away from our December seventh and eighth workshop. It is going to be unbelievably awesome. We have Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prints for Pizza Hut. Uh, he’s going to be speaking there. He’s the PR consultant of choice for President Bush for President Clinton. He’ll be speaking. We’ve got Ken Schmidt, the man who was once in charge of Harley Davidson and their marketing efforts between 1985 and 1999. Um, he’s going to be speaking. I will be there. Dr Robert Zellner will be there. It is going to be a fabulous event. If you haven’t booked your tickets, book them today by going to thrive time show.com. And if you’re looking to save some money, if you will just subscribe to our podcast on itunes and leave us an objective review. We will give you a free tickets to the conference and all you have to do is pay $37 for the workbook and the food.

Now, on today’s show, a ask me anything addition. I’m answering the question that I’ve been asked repeatedly at conferences and by clients, they always, they always like to say, you know, the, the, what’s the like, what’s that one thing or one character trait that you have that you believe that’s allowed you to be successful when most people don’t really have success by default. You know, what’s one character trait that has allowed you to succeed that most people don’t seem to have by default? And so if there’s the one, uh, the first one would be resilience. Um, I, uh, am very similar to, to bamboo and that, you know, my roots for why I do things are they go way below the surface. Have you ever seen bamboo? It grows very tall, very thick. It’s almost impossible to get rid of it, bend, but not break.

Because when you try to dig it up, what do you find down there? A massive root system, deep. So if you attempt to chop it down, it just grows back stronger. In bamboo is, I mean it’s a monster if you try to get rid of it. And so whenever I started, you know, the elephant in the room, men’s grooming lounge or a thrive or DJ connection, I will not stop and it doesn’t matter how long it takes, but I have financially fortified myself or I have made the tradeoffs needed. So my wife and I were starting to Dj connection. I had three jobs she had to. We turned off our air conditioning. We turned off the heat. We live below our means. We sold a car. You didn’t take a bunch of vacations? No, not at all. No, no, no vacations. Furthermore, I don’t think anybody out there listening.

If you’re out there listening right now and you have a business that’s not profitable, I don’t think you should ever go on vacation until it’s profitable. Right? Ever. Not one time. What’s the pull until it’s. I don’t understand it, but anyway, so that would be my one trait is resiliency. That’s a big thing. But a couple of other traits that I think are important to share is I don’t struggle with boredom. Um, now this is this as it relates to my business, like I will not start a business if I’m going to get bored with it. So when most people get bored and start looking for something new, that’s what I board down. So I’m not really into like new houses and new cars and new girlfriends and new, uh, new friends and new apps and new new business ideas or new shiny objects. I’m just myopically focused on being fruitful before I multiply. It just, it’s so important that you don’t allow yourself as a business owner to get distracted. You’ve got to stay focused. So, chuck, I want you to break down these, these first two character traits. One, this concept of resiliency. The clients that you’ve worked with who’ve had massive success, how big of a role does their resilience play and their success?

Well, you have to know that, I mean just in life, but especially growing and running a business, that obstacles are going to come up. Things are going to try to prevent you to getting to your goals and if you let every one of those, every time you fall off of the horse where the bike, you just stay down there and you don’t push yourself to get back up and keep going, you’re going to fail and you’re going to fail quickly because it’s gonna happen often, so you have to be resilient.

What about people that struggle with boredom? Chump. They can’t board that big of a factor. Does the ability to stay myopically focused on one idea for a decade if need be to make a company successful? How? What role does that play in the success of your claim?

It happens a lot. I see a lot of times people are almost too that you know, we’ll call it that Dr. z level where he’s got all of the systems and people in place where he can manage his businesses. He doesn’t have to be in the day to day and people get 70, 80 percent of the way there and they want to start their next new thing. They want to go ahead and start focusing on this other product or complimentary service they could introduce when really what they need to be focused on is how they train their employees because that’s the limiting factor. Now you know you can increase the marketing, you can increase the sales, but if you don’t have a team that can do it, why are you focusing on a whole new product or service we have work to do here?

The next notable quotable I want to read to you, it comes from Napoleon Hill. This is the best selling author of think and grow rich, and he was the personal apprentice of the late great, Andrew Carnegie. He writes, patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success. Patience, persistence, and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success. And I agree. What do you want to call it? Persistence or resiliency. You just have to be a persistent person. Patients, you have to not get bored with your business. You have to stay focused on it for a long time, and then third, perspiration. You have got to outwork everybody. You just have to put in that kind of grind if you want to ask if you want to have success chip, you have to have that sort of a work ethic.

I had a couple more that came to mind as we were talking. I want to share with everybody and one thing that I learned from you. I learned this from my mom and dad watching how they handled their business as well, but you have to have the ability to hold yourself to a higher standard. Therefore you can hold people accountable, right? So you are the grinder. If you are the first Asian guy, you’re going to be able to hold your team accountable without any reservations because you know that you hold yourself to a higher standard. Next would be this. This is a great one too. The ability to say no to employees and your clients. I see so many business owners that will never tell their clients know and it ends up ruining their lives. Even like the better their business does, the worst their life is.

That is. That is so true. I would say saying no is something that I don’t know why I don’t struggle with it. Um, I think stuttering as a kid, um, I really held most of humanity in such a low regard that, uh, because, you know, when you’re a kid and you stutter, I think pretty much everybody makes fun of the kid who stutters with, except for maybe with the exception of maybe 10 percent. I think I’m in a bus and people are mocking me for stuttering is terrible. I think everybody did it, but maybe 10 percent and I don’t remember anybody except for one guy ever standing up for me ever. They just watch it happen. So even the people who are appalled by it, they don’t stand up and do anything. Yeah.

Or they giggle out of nervousness or

I think because of that, I think that I’m, I’ve sort of held humanity to very, very low esteem, uh, and I never worried about what the other guy thinks. Right. Well, that, that leads to, continues today.

That leads to the last one that I wanted to talk about. And that’s the ability to freak out whenever you need to freak out all time, but if you’re not able to freak out, like when the time calls for some freaking out, you’re going to have a tough road.

Yeah. And I, I think that my problem with the freakout is that like I have, I’m like a volcano. It’s just energy. I do a pretty good job of not letting it go, but I like the energy is always there. He’s just put a lid on a volcano. That’s how I will learning to cope with the dragon energy that God has blessed me with the age of 38 folks. I’m almost there. You must channel. So if you’re out there today and you’re struggling to grow your business, I would just ask you which one of these character traits to you need to improve on? For me, my biggest failing was just, I’m not freaking out at the wrong time. And I had to learn to do that over time. And I still do bring the heat or bring the spirit of competition, the intensity when needed. But, uh, I know how to make it more sustainable now, and that was something I had to learn. But if you’re struggling with being persistent or having the patients needed or the work ethic, you got to be honest with yourself and decide here and now, today that you are not going to let this hold you back. And now, without any further ado, great.