Why Hard Work Is Directly Related to Success with Mat Pelletier

Audio Transcription

On today’s show, we interview the bestselling author of the new book embracing failure. Today’s author shares with us why hard work is directly related to success. There’s just no way around it. Ladies and gentlemen on today’s show, today’s author shares with us why failure is the most effective and cruelest teacher ever. Ladies and gentlemen, if any further I do now, it’s my pleasure to introduce to you the best selling author of embracing failure. Mr Mat Pelletier.

Dr z. It is always ecstasy when you are,

And on today’s show we have west Carter, the attorney of choice for so many great Americans. And on today’s show we have a super guest. This guy is the author of a new book written. It’s called embracing failure. Mr Mat Pelletier, welcome onto the thrive time show. How are you?

I’m doing fantastic. Lee, thank you so much for having me, Dr z and West. Nice to talk with you guys also.

Oh, welcome to the show buddy west. I gotta I gotta I wanna I’m gonna kind of tee this up so you can interrogate our guests here at Gambit. I’m gonna hit him with two hard questions and then you’re next here. So here we go. Mat Pelletier with your career, could you kind of, I know you’ve had a ton of success up to this point, but could you introduce our listeners into your career and your background just so they know why you’re qualified to write this new book? Embracing failure,

Roger. Okay. So basically, so I grew up in rural Connecticut. I grew up on a dirt road. They had mentioned it, paved it later in life, and a very small house supply with floor, basically a very modest living. I guess you could say starting off at the bottom was a good, definitely. Yeah. So that’s that. That was it. So, I mean, so I fell into business at a very young age. I was the, a prototypical kid with lemonade stand. You know what I’m saying

Now what, what when did you feel like you finally started to gain some traction in your career? What were some of your big wins with your, with your business career up to this point?

So, up to this point, well early on there the winds were pretty far between the losses. So I’m going to have to say a lot of losses. It is pretty a slow grind for me. I’m not definitely one of those guys who started off and, you know, 24 months later put on an IPO and you know, sold the company for $1 billion and that, that’s not my story. That’s a different, yes. So my career has been a slow grind. As you know, I had been in the construction business my entire life from like 15, 16 years old to now I’m just, I’m 47, so it’s been a long grunt. So I started getting traction, you know, halfway through that career when I had the ability to select my customers instead of doing work because I had no choice. And I learned that that was a much better route. So it took, it took a long time for me to gain traction.

So West, before I interrogate Mat Pelletier about his new book here, embracing failure, what questions would you have for Mr Mat Pelletier here? Just, just really paint him into a corner. Make it uncomfortable. Like what? Like, like we normally do. Well, I’m curious, you know, how did you transition from entrepreneur to wanting to write a book?

That’s a good question. It’s good question. So, you know what my inspiration for the, I had multiple inspirations for the book, so I, I guess what happened was, you know, I have two young sons, we’re not young anymore, one 17, one 15. But when they were born it was a very, very emotional, prophetic time. But I know Clay’s got a bunch of kids and I’m not sure about the, the other guys, but it was very emotional. And so what happened was I sat down and wrote them letters and then throughout the years I wrote more letters and it basically, they would just let her say, Hey, look, I’ve been doing this a long time. I have so many lessons to teach you. If I get hit by a train, read these letters, it’s going to save you a ton, a ton of hard times. And so it became kind of a manifesto.

And then then I started giving them back to them and they started reading. I’m like, wow, this is profound stuff, man. You know, this is great. I, so I started writing more than adults into, I started writing a manifesto to myself 25 years ago and I said, and thought, Geez, why are you just giving this to your kids? Why don’t you share this with the world? I have a lot of a lot of heartache, a lot of interesting situations. We’d come from zero to a hundred. Why not share it with the world? So I decided to turn it into a book. Then once I decided that, you know, we were going to turn it into basically a letter to myself, it, the book is wrote itself cause I was like okay, if I could give this book to myself 25 years ago, this would be a roadmap and it would just, would have saved me a ton of time and effort. And so I’m trying to help other people with their journey.

Wes, you are an attorney so you’re, anytime that I get a call from you, I know it’s not going to be the call I want to get, but I like talking to you cause you’re a very nice, nice guy. You’ve always been just a great attorney and, and so it’s w z. It’s the weirdest thing because I like Wes a lot and when I see them call, it triggers this immediate like media. Yes. Ah, what’s the question about something? It’s usually, you know, do I remember this or what was this and what was the, and it’s, and it’s weird cause you know when you’re doing business you, you have that little failure, you have that little push back, you have it adversities that, you know what I’m talking about? The litigious stuff that’s not so fun. Yeah. See how do you embrace the failures? [inaudible] Failures.

But the setbacks are the pushbacks. There’s of the litigious nature. I just never take phone calls from attorneys ever. So therefore you just stay in your head in the sand and you don’t know what’s going on. You know what’s, okay. No, I’m teasing you. You take the phone call and you know that they are your advocate. You know, they are, you’re, you’re a hired gun. They’re like a, what do they call them? Like A, they’re like a Ninja. You hired to go, you know, have you seen him in his black Ninja outfit by the way? An impressive, it is impressive. [inaudible] I wanna ask you this because you have learned to push through failure. You’re a 53 year old guy with multiple 40 54 year old guy with multiple changes every year. I know it’s hard to keep track annually, but there’s multiple, multiple. These are companies that you’ve built. What question would you have for Mat Pelletier about his new book that’s all about embracing failure? Well, I’ll tell you, if I’m listening to a podcast or the radio show or I’m listening to this somehow or another to the magic of the Internet, take Melvin. Thank you. Thank you. If I want to go home, if I’m saying, listen man, I don’t failure. I don’t want to deal with failure. I want to, I want to know with such a loser, why would I buy this book?

Why would you buy this book? So that’s a good question. So everybody wants success. That’s, that’s what we all want, right? I mean, who wants to stay on? Yes. Easy to fail. [inaudible]

We’ll just get up in the morning. Yeah,

Yeah. Excuse me. If you want to do nothing, just grab a chair and stare at the wall. You can do nothing. That’s, that’s the easiest thing in the world to do. But if you really want success and that’s what you drive, where you want more out of your life, well I got bad news that you’re going to run into some brick walls. But you know what? That’s how it goes for everybody. So I’m just trying to, I display to everybody that you know, on your way to success, you’re going to be hitting some obstacles. It’s okay. We all hit it. You know, I think you’re going to hit them. But the strongest and the most resilient of lessons learned from hitting those brick walls that we turn. And when we get really good at it, we can take down a lot of brick walls. So I’m a lawyer still call yet. I’m not scared the lawyers because I got some more sleep than they do.

We’ll show those bricks. Come on now

As part of learning from the fit, you know,

Now Andrew can vouch for this. He probably knows about some of these stories. A z. You’ve heard these stories, but I’m gonna, I’m going to air things as west that have happened from front up in the past in the past that there is no more legal type of recourse that can be taken. I believe that she’s illiquid statute limitations have expired. So this is what happened is a mad I, I started coming out DJ connection and I thought I’m going to go out there and just DJ the heck out of parties. And I was, I got to be pretty good. But they’d each have about 18, 19. I started to get some good rhythm, some good momentum. I started getting referred for big, I mean, some big events and I never thought of like having backup gear or backup phone numbers for clients, you know.

So I set up a system at the Sheraton hotel downtown. I’m like downtown Tulsa and I’m like, man, I’m here early. Nobody’s here. This is the crown plaza. But it was called the [inaudible]. And then I set up knowing there’s nobody here. I talked to the waitstaff there. Like there’s, they say we are confident, sir. This is this Saturday in May and for whatever reason we just didn’t book out this ballroom. We are confident. There is no wedding in this ballroom. There is a reunion over here. There’s a party over there, but there is no wedding here. So I, I say, okay, all of a sudden I get 20 minutes before the show’s supposed to start bettering they knitting being ding. I get a call. They tell me no, no, no. The event, the bride says passionately with a lot of attacked and a lot of like, are you kidding me?

Anyway, the wedding, it turns out it’s an Oklahoma City, not in downtown Tulsa, at the Sheridan in Oklahoma City. So I drive an hour and a half. I get there, limited service, limited, whatever. I get to the shared in Oklahoma City. However, I clear, I didn’t clarify yet again. The which one. Ah, so I go to the wrong one and this continues. I end up getting there probably two hours into the end of the reception and I people said the hay, the Hay haterade it was like I was levitating on a force field of hate and I was able to set up using their hate propelled me to set up quickly and then I had to follow the brides had something nice like, boy if you don’t set up here, I swear to you know, just that kind of thing. And I remember that and I thought that was really bad.

And then I remember going to the Manford Prom Manford Prom, who of course I went there and my speaker’s blue on my aunt blue lot power surge. And I remember thinking about how I was going to DJ the prom without speakers. How’d that work out? Ah, well for the first event I got just incredible. I mean I had never been booed at a wedding. What I got, I mean it was, it was bad. I still have it seared in my mind. People were not not excited, it was bad. Seriously. It was like a grumbling Howley boom. It was bad. When I got finally set up, people were going, boom, it was bad. Then the one in May,

See how you see how vividly you remembered.

Oh yeah, it was great teaching.

Yes, you’re, you’re describing it like inch by inch. Second by second. You remember it,

Right? So I saw I’m going to get a backup phone number. I didn’t think get a backup amp. No, no. Didn’t think that. I tell Manford man. I go to Manford and I call my wife [inaudible] thing and she’s like, you need a what amplifier? What’s that? Brings it out. I’m sitting there DJ in a high school prom with just me and no music for two hours. Just looking at me. Brutal people sharpen knives, people loading their guns is bad. And I had these kinds of situations over and each time I’m going, Oh, I’ve got to update my system. Oh wait, I should have a backup. And so by the time that this system was built, you know, the young djs would come to me and go, Hey, well how come we have to get a backup number for everybody? I’m like, Gosh, you can ruin someone’s life. Passionate teaching moments. If I just want to know, Mat Pelletier, what was the bottom moment for you? What was the moment where you’re like the basement of life, you’re on the threshold of Haiti’s life’s not going well. When did you really personally deal with some just epic failure and nothing like from this week just go further back so it’s not too serious.

Yeah. So I, I mean there is a long list of those epic failures. So it depends on like serious like business epic failures are just from a young perspective. Cause I have some similar ones like you asked. We have a lot in common. I played in rock bands in high school and college and I was in music minor. So when I was in college that was my, I was hoping to be, you know, grunge scene was big in the 90s and I’m going to be a rock and roller. I’m going to be the drummer for Pearl Jam. And you know, we played a couple of big shows like in big venues where nobody showed us. It’s just a bit, and it’s like you talk about learning to ability quickly. That’s a great way to learn to be humble. You know, you’ve got your big show, you’re coming on stage, rock and rolling, and there was nobody here and that’s, that’s [inaudible]

Maybe, maybe you were at the wrong Sheridan hotel. Did you ever think of that? I mean, maybe it was the other, shared it at another town down the road. I made simple mistakes

Then the, I was maybe born in the wrong fricking place.

Think how many thousands of kids now were heartbroken cause you didn’t show up to the concert. I mean, that’s just brutal. You know, I gotta tell about Pearl Jam and backup things real quick. That Pearl Jam, they really were ahead of their time west. They were, they were innovators. And one of the things they did was they made sure they never forgot the lyrics by never really having lyrics. So they would just go up there, hey, you know what I mean? If you’re noticing that you go to their concerts and listen and you’re going, are there lyrics? There’s Eddie saying lyrics. Have you noticed that it makes it easier to sing along? I mean, I’m Pearl Jam. Great, but I’d never knew what they were talking about. Now you’re getting everything.

Did either. I never, I just played the drums saying they’ll for those. Yeah,

It’s fun.

But I know that they’re still harmony. So whatever man, it’s all cool. As long as they get paid at the end of the night, it’s all fine with me. You know?

Matt, what advice would you give somebody out to WHO’s struggling with fear?

So struggle with fear. If you’ve struggled with fear in business or whatever else you’re doing. So my best advice would that would be, you know, dude, everybody has here, let’s face it, I don’t care who you are, how successful you are or what early stage you are in your life. But if you allow fear to make the decisions for you, you’re probably going to find yourself in a bad, difficult situation. So everybody has fear, but you just can’t let that control your, your thoughts and your decision making paradigm. So that’s what I would tell everybody. Everybody’s going to have fear. The problem is if you allow that fear to make all of your life decisions for you, you can count on a very, very scarcity mindset type life. So you just have to know that, hey, I’m going to be fearful. This is going to be a little dangerous know, but I’m going to work through it. On have side of the fear is going to be my success. So I gotta handle it for this.

He’s Z. Where’s, where’s this going to hit him with a hard, a hard hitting question here and in west, I just want to have gone on a cruise next week on a, on a boat and I battle I’m afraid of true, true students. Really. I am afraid of heights and I am afraid of of traveling and I am afraid of put large bodies of water. And so Z, this is the audio of me boarding. Last time I boarded a cruise boat. This is the audio of what I was thinking in my head here. Yeah, get on the boat. I can get on the boat. It seems like the horror soundtrack is playing in my mind the entire time. And my wife steps near the edge, like 10 feet away from the edge. I’m sure she’s going to fall off. She’s taking her life and then I get on the plane. I’m like, baby steps get out. I mean, seriously, it’s terrible. But I do it.

That’s interesting that I know you don’t like crowds. You don’t like to travel and you don’t like water. So you must have bodies. It was really love your wife to go on a cruise do.

So I, I, once I get settled, it takes about 24 hours. I get settled and I have rules. I don’t go near the edge, the railings. Okay. And I don’t try to look out too much around the ocean. There’s so much to do and it’s so well done and it’s a royal Caribbean does a great job and the kids are so fun, but I just try not to look out over the ocean or over the edge or let anyone say the word cruise book, then I’m fine.

Gotcha, Gotcha. Or crews, they just get back together.

Yeah. A simple set of instructions there, but you’re on a cruise boat.

Sure. Yeah man, that’s make sense. Whereas what question do you have here for Mr Mat Pelletier? One of the things I loved earlier, Matt, was when you made the correlation between teaching your children some of these principles. And it made me think, you know, from a failure standpoint, I think it’s, you know, would you say as an entrepreneur, you know, we have helicopter parents where we don’t let our kids fail, we don’t let them experience failure in the challenges and they don’t know how to deal with it. If you’re talking to an entrepreneur, do you try to save them from some of these failures or do you think it’s part of building their entrepreneurial character where they have to experience some of this to get where they need to be from a mental and character stance?

Yeah, that’s a good question. So no, I would never want this rescue anybody to give them a participation trophy of any kind. So you know that just because you exist doesn’t mean that you are deserved anything. And I don’t care what you’re doing or how you’re doing it, but I don’t want to steal anybody’s opportunity to fall flat on your face because the, what I’m saying is those failures that you go through in business and life are gonna. You want to build your resilience and five, Amina, all iPad, tons of failures. Just my business is stripe. I mean, when we bid on large commercial projects, I mean, you get eight we, excuse me, we lose eight out of 10 of them. I think our numbers are at. So we’re like 20%. We’re, we’re doing well. And that’s a good year. So I mean, if you don’t realize that you’re gonna fall flat on your face, the key is that you just have to expect it. No, get up. It, make a change and keep pressing on that the lessons that they learned. So just expect it.

Matt, for the listeners out there that aren’t familiar with what you do for a living do you, do you sell helicopters or, or what, what do you, what do you do? What’s your, what’s your what keeps playing to listeners? What your core competency is, what your business does. We don’t tell, oh, this Jamaica that queued up. That had been really good timing by the way. Went for it.

No. Yes. Excellent. Excellent. No, we are commercial construction managers and real estate developers.

Oh, well that’s not anything to do with helicopters, clay. No, it does. I mean, if you think about it for hours, somebody had to build a helicopter. Think of the parallels. Both businesses are LLCs. Maybe Wes, maybe. Okay. Okay. All right, so I asked you this, Matt, you, our listeners, a lot of our listeners are note-takers. They’re money makers, they’re doers, they’re, they’re doers. They’re implementers, but some people atZ , I don’t know what the heck it is. Some people will go to you for advice and when you give them the advice, they won’t do it. I want to ask you, Matt, what’s the, what’s the advice that you teach people the most or the, the principle that you give people the most that you, most of the time they won’t implement. They ask you to say what we know. You give them the advice, but they don’t implement it. Can you tell us that root cause I think it’s easier slumsy to receive advice from someone who’s not right in front of you. Yeah. You’re in a podcast, you’re like, oh, what’s that? What’s that tough advice? We need

The top advice. So I mean there’s so many different bits of advice, but a couple of I could try it are, you know, especially for young people. So you need to understand that hard work is directly associated with success. So if you are not interested in working hard and developing amazing habits for yourself and you really shouldn’t expect a good results. So if your goal is to be, I don’t care financially independent, financially secure anything you want to be a professional athlete. Okay, those are all fantastic goals. Make sure you know that there’s going to be tremendous work and lifestyle change to achieve that. So as long as you know that that can be done, anything can be done. You may have to make some changes along the way, but just going to be a great deal of sacrifice along the way. But as long as your, you have your goal and you’re excited to reach it, someday you’re probably going to reach it. I almost can’t stop you, but you have to know this is the path and there’s going to be some stumbling blocks on the way. So that would be one piece of advice. Yeah. Yeah.

Man, I’ve got a question for you. I know you don’t know

Clay just intimately or that, well I should say. But clay had a, had a goal and he, he made himself available for the 2019 NFL draft hoping and he’d only, he’d only visit the Patriots. You know, facilities, which they did invite, but that’s the only one that he was going, he, they weren’t going to, I did practice how I’m gonna answer all the questions at the press day. You know, I’ve been walking, he did [inaudible] practicing there and I want you to know I’m ready for it. But he had the I, and then I want to call it a failure, but I’ll just sit like this. He not only did he not get drafted in the seven-round draft come on, but he did not get any phone calls that we know of. Now here again is your baby had a backup number on there or backup amp or something. We don’t know the version of Jerry and might’ve been, but he never, he didn’t get any phone calls to come in and do like a tryout. You know there are undrafted tryout things because that’s a big deal, you know. So there’s the, I thought that I was [inaudible]

I can’t take the call now Bob. That’s what I bought. Y’all. You’re good.

That’s what happened. I got missing calls in the shower, the shower, the whole time version and Bill Belichick. Oh Wow. You missed those. I did. I was reading my laminated [inaudible]

Well you’re so spiritual is I can see where that would happen. Yes. Not to be fair. What have I not been a total failure? I think we did get some correspondence from the Patriot organization. That’s right. You did get some, some correspondence. I did. I actually have [inaudible] right, right. Cause our logo looked too similar to that. [inaudible] Is that t that technically is correspondence,

Right? Well, how great. How great does that make you to give someone advice and then they just turn and walk away like you didn’t give me and then go make that mistake? Does that make you crazy or is that what you’re just going to drag it and go, yeah, I’ve seen it a bunch.

We know at this point I just shrug and say, ah, that’s what you want. So you, you’re looking for zero. You will find it. I trust you. I need to, do you want to listen to me? If you want to take the advice, take it to the next level. Maybe you can turn it into something even better. I don’t know. But if you’re not going to take my advice and I’m, I’m gonna try to guide you and don’t waste my time anymore. It’s the most important thing that we have is our time. So if someone’s burning your time like that, yeah, don’t really offer it.

Yeah, exactly. Now, now you know, we want to, we’d like to do a little hype. We like, we like hyping things right here and we want to hype your book a little bit. So give us a little flavor taste as winter beets. It’s going a little, little, little. How’s your father little, you don’t give us a little, some something in there that’s going to make me want to get on. Either go to my local bookstore. Do they still exist or amazon.com and buy said book because we’re going to buy it here in a little bit. We always buy a book. We love books.

Oh good. Good, good, good, good. So know my book. It’s it’s been a definitely our work of my lifestyle. I’m really super proud of my book most deprecating book and you know, it helps people try to get through their fears and failures and develop you know, a, a definitely a positive.

Nice. Yeah.

Block out the scarcity mindset and develop an abundance mindset. Seems to be, yeah. And that, that’s, that’s what it is. And they will. And a lot of the messages are uplifting and it’s definitely not a cheerleader session or you know, participation, trophy style of format did at least. But it’s, it’s an excellent read and you know, it became a best seller last week. So we’re super psyched about that. So I hope that most of all, it helps a lot of people. You know what I mean?

Z, this is what the Burkle Matt, this is what the book does to the readers. If I have audio of what, how you’re going to feel Oh, good. After you read this book. So you might be feeling right now like [inaudible] nights and people feel like you are too poom with was sweatpants and Gouda. Walmart, there’s certain, there’s a certain phase of people’s life, you know, we were so out there just floated [inaudible] you could be in that mindset or, but this is how you’re gonna fit this. They’re going to feel after, oh, after you rehears most care here, queued up here. Okay. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You’re gonna feel like you’re watching Notre Dame versus miss [inaudible] is flooded, but down. Yeah. Care. 90,000 people get that water at it here. Oh yes, get the book, get the book, pick up the book. If you’re not picking up the book, embracing failure, she may be failing. You may be failing well, but you have to embrace it and go by the book. You got to embrace it and learn from it. You got to, you got to change some stuff. Stuff

You’re already fixed. That’s it.

There you go. Well, if you could go back 25 years in the past and the past, I know you’re writing this book, which I think is really charming that you started with the letters to your kids and all that, and I’m glad, by the way, sidebar, you can get by train. I mean that we know of. I mean we’re going back in the past, he was going back,

Going back, is this going the past? This is the past. So you go back to yourself 25 2025 years ago, and you’re sitting down with yourself and you say self, you look, yeah, you look what’s going on. Cell phones. What would you, what advice would you give yourself?

What advice would I give myself 25 years ago? That’s a good question. So that’s probably the reason why I wrote the book. You know, and cause it was tough. You know, you guys all started your own businesses the first day you started business. It wasn’t a the easiest thing to do in life, but she if you were on your own and you know, he didn’t have a place to stay and food was a commodity that you needed when you were a teenager. So you know, so the reason for the book, you know, don’t let fear be involved in your decision making process. Although you’re going to, you’re going to feel fear. Don’t let it control you because it will make you turn tail most of the time have run. So don’t be such as you’re going to be 100% fine most of the time. If you work hard me, you put God first, your customer’s needs before yours, all else will take care of itself. It just may take some time. And then most important, you know, you can never give up. So when you know you hit obstacles and roadblocks and failures, you gotta just change and get up and keep moving forward. If you do that, you’ll find successful. Definitely find you,

You know, whereas I have, I have a legal question for you that may may tie into a today’s show about pushing through adversity. I would like to ask you, and then maybe Mat Pelletier can chime in on this. We have a listener out there who is a general contractor who is owed $22,000, which is that we have a general contractor out there listening. So Z, this contractor owed $22,000 and it’s 90 days old. Now it’s 90 days old. That money is old a and he’s owed the 22 grand. How much was the complete job? Just, I don’t know that part. I have the details. It says now the general contractor who owes in the money’s ghost in this guy, he won’t return his calls. So he does a little research, does a little dig in into it, finds out guys really not financially very solvent.

The guy who owes him money, he’s probably not in a good space based financially. I told him, this is my advice. I said, hey one, I’m going to ask Wes on the show. But here are my kind of moves. One hope you’ll get, hopefully you learned your lesson. Don’t invoice super poor people. Don’t invoice people, but especially poor people cause they’re not going to pay it to, it’s gonna probably cost you 10 grand to win 20 grand and at least what, 40, 50 hours of your time. I mean, so my advice was talk to west, see if the guy’s even sueable before you try to get it. Because I think a lot of times you have to go support people. You get nothing. A Z. I’ve look at your take Wesson and your take on this z. And then I want to go back to Mat Pelletier on this. If I’m listing right now and I’m just kinda going through this adversity today, I’m, I’m just, you know, trying to, I’m just, I’m trying to embrace the failure, but I also need to get paid. Yeah. w w what advice would you have for this guy who is owed $22,000 90 days old, owed to him by a brook, poor person who’s maybe a deadbeat? Well,

It does tie in well to the conversation with Matt because we’d call some people judgment proof, which means I’m going to sue you, spend a lot of money, get a judgment and all, it’s really just a piece of paper. If they don’t have any money to collect or assets to collect, it’s just a piece of paper you can throw in the trash. It’s not worth anything. So in those situations, you know, you do have to kind of just embrace, hey, this is a business lesson. It was a fail. How can we change our systems? Whether that’s getting paid up front or, you know, getting, you know, putting liens on, you know, property, whatever it is. How do I change my system? So this doesn’t happen again. So I can improve and you know, try to address this in the future. But sometimes people just have to be willing to say, hey, it’s a, this is a lesson I’m going to take it instead of dwelling on it, getting stuck on spending

My fortune and my time fighting for what might be a lost cause. I got to just embrace that was that one’s on me next time I won’t let it have. How much money would it cost this, this thriver to pay you to see if somebody was even sueable somebody who’s now just see if there are judgment proof, no PR. You probably talking about a few hours of time to, to do some bucks for $200 somewhere in that neighborhood and do a deep dive to see if this person is sueable right. You know, you can try to find out what assets they have. You know that are they working through an LLC? Can you get to their personal stuff and you kind of go through a decision tree there to see what they can get to. I want to ask Zia on, this is a young guy,Z , did you ever sue somebody who has judgment proof and then when nothing as a result of fighting?

No, never. Never. I, I don’t doubt that, but I think for the civil listeners out there who don’t know you as well as I do, they may go really? Are you kidding me? No. I never also took a hammer and hit myself in the crotch and the crotch repeatedly either. So surprising. I know, I’m just asking you see you when somebody owes you some money and you know they’re a deadbeat, when do you write it off? What’s your threshold? Well, there’s, there’s different moves and there’s different categories and that’s why I was asking the percentage of the, of the deal for that guy and I don’t know, was it a million dollar deal and now 22 of it based upon the context of this client. I actually believe that’s probably the whole deal. And that’s kind of what I’m assuming too. It’s kind of a kind of a smaller, I mean the thing about it is, is that I’ve also learned you get more flies with honey.

Come on. So you don’t, you don’t ever push the mean button. You don’t talk about attorneys, you don’t about lawsuits. You talk about, hey, can we work something out? Can I get something? What can I do? What can I, how can I help? It’s a lot of times you could maybe get get goods and services. You’re kind of like, okay, you’re a con general contractor. Well maybe you can, you know, I need something done or I need, I need something. Or maybe the guy, that guy’s a don’t pick up truck there that he’s willing to anyway, he didn’t think he’d get your hands on from him. But you’re being nice and kind and trying to work it through. Hey, I know you may be on hard times and it’ll turn around, but what can we do for right now? Cause I mean he’s got payroll, he’s got stuff he’s got to pay. It doesn’t take too many of those deals in a small subs. You guys go sit and he’s the guys got him. This guys goes to them, he said he’s gotta know an address. Scott knows something, right? I mean, you go, you show up, he showed up at his house with a lead pipe. No one was there minus the [inaudible].

It is illegal in Oklahoma, isn’t it? I’m not sure.

And in Oklahoma you, you no longer can hit people too with the led pipe or bludgeoned people to death anymore. That’s been a newer thing. You can, they just frowned upon it and frown upon it. Matt, what’s your take man? You’re in the contracting space. When you have a deadbeat contract and you’re dealing with a dead beat subcontractor, what’s your take on that?

So I, that would be a, that kind of question would reflect back to my earlier days in business because first of all, we have, we don’t do smaller work like that for the reason that if you’re doing small work, a small mistake can be a big problem. So I actually find less risk on the larger projects. So we do, you know, projects like a million is up. And the reason is the customer base that can write a check for 1 million or 10 million, they generally have markets. So a room note yourself, don’t do business with people. We don’t have any money. So that would be a take that your, your clients should to learn from. Don’t do business with people with no money. Just as a general rule, a good thing. And a good way to mitigate that is ask for proof of funds before you do.

If it’s a, so if it’s a $10,000 job or a $10 million job, that’s great. First meet the person. I’m sure it will be a long process of evaluating each other, make sure they have good intentions, you know, and are they good people or are they safe, tannic people or good people with moral values and, you know, try to evaluate the best you can. Not Perfect. But and then after you do contracts, say, ah, I’m gonna need to see some proof of funds. And if they say, I don’t want to show that you are going to have a serious problem on your hands.

So end it now. Yeah, and I think talking about fear, I think when I see this a lot with my clients, it’s because they’re operating out of fear. They’re afraid to turn down any business because they think they need every contract they can get instead of turning down the work. They know in their gut they should turn down out of fear of paying the bills. They just take everything they can get their hands on.

[Inaudible] It always comes back to why this is why you can never ever stop marketing. Like you just cannot stop marketing. Can I give you guys a dirty, dirty, dirty move? Well, let me, let me get my dirty music ready. Let me, okay, I’m ready. This is a, how you doing? Yeah, you do. It’s a, it’s a dirty move to do a 10 99 on them and then that way you know you’ve written the money off. You’re like, it’s done. I’m going to attend 99 I’m gonna. You know what? $22,000 I paid you obviously to hire me to do work I did. And I’m going to let the government go collect their funds off. I get the tax write off at least. Okay. I get that at least. Which at 22,000, which let’s say you’re in the higher tax bracket, could be 40 to 50% of said profits that you made that year that you get to kind of get back.

And then, and then he’s got to deal with a little, an industry called, I don’t know how you pronounce his IRS. Is it ers or is the Ice Island? Is it just oof? I don’t know. It’s called run the other way it’s called. Yeah. Was, but I mean to think about it is that those guys will get there. They will get their pound of flesh one way or another and they’ve got the means to do it and you know, then you just chalk it off and, you know, guess what? I learned a valuable lesson. I need to get, I need to get this book on it. I pushed through failures from Mat Pelletier because he’s going to tell me what to do beforehand next time that I didn’t listen to this time. But I think that’s a, I think being, being cautious and wearing, and when you build a rapport and now all of a sudden you are solving for the same general contractor over and over and you’ve got to re you’ve got to report, you know, you’ve got to, you got your momentum going and now you don’t have to always check because the guy pays and he’s a good guy, you’ve got a good relationship.

But that might be a little secret move. I’ve had friends do that, that have you’ve done some work and didn’t get paid and then they ultimately do that as a, as a form of, at least I get a tax benefit for that loss of money or that could do a business loss on it too. But the one’s a little dirtier than the other. So this is not a super dirty man.

Retaliation, you know what I mean?

West is going to chop that up.

Kate, if you can work out a payment plan and try to settle things amicably and get some kind of forms, a lot of it without going legal, that’s probably your best route. But you know what,

Right. And if they’re ghosting you, you can’t even talk to him to set that up. So I grew up both those things. I’m mad as an attorney. I wholeheartedly agree. Lawsuits should be your last resort always. And two from a 10 99 in them, it is a move. And basically you’re forgiving their debt to you and when you forgive someone’s debt, technically that’s can be income to them. And so you send them a 10 99 for the amount of debt that you forgave, that they owed you. And then, and then they have to deal with the repercussions of that, which, you know, you don’t have that big a hammer, but the federal uncle Sam, he’s got a big enough hammer for anybody and do be created, like you mentioned, you know, we’ve had to do that with clients before to to carpenter, hey, we were gonna Remodel the office.

Then couple months, we do some work for us. Or you got a car. I’ve seen attorneys take golf clubs and all kinds of stuff from clients. I mean, anything is better than nothing. If you’re getting down to that, that desperate, right? Anything’s better than nothing and anything that had the value that they can pay you or I mean being nice just saying, let’s just work out a payment plan. Can you pay me 500 bucks a month for the, you know, for the next three years. I mean, whatever it is, I mean, something’s better than nothing having a deal. Would you recommend getting that in writing at that point west? Does it matter? You know, usually what I would suggest is if, let’s say you’re behind 20 grand and you say, okay, well I’ll take payments on it, I’d do a promissory note. So if I stopped paying you again, you don’t have to go fight over the original contract and whether or not you did the work. Now you’ve got a nice clean, simple note that says, I owe you this much here. My payments, if I don’t make payments, I can collect. The note

Guys, here’s the deal. I had a respect for Matt’s time as well as I have to go board a boat here to get on this cruise ship

And I’ve gotta, I’ve gotta

Board this boatZ and with great fear, I shut board the book. I’m wondering if here, I wonder if they have any pocket cranberry on that boat. Your plane move. I feel like I need to think, I don’t know. The music that I keep finding is this not as scary as how I feel the boat is like this is, let me get this is better probably because there we go. This is how I feel. They’re like [inaudible] passengers will be porting the boat to the sunny Caribbean. Harold port of call will be Jamaica. We’ll just stand there. [Inaudible] that captain slip that kind of rails off there. Well, you can’t live like that. Seriously. You can’t be afraid. You gotta push on, you gotta get bored. That boat, you got to push through the pain. You got to embrace that failure. Mat Pelletier, thank you for being on the show. Oh Clay, I’ve got one party mode on a new party note for Matt and one for West

To you. I think you should as a, as a father figure in your life play. I think you should go home tonight and Binge Watch titanic as many times as you can. That’ll give you the had dreams. Here we go up few you a little cowbell always helps titanic check. Yeah Jack and he just dead body falls the bottom of the ocean. If you live in green country, Oklahoma and really anywhere in the world, I mean you’ll take clients from anywhere. Right west. We got clients all over the world, all over the world. This thing called a telephone or internet. You could contact Wesson and they’ve got a great first time like step in deal. Like what? What do you guys offer? Like somebody calls up says, I don’t know if I want to use this guy or not. Taco for the first year it was at a free awesome would be awesome.

No, just free 15 minute consultation so we can make sure I want to work with you and work with me and suddenly do well. She could be selective of your own people. Then I at that place where there are some clients that are better off going somewhere else and Matt, I’ll tell you what, for people to understand that failure is really an opportunity to learn and to grow. Is is an awesome thing. The fact that you wrote a book, a bestselling book about that, I think that you know so many times you want to celebrate success and outbreak, good times come out and not realize that behind every success, what 10 20 a hundred thousand failures from heaven. Thomas Edison had only had what, 10,000 experiments that didn’t work. I mean failed experiments at the 10th one’s laboratory combined. I mean crazy. That’s a lot of failures. That’s a lot. Fedex over 10 years, ESPN over 10 years, Tesla still failing but becoming more profitable. Okay, so now that the further I do, here we go. See three, two, one, boom.

If you have ever thought about attending the in-person two day interactive thrive time show business conferences, we’ve thought we’d share with you what the thrive time show business conferences is like it compared to attending a Tony Robbins business conference. So I called up a thriver who’s actually attended an in person Tony robins conference and who’s actually attended our conference and who’s been very successful in the game of business. And I thought I’d just ask them directly, how does the thrive time show interactive business conferences compare to attending a Tony Robbins conference or any other type of business conference? So Ladies and gentlemen, now without any further ado, we have a gentleman from Oklahoma City who recently attended our last in-person thrive time show business conferences sharing with you about his experience.

Yeah, he’s a little more find your passion yeah. Out of your and you had so much content in your, like I took so much notes. It was crazy. I went, I went back immediately and started the group interview. So I went through two group interview processes and I know you’ve got the very little time, but I want to tell you this, we had this guy that was a web developer and he everything on paper, he was like, yeah, I do c plus plus all this stuff. So we said, hey, come in for a four hour shadow. He comes in two days ago and he knew crap. He didn’t do nothing. So I was going to hire that guy.

Oh. And I, and I tell you what, before I discovered the group interview, I have done that. I mean I have, I mean I, we think we’ve all done that. I mean that’s the group interview shall set you free.

Oh Man. Every last two weeks, every Wednesday at 5:00 PM we did the interview and it took no time out of my day cause by 5:00 PM I’m already back at the office. I’m not like making time for it. Right. So that’s great man. I, I really appreciate all of the stuff that you said.

Well, Hey, I got to ask you this, because we have people all the time that really enjoy Tony Robbins conference and conferences and people who enjoy ours. How would you compare the two from your perspective, the Tony robins conferences versus our co business conferences?

Well, I think, I think the main thing was that you weren’t required to get up and act like a monkey.

Jump around. And, you know, I’m, I’m in, I’m a very, I’m commuting traunch and the reason why we’re such good friends as kid, we are, we’re so much alike. We’re introverts, right? And I would call myself an introverted extrovert. But you basically get in there and you get down to the, maybe gree, you get pass all the high five and bs and you’re getting straight down to like, hey, what do we need to do to build our business? And you’re around successful people at Tony Robbins, you’re just around inbody.

And so I felt, I felt so surrounded with what, like I felt, I didn’t feel like near this most successful person in the room. Like, cause I’ll walk in the room now, you know, around here and I’m around herbal lifers and a bunch of people that, you know, basically call themselves an entrepreneur and then you get into a conference like that and you’re like walking around rock stars, multimillionaires. Yup. And I just felt like I was in the right spot.

We know we have, I think at the conference, I think we had 70 70 more than 70 people there who had multimillion-dollar companies at the conference out of an attendance of like 120 people, you know, I mean it’s just at that really is a powerful thing. We had one guy there who sold, you know, a lot of realtors struggle to sell, you know, $5 million a year of sales or 10 million. This guy sold $58 million of real estate last year. I mean, it’s just, it’s a different, a different league. What was your highlight, just so I can share it with the team? What was your highlight of the conference? The part where you go that right there was the best part or maybe some of your favorite parts.

Well, I saw, I thought there were a few different parts. Okay. So I thought the little sideline thing that you took everybody apart with the MCO. I thought that was one of my favorite parts. The group interview deal was the, was another favorite part. And then the Google or you just, I guess more topics than anything. Yeah, but I mean you were great man. Like every time you stood up and spoke, I was all ears and it was just, I mean, taking notes like crazy, but those three things were the same. The key takeaways is my first time coming that I immediately was like, I’m going to go home and I want to do these things right now. And I literally went home and I was like, do we have a sitemap and we have a clickable phone number. Do you know what I mean? Like I was literally on top of my designer the next day.

That’s great. That’s great. Why I appreciate you sharing that because we just try to make our conferences so actionable and I think we’ve all run through the minefield of crazy business conferences where they maybe get one good thing and we’d come home and we’d go. That one thing was a game-changer, but that’s all I got. I was there for three days or two days or, and all I got was one thing. And I’m so glad that you went home with a lot of things.

Yeah, man. I feel like I’ve already gotten value, like major values without coaching. So y’all need, you’re doing, you’re doing a great job and I love seeing like you’re, you’re a biography and all of the stuff he’s done and that’s why I want to work with someone that he served dogs feet and I really felt like you were that guy.

Well, I appreciate you saying that my friend and each conference, just so you know, it’s a little bit different. I’d say each conference is probably 85% different because of the questions that are asked. So each time you go, you’re, it’s like the same kind of guard rails we’re going to get through the 13 points, but how we get there is different every time based upon those questions. So I can’t wait to see at the next one,

Tim, the world’s best business conferences led by America’s number one business coach for free by subscribing on iTunes and leaving us an objective review. Claim your tickets by emailing us proof that you did it, and your contact information to info at thrive time. Show.Com.