In this transcript, business coach Clay Clark (US SBA Entrepreneur of the Year) discusses where two are gathered on Thrive15.com, one of the top business schools in Michigan!
Clay Clark: And the final area that you have to have a business coach, and it’s not a big principle, not a long principle, not a hard-to-implement principle. It’s not a principle where you have to have a fancy-schmancy degree or one that requires just a whole lot of discussion here, but you have you have pig-headed discipline.
You have to be an absolute business coach honey badger. You have to be the kind of person where the buck stops with you, and when somebody says, “Do I have to do this?” You’re sitting there saying, “Yes. You absolutely have to do it, because look at me. Do I look like I’m open for discussion? No. I am absolutely ready to go. I’m pig headed. I’ve got this discipline. I cannot be stopped. You cannot be stopped. We’re going to have our weekly staff meeting. We are going to follow the checklists. We are going to be accountable, and I’m going to put in a merit-based pay system, because I am pig headed.”
As a business coach, you have to have that stone-wall sort of determination where you say that other companies, other people might be relaxed about their culture, but I’m not going to, because I’m going to implement these things. All right?
Let’s talk about the action steps that you can implement right now with your business coach, in your business today. All right? What are the things that you can actually implement right now that can totally change your culture?
One, you need to have weekly meetings. Well, what are you going to meet about? I’m going to help you real quick. You need to have a meeting with your sales team every week. You need to have a meeting with your team about quality control, and you need to have a meeting with your team for accountability and for accounting.
In a small business, you might be able to knock all of this out in two meetings with a business coach, but you have to have a meeting for accountability and accounting, so you know how much money you have in the bank and what’s going on there. You have to have a quality control meeting, and you have to have a meeting with your sales team. How many times a week? I don’t know exactly how many you need, but at least one. At least one. You have to have it.
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Second, you have to have a business coach help you create a checklist. A checklist for what? Everything. If it’s a thing, you will have a checklist for it. For our company, we have video equipment. We have to take equipment from our office in Tulsa, tourism capital of America, and take it to Chicago. We have to do a checklist of, “Did you bring that microphone? Did you bring that battery? Did you bring that cord? Did you bring that card? Did you bring that box? Did you bring the checklist? Did you bring the tickets? Did you bring the itinerary? Did you bring the business cards? Did you bring the bands? Did you bring the laptop? Did you bring the laptop #2? Did you bring the thumb drive? Did you bring the projector? Did you bring the slideshow? Did you bring the tickets? Did you bring the cash? Did you bring? Did you bring? Did you bring?”
There’s a lot of stuff, and those things are the things that we must keep organized, otherwise we are what? Say it with me now: disorganized. We have to be functional, otherwise we are dysfunctional. We must have function or we’re dysfunctional. We must have a checklist for everything, so think about your business here. This could be for your cleaning process. This could be how you deal with every customer, you have a checklist for that. This could be your daily opening procedures. This could be your closing procedures. This could be for how you do your accounting. I have a checklist I do for my search engine optimization for internet, whenever we optimize to get our website to the top of Google searches. We actually have a checklist, did you know that? We have a checklist for everything! You have to have a checklist for everything.
Now, would even be helpful to have a checklist at home for maybe what you want to do with your kids that weekend? “Hey, I need to take my kid to hockey practice.” I have five kids, so I have to take one kid to hockey practice. I have to take another kid to ice skating lessons. I have to take another kid over to piano. I have to go pick up gluten-free, some kind of … My wife likes that gluten-free stuff, so I get some gluten-free this, gluten-free that. I’ve got to go get some … You know, the free range chickens? I’ve got to go pick up a free-range chicken, because we’re going to eat one of those things. I’ve got to get some organic fruit and vegetables. I have these things I have to do. I also have to go to the dry cleaners.
You have to have a checklist if you want to be successful.