In this transcript, Caleb Taylor (business coach student and Thrive correspondent) and discuss the importance of Clay Clark (speaker of choice for Hewlett-Packard, Maytag University, and more) on Thrive15.com, the best business coach program.
In this transcript, Caleb Taylor (business coach student and Thrive correspondent) and discuss the importance of Clay Clark (speaker of choice for Hewlett-Packard, Maytag University, and more) on Thrive15.com, the best business coach program.Caleb Taylor: So, you have to articulate to yourself and your team your financial goal.
Clay Clark: Financial goal, then how much. How much product you have to sell, service you have to sell …
Caleb Taylor: To get to that business coach financial goal.
Clay Clark: And then third, is you’re going to explain specifically how, in terms of like the nuance, in terms of the actual, “What are you going to provide.”
Caleb Taylor: Okay.
Clay Clark: And for us, it was over delivering humorous enthusiasm.
Caleb Taylor: Good. Those are specific action steps to execute our principal. I love it.
Clay Clark: Bam!
Caleb Taylor: Okay, let’s go down to step number two.
Clay Clark: Pumped up!
Caleb Taylor: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Set up a structure, chaos and poverty results from business coach disorganization.
Clay Clark: Hmm.
Caleb Taylor: Okay, we’ve got another notable quotable here. This notable quotable comes from Michael Gerber, and this comes from his book, “The Most Successful Small Business.” He says, “Most entrepreneurs are merely technicians with an entrepreneurial seizure. Most entrepreneurs fail because you are working in your business, rather than on your business.” Clay, what does this mean to you?
Clay Clark: Well, what’s happening is if you don’t have a structure for your business, like if you don’t have a specific way … So let’s just go through a business, just real quickly.
Clay Clark: Marketing, okay?
Caleb Taylor: Yeah.
Clay Clark: Sales. Let’s say this is fulfillment, quality control and this is your accounting. If you don’t have a specific way that you market, a specific size for your logo, with a specific color and a specific brand standard, a specific brochure, a specific website, a specific slogan, a specific brand, a concept, then you will get casualties, to quote my friend Tim Redmond, and my former boss. Casualness creates casualties.
So, if you don’t have a specific business coach system for sales, and it’s casual, because you’re working in the business … You’re like, you’re on the phone, you’re the owner right now. If you’re the owner right now and you’re the one personally making all the sales calls and you don’t have a script, you’re working in the business. So you’re actually literally mopping the floors, making the sales calls, doing the accounting. Nothing’s written down and it’s casual, then nobody can replicate it. It’s like trying to replicate … When you make a cookie, you know, if you make gingerbread cookies, in theory they have that stuff you can buy at Target, you know, it’s like the cookie cutter.
Caleb Taylor: Yeah.
Clay Clark: If you buy a cookie cutter, you should be able to make the same cookie over and over times a thousand, with no deviation.
Caleb Taylor: Yeah, it’s their system.
Clay Clark: But if you’re making a recipe with nothing written down and you’re using a cookie cutter that’s like you’re making with an Exacto knife, nobody can follow it. So you have to have a business coach system for the marketing, for the sales, for the quality control, for the accounting, and you as an owner need to be working on your business … Thrive15.com can help you do that as one of the best sales training programs.
Caleb Taylor: Right.
Clay Clark: To create these systems, so that you are not casual, and therefore you do not create casualties. Because if I come to work for you and you don’t have systems, you’re freaking me out.
Caleb Taylor: So what Michael’s saying and what you’re saying here, is when you’re working in your business, you’re really just an employee working a lot more hours …
Clay Clark: Yes.
Caleb Taylor: Than all the other employees. I know there’s a lot of entrepreneurs that decided that they wanted to be their own boss.
Clay Clark: Both.
Caleb Taylor: They went and started their own company, but in the process they didn’t build a system. So now they’re still an employee, they’re just working a whole lot more than they were before.
Clay Clark: Let’s get some real specifics about this, okay?
Caleb Taylor: Good.
Clay Clark: I’m going to try to help you. So again, I just want to make sure you’re seeing this, okay? This is how I do it, specifically. Because I have five kids, okay?
Caleb Taylor: Right.
Clay Clark: So from four a.m. to seven a.m. I like to work on my business. Four a.m. to seven a.m., sometimes four a.m. to eight a.m. From eight a.m. to five p.m., that’s where I work in my business.
Caleb Taylor: So what do some tasks look like when you’re working on your business?
Clay Clark: Well, on my business, I say what happened yesterday that was wrong, and what is a system that I can build to fix it so it never happens again.
Caleb Taylor: Good.
Clay Clark: So like today when I came upstairs, here, I was thinking to myself, I’m like, “Gosh, I’m wondering why the TV in the lobby,” because we just put a TV in there, “Why it has audio?” I don’t want it to have audio. It shouldn’t have audio, because it doesn’t make sense because we need to have lobby music. So I wrote down on my piece of paper immediately, “I need to create a checklist that states what the TV needs to have on it downstairs.”
Caleb Taylor: Built a system.
Clay Clark: Built a system.
Caleb Taylor: Good.
Clay Clark: I wondered about six months ago, “Why does our bathroom consistently smell awful?” And “is the trash not being taken out in the morning?” So I looked and I said, “Is this a system problem?” So I look at the system and I’m like, “Is this on the checklist?” And I realized it was on the checklist, right?
Caleb Taylor: Yeah.
Clay Clark: We had a great checklist, and we had a horrible person doing it.
Caleb Taylor: Okay.
Clay Clark: So I made a switch, and now we have the incredible Renda, and she’s bringing some splenda to the job and now it’s going great.