Business Coach: Goal Setting

The following transcript explains goal setting for your business with Clay Clark, US Small Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year, Business Coach and Caleb Taylor on Thrive15.com, the best Ohio business college.

Clay Clark:                  Man, when I knew that I was going to be on the set today this business coach got excited

Caleb Taylor:             Oh, I look forward to it every time.

Clay Clark:                  Yeah, I knew you did.

Caleb Taylor:             Mostly because I don’t know what you’re going to say. You keep us all on the edge of our seats.

Clay Clark:                  As a business coach I was actually on the end of my seat just a minute ago until I kind of adjusted.

Caleb Taylor:             Good, good. Well you know what, you’re going to sit on the edge of your seat this whole time because we’re talking about some fun stuff here. We are talking about accounting and financial planning, but specifically goal setting by numbers. I’m glad that were talking about this with you, not just because you’re an attractive man, but also because you didn’t grow up with a trust fund, you didn’t grow up with a lot of wealth, that just propelled you to the success that you have now.

Clay Clark:                  Yeah.

Caleb Taylor:             You learned how to set specific goals in your business financially. You learned how to save, you learned how to re-invest it. You learned what was necessary to succeed and that’s how you made it where you are today. That’s why I’m excited to hear from you.

Clay Clark:                  I appreciate that. Honestly, I like to joke around and keep things light but I will tell you, if you’re watching this and you’re coming from a place of financial desperation or frustration, it can be tough.

Caleb Taylor:             Yes.

Clay Clark:                  The Gallup poll came out a research on this. There’s a lot of other studies but they were showing that 13% of American employees are engaged in their jobs. Some other stats show 20% of Americans are engaged in their jobs, but the point is that very few people are actively working in something that they’re passionate about. Yet there’s all sorts of data that we can pop up on the screen here. I know we’ve got a lot of data we can show you here, but most Americans cannot afford to retire.

Caleb Taylor:             Right.

Clay Clark:                  That means that most people are doing a job that they don’t like and then they can’t retire at the end of a lifetime of working at that job. I do believe that life is not a dress rehearsal. If we’ll just take ownership of the numbers in our life, we can do awesome things, and live a life of abundance, and not just to get by. We’re going to teach you specifically how to do it with numbers today.

Caleb Taylor:             Good. Yeah, you have a book about that. You talk about how life’s not a dress rehearsal, make it epic. I know this as a successful business coach.

Clay Clark:                  Absolutely.

Caleb Taylor:             Make your life epic.

Clay Clark:                  Yeah, absolutely.

Caleb Taylor:             By setting these specific goals financially that will help you get to the point where you can wake up every day, and you do something you love doing.

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Clay Clark:                  Yeah. I can honestly say, there’s things that always in hindsight, I wish I would have done this, wish I would have done that. I can honestly say when I go to the store, I don’t sit around and look for the best price anymore. I used to, that used to be the number one focus. I used to just go, “Gosh, how am I going to afford this or that?”

Caleb Taylor:             Right.

Clay Clark:                  Now our cars are paid for, we don’t really have debt, but at the same time we don’t spend like a bunch of crazy people either.

Caleb Taylor:             Right.

Clay Clark:                  We’re pretty frugal. I buy five blue suits a year. I like to wear those suit every day…

Caleb Taylor:             You’ve got a couple red ties don’t you?

Clay Clark:                  Yeah, but it’s a plethora. Plethora … I don’t know if that’s a word you’re…

Caleb Taylor:             No, no, I’m familiar…

Clay Clark:                  Understand, but okay yeah.

Caleb Taylor:             Good. Well lets jump right into this, okay. I know that I’ve heard you say, “One of the most important things when setting goals by the numbers, is identifying that breakeven point in your business.” At what point are you no longer losing money?

Clay Clark:                  Can we just show you up here?

Caleb Taylor:             Please, please.

Clay Clark:                  This is big, take it from me a business coach.

Caleb Taylor:             Come on.

Clay Clark:                  If you’re driving your car, and I’m hoping that you have a car that has some of these features working. One of the first cars I had was a Ford Escort, and the car just didn’t have certain features that other cars have … Here’s my steering wheel. Over here you have a gage, maybe here you have a gage, maybe here you have a gage, but this one is the empty, this is the full, this is your gas.

Caleb Taylor:             Sure.

Clay Clark:                  You say, “I’m on E.”

Caleb Taylor:             Right.

Clay Clark:                  Well then you have one that’s like here it will say oil pressure or your RPMs. Let’s just say its RPMs. You have one here and again this tells you whether you’re driving the engine really hard or not so much at all. Then you have some other gauges here. Well in business, what we’re going to want to do is we’re going to have three basic gauges that are very important.

One is the breakeven point. We need to know how many transactions we need to do every month to break even.

Caleb Taylor:             Okay.

How many transactions do we need to break even?

Clay Clark:                  At what point are you no longer losing money in your business?

Caleb Taylor:             That’s right.

Clay Clark:                  Okay.

Caleb Taylor:             That’s a number we need to know. Very important and I don’t want to skip ahead but you have to know that. I would bet you 50% of business owners I meet, maybe even 70% of business owners I meet to hire me as a coach or want to help them, have no idea what that number is. If you’re watching this right now, how many deals do you have to do a month just to break even?