In this business coach transcript, Caleb Taylor (Thrive15 correspondent) and Clay Clark (Founder of Thrive15.com, one of the top business schools in PA) discuss the importance of setting networking goals.
Clay: You know what, when I wore this great red tie today I first thought about freedom.
Caleb: SO MUCH BUSINESS COACH KNOWLEDGE
Clay: And then I thought about the fact that I was going to wear this tie anyway.
Caleb: Oh, yeah.
Clay: So, I put it on.
Caleb: That’s great. I think it really brings out your lips.
Clay: Red, white and blue, baby.
Caleb: The color in your lips, it’s beautiful. No, it’s a compliment.
Clay: No, it’s fine. I don’t know if you got the business coach Hatorade that I sent to you. I sent you some bottles of [Hatorade 00:01:49]. I hope you can sip it when you’re…
Caleb: [Crosstalk 00:01:51]. Oh, well, that’s okay. I think you’re misinterpreting the business coach compliments. That’s okay.
Okay, we’re talking about networking today, okay?
Clay: Yeah.
Caleb: We’ll do networking.
Clay: Sure.
Caleb: Specifically, talking about setting networking goals. I feel that a lot of people, there’s a whole group of people that struggle to set goals.
Clay: Yeah.
Caleb: Then there’s a different group of people who don’t ever think about setting goals when it comes to networking.
Clay: I will say this. I think we all, in some area of our lives, struggle with goal setting. Some of us, like let’s say fitness is the area where we’re just like, “I don’t set very good goals there.” Or in terms of like family, how do you set family goals? I’m just making up an example, but if I’m a dad and I wanted to have a great relationship with my son, I need to set a goal for a number of times that we can have interactions together. That’s a quantifiable goal.
Caleb: Right.
Clay: For some reason, anything that’s like a soft skill or a soft … like it’s [inaudible 00:02:48] of like not immediately, it’s not obvious how to measure it.
Caleb: Yeah.
Clay: If it’s a hockey game, you keep score. This team had these many points, this team had these many points. It’s easy to measure that. How do you build good relationships? It’s hard to quantify that.
Caleb: Right.
Clay: At least, at a quick business coach glance. We need to do, anything that we want to have success then we need to measure it. You cannot manage it if you can’t measure it. You really need to make sure that we are coming up with a quantifiable number for anything which we care to see succeed in our lives.
Caleb: Right. You can’t make improvements if you can’t see where you’re struggling and see how you’ve improved. It makes sense.
Clay: Absolutely.
Caleb: You’ve done this with networking. I’ve seen you do it. I’ve seen you, whether it’s identify people, you’ve said, “You know what, in six months I’m going to be good friends with that person.”
Clay: I’ve done this.
Caleb: I’ve seen you. That’s a goal that you achieved.
Clay: Yeah.
Caleb: You’ve done it. I’m excited to hear how you did it in the DJ world and how you do it with Thrive. I think you’re a great person to be teaching this, because you didn’t come from a crazy wealthy family who had incredible connections. Clay is a real person who made this happen by implementing these principles, and we’re going to teach you how to do that today.
Clay: Yeah. I’m going to give you one example of one. We can follow that relationship through this.
Caleb: Okay.
Clay: Clifton Taulbert is one of our Thrive business coach mentors.
Caleb: Yeah.
Clay: He has been a guy that has changed my life. I know if you’ve watched any other episodes you might know this at this point, but Clifton grew up during the time of legal segregation where he’s a black person, he could not go into a bank. As an African-American, he could not walk into the front door of a bank. He ended up going so far high up the ladder that he ultimately owned his own bank.
I remember thinking, “Gosh, if I could just meet him, that could change my life.” Systematically, the principles that we’re teaching today, I used those principles and ultimately have become a friend with him today. It’s just been neat to see how that works. I’m telling you, you can absolutely meet new people that can have the power to change your life if you’ll follow these principles.
Caleb: I wanted to quickly read something that I found in Forbes that blew me away. I love this. Okay. It said, “There was a fascinating study conducted on the 1979 Harvard MBA program where graduate students were asked, ‘Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?’ The result, only 3% had written goals and plans, 13% had goals but they weren’t in writing, and 84% had no goals at all.”
Clay: Yeah.
Caleb: This is where I love this part. “Ten years later, the same group was interviewed again and the result was mind-blowing. The 13% of the class who had goals but did not have them written down were earning twice the amount of the 84% who had no goals. The 3% who had written goals were earning, on average, 10 times as much as the other 97% of the class combined.”
Clay: I want to tell you something real quick. I promise to have a point here. If you watch the movie Star Wars, the way that George Lucas directed is he never told the actors what was coming around the corner on the plot line. That way, they get their initial reaction on camera. This is one of these moments for you.
Years ago, when you’re a graduate from high school, roughly, and I remember hearing about how well you were doing in school and talking to your dad, I thought, “Man, Caleb Taylor would be an awesome guy someday to have work with us. I don’t know how, I just know that he’s a high integrity guy. We need to have him work with us in some capacity.”
I remember meeting your dad originally when I discovered that he was very successful as an entrepreneur, and I remember being like, “I really want to get to know that guy.” But I had to decide that I’m going to get to know your father. It was systematic. It required phone calls. It’s was awkward, the first calls. We didn’t know what to say, we didn’t know what to…
Caleb: You just take action and you do it.
Clay: It’s a systematic process. I’m just telling anybody watching this, whether you want to have a guy like Caleb work with you someday, or you want to have a contact with your dad, or whether it’s Clifton Taulbert, or David Robinson, the NBA Hall of Famer, we can all do this if we would just sit down and put our ideas, turn it into things. Write it down.
Caleb: Yeah.
Clay: Do it. I’m telling you, it can happen.
Caleb: You got to make it happen.