Answering Mailbag Questions

Audio Transcription

 

If you are an entrepreneur you can submit a question through the Thrive Time website and it could potentially be answered on-air. In this episode business coach, Clay Clark, and his trusted co-host answer your personal  business questions. it is their joy to help other entrepreneurs to solve the issues in your businesses that hold you back.

Listen To The Business Coach As He Answers Questions : Podcast Transcript

Announcer 1: [music] Now broadcasting from the center of the universe and the thrive15.com world headquarters.

Presenting the world’s only business school without the BS, with optometrist an entrepreneur Dr. Robert Zoellner and of course small business administration entrepreneur of the year in your ear, Clay Clark it’s the Thrive Time Show, on talk radio 1170. Three, two, one, boom.

[background music]

Clay Clark: What is going on Tulsa and welcome back to the high energy Tuesday edition of The Thrive Time Show. On Tuesdays we don’t have a two hour format, we only have the one hour, one hour of power. One hour of power every Tuesdays we have one hour of power to pump Tulsa up. That’s all we got, so just one hour.

Dr. Robert Zoellner: That’s right that’s why I’m renaming it Onesday.

Clay: Onesday.

Dr. Z: Instead of two hour day, we only have one hour so it’s Onesday not Tuesday.

Clay: So we’re going to get into something that thrivers are asking about, people want to know because you can email [email protected], and when you do, we actually read those and each show is based upon the questions that you’re asking. So my name is Clay Clark I’m the former SPA entrepreneur of the year and I am business coach here, I’m joined here with Dr. Robert Zoellner and we have a very special guest with us here today, doctor Z.

Dr. Z: Very special guest. We pulled her out of retirement.

Clay: We pulled her out of retirement.

Dr. Z: I mean we forced her out of retirement. She was clawing and we just drugged her out.

Clay: She was in a hammock just looking out over the river, just enjoying the easy–

Dr. Z: Umbrellas–

Clay: Her little margaritas totally retired we brought her out. Miss Chera Kimiko.

Chera Kimiko: Hello hello hello hello.

Clay: Welcome back.

Chera: Thank you, it’s good to be back.

Clay: What we are talking of, we have a question that was asked and I’m going to read the question to you but it says, “How do you guys get up the boldness needed to start a business?” How do you guys get up the boldness needed to and so that’s a pretty simple answer– I can probably give you a pretty simple answer, but I want to break it down and really make sure I give you a depth into it so that I hit it from all the different ways. So I broke it down into this little memory mechanism here called brave, okay? So the first part of the brave the letter B is bold. You have to be bold and I have a notable quotable Z, that I want to read to the thrivers out there.

Dr. Z: Oh please do.

Clay: This is from Steve Jobs okay, you can Google this.

Dr. Z: Steve Jobs, who’s that?

Clay: He’s the guy who co-founded Apple. He is the former CEO of Pixar and he says this. He says, “You can’t control the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backward, so you have to trust the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something your gut, destiny, life, karma whatever, but you’ve got to have that faith guys you got a faith.” Z, if someone’s listening right now and they’ve always wanted to start a business and for whatever reason they just can’t pull the trigger it’s ready aim aim aim, but I just don’t fire. Ready aim aim, encourage these people Z, how can they get started? What will they need to do?

Dr. Z: Well I tell you what, you know what’s so fantastic about this show even though it’s one hour? We’ve got the perfect person on here to help encourage people and a lot of times that’s what you do in life, if you say, “I’m having a hard time doing it.” You find someone who did the thing and then they can help pump you up. I know we tease about pumping them up a lot but that’s part of the game and so on the show today’s Miss Chera Kimiko, who somebody said yes the number one anchor in Tulsa for years and years and years and some would say a cushy well wanted job.

I mean there’s what a thousand people trying to get that job, thousands of people trying to be anchors on TV. So they go, “Okay you made it, you’re at the pinnacle, your number one in the market. You’re rocking it.” Then all of a sudden you step out of that comfort zone and you step into entrepreneurship. You step in starting your own business and that’s just– some people look at that and they go, “That’s crazy, the security the thing dadadada dadadada.”

Clay: Why’d you do it?

Dr. Z: So one of the things I would tell you if you can’t find people like Chera, and sit down with her, buy her a cup of coffee, and say, “Hey encourage me. Help me because I saw what you did, mentor me.” That’s what the show is about, so Chera, I throw it to you. I mean here you are your number one anchor and Tulsa then all of a sudden you said to yourself time for a change, viola.

Chera: Yes it was time for a change and I was scared and we talked about that, it’s a scary venture, it’s a scary thing. What are you going to do financially? Who’s going to stand behind you? I just say go for it, you have to. That’s why kids sometimes are able to do a lot of things that we’re in awe about, because they don’t have the inhibitions and they have not been knocked down so many times like adults have been, and they’re able just to do it because they have no fear. I say when you want to start your own business, go back into your inner child and have that no-fear. Start knocking on the doors, and who cares if people say no because for all the no’s that you’re going to get, there’s going to be someone that believes in you and says, “Yes.” But you have to pick up the phone, you have to make contacts, you have to make calls.

Clay: I have a little checklist I always tell people, they always say, “When do I know if it’s time to start a business or not?” This is my thing I call it the fear method, okay, it’s F-E-A-R, so I’m going to get and do it. F you got to have the finances together, you are going to have a little bit of a war chest.

Dr. Z: Yes you do.

Clay: You don’t he’s just completely like, “I want to start a business.” Because most businesses fail because they are underfunded. So you got to save, you got to have some sort of financial realities. E- you have to have evidence that the world actually wants the product.

Dr. Z: Evidence.

Clay: So here’s a move you can do in this move was done by Tim Ferriss, who’s the author of The 4-hour Work Week, I don’t know if I’ve ever told the story on air, but it’s beautiful and you can verify it, its awesome. What he did is he wanted to become a best-selling author, but he’d never written a book before. So he thought I’m going to run google ads for various book titles, and whatever one gets the most clicks and people that actually try to buy it, that’s the one I’ll write.

Dr. Z: [laughs]

Chera: Really that’s awesome.

Dr. Z: That’s a beautiful move.

Chera: I love that.

Clay: You want to move but you want to have evidence that people actually want it, so one thing that I do a lot, is if I have a business idea that someone’s working on I say, “Let’s go and build a website, let’s launch ads.” They go, “But I can’t even deliver the service yet.” It doesn’t matter, run the ads and when people try to buy it just tell him you’re all booked out they’re not available yet.

Chera: [laughs] I see.

Announcer: You’re listening to The Thrive Time Show on talk radio1170.

Clay: That is not my move, that’s actually a move that’s taught in The Lean Startup book by Eric Ries in the guise of a Recliner Perkins is one the biggest venture capital funds in the world, but you want to have evidence that what you think is a market is actually market. Now this A this is the part that have to be action orientated. You have to go ahead and block out time in your schedule realistically and say, “When do I have time to take action?” If you’re a mom and you have kids and you are going, “I don’t have but 10 hours a week.” That’s okay, but just commit to those 10 hours. If you say, “I already have a job.” So my wife and I we started our businesses, I had three jobs. I made all my cold calls in route to the other jobs.

I literally would call people back from my singular limited minute cell phone with the big old buttons that weird phone I got, I would call– I make my calls on the way to west telecommunication. That’s how I did it. This R and this is the part that you got to think about it, at what point will you get a return on your money? How long will it take you until you can break even? Then these are things you just want to think about, quick checklist go through those before you get started and now we’re moving on to this second powerful principle, this concept of being brave, is you have to be R relentless.

I don’t know Z, how you would define relentlessness, but I’m going to go ahead and read off a little notable quotable here and then I want to have you unpack it here. Okay, this is big George Washington Carver he says, “Start where you are, with what you have. Make something of it and never be satisfied.” That’s George Washington Carver the famous inventor who was born into slavery and went on to invent countless inventions and uses of the peanut that helped liberate his people economically, but he just said start where you stand, and that guy was relentless about inventing things that would help economically produce income for the African-American people at the time. Z, how would you define relentlessness?

Dr. Z: I tell you what I am going to take it back to the farm.

Clay: Okay here we go.

[Background music]

Dr. Z: Yee-haw. It’s time for a little farm logic. You see [laughs] you see my number two rule in business is. Oh yes, number two, that means it’s important, and that is you want to be the pig at breakfast and not the chicken.

Clay: What do you mean?

Chera: I like chicken.

Dr. Z: The pig is committed, the pig gave his life for breakfast, the chickens just involved just laid some eggs and said, “If it works out I’m here. I’m going to contribute this to breakfast but I’ve got other things to do.” The pig said, “I’m giving my life to it,” and that’s what relentless is. Relentless is waking up and saying to yourself, “I’m going to do whatever it is I need to do.” Being fully committed and having that drive to say, “No one’s going to hand it to you. No one’s going to give it to you.” Your competitors, they never came and made my mortgage, they didn’t even make a car payment.

Clay: What?

Dr. Z: Yes they didn’t and so I had to get up every morning and be fully committed and I think that’s part of that relentless thing, is that you have to have that commitment. You have to be the pig at breakfast. You’ve got to give everything.

Chera: I would even like to add onto that is to have a relentless attitude and go for it, is to bring yourself back to what you do as a parent every day. Because as a parent you are relentless to make sure that your child gets needs or has whatever they want. You’re relentless to raise them as a good child. There are no real good books that fit any specific or certain person on raising a child, but you do your best every day, and you do your best on what motivates you, motivates them and you take it to the next level to help them become a better human being. I’m formulating that is because you put a lot of effort into your children and that’s how the effort that you have to expel into your business.

Clay: As a business coach, I will say this, one thing that irritates me in a really unhealthy way, I’ll probably have to get over it, is I feel like as an entrepreneur, if you’re going to be successful as an entrepreneur, you have to understand that as the articulated, no one is going to give it to you. I see so many entrepreneurs who are going to these conventions, there’s value in certain seminars and conventions, but this is what I hear a lot. I hear this way too often. I hear people say, “The city of Tulsa just doesn’t do enough to support entrepreneurship.” Well screw that. Don’t worry about the city of Tulsa. I’m just telling you, I started my business out of my dorm room and I didn’t get any help from the city of Tulsa, there was no help from the government, no help from anybody. You just have to do it and I’m telling you, there’s a lot of people who ask me a lot of time. They say, “How do you advise people to get the hustle needed.” I mean this in the most respectful way. You have to work like an immigrant if you’re going to start a successful company. People who come over here from other countries they don’t have a backup plan.

So many people they come over here from Asia, from Germany, from Ireland, from Africa, and these people hustle because they have no other way. This is the only place on the planet, one of the other places on the planet where you can come over here as a first generation immigrant and make it. But so many people bring this entitlement mindset to entrepreneurship.

Dr. Z: Preach it now. Preach it. Come on.

Chera: I know. Take us to church.

Clay: If you do that well you can’t be complaining that the city of Tulsa isn’t doing enough to help you, or your community isn’t doing enough to help you, or the entrepreneurship is not taught enough. We’re giving you the tools and resources and the one area we thought that wasn’t being met enough was online education so Z and I have tried to fix that with thrive15.com. Whether you use thrive15.com or not, nobody is going to give you the business. You must absolutely be relentless. Now Z, when we come back, we’re going to be talking about this concept called advertising.

Dr. Z: I love advertising.

Clay: You got to advertise a lot if you want to start and grow a successful business. Thrive Time Show. Stay tuned.

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[music]

Announcer: Live. Local now. You’re listening to The Thrive Time Show on talk radio 1170.

Clay: All right Thrive Nation. Welcome back to your persuasion station. The place where you go to learn how to start and grow a business. The place where if you’re kind on a tipping point and you’re going, I want to start a business, but I don’t, but I do, but I don’t, I want, I just — You need that persuasion to get you over the hump to learn how to start or grow a business.

I’m going to tell you this. If you want to start or grow a business, this is the best radio show for you. I’ve had a lot of success as an entrepreneur. My name is Clay Clarke. I’m a former SBA entrepreneur of the year, despite taking algebra three times, despite being kicked out of college, despite maybe not having that pedigree of having that rich uncle that everyone imagines you have to have to start a business, and I’m joined here with kind of like my business Yoda. It’s Dr Robert Zoellner. Sir, how are you?

Dr. Z: Yoda. You’ve got a good Yoda voice. Give me a little Yoda.

Clay: Let’s go with a “No, no, in due time”.

Dr. Z: It’s great to be here on a Tuesday. The only problem with Tuesday is when we have one hour, we’ve got so much stuff to pack into one hour.

Clay: [Yoda voice] Show is too short.

[laughter]

Dr. Z: We have a super special guest on today. We pulled her out of retirement and she is the epitome of a mom-prenuer.

A very successful lady, doing a successful job and she said, “You know what; it’s time for me to do my own thing. It’s time for me to step out of this comfort little bubble of being a TV anchor to doing my own business.” Scary? Yes. Right?

Chera: Yes.

Dr. Z: And that’s what we’re talking about today. We’re trying to encourage you guys. The guys that are on the bubble, you’re kind of on this ledge. You’re thinking about jumping. I’m not yet down there and I want to jump. I’m thinking about jumping.

Clay: Chera Kamiko is in the house. She is here. Chera how are you?

Chera: I’m great.

Clay: I can feel this aura. It’s almost like The Force, Z. The force, you know what am saying? You can just feel The Force, it’s a beautiful thing here. We’re talking today though specifically about this concept of being brave. We’re talking about B, being bold. You got to be bold.

You got to get out there and — history goes to the bold. History goes to the bold, that’s what it goes to. Bold means you’re stepping out of that comfort zone. You’re stepping into something you don’t know exactly how it’s going to all work out, but you know that it will. We gave you a little Steve Jobs quote there.

We’re going to talk about being relentless. You have to be relentless. You can’t, to quote Yoda, “Do or do not. There is no try.”

Dr. Z: Yes. There’s no try.

Clay: You can’t try. You have to do.

Dr. Z: And you have to do whatever it takes. You’ve got to be that pig at breakfast. You’ve got to give it all.

Chera: And you have to do it every day. Every single day. My grandmother, she’s Japanese before she died she would always tell me with her Japanese voice, “If you’re going to do something no matter if it’s your first or your hundredth time, you have to do it with a hundred percent.

Whether it’s making your bed, putting on your shoes or doing something because you get used to putting all of your effort in and you know what it’s like to be motivated, and to have that fire in your belly, and get something in return.”

Dr. Z: I hate walking around with only one shoe on, that’s the worst. When you get those shoes, you got to get them both, get them tied right, get them on. You walk around with one, you’re kind of off, limping.

Clay: I’m going to continue to talk about things that irritate me on this very encouraging show, because this is something that irritates me in our culture right now. I see it. It drives me crazy. I’m a little bit old-school. But we have such a nice safety net in our country–

Chera: A beautiful safety net.

Clay: But you can be just a complete sloth–

Dr. Z: Hold on second. Are you going to preach a little?

Clay: I wasn’t planning on it but sure.

Chera: I’m so glad you’re shy. We need to pull you out. Come on.

Clay: All right, here’s the deal thrivers. The area of frustration that I have is that so many people across this country get up every day around 8:50. Work starts at 9:00, you come in, you know who you are, you’re coming into work not people who listen to this station, the people who listen to other stations. Not you people, other people.

They get up at 8:50 for the 9:00 job, they come in looking like they woke up two minutes ago, and they’re not prepared, they’re not reading the operations manual, they’re leaving early. They’re on Facebook during the work day, and they’re able to just eek out survival because we have such a great welfare state. It’s awesome.

I’m telling you. In our country, you can get by and you can have cable TV, you can get yourself a cell phone, you can actually have free college. You know how awesome the gift of college is in our city right now? I got asked to speak at a local community college, if you’re a citizen of Tulsa, you now get a deeply discounted if not free local community college experience and I got asked to speak at one of these things, and the attendance of the kids that were — This is free college. Not even half the kids are even showing up for class. We have such a gift. I will just tell you, you were born at the specific right time in the history of the world in the specific right place physically, the timing, the place. This is the best time in the history of the world to start or grow a business.

Chera: Well think about when we are growing up how much you can do if you turned your TV off? Think about how much you can do now if you put that phone or the iPad down.

Dr. Z: Let them hear it.

Chera: I’m serious. Hours and hours go by, as you all know, we can sit there for hours and look at our iPad’s, look at the computers and you spent maybe half that time trying to do what motivates you, or to start that business; put down the phone, put down the iPad, get away from the computer and spend those hours doing your business that you want to create.

Clay: And people will say, I want to have a balanced life, I want to be able to get all the concerts, I want to be able to have all the things I want, I want to be able to buy that new iPad. I never want to delayed gratification. But if you’re going to be successful you have to start a business. I’m going to give you two statistics that will blow your mind.

This first one comes from Forbes from the article called Sixteen Surprising Statistics About Small Businesses. They said that small businesses have generated over 65% of the new jobs since 1995. That’s Forbes. That’s huge knowledge.

Dr. Z: That’s a bomb.

Clay: 65% of — We’re talking about which candidate is going to create the jobs. I don’t know. Nobody. Who’s going to create the jobs? You. And if you get this book called The Millionaire Next Door, go get that book, The Millionaire Next Door. It’s written by a guy by the last name of Danko and Stanley. Awesome book called The Millionaire Next Door. Google it. In that book, it will show you that over half of the millionaires in our country are first generation, which means they actually started a business without any wealth or any big grant or any big trust fund. They went out there and did it, but you have to be one; bold, two; relentless and three; you have to advertise. Z, why do you have to advertise once you finally created something that the world wants and needs? Why do you have to advertise?

Dr. Z: To let people know. You don’t light a candle and then put it under a bushel. You let it shine. You got to let it shine. You got to let your light shine. Know what I’m saying?

Clay: I want to be more organic. I want to be more word of mouth.

Dr. Z: Bro, I tell you what, this copy shop I have, it’s just so good. People will find it organically, bro. Bro, it’s just copies we change the world around. It’s going to be viral, bro. You have to advertise because you have to get the message out. I tell you what, if you don’t, people won’t find you and they won’t come in and spend money and you won’t sell your product or service and, therefore, you won’t make profit. Therefore, you’ll be one of the eight out of 10 that has to shut down your business. But we’re changing that, as we know.

Clay: We are. We are helping one business at a time and helping Tulsan’s learn how to start and grow a successful business. When we come back, we’re going to be talking specifically about some of your more successful advertising campaigns that you’ve done throughout your business careers. We’re going to be going through the list of a few moves that move the needle because there’s someone listening right now who goes, “I want to advertise. I just don’t know how to do it.” There’s someone else who’s listening right now who says, “I think I hear Janet Jackson in the background. Can you crank that up?” I’m going to say, “Okay.” We can do that on this super Tuesday, Z.

Dr. Z: Well, that’s the way love goes because that’s the way advertising goes.

Clay: Oh my gosh. This is like a moth through a flame burned through the fire?

Chera: Oh my goodness.

Clay: Wow. Crank it up.

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Announcer 1: You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show on talk radio 1170.

Clay: All right, Thrive Nation. Welcome back to the motivation station. The place that you go. It’s almost like you’re leaving the normal ho hum of the work day, and you’re escaping into a cocoon of entrepreneurialship. You’re in your car, which has now been transformed into this audio dojo of mojo. You’re listening to the Thrive Time Show where we consistently encourage you and teach you how to start and grow a successful business. My name is business coach, Clay Clark. I’m a former SBA entrepreneur of the year and the father of five human kids. I’m joined here with my broda, with my Yoda, with the man who has so much business knowledge, it’ll make your brain exploda, Dr. Robert Zoellner.

[laughter]

Dr. Z: I like that.

Chera: A rapper now.

Dr. Z: Exploda. That’s his old DJ days coming back right there.

Chera: Broda exploda.

Dr. Z: And we’re joined by a beautiful human being who was Tulsa’s premier anchorwoman for years. Then, she stepped out of that little comfort bubble and now she is an entrepreneur, a mompreneur, and she started a new business. We’re so excited to have her on the show, Chera Kimiko, and to share her journey going forward now with her new business.

Chera: Thank you. It’s good to be here. It is a journey. Oh my gosh, it’s a process.

Clay: Little bit of a process.

Chera: Process, a journey, it’s scary, it’s fun, it’s exhilarating, it’s, “Oh my gosh, what’ll I do, where do I go now, what do I do now? Who do I turn to? Who do I listen to?” There’s so much information.

Clay: Well, I will say this. We’re talking about advertising. Specifically, we’re talking today about how to be bold and how to get that courage up to start a business. We told you that B; you got to be bold, two; you got to be relentless and three; you’ve got to advertise. So, Z, walk us through some of your favorite advertising moves you’ve ever done that were the most effective to move the needle and get customers in the door.

Dr. Z: Well, I tell you what, one of the best super moves out there is to find a parade and get in front of it. You find a parade and you get in front of it. People watch you and say, “Oh my gosh, look at his parade.” You just jump in front of a parade. What I did is this. One of the things that I did is I leveraged the good will that some on air personalities have. We called them disc jockeys back in the day, but now they’re on air personalities. They had been in someone’s ear for years talking to them and the people that listen to them said, “I feel like I know them. I trust them. I bring them into my car, my home. I listen to them when I’m jogging, when I’m working out. They’re my broda.” So what you do is you go into them and you have them come in for me, my super move, was to have them be a patient of mine. They would personally endorse me, bring me on their show. The first few months they would actually talk me up, and they’d say things about me that I would never say about myself because when you brag on yourself, it just sounds hollow. But when you pay someone else to do it, it’s so much better.

Then, I would come on the show, and we would have these back and forth conversations. They would just be telling everybody how awesome the experience was. A lot of times they would come in and it’d be amazing because they would find something in my business that I forgot about. We do the same thing every day, and you lose perspective because it’s every day. They would come on, and that was a super move and that was the parade. You already had an established reputation and the people already loved them. I got them to come on and endorse me and that was huge. That was a huge super move.

Chera: What do you do now though? Because it probably was easier back then when there was not all of the tablets and all of the highway information that’s going on, you were able to reach out to those personalities. Now time is of the essence. A lot of these personalities don’t have a lot of time. Where do you go and how do you target then to make you in front of that parade again?

Dr. Z: That’s an excellent question. Now what you do is you’re always looking for the next parade. You’re always looking for the next parade, and so one of the things that you do is it’s still a move I do, but I change it around because what happens is that I go from different radio stations to different radio stations and I still do that, Chera. That’s something that I’ve committed to and I do, and now I don’t have to spend as much to get the same bang for my dollar, right? Now what you do with all the social media out there you’ve got to have a component of that. You’ve got to gather that up and try to be troll free in that.

Chera: Because there’s a way to advertise without advertising.

Dr. Z: Absolutely. And the best way, of course, is over deliver and get the word of mouth out there. At first, you have to prime the pump. I call it priming the pump. You just don’t turn the pump on and the pump works. You got to prime it. You got to prime that thing. You got to get people in that don’t know about you, haven’t heard about you, you know what I’m saying? Once you do that when you over deliver, now you have a little army of people out there pumping your pump.

Clay: Let me ask you this. With your auto auction, what’s an advertising move? For the auto auction, you sell directly to used car dealers, so you’re not selling to the average consumer. How do you advertise a business like that where it’s more of a B to B, business to business kind of business as opposed to a business to consumer?

Dr. Z: I have a dude. He pulls up in a dude car. He pulls up in a dude truck.

Clay: Can Chera be the dude or does it specifically have to be a dude?

Dr. Z: Well, I found that dudes are better, but she could be a dude. She could do the dude thing. So you pull up, he’s got a box of dude food like doughnuts, [laughter] pastries.

Clay: He’s like in a food truck of high calorie low —

Chera: Could we make it a Bentley though, instead?

Dr. Z: For you, it’d be a Bentley.

Chera: Okay, thank you.

Dr. Z: They pull in, they knock on the door, and they literally go in there and sit down and build a relationship with the dude. One by one, you have to do that. You build that relationship and then what you do is then you invite that person out to the business, we give him a free lunch, they’re wowed by the experience, they’re wowed by the facilities, and then they see, “Oh wow, this is a start up business”, but “Oh wow this thing is happening and I’m going to start doing business with you.” It all starts with a dude pulling up in a pick up truck getting out with dude food.

Chera: And then I think it also goes to a name that you’re going to pick for your business and something that’s memorable and something that rolls off someone’s tongue and is not too long.

Dr. Z: Absolutely. I remember back in the day my big thing was picking a good phone number. I bought a bunch of 2020 phone numbers. When we come back, I’m going to tell you a really funny story about buying a phone number.

Clay: And right now, this is a beautiful segway. We have some 80’s for the for the ladies out there, ladies love the 80’s and guys do too but a little George Michael? See, this is the perfect moment in American history right now. I cannot believe it. George Michael?

Dr. Z: You got to have faith, though. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what the show is about. Giving you the faith to do it.

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Announcer: You’re listening to The Thrive Time Show on talk radio 1170.

Clay: All right Thrive Nation. Welcome back to Tulsa’s only local business radio show. It is The Thrive Time Show during your drive time home. My name is Clay Clark, a business coach and the former SBA entrepreneur of the year in your ear. I’m joined here with Dr. Robert Zoellner the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrists body. We are joined here with a recovering TV anchor, a former TV anchor, a woman who has dominated the TV game for quite a while and then she said, “I’m going to hang a left. I’m going to exit off here. I’m going to exit off this ramp here, and I’m going to go ahead and start my own business.” That kind of crazy person, it’s Miss Chera Kimiko, how are you?

Chera: Hello, hello. Happy Tuesday. Fun to be here.

Clay: For Tulsan’s who want to know, what have you been doing the last year? What have you been up to? How would you describe it?

Chera: I have been doing great. So much. People said,”You retired, you’re not supposed to do anything. I said, “No. I’m busier now than I ever was before. I have less time on my hands and doing more than I was.” It just shows me how much time I wasted probably before.

Clay: Okay. [laughs] Well, here’s the thing, we have a question that came in from a thriver and they’re wanting to know how do you become bold or how do you get your courage up to actually start a business? So we’re breaking it down for you.

Chera: Ask a kid.

Clay: Ask a kid?

Dr. Z: [laughs]

Chera: Because a kid can tell you in the simplest answer, “Just do it. You just do it.”

Dr. Z: I love the Nike saying, I love that. “Just do it.”

Chera: You know, that was discovered by a woman.

Dr. Z: Really?

Chera: Yes.

Dr. Z: Was it? That’s cool.

Clay: This just in from home office.

Chera: Oh wait, maybe it was the swoosh from a woman. One of them.

Dr. Z: She had and if it was a dude did it, he probably had a mom. There was a woman involved somehow or another.

Chera: Thank you, Robert.

Clay: Absolutely. Here’s the thing, the B was bold, you got to be bold, two; you got to be relentless, three; you’ve got to advertise.

Dr. Z: Got to do it.

Clay: Now these final two moves here okay for this brave memorization tool here okay? V, you’ve got to be committed to victory. So many people that I see that I’ve met over the years they’ve come to me they said, “Clay,–” I went to graphic design school with him at Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma State and he said, “I don’t understand why every business that you have works. I don’t get it. I don’t get it because I’ve started these businesses and they haven’t worked.” He started to talk to me a little bit about luck and I listened to him and my job is a friend is not to judge people. Now he was a client and he asked me I would have maybe told him but he was going in great detail about how all of his businesses didn’t work. He didn’t ask me though how could you make them work. He just wanted to talk about how mine worked and his didn’t and luck was the theme. I’m going to just tell you something about this luck and this victory what this means.

If you’re going to start a successful business, you’re going to have to spend about 40 to 50 hours a week working in the business. That means you specifically are working; say you have a business where you make pizzas. That means you’re spending 40 or 50 hours a week just making pizzas and that’s maintenance. You’re just maintaining. All you’re doing is, people come in, you make the pizzas, you sell the pizzas but here’s the part that nobody really wants to do, nobody really wants to get into is, here’s my notable quotable for Michael [unintelligible 00:35:04],

Dr. Z: Come on. Come on.

Clay: “Most entrepreneurs are merely technicians with an entrepreneurial seizure. Most entrepreneurs fail because you’re working in your business rather than on your business.” Today I set my alarm for 2 A.M. and I woke up at 2 A.M. today and I worked on workflows because you and I are at thrive15.com, we have many many more people that are reaching out to us for individualized one-on-one coaching than what we can handle. We decided to start selling tickets to workshops and we have many many more people wanting to buy tickets than we can handle. I am fixing the workflow and you saw that on the whiteboard out there–

Dr. Z: Very cool.

Clay: But it’s a linear workflow and I’m discovering, “Hey, we’ve got a scale-out every aspect of this because otherwise, I’m going to go crazy.” You get up at 2 A.M., well then you have to go to bed like for me 8 P.M. to get up at 2 A.M. so I made a sacrifice. I didn’t watch TV, I didn’t go on social media, I still went on a great date with my wife last night, went and saw that new movie about the war the one that Mel Gibson produced.

Chera: Is it good?

Clay: It was awesome.

Dr. Z: Hacksaw Ridge.

Clay: Yes, it was a great movie. Went and saw that.

Dr. Z: I heard it was good.

Clay: Then I made sure I went to bed at eight so I could get up at two. All I’m saying is you’ve got to somehow get ahead of it. You’ve got to get up early or stay late, you’ve got to work on your business.

Chera: Look at how amazing it was doing that when you gave up all the internet and TV.

Clay: Yes. I mean it’s in share of we’ve turned off of TV.

Announcer: You’re listening to The Thrive Time Show on talk radio 1170.

Clay: We don’t really watch TV, there was a lot of things we gave up, but we didn’t really miss it.

Chera: For me, coming out of TV it’s hard to not put on the TV. I like the sound even as static and we have a TV in every room and my husband Chuck says, “I can’t stand the TV.” I can’t stand silence.

Dr. Z: I can’t stand silence either.

Chera: To my husband’s credit, it works and it makes you more productive.

Clay: I don’t do well with silence at all. What I do is I am big into, I wouldn’t say meditative music but just music that creates an ambiance. It’s always good [makes music] there’s always some music, mostly R&B, John Legend kind of stuff.

Chera: But I mean, when you actually turn off the TV and stop watching or you stop going on social media to compare yourself and compete with everybody else on social media, then you get all your time back to you what you need to do for you to make you more valuable.

Dr. Z: But I need to post one more selfie. I need to get one more selfie on there.

Clay: Now Z, there’s one more component to this brave

Dr. Z: Just one more selfie.

Clay: B is bold, R is relentless, A is advertising, V is victory.

Dr. Z: I’m taking it right now.

Clay: E the four Es. Here we go, this is Jack Welch the top CEO.

Dr. Z: Jack Welch is my favorite.

Clay: He’s the top CEO of all time. He grew GE by 4000% during his tenure. He grew that company, they were stagnant, he helped him grow, this is his four Es. One is you have to bring energy. You have to bring energy into the workplace man, you just have to bring energy, cant be low energy. Two, edge. You’ve got to make that tough call, a tough call. Three, execute. You have to execute. You have to actually get stuff done. The fourth one is you have to energize those that are around you. So Chera, I want to ask you’ve been running your own business now for a while, for someone who’s maybe not started the business before and you having now run your own business, what part of the business is the hardest thing to get used to? What aspects of running a daily business are the hardest parts for someone to get used to?

Chera: Well, specifically for myself because it’s different for everybody, but I think I told you this, is I have had a very hard time transitioning and people not understanding deadlines and it drives me bat bleep crazy because we were on a time frame, a deadline, a hard deadline up to the second. When our boss told us to do something or we had to get something done it had to be done or we were either suspended or fired. There were no if, ands, or buts and that has been the hardest thing for me is to, how do I change my attitude to get them motivated to meet my deadlines?

Clay: Z, I’m going to throw that to you. What answer would you have to Chera there? Edge.

Dr. Z: Well, there’re two methods. One is called good cop-

Clay: Okay, good cop.

Dr. Z: -and one is called a bad cop. You guys are all good people.

Chera: I don’t like to be bad cop all the time.

Dr. Z: I know but you have to wear both hats. You have to be able to switch those gears. You have to build a praise them when they’re doing good and then you have to be able to come in and be a bad cop when they’re not. You have to do it.

Chera: Which brings me to my point that I made before. As for women, we can’t be as emotional as we usually are. We have to compartmentalize and we have to be logical and literal and go on with the business and it’s a business call, it’s not an emotional call, but also not lose the empathy.

Dr. Z: Yes.

Clay: Well, here is something that is– I don’t if anyone will to listen to this or will receive this the right way but–

[laughter]

Chera: Good job. Good luck.

Clay: But, Steve Jobs had a concept, if you Google it tonight, it was called Reality Distortion. Many people would call it lying but Steve called it the reality distortion field and I will give you two examples of what Steve Jobs did that were epic, that you’ll probably disagree with the morals but you can’t disagree with the results. Here’s one, Z. He goes, he’s telling his programmers, if you buy a Mac computer now, if you’ll notice if you hit the on button it just fires up right away. iPads, they fire up right away. They don’t require a boot up and the guy goes, “It requires a boot up. You can’t make a computer that doesn’t have a boot up. These laptops they have to have a boot up, period.” He goes, “Here’s the deal. We have signed a contract with a major major company, it’s an ambulance company and they’re going to use this to fire up those calipers, so a guy has a heart attack you know those seconds will kill somebody if the machine does not fire up immediately,” and the coder is going “What?” and he goes, “Man I’m telling you, if you don’t make this machine boot up instantly-

Dr. Z: People die.

Clay: -people are going to die.” and he goes, “Oh no.” So he pulls an all-nighter, he grinds, he pushes, he does what he does. He codes until his brain explodes and then Steve goes, “Hey check it out, I’m glad that you made it work but I made up the whole story about the ambulance. Good job.” And he did the same thing with the glass used for iPads. He told the company, “Hey, if you can’t make this glass for the iPad, it’s okay. I’m going to switch to your competitor because they already have the technology.” And the Corning is going, “They do?” he’s like, “We’re switching right now buddy. We’re switching. I’m only letting you have a chance at this because I care so much about our relationship and your competitor already has it.” and the guy goes, “How?” He goes, “I don’t know how. You’re the glass guy, you figure it out.” And guess what, they figured it out and he came back later and said I made it up. So I’m just saying that’s not the move to do but the reason I’m saying that he created a sense of urgency like the deadlines and so what I do in my businesses is that I have a sense of urgency and if you don’t get things done on time, Z, bad things happen.

Dr. Z: Bad things happen, I tell you what now. You’re listening to this show. We’re only on an hour today, it’s Tuesday and you say, “I want more.”

Clay: I want more.

Dr. Z: I want more.

Clay: I want more.

Dr. Z: You can go to thrivetimeshow.com and listen to our podcast of all the back shows and then also you can go to thrive15.com, become a member for $19. What all do you get, business coach, Clay?

Clay: Well, what you get is you get access to thousands of videos, thousands of video training videos, you get thousands of these things. You have access to best practice downloadables, you have exclusive access to in-person workshops, you can ask us any business question. But most importantly it is the world’s best business coaching platform. Thrive15.com, Google it, thrive15.com. Now Z, we have something special here.

Dr. Z: I know. If you’re watching Facebook Live, you can watch Chera do a little lip syncing right now.

Clay: Here we go. Oh, wow. You got the instrumental part.

Chera: Wow. You got the instrumental part.

Dr. Z: Oh, God.

[00:42:34] [END OF AUDIO]