Episode 111: Growth with "No" Featuring with Clay Clark

You're a high roller, Michalowicz, aren't you, dude?

Oh, don't lose your weight.

Oh, yeah. Geez. I don't know what that is. I can't turn it off.

Okay, random sound clip of the day. Thank you, Evanescence.

Hot Pockets. No, it's my damn soundboard. Oh, geez. Still playing. Oh, my darn soundboard is busted. I can't stop a clip from playing. I can't sort my favorites anymore. It's. It's all ruined.

This is.

But at least this is still. Bruh.

Bruh.

Hot Pockets. That's right.

Well, after hearing that, you know that you're about to grunt along with the Profit first podcast.

Episode 11 1, triple one. Yes.

Unbelievable.

Clay.

Game changing, mind blowing. Life changing. Yes.

First, that's how this brings in. Billy.

Billy, push yourself. Push yourself, Billy. Push yourself.

This is tremendous.

This is our new way of having guests come on in the beginning and grunt along with us. But welcome to the show, everyone. My name is Chris Curran. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording, and I produce podcast shows for awesome companies and people.

I'm Mike Michalowitz, the author of Profit first and the newly released book Surge. You better pick up a copy. Joined studio by my coughing and choking partner here, Christina Bulldog.

Hey.

She was having a coughing fit while Clinton Clay Clark was chanting away some awesome stuff there. And you, you are listening to the Profit first podcast. This is the show that we focus on all elements of profitability. Our goal here is by the end of the show, you've walked out with yet another quiver or another arrow in your quiver. Not another quiver in your arrow, another arrow in your quiver on being more profitable. And if you don't follow what we have to offer you, then you'll just sit there and quiver like a sissy.

And someone someday will whip you with a wet noodle. That's what we're doing.

Or whip you with a real whip right there.

Oh.

O yes. You can find our show everywhere. You hear podcasts, itunes, tunein, Radio, Stitcher. Hello, anyone? Podcast addict Apps. Any app you use. And our website, profitfirstpodcast.com all our previous episodes are there. People commenting, asking questions. It's great. You can join in the conversation. And if you have a question or comment after this episode, go ahead to the website and comment on it. You can ask Mike or our guests any question you want. Right, Mike?

Oh, you can ask any question that you have.

That's right.

And we'll answer them. That's right. Now, hey, I'M sorry, do you want to say something?

I do, actually. Because, you know, you're in business, you're listening to this, you want to make a living and you want to make some money in business. And I do. But revenue is a 1Khz tone. Oh, wait, wow, wait, hold on.

Profit.

Sorry, hold on, hold on. Revenue is a 1Khz tone.

But profit will make everyone else moan. Make you moan. And I meant that like in a good way, like a sexual moan. Not like a moan like you've taken a bullet to the thigh or something.

That was a long setup for pretty much nothing. Okay, let's move on.

Well, let's move on to the shout outs. I. I forgot to do it last.

Yeah, we do have a shout out. This comes in from Matt White. He emailed in and he says, first off, I want to thank you for writing. I've read and listened to, well, all, or listened to, I should say, several of your books. And now work with Annual, who's one of our certified Profit first professionals. So shout out to Ann and he says, profit. The Profit first concept saved my business. It didn't work exactly as I intended, but it started putting money into various accounts back in November 2014. When I hit a very slow patch in 2015, the money I had put into those other accounts were able to cover the cost of the bills that we could survive.

Beautiful.

Awesome.

Matt, shout out to you. You're working with angel, who's aw awesome. And she does, she takes. No, no, no. So your business will continue to be more and more profitable. There's no question about it. Hey, Chris, before we dig into the show, what you been up to, my brother?

You know, I'm about to read this book that I'm psyched to read. Yeah, I'm sure this happens to everyone. You find a book, the title and the subtitle really speak to you and then sometimes you read it, sometimes it's great, sometimes it's not. But I. So I haven't start reading this but. And I want to say the title and subtitle because I think it's so important. Breaking the habit of being yourself. How to lose your mind and create a new one. And this is great because I think in. Especially in profitability, it's so mental. We have this construct in our mind of how much we can make and how to create a new construct in your mind because if you don't do that, you're never going to get past the current construct. So it's so cool. I love that Stuff. You love that stuff too, Mike, don't you?

I do love that stuff, but I don't love as much as I love my new Amazon Echo. I just. They had that prime day.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I think it was on the 12th.

On 12th of July. Right. And I'm like, I won't get suckered into this. But it invoked me to start browsing Amazon. Like, oh, no, I'm getting suckered in. And then it's like, oh, get the Amazon echo, you know, $50 off or something. And I'm like, that will be my. My profit distribution. It was $100. Like, that's my treat for myself.

Right?

So I get it. The thing's awesome.

This morning.

Come in. This morning I come into the kitchen. That's where I have it. And I'm making my oatmeal, which I love. And I say, hey, Alexa, what's the news brief for today? And she's like, here's the news brief, Michael. And she said, a little facetious.

Michael.

Michael. Yeah, it was an indignant voice. But then she went through the news brief, gave me the weather, and then said, when I had my first appointment, I'm like, hot dog. The future's here.

That's awesome. By the way, at the end of this, we have to get Alexa on the show at some point. We gotta ask Alexa.

Oh, we should. We should. In her indignant voice. Oh, you wanna listen to another country song, Michael? Don't you have any other music in your repertoire?

She sounds very judgmental, this Alexa. Hot pock.

Don't you people have homes?

So.

Kids. All right, before we bring on our pockets guest, I want to thank our corporate partners, please. Actually, I do want to mention our guest, firstly, as a tease, kind of. His name is Clay Clark, and he has a fascinating vantage point. He says, you can be happier and more profitable if you use the word no more.

Isn't he number one in the world?

He's America's number one business coach. Oh, you know what business coach ranking?

I am 36.

I wish.

I wish it was like 3221. There was a ranking that came out, and the went up to 3,221. That's where I was.

I want to ask him, actually, if. If no. If a good way to say no is something. What Barry says sometimes.

No way, you crazy.

You know? No, that's a good way to ask.

That's a good way. We'll ask him in a second. First, I want to thank our corporate partners, fundera we love you, Nextiva. We love you. Fundbox. We love you. And Receipt Bank.

We love you.

We love you.

We love you. We love you. I'm just kidding. I was just kidding. We'll tell you more about those organizations at the end of the show and how you can connect with and how we believe they'll bring more profits to your business.

And they're not just like companies we take money from. Like, you use most of these companies and you know these people?

Yep, we use them all, actually. We've never had a need for a loan, but we've facilitated loans for some of our members and clientele through Fundera. We've never needed to use Fundbox for ourselves to collect because we have Christina, who. When someone's not paying, give me your money. But. But we've used Fundbox for our members, and all these companies are exceptional. Nice talking about exceptional. He's America's number one business coach. His name is Clay Clark. He's the former US Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year, the US SBA Entrepreneur of the Year for the state of Oklahoma. Do you know who was the SBA Entrepreneur of the Year for New Jersey?

You?

Yep, I truly was. But this is. This is. That's not a lie. This is back 20 years ago. Thank you, Ryan. 82, Kobe, Rock, and Obi shouted down the hallway. That was back in 82. Not that far. Not that far back. I went on to get an SBA loan for a half a million dollars and blew it. So I don't know if I deserve that title. Clay has started numerous successful businesses. He's written three business books, and he argues that saying no is the key to profitability and happiness. Clay, welcome to the show.

Hey, I appreciate you for letting me harass your audience here today, and hopefully everybody will leave here with some very specific, actionable ways that can free up more time and free up more profitability.

Oh, for sure. And they'll learn some new voice impersonations. I think you're the best guest ever at the intro. That was awesome.

Oh, well, hopefully I live up to the hype, you know?

Yeah, well, let's. Let's dig into it. Now you're saying happiness and profitability happens. When you say no, that sounds counterintuitive. Saying no means you're declining opportunities, you're declining things. How does that work?

Well, Steve Jobs, who's now become kind of like the Yoda of business, you know, so many people now quote him and revere him. At the time that he was alive, though, a lot of people who Worked in close proximity with him, thought that he was an ass. I mean, people thought this guy is an ass. Even, even the book that was written with his authorization with Walter Isaacson, it goes on to he very open about it. But he was legendary for saying no. And he has this little excerpt I wanted to read to your listeners. It says, people think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on, but that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to a thousand things. And so as an entrepreneur, I own nine different companies. My wife and I, we have 36 chickens. We just had 12 little baby chicks. You know, we have two Great Pyrenees dogs. You know, we have the five kids. I mean, we have a lot of things going on. And the other day I was approached by somebody who said, clay, for the elephant in the room. It's our, it's our men's grooming lounge. You can check it out@eitrlounge.com and people go, you're not even. You don't actually even look like you're in style yourself. Your haircut isn't even good. Why would you own a haircut business? I would never go to a haircut business that you.

I love how you break into the hot pocket voice. Keep doing it.

The thing is, is that I don't. I, you know, I'm not a style guy. I honestly am. I wear the same thing every day. I literally wear a red tie every day with a white shirt and my blue suit every single day. I have six of the same suits. But I. When I heard the idea of men's grooming and a membership model, I thought, okay, that's going to be a great idea. But because I know this principle we're teaching today, I had to ask myself, what am I going to say no to if I say yes to this?

But. But you own nine businesses. It sounds like you're. You said yes to nine businesses. Am I missing something here?

What I do is every week I have my big three. I have a weekly meeting per company. So I have a meeting today at. It's 12:15 Central. I have a meeting today at 4:00 Central for my company called Sprik Realty. It's S P R I K Realty. It's based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We have a lot of real estate agents and we Sell millions of dollars of property. We closed on six houses yesterday and all that. But all of it, we have a weekly meeting. Okay, so that's step one. We have a weekly meeting. And then at that weekly meeting, anybody. So if you guys worked with me, any questions that you have, you cannot ask me a question during the week under any circumstance. Only at that meeting, period. I never see you, you know, interesting. And then my, the manager, let's say that you were the manager. You can text me, I'm always available for you. You know what I mean? Because I am. I've committed to you, I've committed to that relationship. But I'm not going to answer every single agent's question. Does that make sense? I hope I'm clarifying.

No, it totally makes sense. So what I'm hearing is nine businesses really translates to nine managers. So you're managing nine people who in turn are managing the day to day operations of these businesses.

Yeah, a footprint of probably 400 people, you know what I mean? But I'm managing those. There's nine people that I deal with directly. And then at that, at the third component. So again, you have a weekly meeting. Two, you bring all your questions to that meeting. And the third is we have these things called KPIs that Gino Wickman wrote so eloquently about in his book called Traction. But it's the key performance indicators and it's the items that you've committed to doing. So we have one guy who's committed to doing the work for the search engine, one guy who's committed to doing. And they're actionable, very specific. You know, I commit to writing 20 articles for the haircut business. I commit to doing 50 drop offs to local insurance agents. I commit to. And everyone has their KPIs and we go over those in a group format. So everyone sees the accountability. So they said, hey, Clay said that he would do this. Even things I'm supposed to do, I put those on the agenda. And then whatever I commit to doing, we have it done in that meeting. And so it's a culture where if you don't commit, if you commit to doing something and you don't do it, then you get thrown under the bus of accountability. And you usually don't stick around too long, you know, and everything is, I don't have any. So if someone says, is there any way we could meet privately because I.

Have something I want to discuss.

Absolutely, let's meet privately with a group of 15 to 20 people and well, it's Something about it's a health issue.

Cool.

If you want to talk about, you know, anything you want to talk about, it's all. But your manager can meet with you. But I'm not going to.

I got you. So, so seriously, if it is a health issue and they're like, I, I need to go see a doctor. Like, they can see the manager one on one and. But if they're, if it's with you, it's only in the group or you're not available.

Yeah. And we had this guy who's a broker in our organization, not no longer with us, but he was kind of like that Yoda kind of guy where he spoke in metaphors. And it would be awesome if you had massive success, where you would say, this man has had such massive success that he can wear, he can be a green man, he can live in a swamp like environment and we can take what he says seriously because he's so successful. But instead this guy's like marketing online. We should overall, you know, I was reading TED Talk, I was watching TED Talks, and Simon Sinek, Simon Sinek says we build community. We need to have the power of the why. You know, and you're going, bro, bro, seriously, like, did you get your drop offs done? You need to drop off 50 boxes of Barbie cookies to the local insurance agents. Well, I focus more on relationships, not on numbers. And so you. Oh, in due time, you know, so it's this whole weird culture where like he wants to talk about these things that don't matter. So I say no to that conversation. I say yes to the KPIs every single time.

So the KPIs absolutely keep you on track now. But. But you sound like you're so inaccessible. Do you still garner the respect and the feel of camaraderie from your employees in all these different businesses if you're not available? And enforcing it so stringently, I don't.

Know that that is a concern for me. I don't care. So if someone doesn't like me, Tony Hsieh, who's the CEO of Zappos, he says that he fires people if he doesn't like them. That's my rule too. So people who like that philosophy, they like working for me. And I've had guys worth me 10 years, 15 years, ladies who've worked with me for a decade. And they go, I love working with Clay because nine to five, baby, it's like intense. It's like you can't, you know, it's like intense. We get our KPIs done. Now the weekend, that's a different story. You know what I mean? After work, we're having fun, but during the work day, for me, I'm all about. I'm kind of like the Bill Belichick. Maybe. Maybe I deflate balls. I'm not sure. But I'm kind of like the Bill Belichick where Bill. You get the idea that Bill Belichick could and will cut any player at any time if they don't perform Right. That is my culture. That's. I'm not saying that's your culture. If you're listening right now and you're like, that sounds so terrible. You're so mean, that's fine. But I have three goals. I'm sorry to offend Ms. Christina because she's a wonderful lady, but this is my goal, and it's pretty sexist. But this is my thing. I want to. And I'll just kind of let your imagination run wild here, but I've had a vasectomy, so I cannot have a sixth child. But what I would like to do is I like to get my KPIs done. I want to make a lot of profit, and then I want to try to create the sixth child despite having a vasectomy. So that's kind of what I do. So I block off time for those attempts for hanging out, chasing my wife around, tricking her to stay married to me. I'm a man. Bear, pig. My wife is beautiful, gorgeous, and, you know, she's like Ms. Tulsa County. And she's one's in commercials back in the day. Her mom is in the opening scene of Top Gun where Goose comes in and talks to Maverick, you know, at the bar. She's the first lady, beautiful lady. And I have to trick her into staying married to me. That requires time, and I have to block out time for that. And I have to say no to a lot of things to keep that marriage, you know, going.

15 years, you know, you know, talking about wives. Clay, when I met my wife is clearly. And Christina knows I met Mrs. Wright and. Or Ms. Right, I should say, until I married her and I found out she was Mrs. Always. Right? Where's my room shot? Where's my rim shot? I need it. All right. But for the folks listening in, they have tons of opportunities in their one business. Yeah, I could do this. I could do that. How do you stay focused and on track in your one singular business to not get distracted by all the little opportunities that are springing up there?

That's great, Lee Cockerel has been a big mentor in my life. He's the former executive vice president of Walt Disney World. So he managed 40,000 people. And I remember being a place in my business where I was. My first company was called dj connection.com. it still exists. I just sold it to a different group. I was able to exit at a pretty good number there. But we were doing 4,000 weddings a year. 4,000, it's 80 a weekend. It's crazy, you know what I mean? And so we had all these entertainers and DJs. And so everyone would always approach me and say, clay, I have got this opportunity. Can we meet at Panera? And I'm like, are you an mlm? No, no, no. It's an opportunity. Can we meet at Panera? So if we meet at Panera Bread. And then they hit me with the opportunity, I'm realizing, oh man, I just got shark tanked again for yet another multi level business, for another party rental opportunity, for a chance to open a chapel. It's gonna be a great chapel. Everyone's gonna love it, you know. And so I realized, hey, you know what, I've got to stop meeting with people about their Ponzi schemes, their direct level marketing companies, their chapels. And I need to focus on what makes me happy. So I devised this system. And my system was, I know nothing. I'm gonna reach out to people who do know what they're doing, you know. So I reached out to guys like Lee Cockrell and Lee Cockrell has said, you know, you've got to define your five Fs. The F5 life is kind of a tornado. The F5 is the biggest tornado out there. It's crazy. Wind power. We're in Tornado alley here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the F5s are this faith, family finances, fitness and friendships. Faith, family finance, fitness and friendships. So what you do is you define on paper or on your to do list, whatever works best for you, what you're going to get done today in those areas. And so it's uncomfortable for me to talk about it, but my father, he has ALS and he'll probably pass away by this time next week. And so his going away party that we're having for my dad is on Saturday. And so I've been working the phones, getting all of his buddies. He's got 200 some odd people flying in to visit him. And if you've ever been around somebody with ALS and you watch somebody being stuck in their own body, it's awful. But when my assistant said you could do this Podcast with these guys. I had to look and go, my big F5, my faith, my family, my finances. Is this something that is worth that time? And I thought about your, and I mean this. I thought about your listeners and I thought about what you stand for. I look through and I saw your funny videos and your funny clips and all the things you do. And I thought if we could bless even one person today who feels obligated, you know, to do all these things and we can help them learn to say no so that they can be the husband or the mom or the father or the business owner they want to be, then we've won something. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

And I know it's an extreme example because it's very true and it's very. It's my life right now. But I literally had to think about, you know, would I want to spend that hour with my dad? Right. Or should I spend that time with you guys? And I had to decide. I feel like this will make an impact. And while my dad is resting right now, he's getting a lot of sleep, trying to get all, you know, ready for the party. You know, it's a deal where like, you got to make those trade offs. And for some reason we never see the profundity of those trade offs until we're near death or until there's some bad. Until there's a breakdown, we don't see the breakthrough. And I'm just encouraging everyone listening right now. Let's have a heightened sense of urgency about our time management and begin to ask ourselves, what are maybe three things today you could say no to that aren't helping you achieve your profitability goals that aren't helping you become the family you want to be that, the faith you want to have, the friendships you want to develop, the. And you know what? I blocked off? Great. I had a great conversation with my friend Eugene Willis, who lives in San Diego, lives in the LA area, just north of San Diego, and he's not a business partner. I don't make any money from the conversation. His nickname in college was Black Thunder. Mine was White Lightning. We were weightlifting buddies, you know, and we. I blocked out time and we had a very rich conversation because it was in my F5 daily to do list. And that's how I keep from being distracted. If it's not on my F5, I'm not doing it.

That's interesting. So it brings this balance. So I'm thinking about your father's circumstance. You want to be with your father, but you also realize there's a balance for yourself, that you can give your business exposure, support others and it doesn't detract from time with your father. Your father needs to rest right now anyway. Yeah, but it's not, he's not forgotten. It's not like, oh, I'm just going to keep blowing through work all the time.

He's on my mind all the time. But I will say this, is that when you know, and this is something everyone needs to do, when you know your mission, like why you're on the planet, then that allows you to have very good, great clarity about your time management. So if you say right now, why am I in business? Okay, let's start there. Why am I in business? Okay, Because I want to be self employed. Okay, fine, but why? Because I want time freedom. Okay. And why? So that I can spend time with my wife. Oh really? So that, so the wife that you want to spend a lot of time with, that's why you're never with her, because you're pursuing it. Wait, wait, let's refresh. So the reason why you're spending time working is so you can make money to have time freedom to spend time with your wife. But yet you're choosing not to be with your wife. Oh, I get it. So what you're doing is, you're not, your activities aren't congruent with what you're doing. So you have dissonance, you're not doing what you want to do. So what happens is sometimes we have to make the decision to unplug the cable, right? Because cable represents about two hours of your week in earnings and about two hours a day in your life. So sometimes to spend time with my wife, my wife and I, we literally make that. We made the decision as a family. No more TV and no more air conditioning because I had to start a company out of an apartment and I had no money. You know what I'm saying? And then as we grew my life and things have happened, I've had to say no more than one speaking event per month. Well, what if, you know, so this month I'm doing a big talk for Chevron Energy and I've turned down some major, major companies. Not because I'm, you know, a diva about it, I just, my wife is more important than those speaking events. But there was a time in my life where I made trade offs so that I could, you know, do speaking events. So you've just got to be very aware of your life. Because if you, if you, to quote Ryan Tedder from One Republic. He's a guy that I went to college with. He says if you spend too much time in one place, it'll make a lifetime quickly disappear. And I think people get stuck in that rat race of doing the same thing every day and not thinking about intentionally. Where am I headed?

Well, let's talk about those speaking engagements. So you're turning them down? Please forward them to me, by the way. But you know, you're turn. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. So you turn them down. Does that allow you to prioritize and pick the best one?

Well, it's. It does it to a certain extent. I will say that I used to dj. I'm in Oklahoma, so I started my first company in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was called DJ Connection, like I mentioned. And when you in Oklahoma, I mean, it's not all redneck, it's not all Bible belt, but a lot of the places I would go, I would go door to door to these different hotels and I would say, I would like to DJ for your event for free. Just let me DJ for your club for free, for your facility for free. And if I do a good job, will you refer me? And they're like, yeah, sure. So I DJed at the holiday Inn, the Renaissance, the Marriott. I mean, every single, literally every single venue within Tulsa, Oklahoma. I DJed for free one time. And then that word of mouth took off. Right. I was sowing those seeds. Well, now I'm in more of a harvest time of my life and I've just decided that I no longer want to do an event for free. And I'm not a diva about it, but if I can't bring my wife to my speaking event, I will not do it. I bring my wife to every event and period. I bring her every time. And if I can't bring one of my kids, I won't do it.

Okay, so you have clear rules set about when an opportunity comes in, this is the only way, or this is the way specifically that you will take the opportunity and anything else is a no.

Yeah, and actually I listened to Seth Godin. He had a fabulous podcast about this. But he says, you know, if you can't add maximum value to something to a partnership, don't do it, you know, because eventually it'll cause again that dissonance or cause that discord. And so I got asked to speak at the Chevron event recently and the one I'm doing here in September. And the lady says, clay, what we're going to do is we're Going to have you come in and talk about XYZ. 1, 2, 3. And the real reason is we want to teach people from all diverse backgrounds that success is possible, that the American dream is possible, because the Studies are showing 59% of people, aka our employees, don't believe it's possible. And Gallup is showing that only 13% of our employees are even engaged. You know, they even like working. You know, and so we like to think we have this perfect workplace, but we want to have. See if you can inspire people. And I said, do you mind if I share personally about my son's battle with blindness? Do you mind if I share that? Do you mind if I talk about my dad's als? Do you mind if I talk about my failings? Do you mind if I'm sincere?

Right?

And she says. And some people say, no. Seriously. Some event planners.

Really?

Oh, yeah. You'll have event planners that'll say, you know, Clay, I'd prefer if you didn't bring up xyz. It's not a problem. It's okay. There's other speakers for you, you know, But I have. It's all I'm trying to do is. And I'm just asking you if you're listening to this right now, you have a business probably, or you want to have a business. There are certain clients, deals that are coming in, and they're either a red light or a green light. And a green light is something you look forward to. It's exciting. It creates momentum in your life. And a red light is like the client where every time they come in, you're going, ah, crap. Oh, my God. You know, and you almost, like, fake. You want to be. You know, like when you're a kid, you fake like you're six. You don't have to go to school. There's some clients where you just don't want to work with them, or there's some customers you don't want to work with. And so I read by reading the book Southwest Airlines, it's called Nuts. By reading that book and the Harvard case study called the Service Profit Chain, and spending some time with the CEO of Hobby Lobby, I learned that you sometimes have to fire clients that don't value what you do or that aren't the right fit. And so I do that fairly often, I'd say 5% of the clients I work with, I fire.

Well, talking about the client front or any kind of opportunity that walks to the door, there's a risk of saying no to something that could be a big Payoff. Can that happen? Can you say no because it wasn't. It didn't feel right and then regret it after the fact? Yeah.

There's two notable. Again, if you know your why, if you know your mission in life. I mean, my mission, just everybody knows my mission as it relates to business is to mentor 1 million people. I'm up right now to as far as success letters and people who've sent them to me. I'm up to several thousand, but not millions. Okay. That's my whole thing. So if I can be on this podcast and help help one person, I'm doing it. If I can't, I'm not doing it. I don't really. So that's my thing. But Tim Ferriss, he's the hour of the author of the Four Hour Work Week and the famous podcaster, he says a person's success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.

Interesting.

Now, Phil Libin, who started Evernote, remember that's a billion dollar company now. I mean, I don't know how well they're doing now, but I follow them very closely as they launched. And Phil said the secret of his happiness is minimizing the amount of time that he spends with people who he doesn't choose to be with.

Interesting.

So interesting. So I'm all about, like, I will gladly turn down opportunities all the time to do what I believe to be the highest. I mean, this. My kid. I mean, my kid. My twins, we just had twins. They turned six. My twins are turning six. You know what they wanted to do? They wanted to pet some ducks. They wanted to get a big old water slide. And, you know, that's a great use of my time. Is it going to be written about? No. Is it going to be engraved in a statue? No. Is. Am I going to make money? No. But it's my F5. That's my family. And I scheduled it and I did it because that is something I value.

And what's your measurement of profitability by saying no, does it bring more profits? And how are you. If so, how are you convinced it does?

Anything that doesn't pay me a 30% profit margin on I won't do it. And anything that's not a recurring revenue stream, I won't do it. Any business model at all, that's not recurring revenue, I won't do it anymore.

Interesting.

Is it really that I'm not interesting? Because you just said that your mind.

This will help you.

Thank you.

Now, is it really that simple or that easy to make that transition in your mind? I mean, what about those people who are so gung ho in their business and put their blood, sweat and tears and say, no, I got to sacrifice everything I'm doing to make my business run? How do you, like, how do you just make that transition to say, no, hold up. I got to do what's best for me? How do you. How do you help them do that? Is it that simple as saying, yeah.

Let me do some things that are maybe a little uncomfortable, but I worked with a client recently as a home builder, and we had. He asked almost the same question that you asked. Christine is like the same. Same question. And I said, what we're going to do is your wife can't come to the first meeting because we're going to just meet one on one. I want to bring her, but I want you, sir, to answer the questions transparently. And I want her to answer them transparently when the other is not present so I can get a clear picture. And we discovered his gross revenue. Okay. Gross revenue per month. Like, you know, that didn't count. Supplies was about 21,000amonth. Okay, 21,000amonth coming in. And I said, why do you have an office? He said, well, you know, I have an office. I like to have an office place to meet clients. And I said, well, okay, after. This is after we had defined the F5 goals, okay. So we started by going over the goals. The F5. He told me all his goals. His faith, family, finance, fitness, friendships. We went over that. Then after that, I said, what's your gross revenue? And I said, so you meet most of your clients, you know, at their house, you go to their places. Yeah. So why do you have an office? He says, why I have an office? Because I said, let's may ask you again. You're telling me you don't have time for your wife, and at your current income, you're spending about 70. You make about $70 an hour, roughly. So how many hours a month does it take you to afford this office? So we do the math. Right. Because I'm a math genius. You're a math genius. We do the math. And it's like, well, four. Carry the. So it's like 40 hours.

I love that voice.

So a quarter of your month. Right. A quarter of your month is spent doing. He's kind of a country boy, you know, and he's like, well, I don't necessarily agree with your math. I don't really, you know, I don't. And he kind of mutters a little bit because, you know, what you do is if you. If you don't agree with someone, typically you don't look at them in the eye. You just kind of wear out, you know? I'm like, no, you definitely work 40 hours a month to afford that office. So I'm empowering you right now. We're gonna cancel that lease, and now you are gonna schedule 40 hours a month with your kids. And he said kind of like, almost like he raised that eyebrow, and he's like, so you. You mean. I was like, you don't have to work during that time, right? Because you're working. The money's going to fund the office. So you could hire someone else to answer the phone for you, or you could take that money and save it, or you could, you know, whatever you want to do, but that's 3,000 you're free from. He's like, all right, man. All right, well, let's not get too crazy. Well, we're looking at all the numbers. We found out he has cable at his house that he and his wife never have time to watch because they're very busy, you know. So we thought, okay, let's kill that. Then he thought, well, you know, I need a place to do my paperwork. If I'm not going to have an office, I'm like, fine. So we looked at redirecting a little bit of his income to have a little bit bigger of a truck, you know, those extended wide body cab things, you know. Anyway, long story short, we did all the math. We discovered he could free up almost $6,000 a month by not just having these certain obligations, you know, just saying no to it. And then on the client front, Christina, we found out that he was doing a lot of work where he's installing gas lines for new neighborhoods, and they never paid quickly. They'd always take, like, 60 days to pay. He's dealing with the utility company, and they're super surly, and they just take forever to respond, and they're very difficult. And so we said, you know, why don't you just not work with those clients? How would you feel if you stopped working with those clients and you, you know, and we looked at. And we optimized his life. Does that make sense? We optimized his finances and his. And we set those boundaries. And so now he's no longer working with those utility companies. He is getting out of the lease. He's got one more month. He has to be in the lease. He has an extended vehicle, like an Extended cab vehicle where he's going to do his paperwork. He said he already told me. He's like, I love that thing. And it's just neat to see people change their lives. But we get so busy, right? Busy with a b u s y ness Busyness instead of business. Business with an I. Business with an I is focused on I. You know, it's I, it's, it's. I'm doing a business. It's focused on me achieving my goals for my family. It's business with an I. And people who are just into busyness, they haven't taken the time to analyze their why.

Interesting, interesting. And, and you know, he could have used Fundbox. I just want to point that out. Christina. Clay, we are running really tight in time, so we gotta get going. Listen, you're looking to coach a million businesses. Yeah, I know there's people listening right now that need to work with you. How can they find out more about you?

Well, what we did is we teamed up with David Robinson, the NBA hall of Fame basketball player, gold medal winner, and Michael Levine, he's the PR consultant for Michael Jackson's estate and Pizza Hut and Nike and all that kind of stuff. And then Lee Cockerell from the Disney World fame, all these different guys. And we started an online school that we've literally spent millions and millions of dollars in developing. And it's 19 bucks a month. So I encourage everybody to go out there, do a seven day trial@thrive15.com and for those who want one on one mentorship, we do have some coaches available, but we have kind of a waiting list. And so we don't always have the availabilities to work with you one on one. But the online platform is always available and if we have an opening, we'd love to help you, but I would encourage you just to go to thrive15.com, check it out. Google my name, see all the people that I've said no to that hate me. Google my name, see all the people who know me, who like me. You can kind of sift through the PR and find what's true. But we're here to help you. We're here to mentor you, we're here to bless you. And you are listening to the absolute best podcast platform. This whole concept of putting the profit back into your life. I encourage you to be a loyal listener to these guys. This is a great podcast. Unbelievable stuff they're teaching you day after day. And I just encourage you to be a loyal listener of this podcast. These guys Are great.

Clearly you got the check to promote us. All right, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Yeah. Thank you.

Thanks, Clay.

Yeah.

All right, so guys, in a minute, I want to recap what we learned from Clay. But first I want to thank our corporate partners and I want to do a special kind of announcement about profit. Khan, right?

Yes.

So this whole episode has been about profitability by saying no, we are going to have a guest, I won't say their name at the moment. Who's eradicated $1 million of debt by saying no to the expensive things using profit first. Now, the little trick here, by the way, he was the guest last week, so you can kind of figure it out that way, but with some other wild guests that are coming on too. All focus on profitability. We did some research here called the Google, and we found that there's never been in history a conference dedicated to profit. This is the first conference ever. And so we started doing it last year. And this year is going to trumpet. That was not a political statement by.

Any means, by the way.

So be there. Thank you to our corporate partners. Receipt Bank. If you want to scan in your receipts, if you don't want to have that bag or shoebox full of receipts. Who has shoeboxes nowadays anywhere? But if you don't want to collect receipts the old fashioned way, Receipt bank, you scan it, it zaps into your computer, it connects to your accounting system, it syncs things up, and you know what you spent your money on in seconds. It's the ultimate efficiency tool. Fundbox. I tried to whisper their name. I try to hot pocket them like Fun Box. When. When Clay was sharing that story of the cowboy who had the electric, he was doing the electrical line work and wasn't getting paid. Fun Box could release those funds to them. So there's a perfect circumstance where Fundbox plays in.

Instead of waiting the 60 days, he could just immediately Fundbox will give him the money. And then 60 days from now, when the guy finally pays him, he just gives it back to Fundbox with a little. With a little what? What do you call it?

Little. With a little fee. But, yeah, small fee.

Very small fee.

Yeah, small fee. A small fee and very reasonable. Right? And he could have. Instead of being living off of hot pockets, that cowboy could have been eating some good meals if he had the money. And Fund Box will make that happen. Now fund Dara, different company. Fundera is one stop loan search. So if you need a loan, buy capital equipment or something like that. Check out fundera.com they'll shop it out for you. Usually getting an answer within 24 hours from traditional, like banks and non traditional lenders, like not banks. And then nextiva is a voiceover IP system. And when I say a, I should say it's the VoiceOver IP system. We are massive fans of Nextiva. We're massive fans of the people over there. We're just massive fans of nextiva. And you will be too. So check them out at nextiva, spelled N E X T I V A dot com. Chris, what'd you learn from today's episode?

Yeah, well, I learned so much. I have so many notes here. But, you know, I think just this idea of simplicity, sort of simplifying your life. I think the vignette or the story he told about the person he was coaching and all that, it just. It's just simplifying your life, clarifying and simplifying, and it's. It sounds like Clay has a great process to do that. I also like that what he did in the beginning with his DJ business, offering to do stuff for free in order to get a good referral. I think that may. That may not apply to all businesses, but certainly that's something to think about. How can you, you know, because look, you need creative ways to get that client that you want to get, right? And I agree fully.

Yeah, I agree totally, totally. We did that when we started Prop first Professionals. The people who are willing to take the risk on us got a significant discount for as long as they members. And that's how we got started. And I think any business can do it. So, Chris, here, you get one bra, bruh. All right, Christina, what was your takeaway?

The last story that he was telling us about with the cowboy and, you know, spinning off of my question of how to make that transition, it honestly sounded and it reminded me so much of what we do here is taking your profit first. It's. It's essentially the same thing. You are simplifying your life. You are getting rid of those unnecessary expenses and those unnecessary things, which in turn gives you more time to do the things that you need to focus on.

Love it. You also get a bruh.

And she also gets a yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Oh. Oh, nice. It happened today in our morning huddle. Mo, that's Aaron Moer. So she goes by Mo. Mo came in and said she's doing her daily updates, doing her KPIs. We have a. We call it the big one. The big one thing you're gonna accomplish at the end of the day or by the End of the day. And she was sharing a bigger one. And she said, but I want to stop and share a story. And the whole kind of mood in the office moved from traditional, kind of like, let's go through a business script to what's going on here. And she started sharing a story of how Profit First Professionals is changing the world. Right. How that one person, one of our members, was able to re empower company to be profitable and save the company. And Erin's like, I'm not here for a paycheck. I mean, I am. But she's like, I'm not here for my life. I'm here to support other lives. Yeah. She sees the why, and we all do here. And it's amazing what a little, tiny, itty bitty company of ours can do when there's all people resonating with a purpose.

Yeah.

And that was my takeaway. Clay's exact words were, why are you on this planet? I also like the F5.

Yeah.

Faith, family finance, fitness, and friendships. And I like the fact I could write that fast. All right, great.

Square on a chessboard, by the way.

Oh, that's a good point.

A little trivia.

Thank you.

So this has been great, by the way. Don't forget, you can rate and review our show wherever you're listening to this podcast. Itunes, Stitcher, Tunein Radio, Google Play. There you go. And, yeah. And so profit first podcast dot com. That's our website. Profitfirstpodcast.com has all our previous episodes. You can comment on this episode. So we want to hear your takeaways from this episode. Don't just listen to Mike and Christina and me. You got more gold in your brain than us. So we need you to go to this post, put in your takeaways, and also you can ask a question, and Mike or Obi Ron or maybe even Clay can answer your question. So this is not just a passive podcast here where you can sit back and. And dress up in a banana suit and listen. You know, you can participate. So we really encourage that. So thank you again to our guest, Clay Clark. And really, we got to just. Mike, quickly. Profit First Professionals, like you just said, is changing the world. Give us the quickie.

Yeah. If you have a business and I suspect you listen to this show and you want to be very profitable. And I hate to say this, but I suspect you're not, because 83% of businesses are not profitable. Profit First Professionals is your source. I wrote a book called Profit first to empower entrepreneurs to be more profitable then the big realization was our accountant, our bookkeeper. The people who support us on a daily basis need to be the enforcers and the guides through profitability. So my partner Obi Ron Kenobi and I started the company. Now Kebbi's here. Mo Rookie 1 and 2 Scalise the hall, as we call them, Hawaiian lumberjack come together to teach our members all the intricacies of driving profitability. You have all those resources available to you. Here's what you do. Go to profitfirstprofessionals.com, click on the find a profit first professional button, fill out the quick form. We will match you up with a masterful profit first professional who will guide you to the highest degrees of profitability ever. Oh, and once that's done, don't leave the site just yet. Go to upcoming events and join us at ProfitCon 2016. It's gonna be the game changing event of the century.

Do it.

You gotta be there. Do it.

Profitcon. You gotta be there. You can get your picture taken with Mike Michalowitz. Unbelievable.

Yes.

And Christina. Well, Christina's.

Yes.

Yes. That's what people are saying. When I get a picture with me.

Sorry.

Yes. Here. This is what they say. I found the.

Finally.

I found it.

You finally found it.

Well, thanks for listening, everyone. Again, thanks, Mike. Thanks, Christina. Thanks to Clay Clark and everyone in the background over there. We really appreciate you being part of the profit first family here. We really love doing the show. We really like not. We're not. It's like we're providing. We're making a difference in your life. We are all together, coming together to live the lives we want to live in. It's really inspirational. So thanks everybody. And who's up next week? Mike?

Dave Kirpin. He's going to teach us how people skills is the absolute key to profitability.

That's it. See you then.

Peace. What's this do?

Yeah.

Sa.