In this episode of "Small Business, Big Moves,". Thomas Bennett is joined by guest Clay Staires to explore creative strategies and innovative approaches that have propelled small businesses to new heights. Discover the steps to building and growing your business.
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Small Business Big Moves is a podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Join Tom Bennett as he explores all things business growth! From business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses!
In this episode of "Small Business, Big Moves,". Thomas Bennett is joined by guest Clay Staires to explore creative strategies and innovative approaches that have propelled small businesses to new heights. Discover the steps to building and growing your business.
Connect with us on social media:
- Facebook: Thomas Bennett
- Instagram: @Thomas.mbennett
-YouTube:@SmallBusinessMoneyConnector
- LinkedIn: Thomas Bennett
Subscribe to "Small Business, Big Moves" on Your Favorite Podcast Platform for more inspiring episodes on innovation and entrepreneurship.
Small Business Big Moves is a podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Join Tom Bennett as he explores all things business growth! From business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses!
Welcome to Small Business Big Moves, the podcast where entrepreneurship meets innovation. I'm your host, Tom Bennett, and we'll explore all things business growth from business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses. Welcome to the show. Today's guest will be Clay Stairs. Clay, I'm excited to have you on the show. If you could introduce yourself. Yeah. Thank you very much, Thomas. And thank you for having me on the show. I'm looking forward to talking with you and to talking with your listeners and providing some, some what I call stair steps to success. So thank you for the introduction. And yeah, my name again is Clay stairs. I run the leadership initiative out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. I may I own, this is a, a business coaching firm. And we work with small business owners all over the country, helping them launch those companies, helping them get up and running. And so that's kind of an introduction of me. I've been doing this since about 2012 and just love, love doing it. Love spending the time with small business owners. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm excited to share some value with them today. But that and that's really what I wanted to cover with everyone today as well is really everything that goes into business and small business. And really the path to growing a company and some steps that you can take towards growing a business. But before we jump into that, I wanted you to give us a background on a little bit about your journey, where you started and what got you into what you're doing now, helping all these small to medium sized business owners. Yeah, So great question, by the way. And so I started out as a high school science teacher and coach back in my early twenties, mid twenties. And I loved doing that. I, I think, you know, coaching, teaching, training, developing, mentoring, speaking, that's kind of my thing. I love doing that kind of thing. So started doing that way back when, and I did that for 15 years. And it kind of went to the mountaintop with that kind of went as far as I could go. And your listeners probably will be familiar with this feeling this idea of I had achieved a lot and had been successful. I'd won awards and things, but I knew that there was more inside of me that I hadn't accessed yet. There's still more and I was looking at teaching. I was going this job is not going to get me into that more. I need to do something else to tap into that. So I did the crazy thing after 15 years of getting out of teaching and get this. I jumped out of teaching and jumped into teaching. Yeah, there's a great idea, you know, and but I did, I moved back to Oklahoma at that point, Thomas, and I took over my family's ministry. So that was my first step into running a non profit organization. And so I did that for 10 years. As I took over, we were in a really tight spot. And so it really stretched me to, you know, To learn new skills and to expand myself really enjoyed that did that for 10 years. And then, oh, here it was again. I, there's more to me. There's more to me than I've accessed. And this job is not going to get me to that more. So I did another switch and jumped out of the non profit world and that's actually when I started the leadership initiative. My own company jumped into the wonderful world of entrepreneurship and of course as all the listeners know, oh yeah, that stretches you. All of a sudden it was like, holy cow, I now have to be in charge of all kinds of stuff. And so I immediately grabbed a business coach to help me with that. So I started that in 2012 and got the business to a point that we'll talk about a little bit here in just a little bit, but got the business to a point where it was providing me time freedom. And financial freedom. And so then I had the opportunity to run for office and it was back during the COVID stuff and everything that was going on and somebody looked at me and said, you, you need to run for office. And it was like, yes. So I ran for office, I won. So now on top of doing the leadership initiative, I'm also an Oklahoma state representative in Oklahoma city and just love doing that as well. So, so that's been my journey to where I am right now. Fantastic. No, I love the story. Right. And it's a, it's an exciting feeling when you get that out, when you get that calling that there's something more I can do, or there's something something else that I can achieve out there. I think like you just mentioned, I think we both have. A very similar purpose or why right when it comes down to at the end of the day, just helping small business owners really get that financial and time freedom, right? Because as you know, a lot of the, I love the saying that why work 40 hours somewhere else when they can work 100 hours for themselves. So I'm sure you see it every day and have a terrible boss. Yeah, yes, exactly. You have to deal with them too. Exactly. So yeah, I know it's a it's a good thing They were both doing and I know I know it's a good feeling day in and day out So I appreciate you sharing that with me and the listeners out there And the other thing I wanted to jump in on Quickly as well as I know obviously I see the I know you're a two time published author Which is exciting and I know I just recently collaborated on a book myself. So I know not many people can say that, but if you wanted to jump into that a little bit about the books that you wrote and how you've been able to help a lot of people with that as well. Yeah. Thank you, Thomas, for giving me a chance to talk about that. Yeah. When I, when I first started out doing my coaching I discovered really quickly that. That one of the biggest hurdles For business owners and probably with humans in general, but what I was discovering with with business owners And they were even admitting this clay. My biggest limiting factor is me I keep getting in my way for whatever reason. I, I don't have the discipline. I don't have the, blah, you know, whatever it is, but the biggest issue with them with, with them and their company was themselves. And so I ended up spending a lot of time with my with my clients. Working on them personally and doing like personal development and all that kind of stuff. And So I ended up writing a book it ended up as I was talking with one person to another I found Okay, we're all humans and we all need to walk down this same path when it comes to personal development so I wrote a book called grow and it's a field guide to personal development and it literally is The path that you can follow there may be several paths, but this is a path that you can follow to help you expand in the book I use concentric circles, and I talked about how so often so you can imagine it with concentric circles. You've got this smaller circle on the inside and we can call that your capacity. All right. That's kind of your mental, emotional, financial, you know, whatever, that's your capacity. But as soon as you start becoming successful, what happens is your responsibility grows and grows and grows. And so many of us find that the responsibility circle is so much bigger than our capacity circle. Okay. And so we freak out. I call the space in between the freak out zone and, Oh my gosh, we don't know what to do. And usually what people do is they make these decisions. I just need things to get smaller. I just need to take a break. I need things to slow down. That's a very common response. I take it the other way. I say, no, what needs to happen is your capacity needs to expand. So that is what the book grow is all about is helping you expand your capacity. To process greater complexity and it was a lot of a lot of fun writing that book. I actually wrote it in a weekend You know, just I actually went to a hotel and barricaded myself in a hotel and just cram that thing out Because it was something that was needed really quickly, you know, it wasn't gonna I couldn't take a year to write it So it's incredible. That was the first book that I did And then the second book that i've got out that's just come out last year has been a lot of fun Is a book called just don't suck and it is primarily from for a business owner. And your business owners may appreciate this. You may have some employees that are just kind of driving you up the wall. You know, just basic stuff like, can you show up on time? Can you follow a system? Can you help me? You're killing me over here. So I was actually leading a business class at a college here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And I asked this group of college seniors, what how would my generation, the people that are going to be hiring you when you come out of college, what words would they use to describe your generation? And they just hopped, Thomas, it was hilarious. They just hopped right into it. entitled, lazy, don't want to work. I mean, and I didn't tell them to give me negative stuff, but that's what they were giving me, you know, and hard to work with. And we want only want to, we want high pay and low responsibility. And, and so I'm writing all this stuff down on a whiteboard and it just comes to me in my head. Okay. So if you want to really stand out, just don't suck. Because this is your competition. What you're giving me, this is your competition. It's literally what people are expecting out of you. And if you can go out there and just not suck, you can really stand out in a crowd. And so that's what my second book is all about. And now I, I refer this book out to all business owners for any new employee that you have come in. Give them this book. Just make it part of your onboarding process. And it also creates a great some great language in your culture. Because if somebody starts acting the fool in the company, you can simply just say, Hey, let's be careful. Let's not suck. And everybody immediately knows what you're talking about. So it's a fun book to have it. Yeah, that's that's spot on. Like that whole just don't suck and just, just don't do what everyone else is doing out there these days. And you'll, it'll be pretty successful and probably be doing just fine. So I like that. And it's a great approach to, like you said, to the onboarding, right? Just bringing that right value up front and almost really aligning with a lot of people's core values here. Just just keep this in mind when you, Go off track or fall into that trap that everyone else is doing. And let's get it back together real quick. Yeah, Thomas. I even have a poster up in in my office. And so I have several posters all over my, my company that, that have different phrases and stuff like that. And so if, if there is an employee that either is acting the fool or even an employee that's doing really good, I don't have to go, you know, in my head. You know, I need to sit down and talk to this person and we got to figure out how to work this out and everything. I just walk over, I grab the employee, walk over to one of the posters and point at it. And, and again, they understand they know because I've used these posters in my, in my coaching and in my teaching. So I just have to go over and point at the poster just don't suck. And they go, Yeah, I'm sorry I showed up late today or Yeah, I'm sorry I didn't do something, and everybody already knows, so you don't have to have those long meetings. Absolutely. And I know we kind of touched on a little bit. About the beginning of the process. Obviously, we talked about the books that you put together. And then, like you mentioned, leading into kind of that onboarding process and probably some of the core values are just kind of reminding business owners that they should have some core values in place or some sort of culture. But then from there, let's jump into really like we talked about initially that path to really grow a company or some of the steps that a small business might be able to take towards growth. I know. You and I mainly talked about it before hopping on here, but just a small business owners wearing so many hats and obviously they can't handle everything. So let's jump into that a little bit. Yeah. It's really something Thomas as business owners, we, we get this vision of the company that we want to start. And usually that vision includes It could be several, but it includes other people. It's not just us sitting there. What turns out to be reality. It's not just us sitting there busting our butt every single day. But we we envision that that initial vision that we have for the company is that there are other people around us helping us do different things in the company. And it's a great picture. That draws us into those decisions and draws us into that future. But the, the, the reality of it is actually bringing on new people is like step four, five, and six. In growing a company and there are there are steps ahead of time that are so important to get into place And I have found over and over that one of one of the traps that we fall in as business owners is we We know the skill that we have we know that we can do a certain thing And we know that we can make money at it. We know that we're good And again, if you don't know that you're good, that's another conversation. But, but we know that we're good, but we, we don't know what the next step is. And so we end up being victims to all kinds of different ideas. We get the, the rando email, you know, Hey, you want to increase your sales, you know, run, do this. And we go, I want to increase my sales and we try it, you know, and, and the example that we were talking about. You need to advertise in the high school newspaper, you know, it's well, I'm just getting my name out there. It's like, no, we don't want to do that. So, so what what I found so often, and even for me when I first started. I knew that I had a skill in coaching teaching training developing speaking. I knew I had a skill I just didn't know how to build the business around it So what I want to do is is just give your listeners that the steps Okay, and and this really is a linear path and And it's a proven path. And so because so often we just don't know what the next step is. We don't have any problem working hard. It's just, what is it I need to be working hard doing? So number one in your company, we talk about we talk about what are your goals? And Thomas, this is really wild. The number of people that I talk to early on that are business owners, I ask them, what are your big goals? What are you wanting to do? The number of people that don't really know. They just you know, Clay, I don't know, just, I'm just a squirrel trying to get a nut type of thing. And they don't really know where they're headed with this thing. And so that can be a huge step for people to just identify what is my goal here? What is it that I want my company to do for me other than just give me a paycheck? Is there, is there somewhere that I'm going? So identifying the goals next of all, to get to those goals, what are the numbers? So this is step number two. What are the numbers that need to be produced to hit that goal? All right. Again, some people, let's say that you've got a service or a product that's a thousand dollars. Okay. You know, and if you sell it, you get 1, 000. Okay, fantastic. Now, how much money are you wanting to make in a year? Well, clay, I want to make a million dollars. Okay. The math is simple. If it costs a thousand or if you're going to going to charge people a thousand and you want to make a million, how many of these transactions do you need to make? And just that simple math, Thomas can be revelation to people. It's like, Oh my gosh, This is great. But if you don't know what those numbers are, you can just be working your butt off, but you don't really know what you're doing. All you need. I just need the next one. I just need the next one. And you never really know if you're on target or not on target. Does that make sense? Yeah, and it's, it's so true, right? And it's like you said, it is interesting how many people, like you said, just, I think a lot of people just want to start their own business or maybe get out of that nine to five and that's really where they started. But like you said, not, not having that end goal or at least a goal to get to next. And like you said, you're just putting the work in, just grinding away, but you're really just spinning in circles because no matter how much you do, it's, yeah. You're not motivated enough, or you're not really getting to what would be the next level. So yeah, I think those are both huge steps. So, so I just want to encourage all of your listeners that are business owners and that are out there, fantastic, great job. You are a very small percentage of the human race. That's what the balls to actually go out and start something. So great job with that. But again, if we don't have a path, then you can find yourself just getting frustrated. And that's a big reason why nine out of 10 businesses fail. You know, and so, because we just didn't know what the path is. So. Step number one, what is the goal step number two, what are the numbers that we need to be putting into place to hit those goals? Step number three is when we're talking about, okay, who is going to be your. What is your ideal and likely buyer, you know who, what is unique to you and who is that ideal and likely buyer to identify what is different about you than everybody else. Okay, so that's step number three. Step number four, now we're getting into branding. So, especially in today's world with online, we have to create a, a branded experience for people. When they find you, you gotta look good. You can't suck. You know, when people find your website, when they find your, your social media, when they find flyers and, and print, printable papers on you, they need to find something that is highly professional. So that's very important. Again, a lot of times, you know, I got to. I got a brother that does websites, so I'm going to have him because he'll do it for free, and he'll bring me a six pack. All right, that's beautiful, that's great. A lot of times that's what we have to do, but sometimes that website just might not be might not be the tool that's helping people say yes to you. So we want to make sure that we have a nice professional brand. Step number five is when we're stepping into now into your marketing. How are we going to get you in front of that ideal and likely buyer and create those leads? We call it designing your marketing stool. And please remember at this point we still haven't hired anybody. This is all just you. So you're doing the work trying to make money while you are making decisions on these other steps. And now we're putting together your, your marketing stool to make sure that people see you and we have to create leads. Well, how many leads do we need to create? I don't know. Well, that goes back to your numbers. How many sales do we have to have to reach your financial goals? Now we can, again, just start doing the math. How many people do you have to talk to to actually get those closes? So now we've created leads for you. And step number six is we are now stepping into, we've created leads, now we've got to close the lead. So now we're in sales. All right. And so there are very specific moves that we can make. I remember for me, Thomas, one of the biggest things was sales. I, being a school teacher and being in ministry, I didn't know anything about sales and sales was intimidating to me. I find this is very common. It's not everybody, but it's very common for those of us like you and I that want to help people. We have a hard time charging people for that help. There's just something that goes in that math inside of our head. And, you know, either we don't want to charge or we only want to charge like a dollar, you know, and it's like, okay, this is a bad idea. So it's, it's learning how to build that relationship and, and, and take that conversation to a place where you can get a close, where people are actually asking you or people are actually paying you money for that service. So now we're closing deals. Woohoo! This is awesome. But, I'm sure many of your business owners understand that, man, now I've closed like 7, different things, and, oh no, now I gotta go do the work, you know? And so, it's, it's actually putting together systems to help you do the work early on. It's all in your head. You probably know what I'm talking about. Thomas. It's all in your head. You know what to do. There's no reason to write it down. It's in my head. I always know what to do. And that's great. Until you get to the point where you can't do all the work and you need help. Okay. And if you hire people without have anything written down, you're screwed. You know, you're in big trouble now because now you've got another person running around crazy, you know, and so it's just during that time there. After you're doing the sales, step number seven is now going to be actually putting together your production systems, how to produce how, how produ, how to produce the quality on a consistent basis. And now that we've created those, now we can move to step number eight now, which is actually okay, let's get some help. Let's get some people in here to actually start helping us. So how do we know who the good person is? How much do I pay them? You know, what is an interview? I don't know what to ask them in an interview. You know, are you going to work good? They said they would be a good employee. Okay. Come on in, you know, so having those, having the having somebody with the experience to let you know, these are the questions you want to ask, and this is the type of person that you're looking for. This is usually one of our biggest issues, and I've made the mistakes too, of hiring people. In a hurry or hiring people and hope the whole higher and hope type of thing and in by day three You already know. Oh, no, I don't like this person, you know, so how can we eliminate that? That disappointment that frustration so again It's having somebody or it's reading a book or it's having somebody that can help you put those systems together on how to find How to hire how to train how to inspire those people so they stick around And then from there, now we're getting into the full on management of your company. We're getting into the accounting of your company and tracking numbers, making sure that you're profitable, not just making money week over week over week, but you're actually able to keep some of that money, you know, getting into the legal and all of those steps, which are, you know, your 9, 10 and 11. But it's that it's that path that I think so many small business owners, including me when I first started. I didn't know the path. I just had the skill and I was hoping to make some money. But when I first started, I hired a coach that helped me walk down this path. And now this path that I've been on for the past 12 years, it's the very same path that I'm helping with all of my clients. Here's the first step. Here's the next step. Here's what we need to do next. And it has been ended up being extremely successful with hundreds of different small business owners all over the country. I love it. Yeah, I know that's a, that's a lot of value just provided and it's spot on with really those steps from start to finish essentially right and then just really the main thing is just repeating it and keeping consistent with that but it is making sure that you hit all those steps along the way. I think a lot of people Eventually might figure out sales or they might figure out marketing, but a lot of people confuse the two. They're both two completely different things and two critical pieces to the business. But then like you said, okay, you do all that, you get the business. Now you you are in the trust and brought on a client. That's where the fun stuff begins and where the real job starts. It's not, okay, we got this. Now we can move on and go get the next client. It's much more than that. Exactly, exactly. So again, I, I love working with small business owners that are, that are open and willing to walk down the path. And again, we've just found great success with it. It's what's, it's what has allowed me to build my business to the point where it got to where I was only going into the office once a week, which is awesome, you know, but it opened up time for me to do other things in my life that, that I wanted to do. And one of those is run for office. And so now I've got this gig going on, which is hilarious. And talk about a screwed up place going to the government. Wow. That is interesting. That's like leadership at a whole new level, man. Absolutely. No, that's incredible. Congratulations. That's really exciting. And it's like you said, you've, you've been on many different paths from the high school teacher to ministry to to leading that and being a governor there. And that's a, that's exciting stuff. Yeah. I, I've just, I've really enjoyed it. It's been something. Absolutely. Yeah. I know we, I know we threw a lot at him today, but anything that We might have missed out or any more value that you'd like to leave the listeners with today. Yeah, I think as you and I were talking about earlier, I think the key thing, again, this is the path. Okay, it's a proven path. And again, if you want to have a coach to help you walk through that, great. If you, if you don't feel like you're really coachable kind of person, that's fine. Get a book to help you with each of those steps. That's fine too. But you know, there's even some people out there that said, you know, I'm, I'm good. I'm just going to learn it on my own. Okay. That's fine as well. If you want to learn from mistakes, you can do that. The old trial and error. You can learn that way. It's just, there's a lot of trial and a lot of error, you know, so you can learn from mentors or you can learn from mistakes whichever you want to do, but I would just want to encourage each of your listeners. If you find yourself in this spot of man, I know that I've got a, a service, I've got a product here that I know can do really well. I just don't know how to break into the next level. I don't know how to get there. Guys, it's been figured out. Okay? It's been figured out. There have been others that have gone ahead of you that have figured this thing out. It took me quite a while to actually trust. That I could follow a path. I thought business success was this like You know this thing I had to get the bones You know, I had to have some chickens hanging from the wall and stuff like that, but it really is a proven path So whether you want to have a book Help you with that. Whether you have another very successful business friend that you want to have help you down that path. If you're looking for a coach, I'd love to have a conversation with you. And, and come and spend time with me. We'll provide you not only with the path, but we'll provide you with a person to help you navigate down that path on a weekly basis. But again, if you don't have a path that you're on, chances are good you can find yourself just going in circles. And you're having the same problems today as you had last year, or you had two years ago, and it just never has been solved for you to, I just want to encourage you as a business owner to solve that problem. I think that's perfect and it's spot on because those those 12 steps you mentioned is when you really break it down. Okay. There's definitely steps in there that each business owner can do, but it really comes down to, is it step one, two, and three that you can do? Is it one, two, three, and six, you know, where, where is that disconnect on that path? And me personally, I think one of the best lessons I learned was learning from other people's failures. Obviously I failed plenty of times in my life at a, at a young age of 30, but it's also when I can find out what other people have done. In business and life that their failures and implement that so I don't have to go down the same path. I think like you just said, those are those 12 steps. It's a lot for any business to take on, but it's really what differentiates those businesses that are in business for 20 years or the businesses that Make it three or four years, unfortunately, if that, and it's just the just the reality that there's a lot of things that go into it just above just above getting a client. Yeah. Well, I appreciate the time. I appreciate you coming on. That's going to be a wrap of this episode of small business, big moves. If you enjoyed this episode or know someone that would get value out of it, what we ask is that you like share or review the podcast. And in the meantime, you can find me on all social media at Thomas and Bennett. And we look forward to seeing you all in the next episode.