A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journal
Written by Las Vegas Motivational Speaker & U.S. Small Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year Clay Clark
“Success 101: The Importance of Resetting Your Financial Thermostat” (Find blog post below brief Clay Clark biography)
About Clay:
– Clay has been written about in the New York Times and the Washington Post
– Is the founder of numerous successful organizations including DJ Connection (America’s largest wedding entertainment business),
Juliet Films (formerly Cherished Traditions Videography), the Bridal Association, the Bridal Association Wedding Show, etc…
– He has worked a business consultant for national organizations including: Farmers Insurance, Maytag, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, etc…
– His “Wheel of Wealth System” for building “scalable and duplicatable business systems designed to be capable of working without the owner” have helped
thousands of people and audience members throughout the United States.
– His best-selling book, Make Your Life Epic: From the Dorm Room to the Board Room has helped countless readers to find a problems and solve them in a profitable
way by starting a successful business.
– For more information about scheduling Clay Clark to speaker to your organization, conference, workshop or group visit: https://makeyourlifeepic.com
– His ability to weave entertainment and education into his speaking events has made him a favorite Dallas Motivational Speaker, Tulsa Motivational Speaker
and Las Vegas Motivational Speaker of choice for event planners and conference organizers from coast to coast.
– He has shared the stage with best-selling authors, professional sports trainers and award-winning business owners.
– He has 5 kids and 1 beautiful wife (as opposed to 2)
“Success 101: The Importance of Resetting Your Financial Baseline Expectations”
We all have financial “normals” and “baseline expectations.” For example, when I worked at Target, I always wanted to earn enough money to afford the $550 per month rent we had to pay at the Fountain Crest Apartments. Because I did not really mind not having air conditioning, I set my financial “normal” and “baseline expectation” to $1,200 per month. Essentially my goal was to earn $1,200 per month. I figured if I did this then I was really rocking. I figured if I earned $1,200 per month as a disk jockey / Target employee that was enough money to pay my rent and to take my beautiful wife to the dollar movie. Then one year for Thanksgiving we went to Houston and I had a conversation with her uncle Clynt.
While talking with Clynt, he asked me, “how many events do you do per weekend?” “What are you goals?” and various questions that maybe me question my “baseline financial expectations” and my “financial normals.” Because he had sold a business for well over a million dollars I listened. He began to explain to me that I should expect much more out of my life. He explained to me that I deserved to earn much more and that I was capable of doing it if I would only begin asking the right questions. Currently I was asking the question, “what do I need to do to earn $1,200 per month?” He challenged me to ask bigger questions like, “what do I need to do to earn $6,000 per month?” At the time I thought this was almost impossible. But I found that exercise of just asking the bigger questions was beginning to affect my thinking drastically. If I was going to make $6,000 per month, I couldn’t possibly work enough hours at Applebee’s to make that kind of money. I couldn’t possibly work enough hours at Target to make that kind of money. To make that kind of money, I would have to stop working at those jobs. In fact is wasn’t even possible to achieve my financial dreams and goals if I stayed there. It was then that I had an “aha” moment as Oprah famously calls them.
I realized that if I was going to change my income and my “financial expectations” I was going to have to change my occupation. I was going to have to change something immediately. I didn’t even make sense to work at Target anymore, because it wasn’t going to help me get to my goal. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. If something isn’t helping me get closer to my goal, it is actually taking me farther away from my goals. Wow! How profound that moment was.
From that moment on, every year I have tried to crank up my financial expectations. When we had child number 1, I realized I needed to grow our companies. When we had child 2, 3, 4 & 5 I really began to realize this. I began to earning 6 figures per year wasn’t going to cut it. I was going to have to build million dollar businesses if I was ever going to build my million dollar dreams. So today with the companies I find myself continually asking the question, “how many clients will we have to work with and add value to for our team and I to achieve our financial goals?” If the number is doable, I am going for it. If it is not possible and not worth doing, I am not touching it.
My friends, achieving success is all about resetting our financial baseline expectations by continually asking the right questions. As a Tulsa Wedding DJ business owner and founder I find myself asking, how many weddings will be have to provide entertainment for in order to achieve our goals? Is that possible? And the answer is a resounding yes. In fact we need to wow about 16,000 brides per year in order to achieve our financial goals. However, the phenomenal thing about this, is that we have to wow the brides to achieve the goals. We have to engage in mutually beneficial relationships to build supreme amounts of value. We can’t achieve just by booking events. We have to add value. We have to take the events to the next level to achieve our goals. We have to do for DJ-ing what Starbucks did for the coffee industry. Can we do it? It’s a big question. And a big question worth answering.
