Where are you at physically?
I'm in a small town in between Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio.
Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio.
Awesome.
Is it called Cleveland?
Just kidding.
Not a small town.
Been there, though.
Fan of Cleveland.
Had some great sandwiches there.
Oh, man, other great stuff, too.
First time I ate a chocolate cake with gold in it.
I didn't even have that.
That's cool.
I'll have to find the restaurant name.
I'll put in the resources, because that place was awesome.
We were celebrating a conference.
We were speaking at a conference for customer satisfaction
and how to make people happy.
And we have a lot of fun doing just that, don't we?
You and I both.
That's right.
I'm not sure about the eating the gold, though, honestly,
Jason.
It's an interesting thing.
You got to look it up and see what's going on with it.
They have their justification and rationalizations
of how they do it.
But I know all the chefs out there
are making fun of both of us right now for not
knowing the, well, look, this is how it works
and this is how you do it.
But yeah, that's legitimately part of the dessert.
So Clay, happiness, leadership, we're
going to talk about some resources first.
What are three resources that you
recommend for other visionary leaders out there?
Yeah, it's so funny you asked me about that, Jackson,
because I was just recommending somebody for leadership
training this week, in fact, yesterday.
And so for me, when I make recommendations,
I definitely recommend reading books.
So Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren,
that's a great way to get your mind around things,
because leadership is more than action, obviously.
So then I recommend John Maxwell.
Yeah.
I'm a Maxwell fan.
I'd like to show you my evidence.
Oh, I can see it.
Oh, it's blurry.
The Maxwell Leadership Bible.
All duct tape.
Oh, yeah.
I've had it since a member gave it to me
at the Christmas party in 2009.
Woo.
Yeah, it sits right next to my desk every day.
So that's a great resource.
And then this resource is going to be a little interesting.
Yeah.
This last resource is a test.
OK?
And the test is, when you ask somebody to come with you,
do they come with you?
Will they go with you?
Test your leadership influence.
So asking somebody to do something with you
and then following through is, to me,
a fantastic resource to try.
Whoa, that's cool.
Yeah.
How can you lead anybody else if you can't lead yourself?
We're over 300, maybe even over 400 guests
in now to the podcast.
I think you're the first person to give us a test,
an actionable test that we can use.
And I really, really like that one.
I wish I had spent more time considering
the value of doing things like that, of leadership, of being.
And then also, I'm going to tie that to, are they following you?
Or are they coming with you based on their true want
and desire or based on your manipulation and coercion
to get them to do so?
Those are two very, very different leadership realities.
You notice I said ask.
Yes.
Ask.
Ask and invite.
I love it.
That was powerful, man.
We're going to come back on, everybody.
We're going to be talking about transforming
the standard for professional networking with Clay Hicks.
A little bit of a shout out to him regarding this.
I introduced him to Barbara Ann Gardner and Hiram Mills,
one of my business partners.
And she joined H7 Networks and has
been really grateful for the connections
that she's had there.
So Clay does have some super awesome, not tricks,
fundamentals of networking in mind and in action.
So definitely check that out.
We will see you guys on the other side
as we make Clay Hicks Vision at large.
All right.
Welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm with Jackson Calame.
I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building fantastic visions
out there.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome in to another show of Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Calame, founder and CEO
of First Class Business.
And I am on an ultra, ultra high today.
We've had so many wonderful victories and blessings
take place, including having Clay Hicks as our guest today
from h7network.com.
He's got a Christian networking group
and wants to make a global impact on how we show up
and serve each other and build relationships.
And I think that's phenomenal.
And before I bring Clay back on, I also
want to make sure to talk about a few of the resources that
are available to you.
One, I've got to give a massive shout out right now
to Dave Morrow of the Hard to Kill, of hardtokill.org
with the Hard to Kill podcast.
He's an award winning Army veteran
that has an incredible podcast.
And he just landed a partnership with Grunt Style, gruntstyle.com.
Over 2 million followers on Instagram
because they've got an incredible foundation of how
they help and serve the military community in addition
to their military apparel.
So congratulations, Dave, on that.
If you're a veteran looking to lose weight or get in shape
so that you can look good, feel good, and then go do good,
I recommend going and getting to know Dave Morrow
and seeing what he's doing in the veterans getting fit AF
community.
Very cool how he leads and the way that he shows up.
We love being a part of his venture.
Then there's Magic's Productions.
Magic's Productions is with Peyton Childers.
And Peyton did the conference for us.
You can see a little picture of it there.
He was our live streaming guru that
did the video and audio set up for first class networking.
He was the first to show up.
He was the last to leave.
His hospitality skills are phenomenal.
A little important story about Peyton
when it comes to broadcasting, he
has the broadcasting background and experience
of having worked with the Texas Rangers during their championship
season last year.
He also was on the production crew for the Sam Houston
University when they won the football championship when
he was in college.
He's got championship rings from both of those, authentic ones.
He would never show that.
He would never talk about it.
But I can't help it.
I think Peyton, I think the world of Peyton.
And if you're in a position where you need an AV guy,
I highly recommend consulting with him.
And he's also moved into helping people
with launching their podcasts and high quality production.
So again, check out what Peyton's up to.
It's always a good idea to see who are the youngins,
the 25-year-old level individuals who
are hustling to make it happen that will probably
dominate the world stages 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the road.
I know Peyton's on that path.
So definitely check out what he's up to.
And then there's the water project.
When I came across the water project,
I didn't quite, I mean, I knew it was important to give water
to people in the world.
But I didn't understand that there
was millions of people in this world who don't even have
access to clean drinking water.
And as that kind of sunk into me,
I was like, man, I've never been thirsty in my life.
This has got to be awful.
Well, I choose to focus our podcast's objective,
our mission, our cause on the water project because of that.
I've never known what it's like.
But there are millions of people who do not have the blessings
that we have to be able to listen to podcasts,
consume it, do podcasting.
And so I hope that you take the chance
to just share this with the people in your circle.
You never know who you're connected to.
That might be in a position to give $100,000
to this initiative or just $5.
Whichever the case is, what I love
about the mission of the water project
is they actually show you which community you're contributing
to, and they show you the results.
They take before and after pictures
of what these people were able to build,
whether it was a sand dam or a borehole well.
And that transparency is something
that I'm just incredibly grateful for.
I'm not affiliated.
I didn't start it.
I don't really work with it.
I look forward to hopefully someday visiting one of these.
That would be the ultimate experience.
But when I did talk to them about visiting
one of these locations, they told me,
Jackson, our locations are so remote.
We choose locations that are incredibly remote
that it would be overlooked if it wasn't
for an organization like ours.
And I was like, man, I definitely
got to go to one of these now.
So I'm very much hoping within the next couple of years
to get myself in a position and my team in a position
where we can take a few people out
and see behind the scenes of what that looks like.
But yes, if you have another cause
that you'd love to see us support, my friends,
there's 8 billion people out there
who need a lot of help in the world.
Do not hesitate to drop the link in the comments
because a lot of the people who listen to this show
are people who do take action, love to give back,
and love to help out.
So do others a favor.
And let's spread the word about things
that we can do to give back.
Speaking of that, big shout out to the production crew
behind the scenes.
We got Vicky and Diana who are helping out.
And on O Pratik Linares, our Spanish podcast,
today we hosted Kiki Ingles.
He has 900,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel
teaching people English for free.
And he came on to our program to learn about
how we're helping people find work for free
in Latin America.
And it's been really cool to see.
Oh, look at that.
They're even going to show us right now what that is.
I know I'm eating into your time, Clay.
I appreciate you letting me do this.
Enrique Rodriguez and Kiki and these individuals
who are in this group, they realized
that there's a huge opportunity to help Latino Americans
learn about becoming virtual assistants
and becoming digital ambassadors.
And so we were able to go live on our channel today
and Kiki Ingles is going to be sharing that
as soon as we get him the post production materials
to his 900,000 followers.
So a huge shout out to Vicky and Diana
who helped coordinate for that.
And Luisa, it was like her first or I think it was
her second podcast interview.
She's been a guest once with us
and she actually led that interview with Kiki
because Cynthia, our traditional podcast host
is on a two-week vacation.
So huge celebrations there.
I have a lot to be very excited about today.
And without further ado, Clay Hicks,
thank you for joining me on one of the best days ever.
Thank you for having me.
Yes, sir, absolutely.
So let's dive in.
Clay, what is the vision for the people that you're serving?
Let's hear it from your mouth.
To lift them up, to unite them.
To lift them up and unite them.
Sorry, let me let you go with that.
Yeah, to lift them up and unite them.
That is the singular vision that I have for them.
Period.
To lift people up and unite them.
I love it.
Yeah, it's my purpose in life too.
To lift people up and unite them.
I love that.
There's a quote from Gordon B. Hinckley
and he said, the world will bring people down.
Oh, he said, lift people up.
He said, the world will bring people down.
It's your job to lift them up.
Yes.
So similar vision, very, very similar.
It's one of my favorite quotes.
I kind of butchered it right there.
It's important for us to remember to do that.
What's your vision for you, Clay?
My vision that I cast inside of H7 is to transform the global
standard for how professionals connect with one another,
serve one another, and ask of one another.
That's right.
That is my simple vision.
I could give you the long version, but let's not.
There's a few more sentences there,
but I'm giving you the short version.
I appreciate that.
Well, I remember last time we talked,
I remember writing that down.
And now that you reminded me of it too,
that connect, serve, ask, it's a very similar framework
to how I strive to learn to go about any influence
that I might bring forward into this world.
So maybe we will take a little bit of time
to talk about the power of connecting
and what that means, the power of serving
and how we do that and the power of asking
and what is it that we're asking for.
So let's try to make some time for that.
But before we do, I'm gonna dive into some
of our core segments.
What is the worst leadership experience that you've ever had?
I'm assuming that question is about somebody else
who may be leading me.
Is that what you mean?
It's your choice.
It's your choice on that.
I don't think, there might be people in the world
who judge you, that happens.
People judge Jesus, but whatever you feel directed
by your spirit, that is gonna be the most valuable
for the audience.
So I would say that any leader, hypocrisy, hypocrisy.
So I have this attitude that I live by
that I don't ask anybody to do anything
that I've not already been able to do.
Okay, so when we strive to create culture in our staff
and our leaders and all of that is that,
when you have 23 on your immediate staff
and then you have almost 400 volunteers that you also serve,
that has to be part of it.
Like hypocrisy is just, there's no room for that,
if that makes sense.
So the worst leadership experience I ever faced
or still do face from time to time is the hypocrisy around,
I'm showing you how to do, I'm asking you to do something,
but I wouldn't do it.
So there's a lot of wounds, a lot of challenges,
of course, a lot of karma that comes along with
our interactions with hypocrisy.
I mean, I'd be the first to admit though at the same time,
there's plenty I'm hypocritical about.
That's an ongoing challenge as a human being.
Well, and I agree with,
there's a context to what you're saying.
You said, I don't ask people to do what I want.
I might ask my daughter to wear a dress to church
if she didn't put one on.
Fortunately, she's always put one on.
But there's certain things,
so I wouldn't go to church in a dress.
Let's leave the Olympics out of this for now.
But yeah, I went there.
But general hypocrisy,
do you believe that we all have some hypocrisy within us
and how do you balance that
or is it possible to not be hypocritical at all?
No, that's impossible.
Okay.
I mean, it's all about,
it's like, I'm a hypocritical man, make some room for me.
No, no, no, I mean, I'm hypocritical.
We're all gonna make mistakes, right?
Yeah, so I've got.
I fail every day in front of frigging thousand people,
apparently, it's very easy, it comes natural to me.
I'm a natural failure.
Anyway, so what I'm trying to say is,
is like subconscious behaviors, behaviors.
So like, I have experience working with leaders,
which has always turned me off,
which worse experience as ever,
I was trying to sum them up.
The leader that I've always struggled with following
is the one who is asking me to do something
and I'm working circles around them
while they may be sitting in a chair.
Yeah.
Okay, that's what I mean.
Like, if you're gonna be a hard worker,
you don't have to tell people you're a hard worker,
you are one.
Right.
And so when you add,
I will follow anybody that I can respect
and everything else, respect has to play a role in on that.
But oftentimes when I'm experiencing bad leadership,
it has a lot to do with what I'm referring to here.
I love that.
And I think part of that is you may wanna protect
the name of the individual and I get that.
And I love in Spanish, they have a word for that.
It's, they have a name for it, it's fulano.
And that, when you use that,
they know they mean like pseudo name.
It's a fake person.
And so feel free to dive into some specific stories
as well as we go,
because it also helps us not overgeneralize.
But let's flip to the opposite gear.
What's the best leadership experience that you've ever had?
So let's go with,
let's go with best leadership experience.
I'll talk about my COO, okay?
He is very special.
We have a very special relationship, okay?
He and I are like freaking blood brothers, okay?
So we get at each other's throats at times, right?
Obviously things aren't perfect or peachy or whatever,
but he has this gift of,
even though he might get upset about something,
he has a gift of being able to step back,
calm down, ask more questions and reconnect.
Every time I see him do that,
because he's got upset at me is what I'm saying.
This is weird, right?
So he's been upset with something I've said or whatever,
but that guy understands leadership.
Like when he comes back and he talks to me,
he's like, okay, so I hear what you're saying there
and we just have this conversation
and can calm everything down.
Now we've never been super overly hot at each other,
but his ability not to give up and mine equally the same
and find that common ground,
the best leadership experience I've had has been with him.
That's amazing.
It's incredibly interesting how a few times
leaders who've been on the show have brought somebody up
that's that close to them in their immediate presence.
Not that, and that doesn't dog them.
I mean, they may have had just tremendous mentors
that need to be brought up and talked about.
I'm sure you have dozens of people that can be brought up
for the same type of conversation
in different contexts as well.
What you reminded me though of is something very valuable
and that's like the LeBron James Austin-Peeves relationship.
It may be mentor to mentee and they're working together
and you get to see them and their conflict on the court
or their same situation with Tim Duncan and Tony Parker
or Tony Parker and Manu Janobili.
They both came into the league almost at the same time.
The levels aren't all that important
as much as the reality that both of those individuals
in each of those circumstances and the y'alls,
they're alpha dogs.
They're alphas who are not going to back down
from an opportunity and both have a desire to contribute
to the greater good, but you may see things differently
and you may need to work through that.
And that's an amazing-
He makes me better, clear.
Like that's it, he makes me better.
It's huge, it's huge.
So if this was the very last chance,
your last podcast segment,
last chance you had to influence the world,
what powerful lesson can other visionaries learn
from your experience, Clay?
I understand what it's like to be a visionary.
It's very easy to get caught up in the vision.
The lesson is, is you are absolutely really not alone
and be sure to take others with you,
which means to treat every person that you meet with,
whether that's the janitor at your building,
the same exact way, treat all people with respect,
regardless of how they make you feel,
regardless of your feelings, regardless of that week's,
how bad it is, how we treat people matters.
And so showing each and every person the same level
of respect, regardless of the outcome,
that would be what I would share.
I love that.
I hope we all get the opportunity
to just kind of marinate on that today.
You know, whether it's going for a walk
and thinking about it, riding it on your wrist.
I actually do that sometimes, usually with Sharpie,
usually one word on the Old Testament,
they call it a frontlet,
little scroll they'd put and they'd tie around.
I just use a Sharpie.
But yeah, learning to, there's certainly
a different priority of time, right?
That's necessary.
If I don't know the janitor and we're not buddies
and I have the option of spending an hour
with a loved one, family member, one of my children,
versus with the janitor,
then that person's gonna get my time
and the janitor may be upset about that.
You know, that's their right.
But I can still treat that individual
with absolute respect and care about my relationship
or my ability to have a relationship with them.
So again, it's something that I hope all of you
visionary leaders decipher for yourself.
What is it that you can take away from that
and add to what you're currently doing?
Because it's not new news.
But are we sharpening the blade?
Are we getting better at what it is,
how we're interacting with such wisdom?
So thanks for diving into that topic.
Transforming the standard of professional networking.
You're about to do that even further.
Feel free to follow that vein.
Let's keep on that vein if you want to.
Yeah, so it's not easy for a visionary to do that.
It really isn't.
To be able to treat people all the same or whatever,
that is very, because in our brains,
now I guess I can't speak for everybody,
but I would say that in our brains, you know,
we have a mission to accomplish, right?
And so it's really easy for a visionary
to accomplish that vision at all costs, right?
Like that's what we want to do.
And so what happens is at that moment of time,
there are going to be people that come into our lives,
even if it's just for five minutes.
And remembering that we should do that
is exactly why my vision is connecting, serving and asking,
because we treat people the same
and we treat them with respect every single person.
I mean, I've heard war stories, you know,
a person going in to try to talk to their boss
and the boss never has time, right?
Or the conversations are minimal
and there's very little connecting.
They don't know much about each other
and they're just too much to the point.
Like that's easy for us to get caught up in.
It's easy for me to get caught up in.
And so stepping out and saying,
listen, we want to stand globally transform
the standard for how professionals connect, serve
and ask one another.
It is at your house as well.
It is in your place of business as well.
It all transfers.
But you see that the troubles that people have,
you know, in simply doing a one-to-one
between two professionals, that's very challenging.
That can be very challenging.
And so connecting and serving and asking,
once you understand and apply that methodology,
you treat everybody pretty much the same
as if they matter.
You know, you just sparked some, what are they?
Promptings, I mean, that's what I'll call it.
And me, networking has changed a lot since COVID.
Yeah.
And it's, and I'm sure there's some places
that have had a change for the better
and some places that have had a change for the worse
in different environments.
And, you know, the ability to connect
and serve with people though,
or improve those environments,
the better we can connect with people, right?
The better we can unlock who is there for the right reasons.
And then also figure out,
are we on the same types of missions
and can we help each other?
I think the faster this world will be able to solve problems.
So what can you teach us about the process?
Let's go through it.
Connecting, serving, asking,
what does it mean to you to connect?
It means to find commonality in short, right?
It's getting to know the human being.
It's tell me about you, where are you from, where you live,
you know, what, tell me your story, you know,
like just connecting, just listening, active listening.
And in that connecting and in that active listening,
you can actually respond better
because you're listening to what they're saying.
I have legit been in conversations with,
connecting with somebody else,
having two different conversations, okay?
Where they're not a hundred percent present, right?
Presence of mind, do they have longer than eight seconds
to pay attention to what I'm saying right now?
Like paying attention to your surroundings
and what's going on is very, very important.
The average person doesn't connect very well.
Even though it's easier to connect
than it is to serve and ask,
they still don't connect very well
or don't understand how to do it.
Well, there's different trainings regarding that too.
Again, you're blowing my mind open in a lot of ways
because I've got some guarded trainings and frameworks
where I'm like, okay, these are important and they matter.
And there's a context for them.
So in the sales world, one of the big common teachings
that hit the block pretty hard these last several years
was how to build rapport
without crossing the line of the friend zone, right?
And so a lot of training,
I've got, in fact, I've got one on my desk
that I look at every once in a while
when talking to my team.
But one of the original trainings along the subject,
this isn't new, this is taught a lot.
It's probably been taught for hundreds of years,
but recently it was talked about a lot in 2021, 2022.
That's, hey, make sure you got the name right.
How's your week going?
Where are you from?
And how's the weather?
And they're taught to do that
because they're all 100% safe questions.
Meaning you can't accidentally ruin the relationship
from the start by falling into a conflict
that detracts from, in this case, those sales calls.
But that rule does not apply in the networking capacity
and in your ability to connect
in more of a complex sales environment either.
And as visionaries, we have to be able to connect
with prospects, candidates, clients,
PR and media professionals, and investors,
and then our families, right?
And then our friends.
There's all sorts of different connections.
So your thoughts on commonality,
how do, does that mean we break the doors wide open
and that we try to find as much commonality as possible?
And sports teams in the whole nine yards to,
where'd you go on your first date with your wife?
Do we get too creative here?
Is there a confine or a method
for how to best connect in a professional environment?
Yeah, so I have five topics that I discuss.
So tell me about your story, right?
Tell me about your story.
Then you have the rest of the stuff,
like tell me about your family.
These are all very general questions, okay?
Very general, but nonetheless, they open up the doors.
They sling open the doors.
So I said, tell me about your story.
What was the other one I already told you?
Family.
Okay, family, hobbies,
what they do professionally and where they're from.
Those are five starter questions or topics to discuss.
Those are great.
And this is helpful.
Again, you might be that 60 year old
who knows it all already,
but you also might be the person listening in
who's 21, 22 years old,
and you've never had the chance to go in a network.
The faster we learn how to connect
on subjects like this quickly,
these are core foundational subjects
that are all relevant to the building
of a genuine relationship.
So I appreciate that a lot.
Yeah, so the connecting, you mentioned the friend zone.
See, if you connect too much,
you'll end up in the friend zone,
which you wanna stay out of.
Which, let me bet with you on that
because as an entrepreneur,
Clay, I've already got people I wanna watch the game with.
I've already got people
I wanna have the yoga conversations with
and the conversation about dogs and all that.
I don't need that anymore.
You might be able to cross that line eventually,
but if you waste my time
when I'm trying to be productive and profitable
for all those who rely on me,
I love you, but I don't have the time for that.
Yeah, yeah.
So I tell people all the time, stay out of friend zone.
And so oftentimes that friend zone comes in,
you said yoga, you said football, whatever, right?
Sports.
And so if you spend too much time connecting,
that's exactly where you'll be.
And so I do liken professional one-to-ones
to dating sometimes, right?
Absolutely.
And nothing worse than,
actually I tell the story like this.
You go to the bar, you see the woman
with her group of friends.
What are you trying to do?
You try to get them away from the friends, right?
So in a networking social,
you wanna get a person by themselves in a one-to-one,
same concept.
The friend zone is dangerous
because not much happens out of it.
There's a lot of disappointment,
a lot of expectations.
Just because we had a beer, Jackson at a bar one place,
doesn't mean anything.
It literally means nothing.
Just talking about sports and stuff.
But when you're an entrepreneur,
if you don't have enough information
to have any level of commonality with,
there has to be a careful balance.
So that's where I've developed those five topics.
It took me 3000 one-to-ones
to develop those topics by the way.
Yeah.
I'm not counting.
I'm not a think you are.
Cause they say measure what you want results with.
So well done on that Clay.
Yeah.
Let's dive into serve.
Because you already opened up that can in such a way
where I'm like, oh cool, I get to use all this.
Now I wanna know how do you define service?
And I could easily have you take your shoes off
at a networking event,
bring a bucket of water and start washing your feet.
There's a good example of that,
but it might not be the,
I might get arrested for doing that.
So-
They could be uncomfortable for certain people.
What does service mean in the context of business to you?
Well, so first of all, you can't serve unless you connect.
Unless you connect first, you gotta build something.
So get that out of there.
Don't do that too fast, right?
But serving.
It's offering to help, trying to help,
asking the questions that help you to help them.
The objective is to take actions that support
trust being earned from you to them.
You said something interesting.
You said asking the questions that help you to serve them.
And somebody could, a bad student could argue,
or rather a difficult student could argue.
Well, I thought you said ask was second,
but that's two different types of asks,
two different applications for it.
So we'll reserve the other ask,
bear with us for now.
But you talked about asking the questions
so you know how to serve appropriately, right?
I could easily come up to you and be like,
hey, do you want me to change that necklace
into a white band instead of a black band?
You know, that could be me offering to serve,
but what weird context.
I see people doing this in business all the time.
It may not sound that silly, but it's not too different.
And oh, you have a website and you're not really like it.
Well, maybe we could help you with the website.
You know, without ever asking a single question
about what they're up to or how.
So how do you serve well?
For those who are good at business,
but we wanna take them to the next level,
how can they level up their ability to serve?
Okay, so I have topics for that as well.
So I have five questions that you could ask.
Oh, good.
Okay, how can I help you?
That one's simple, very general, but opens up the door.
Okay, who would you like to meet?
Who is your ideal client?
Your ICP, right?
Your ideal client profile.
I'm gonna add one up on that one.
And I love, I get to color commentate.
You get to do the hard part, I get to the easy part
and add to it.
So when I ask people about their ICP,
I say, who is your ideal client, not your common client.
Okay, sure, sure.
And the reason why is because almost everybody
in the market will name their common client instead
if they're not prodded that way.
They, I'm sorry, but they screwed up.
It causes them to focus on the wrong reality.
So it's very good, ideal, very important word
to emphasize there.
All right, what else?
What else you got?
All right, so these next two questions are unique
because sometimes not everybody has a big network,
but they do have expertise in something.
So the next question is, how's your business going?
What can I do to help with it?
Like that's a general question, right?
The last one is basically like, how can what I do help you?
Okay, like what my expertise is.
This is just about adding value.
This is not about selling your product or service either.
This is about adding value.
So think about gifting that away.
Like what-
So many people are so scared of that these days
and it's just sad to see how scared people are
having the conversations.
People, visionaries, you can say no.
Believe it or not, you can evaluate something and say,
I'm gonna take time to think about this
and not have any intention to work with somebody,
but listen and hear what people,
you don't have to assume everybody's out to get you
just because everybody wants to be around you.
Well, think about it.
Like when you open up and you become vulnerable
and you're offering help,
you are, when that vulnerability happens,
and that person accepts the help,
you are earning their trust.
As long as you follow through,
you've earned at least credibility
and started going up the ladder of trust, okay?
I'm not saying you let me watch your kids.
I'm not saying that,
but I am saying a little bit of trust in business,
a little bit of trust in business.
And then when I offer to help and I follow through,
I have completed the task,
I've earned a little bit of credibility and trust with you.
Well, and that's the sad reality,
is what I'm saying is a lot of people are so scared
to make those things come to fruition.
And what I see in the market,
it has a lot to do with the reflection of the stats.
96% of business owners lose within 10 years,
4% are barely surviving,
and they have a survivor's mentality because of it.
And so they're not willing to boldly accept.
Like, Clay, if you're like,
hey, I wanna help you in your business with this,
I'd be like, let's explore it.
Like, no, even the first time you met me,
I would have been like, okay, shoot, let me hear it, right?
So many others are like,
oh, I already have a team for that.
Oh, no, I didn't know what I'm doing over here.
And they get in this very pretentious, awkward reality.
Yeah, so I'm hoping that enough people listen to this,
and be like, well, Jackson's kind of harsh.
No, I'm not.
I'm ready to throw down with people.
I am ready to show up and do what I need to do.
And it's hard to do that when others are all timid
and quiet and awkward.
It's like, oh, leave.
So those are good questions.
How would you like to meet?
Who would you like to meet?
And who's your ideal client?
Those are two different questions.
I love that.
How's your business going?
Asking that, I mean, you gotta have some,
at least a little bit of trust to establish somebody
before you ask that,
because people are terrified to answer that question.
And then how can what I do help you?
Again, going back to connecting,
if they don't know what you do professionally,
then don't put the cart before the horse, right?
Make sure that you're connected before you do that.
So I'm loving this framework, man.
Ask, ask.
So if we get all that going right,
and we have this amazing relationship unfolding
like you and I have, and like,
who did I interview today?
He was freaking amazing.
The interview, no, the author of Thrive,
Rand Selig.
Rand, that guy is incredible.
I gotta get you guys in touch.
That guy is absolutely incredible.
We laughed.
It was our first conversation.
We laughed, we pondered, we cried.
We were like, he's like, where do you live?
We gotta meet, let's get together.
It was so awesome.
And like, you know, so ask, where do we go from there?
So this is the same person
that is trying to guide the conversation.
So they have served, and now it's time to ask.
You may only have a few minutes left, but you have to ask.
So the ask is asking for help, right?
What the prospect and all that good stuff,
like what is your ask?
So the reason why you ask is to give them a chance
to earn your trust.
And that's where most people stop.
They're like, well, okay, I've served you.
I've helped you, I've helped you.
And then, but they never ask.
You know, could be that they're just a blatant altruist.
Like that's what they wanna do.
They just wanna serve, serve, serve.
Or they're afraid to ask, cause they might get it.
So there's the stumbling to ask,
cause there's only a few minutes left,
so they can't say it.
They ask ramble, all that stuff.
And so we always tell people to ask
in the form of industry, which is a sidebar,
but the reality is-
In the form of what?
In the form of industry.
Industry, okay, go ahead.
Yeah, because it makes it easier on them
to actually help you and give you a chance
to earn their trust.
So everything inside of connect, serve, and ask,
serve and ask is where all the trust is being earned.
And it can be little, it can be a lot,
whatever it is between those two people.
But essentially, if we don't ask,
we take the power away from the other person
and earn our trust.
That's it, that's what it comes down to.
So we have-
An example of these ask,
she got the five questions for the connect
and the five for the serve.
Do you have the five for the ask?
Or do you have something else?
Maybe you have the one, what is it?
Yeah, so the ask, it should be in the form of industry
or type of person, depending upon whether they're B2B
or B2C.
So they ask relative to the person
that they're talking to as well
to make it easier for them to help you.
That's all I mean by that.
But oftentimes leaders, visionaries have a hard time
asking for help too.
Generally speaking, asking for help.
Let me give an example.
You tell me, give me an A to F grade, okay?
I want an A to F grade.
If I bombed this, I want you to let me know I bombed it.
It's the only way I learned, right?
So we're in the process right now
of deciding which software system we're gonna use
to amplify the distribution of our show
as we want to get this out to the world more and more.
And we're exploring Metricool, RecurPost, Nestify,
Social Oomph, and oh man, I'm gonna forget one,
at least one here, and MeatAger and Publer.
Those ones are all of the different realities.
Then I sent a message to Eli Delaney,
who was just on the show and he's a real guru with systems
and I'm like, hey man, which one do you recommend?
And you know, are like, do you know anything about these
and what we're trying to do?
And Eli's response was don't do any of those to Publer.
And so now it's in our lineup
and I get his self-assured nature
and I'm like excited about that.
So now we're like, man, I freak,
I just want it in this box, you know?
But you know what, nope, I asked him,
I'm gonna use this.
And then I sent a message to them
with all of our core requirements
and I decided to ask him, I was like, hey, by the way,
if you wanna come on our show,
tell your founder or y'all's brand representative
that we'd be happy to host you,
whether we work with you or not,
can you guys drop something cool?
And then we sent a very similar message
to all the other providers that were there,
explaining what we're trying to do,
what it is that we're up to,
why it is that we're trying to build the way we're building,
why we wanna be able to distribute more than 100 pieces
of content on our social media pages per day.
And that, I don't know, is that the type,
did I take your ass too far?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Ashley, just pull it back to the gentleman
you originally asked the question to.
The fact is, is you were being vulnerable.
100%.
You didn't have the answer,
you're asking somebody else for that help.
That is the same form.
It is the exact same thing.
I mean, I tell people all the time.
You're talking about being real with people
about where you're at.
Yeah, so-
Wow, what a novel concept.
I mean, you know, authenticity, holy shit.
Oh, excuse me.
Yeah.
So, yeah, authenticity would take you pretty far.
So.
Yeah.
Oh, no, so what'd you give me, A to F?
Actually, that one, I'm gonna give you an A,
because you were vulnerable.
You asked, he responded confidently.
He didn't even suggest anything else.
He said, this is what I would do.
You asked him to tell you what he would do.
He did exactly that, meaning you where you are.
I would trust that dude in other systems as well.
See, well, and I do appreciate that.
I'll add a little bit of a filter on there
because I'm an auditor.
That's my nature.
Right, I need to do the research and see what's there.
I really love the way that Eli does things
and how he's doing things.
And so those of you listening in,
this is not about disrespecting Eli.
It's about making sure you don't put unnecessary blinders on
when you're building.
All right, so while yes, he's hook, line, and sinker
into that program, and he has an affiliate link,
don't forget, people often refer things to you
because they get a commission on something.
And so, you know, when you put your business decisions
in the hands of anybody else, it's your fault
if your business fails, it's your business.
So I know that he's got a little bit of a bias there,
but I'm also not out to,
I would never hang him out the dryer
and feel like he's only doing that
because he gets the affiliate link.
That's not who Eli is as a person,
but it's still my responsibility as a delegator,
as a person in charge of the vision
to work with my team to do the research
to make sure that this system is truly what we need
compared to the other systems we want.
And if Eli were to get mad at me because I don't use it,
or he were to get offended
because I didn't take his suggestion on the system,
what that would reveal is Eli's lack of leadership
and his inability to respect my decisions
as a person in the company.
And so there's all sorts of things in leadership
that as entrepreneurs and visionaries,
we want to learn to watch out for, to prepare for,
to implement.
It's not as straightforward and easy
as people make it out to be,
but if we keep the simple focus of,
am I doing this because I want great relationships?
Am I doing this because I want to improve my life
and be a better person?
That should really drive,
for me, that's what drives all of my decisions
with how I do things.
So, dude, this was huge.
This was all,
so give them a chance to earn your trust
and the way to do that.
And that's so well articulated, Clay.
I hope more of my guests watch this segment
when we produce it,
because like the one right there,
because if you don't give somebody the chance to help you,
you can't learn what they're capable of.
Yeah, I mean, they could be just what you needed
and you skipped it because of your pride
or because of your ego and it might get hurt
by you asking for help and how that's perceived by you.
And you don't even know how they actually perceive you.
You're taking the power away from the whole thing.
You're controlling the whole outcome.
And you're gonna work your butt off,
just like I do when I make mistakes
and I don't bring in my team and ask for help.
Then I'm behind.
And then I feel bad because I'm behind.
And then I didn't wanna put it on them
because that would have put them behind.
So I'm like, no, no, I'll take it.
And then they're like, hey, we can help.
My bad.
My bad, my bad.
Huge.
I was watching Scott, what is his last name?
He's on one of those wisdom podcasts.
Great, great reference, Scott Galloway.
I'll put it in the show notes.
But he was talking about five things,
five habits.
One of those YouTube posts, it's like over promises.
And you're like, really, another one?
Like, I clicked it.
When I watched it, it was so good.
They were amazing, powerful habits.
And I was like, whoa, this is brilliant.
And one of them, he talks about entrepreneurs in there.
And he says, your job as an entrepreneurship,
as an entrepreneur is just eat spoonfuls of shit every day.
As much as you can, as fast as you can.
That is entrepreneurship in a nutshell.
And I was like, there's so much truth
to that harsh, awkward statement.
But yeah, he's incredibly wise.
And the things that he shares, and he's very radical
in how he portrays things.
But again, back to it.
It's so hard, Clay, to get out of our own way
and to work with teams and to include people.
But so many of the best things in life are hard.
Yeah.
That's right.
Yeah, I love that.
You're a legitimate, authentic, you can hold that back.
No, I can't hold that back.
That's parenting right there.
It is hard.
All relationships are hard.
So let's cultivate great things
by doing the hard work, my friends.
Clay, thank you for coming on, being an example of that.
We're gonna make sure that all the ways
that you guys can link with Clay that are relevant
are in the show notes down below.
It'll be the action steps.
You can go to h7network.com and see how they're scaling
their global networking process.
And also the other things that they build
because of the fantastic friendships
that they're building throughout that.
Also, we will have down below the resources.
And then at the top right corner,
you'll see on your screen a button that says, be our guest.
If you're a visionary leader,
you'd love to come and talk about your vision
and share some of your wisdom with the world.
We'd love to have you.
You could be Mark Zuckerberg,
who's studying his own Facebook platform
and watching this right now.
Mark, we'd love to have you as long as you wanna be here.
And you could be, I don't know, who else, Clay?
Who else should we invite?
Elon.
Yeah, here we go.
Who would you like to meet, right?
Clay, who would you like to meet?
Elon Musk.
Elon Musk, right?
Oh man, absolutely.
So on x.com, Elon, we'd love to have you as well.
But even if you're not those guys,
we'd still absolutely love to have you on the show.
It's not about prowess and vanity.
It's about learning from people who are striving
to help others out there in the world.
And like Clay said with his quote, all people matter.
So your vision matters,
and we hope you have the courage to come share it
if you feel inclined to do so.
We'll see you guys all in the next episode.
This was a lot of fun, Clay.
Appreciate you, man.
Thank you for having me.
Appreciate our relationship.
And thank you, everybody, for listening
and love to connect.
So thank you. Absolutely.
I'll see you behind the scenes, brother.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent spring day.