DO YOUR JOB

A Word from US Small Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark: Listeners of the ThriveTime Radio Show and Thrivers (members of the Thrive15. com entrepreneurial community) often ask me why I am so obsessed with the New England Patriots and their legendary head coach, Bill Belichick. I'm not from Boston, I'm not a shameless apologist for Boston sports, my businesses are not based in Boston, and I have no family members that live in Boston so that's really a fair question. So why do I constantly reference Bill Belichick when teaching best-practice management systems to business owners? And the answer is.... I love to study proven and consistent long-term winners in all walks of life so that I can apply their proven strategies, methods, and mindsets to my own life and businesses. I have found that coaching an NFL team is very similar to running a business in America. The National Football League is one of America's most competitive professional sports leagues and if the team doesn't win, the head coach gets fired. Sound familiar? In the world of business, if your team does not produce a profit, the owner or manager gets fired. The National Football League is filled with rules that are intentionally designed to create parody yet, Bill Belichick just keeps on winning. The American government has also created rules that are been designed to create parody in our economy. With our current tax system (as of pre-2017), the more you make, the more the government takes in taxes. In the NFL, every team has to stick within a salary cap (an annual budget) and the head coach must produce victories (profits) or the head coach (boss) gets fired. Each year in the NFL, the team that wins the Super Bowl is then rewarded with the most difficult playing schedule in the league and the worst drafts picks in the next National Football League Draft. Having been self-employed for 20 years, I know that this is exactly like running a business. In business, you work as hard as possible to create a positive, winning, and profitable business and then once you do, all of your competitors are aiming for you and offering your top talent top salaries to leave your team and to go play for them.