1052: Goal Setting and Team Building with Consultant and Investor Cliff Locks

Unknown Speaker 0:00 Well, hey, and welcome back to the podcast Cliff locks is here. Now cliff is the founder and senior partner of C k locks Consulting Inc. He has three businesses, millionaire life services, investment, capital growth and reverse logistics solutions. Cliff is a serial entrepreneur and investor, he formed and profitably exited three businesses. And Cliff has served on numerous boards. And he has so much to tell us about achievement about goal setting. And he's accomplished what what the dream path in life is, which is to accomplish great things. And then later on, give back and teach the lessons that he's learned. So cliff, excited to be speaking with you, Robert, you're a nice man, it's been a pleasure to listen to your fine podcasts, and your guests, you really put together a very rich environment that's very nurturing, and educational. So I want to compliment you and our listeners, that we have a real community. And that's really the strength we bring forth. And it's a privilege to be with your guests, you know,

Unknown Speaker 1:04 our listeners are really important. I agree. And it helps to have that sort of positivity, it doesn't take much effort or time to just like, say, a nice thing to somebody, because the world is filled with enough negativity, we don't need that. We want to achieve great things, and have this positive mindset and everything that goes with that. So we introduced you a little bit, but what are you all about? How do you stand out? How are you unique? What gets you excited these days?

Unknown Speaker 1:31 Well, what really gets me excited is the next generation, if you really think about our young people coming into business, our employees, our team members, creating wonderful flourishing teams that really are bringing their best self to the job site. And really listening to you know what the vision of success looks like. Usually, it's our leaders, it could be our CEOs, our board of directors, or presidents, that sort of are laying out a vision of what they're looking to accomplish in the next month, three months, six months, a year out even three to five years out. And when you start to really look at that, and you start to work backwards, we have a chance to really look at sharing that

Unknown Speaker 2:11 with the team members and how they fit in and also look at the path of being able to, you know, how deep is the bench? In other words, what does our team look like? In other words, you know, I have built three companies and have sold them, but I built them to sell them. So not everybody is thinking that, but that's usually where the real wealth is made in life is that exit, if our listeners want to consider that, you know, it's part of their, how they want to run their business.

Unknown Speaker 2:40 But selling the business means you can't be the only individual that's really at the front. And we it's about a team, the individual that's looking to acquire is looking for a business that's ongoing, who's thriving and growing. And that's how you get a very high, you know, profitable multiple,

Unknown Speaker 2:58 is the idea that businesses continuing to grow and scale.

Unknown Speaker 3:02 I love that, that just this simple concept that you sold the business, there's so much built into that, as you said, because for you to have sold a business, you have to be organized, you have to plan, you have to build a team, you have to have everything in order. So that way it can be somewhat turnkey when you hand it off, because you don't want to just be a business owner, and then sell the now you're an employee. For someone else. It doesn't sound like fun at all, it's definitely not something that you can repeat three times, and then go off and do something else. Now you're kind of just stuck with that business. And so as I said, there's a lot built into just those couple of statements and what you've done. And so what's the secret of your success, like people talk about these things like goal setting, and time management and having a good network? And these are all important, but what's the order of importance? What should we be thinking about? What are people missing these days? It's a really important question. You're asking Robert, you're brilliant, you know, if we really go out there, and we put the time into really understanding what our vision of success looks like, which means is the goal, writing down the exercise? You know, I had shared something earlier in one of our conversations about Brian Tracy, somebody that's mentored me. And it's a privilege to take that material and that self improvement material, write down what your goals are, because subliminally we're making decisions during the day. And if we really think about it, the decisions we'll make will go back to what was important, which we wrote down was our goals. So we have our business goals, we have our family goals, we have our children goals, you know, at this point, the more detail and sometimes I'll use the word color that we can bring into the goals it makes it a lot easier to accomplish them. So you know, with my teams in the individuals that I coach, and mentor all over the world. The goal setting is the key piece that allows people to really thrive and then also understand when they arrive meaning they're successful.

Unknown Speaker 5:00 Have, they actually understood, hey, this is what I was looking to accomplish, I've accomplished it or are on my journey to accomplish it. So you get that, you know, sort of feedback, you know, in, in business, sometimes we'll talk about KPIs or OKRs. So those key performance indicators, you know, trying to measure against, you know, targets that we're setting for ourselves and team members. And that way, we're all aligned, you know, and I think we have to share, you know, how we're gonna get measured with our team members. So they can actually bring the best of themselves forward. And I think, you know, we see companies that want to do annual reviews, and I'm like, No, you really need to do it, kind of like monthly, or at least quarterly at a minimum, because people really want to bring themselves forward and be part of that ecosystem where things are really moving in a good direction. But if they don't know they need to make improvements, and you wait until the end of the year, you really, you're not doing a good service to the team member at that point. And it's kind of late.

Unknown Speaker 5:57 And it seems like maybe the problem that you're explaining here is people not taking their goals seriously, right? Because it's it goals are misunderstood, or and they seem to be by the average person that there's a few little rules and regulations built into it. And I don't know if you've experienced similar frustration, but sometimes like you say, my my past years and travels when I try to talk to someone about goals, like they don't have them, the they don't think they're important, the average person just has this new year's resolution kind of idea. And then it gets thrown out very quickly. And even just You're making me think about a when out trying to plan for the future, when it's like you tried to work with someone, and they don't really phrase it in even a complete sentence. And it's like, are you afraid of the future? Are you afraid of these goals, but I think that you're so right, that these goals are important, because that way, you know, when you've arrived there, and then you can move on to the next thing. It's never, it's never done. And then there's also this aspect you mentioned of having others be on the journey with you because that way, it's not so lonely. And then you also mentioned a little bit there about how you know about your priorities that way, because the time will pass either way. And if we don't have these important goals, to kind of keep at the forefront and say, Okay, if I want to get over here in 52 weeks, I can't wait until week 51 To do what I need to be working on this daily. And then when the distractions come in the emails or social media, then we can prioritize. And we can say, Well, hey, I'll make this small sacrifice here. So that way, I can work on my goal, because I know that I'm pursuing something greater. I'm looking for that kind of delayed gratification. And so as far as these companies that you've sold, I'm really curious. So like, What were these? Or is there one that really stands out? A few or less? What was this journey, like, as far as creating, building selling? I mean, tell us about it. Well, the last company has sold to a fortune 500 company.

Unknown Speaker 7:59 And it was a privilege to get acquired, you know, I'll give you some metrics, you know, listeners have some value. We got paid 11 times EBIT, da, so EBIT, DA would be the profit of the company. Okay. And that's a very nice multiple, but really, the, the jam that I'm looking to share with our listeners is, it had a vision of what the future looked like it had additional acquisitions, it had additional new business lines.

Unknown Speaker 8:25 And that future, which was a growing future, and the individual acquired us had the resources mean, the financial resources to make the investments.

Unknown Speaker 8:34 That's why they paid very high multiple, because most companies get sold for six to eight times EBIT, da, but 11 is very high. So you know, the takeaway is, look, if you plan on rich future, and you can articulate that to the company that's acquiring you, he'll pay you more. And then the other side of it is, you know, part of the conversation is, are you going to have an urn out? Or is it an all cash deal? You know, mine, I've always done all cash deals, but it's not always that way. So to the our listeners,

Unknown Speaker 9:02 you'll find the individual is looking to sort of get you to stay there for 18 months. In my case, and part of a transitional team, I think the integration piece, meaning someone's going to, you know, there's an acquisition taking place, how is our team going to be integrated into the larger company in our case, so I think that needs to get discussed very, very early on employment contracts, you know, facilities.

Unknown Speaker 9:27 So it's a very smooth process in a acquiring company will obtain the value that they had projected in their pro formas. And they'll do well.

Unknown Speaker 9:39 So I think that's the piece of it. I mean, the other side of it is if when I you know, I step back, you know, a professional sports marketing company, you know, for the NHL teams and your Dodger, town Islanders, the Detroit Pistons or clients, and then I had an ad agency sales promotions. So you know, marketing has always been a key piece of

Unknown Speaker 10:00 And

Unknown Speaker 10:01 when we talk about a legacy for ourselves and our listeners, you know, what's going on in your family and your business, you know, I'd have a couple of books that are written in an Amazon that are available on Amazon, you know how to achieve success fast, you know how to be a self millionaire, you know, guiding the next generation to thrive and build continued success for your family legacy. These are just the ways for me to give back to the community that say, there's some shortcuts that are out there, but they're very workable, they're not hard. It's this thoughtful process. And the goal setting Robert, was the key piece on the front end, that allows a lot of this to come together and be seamless. And at the end of the day, it should be fun. You should be doing things that we really enjoy doing.

Unknown Speaker 10:47 And that's what we all want, right? No one wants to slave and toil for 50 years for the hope of something later, it should be fun, enjoyable, fulfilling, we should have this forward momentum. And so tell us about the goal setting, as you said, we connected previously. And we talked about Brian Tracy and I watched some Brian Tracy at your recommendation, but for in your own words, what's goal setting about? And, you know, do we need to focus on the basics, the fundamentals and make sure we get it like just what do we need to do with our goals?

Unknown Speaker 11:18 I think we have to break the goals down to a couple of different pieces. And I'll speak for myself. In other words,

Unknown Speaker 11:26 I married a young lady, go, we're married for 36 years now. So just think about me know which other 37 years actually met because it's funny because today's the 16th of February, we met on Valentine's Day and on the Long Island Railroad going into Manhattan from Long Island. So as a romantic story, and I sent her some roses, actually two dozen after meeting her on the train, you know, to where she worked out it shared her business card. So it's just a funny anecdotal type story. But she was in my goals. I mean, I had took the time to figure out what what skills and attributes I wanted in a life partner.

Unknown Speaker 12:02 I figured out how much money I would need. And I wrote this down, you know, as part of my goals, you know, on the cash flow, I knew I wanted a boat. I knew I wanted to go camping and hiking. I knew I wanted to go skydiving, I knew I wanted to go scuba diving, these are things that I had in my goals, which some people could be a stretch goal. You know, I knew I wanted to have a family, you know, with children.

Unknown Speaker 12:26 So one of the unique things I'll share with our listeners, which is really it's a gift from Robert and myself to our listeners is if we can bring the goal setting into our children's lives, where they start to write their goals down and it can be my kids, they get it on a write on wipe off board in their rooms, you get a different type child that's hyper focused on what's important, you know, taking ownership of their learning, you'll have less disruption in the home. We see some programs out there, the Leader in Me, which is at a Stephen Covey's organization, which is K through 12. It's taken Stephen Covey's motivational material, mental Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And it's bringing it into kindergarten through 12th grade. And you get a very different type of young person because their goals are written down, it happens to be in maybe that the marble notebook that we probably will had hit on early years in school. But it works extremely well. So that's the gift I want to share with our listeners, Robert, because you have a real vibrant community, you know, we can go out there and we can make the world a little better place and really try to help others as a giver.

Unknown Speaker 13:36 I think it's magical, you know, and care about our teams and our families, our neighbors, you know, we're all in it together. At the end of the day, you know, I love it. It's a great message, and especially setting up the next generation for success because I don't know about you clip. But when I was a kid when I was in school, the parents teachers, they just said here, Julie assignment just work hard, and there wasn't really much reason to do it other than here, you're here to do this, and you have to and it's really wet and that's fine, I guess. But then it's, it's all too easy for your brain to invent reasons to procrastinate or to for the negative self talk to just fill in that empty space when there isn't much in terms of a purpose or explaining why this is important or what were building towards. And it was it seemed at least very fear based, right? It was like, Don't fail this class. Because if you fail this class, you won't go to college. If you don't go to college, you won't get a job. It was just very like Rudel sort of and not warm and positive in the way that you're speaking now. And so it seems like there is a better way to do it. And then also see you're mentioning that you know, you're there working to get these sorts of things, and different school curriculums, but even if it's not taught in school, that's still okay. They're if they're your kid, you can teach your kid

Unknown Speaker 15:00 goal setting, achievements, entrepreneurism, and all these other sorts of things. And so that I think that's a really good message and something to think about. But you know, something that would really interest me is finding out about your own, maybe mistakes, failures, if you experience any sort of like negativity, stress, because that's the good stuff, right? Especially when you've gone through that and come out stronger. So there's anything coming to mind as far as just the the past negativity, the hurt, the pain, the problems, what comes to mind.

Unknown Speaker 15:36 All of us have wounds for childhood, I think we use need to realize that

Unknown Speaker 15:42 when you're looking at life, and

Unknown Speaker 15:46 one of the metaphors would be life is like a book. So the prior chapters have already been written in your life. So any kind of, you know, if you're getting picked on, or some of the disruption that can take place, within a family nucleolus, or outside influences

Unknown Speaker 16:04 are a key piece of it. But we also have the privilege of writing the next chapter in our book into the future. So you know, are you going to get delayed on looking backwards? Or are we going to look forward and plan for a bright future, we really are in control more than we give ourselves credit for at times. So you know, going to school University was not easy. I'm an RA in Rochester Institute of Technology graduate,

Unknown Speaker 16:29 building the businesses early on, you know, I was using credit cards for lines of credit, you know, so you know, hundreds of 1000s of dollars were utilized. Now, there's easier ways now to go out there and raise equity,

Unknown Speaker 16:44 or maybe an SBA loan. So these are more vibrant ways to do it. But in my case, you know, I used you know, lines of credit, through the

Unknown Speaker 16:53 cash flow is a key piece, that eliminates a lot of the pain that can be in somebody's life, right. It's the lifeblood, so we have enough cash coming in, we can support the family ourselves. And that reduces the archer that takes place. You know, folks, listeners can reach out to me, as you know, where they are, and with their lives to figure out, what do you want to work on at this point? What does the future look like, you know, and sort of work backwards so you can execute on your plan. And so, when you're looking at pain, a lot of it is

Unknown Speaker 17:25 in and I guess you get to look at it a couple of ways, you know, I took some time to really work on myself. So that's one of the takeaways for our listeners, you own it, meaning I own it. You know,

Unknown Speaker 17:38 scouting, boy scouting was very, very influential on career planning.

Unknown Speaker 17:43 And figuring out what do we want to do between the transition from high school into the university, it's a heck of a lot easier to do it right on the front end. Because you're going to spend, let's say, four or five years at university, you might as well pick a career that you really want to enjoy and you want to thrive in. Alright, versus going there not knowing what you want to do and trying to find yourselves in Scouting has something called the merit badge program, and it does extremely well. So some of us do a sports path. Some of us do with scouting, some do both. So around a well rounded youth is doing sports is doing scouting. Okay. And now you're having this, you know, ability to really figure out what, where is your passion? What do you love to do? And can you make a career out of that? And if you're doing things you don't enjoy doing,

Unknown Speaker 18:33 it's really a time to reassess. Why.

Unknown Speaker 18:39 And then at that point, are you going to make some, you know, some physical changes or get self educated? Look, generative AI is going to be disruptive, you know, we could use the word copilot, we could use the word assistant, you know, those that don't want to level up their knowledge, could very well get displaced. But

Unknown Speaker 18:57 it's not a given at this point, we're early enough, where we can actually get educated as an assistive tool to actually provide additional resources for what we're working on within our organization. So it's powerful.

Unknown Speaker 19:12 And it's easier than most people realize, to actually take the time to use

Unknown Speaker 19:18 generative AI, which would be Chechi Beatty, there's some competitors that have you know, from Microsoft and Google

Unknown Speaker 19:26 reach out if you need help any of the listeners, you know, it's to me, it's fun, you know, and we use it in the hybrid accelerator program very, very heavily to build business cases. Market Fit, looking at the team

Unknown Speaker 19:41 and figuring out what the roles are sitting in there what's working well the financials, you know, investments that need to be made in a company.

Unknown Speaker 19:50 So, you know, folks looking to raise money and that's something else that I live in in that space. You really never it's not a I wanted to take aways. It's not about burning invest.

Unknown Speaker 20:00 There's cash, it's really about driving revenue, profitable revenue that's sustainable and continues to grow. That allows the business to continue to really thrive. And scale is really the magic. And the investors capital is really supposed to be fuel to allow that to take place.

Unknown Speaker 20:21 There's just so much to think about. And I just I love your mindset and how how simple it can be. And sure there is uncertainty. And there are unknowns in the path ahead. But just this is, this is wonderful thing about when you say, well, there's the future will happen, whether you plan it or not, might as well plan it, figure out what you want, take the time, get really detailed, set those stretch goals, and then work backwards and figure out okay, what will they need to do to get there? And that also might involve just the questions you're not even thinking of, right? Like you mentioned about some of these, some of these business terms like talking about cash flow, and things like that. And if someone might say, well, I need other people in my circle, or on my team, even just to be aware of what I'm not even considering what I don't even know. And it's, it can be exciting, right? If we have this sort of self awareness that you're talking about, and just think some of these things through because a lot of people don't. And you see what happens when you don't think those things through. And so this is what we need to be doing. And so there's so much so many more paths we could take in our conversation, but we want to keep people eager and thirsty, to check you out on social media to find out your books to find out about your company. So tell us what are some next steps, what's the call to action here, you can visit my website, which is millionaire Life dot services. So that's millionaire Life dot services, Amazon, if you just type in Clif box, you'll find you know, a multitude of books I've written seven books I published so far for. And it's just again, it's a part of the legacy on how to give back to others. If service and

Unknown Speaker 22:09 other places to reach me, you can go onto LinkedIn, you'll find me

Unknown Speaker 22:14 posting things that are in what I consider to be important and thoughtful and inquired of

Unknown Speaker 22:19 I love strategic partnerships. You know, I love to scale I love being on the board of directors of board of advisors of companies.

Unknown Speaker 22:28 Not everybody needs to struggle, you know, when you go out and you figure out what that inner circle a really, really bright individuals that have been there many have built and exited companies or the Circle of Influence of friends that you have, you know, are they lifting you up? are they holding you back? You know, give it some thought, you know, it's a thoughtful process. But sometimes we take it for granted, we just go through the day. And it's like, well, you could pull back a little bit and do some inner thinking and write it down on paper. And now the generative AI, you could ask, you know, to help you write your goals, the generative AI will help you actually refine things and give it more detail. And it's amazing how easy it is. And you can google or you can watch some YouTubes on engineering a prompt, which means just asking you a question to the generative AI, and it'll come back with thoughtful information. So Robert, it's been fun,

Unknown Speaker 23:22 you know, anything to do to support you and your listeners, it's always a privilege. And thank you for what you do for the community. And thank you for saying that. And it is a privilege just hearing your thought process and your logic. And it's just it seems like it's so important to take the time think these things through and just to be well read because people have lived whole lifetimes and figured some of these things out through trial and error. And now you don't have to go through those years, they've also condensed it into a little book such as the books that you have put out and the the the resources are out there, it's just a matter of finding them but finding the right people or as with the generative AI just having the skills of wading through the mess, right, differentiating the signal from the noise because shad GBT sure as heck can give you a whole big bunch of texts that you don't use. But as you said, you go back and forth with it. You say here's what I'm thinking helped me develop my goals helped me figure out some of the strategies as long as we are careful and we think some of these things through as far as what we want what we will do to get there what the future will look like then we can achieve great and amazing things and enjoy our life and and just help others in the process which is what it's all about. And so you need to check out Cliff locks on social media but most importantly check out his books especially that one about the what was it called about steps to becoming a millionaire. That sounds amazing. Yeah, how to be a self made millionaire. Yes. And so what as we're running out of conversation here what

Unknown Speaker 25:00 What's next year Mr. Cliff locks, I know that you talk about like, you want these hopes and dreams of being on boards, but do you have like a ultimate life purpose that is not yet fulfilled?

Unknown Speaker 25:12 Well, I've written the courses at this point, they're self paced. So that's one of the big takeaways. And it was part of my goals, you know, you know, I shared that I have seven books,

Unknown Speaker 25:21 that all are published and published, and one every six weeks at this point, so it rolls out,

Unknown Speaker 25:27 probably sitting on more boards of some of your listeners to assist them on what they're looking to accomplish in their lives.

Unknown Speaker 25:35 It's really a listening campaign, you know, what's important to the individual? What are they really, really good at? What do they love to do, it's got high margins, and you get paid. So you're really great at it, you love doing it, it's highly profitable, and you get paid, you know, so focusing on those rich skill sets that people have to really make sure it plugs in. And sometimes you're missing some team members that may be on where it could be two companies coming together to create, you know, sort of a merger. And now they have one has the client, so he's got some phenomenal services. It's just this thoughtful process, you know, how do we build these, you know, multimillion dollar companies, 1015 20 $100 million companies, to really at the end of the day, you know, I had suggested considered exit, you know, to sell, so you can really take some wealth off the table. But again, it's up to the individual, what's important to them. And the other piece, I'll leave with our listeners, ask your employers for equity, and your fine company asked for options, which we don't ask you don't get. So ownership of an entity at some point that exits will help create some additional wealth, even if you're an employee. But if you got to ask,

Unknown Speaker 26:47 so you can always get back to me, you know, somebody has something that's trying to negotiate something with an employer, or somebody they report to, I'm happy to sort of come up with some strategies that will help that individual to thrive in those conversations and build their competence. Remember, it's always about value that we're bringing to the company. So when you look at your salary, and your benefits, you need to deliver 10 times that value, meaning what you're taking from the company, in essence, and sort of compensation. And the company needs to have a 10x value to what you bring into that organization. So we have a fiduciary responsibility to give back, you know, to those organizations so they can thrive.

Unknown Speaker 27:28 Excellent. Well, I love your abundance mindset, and just the way that you're thinking about the future. And just it's very visual, right? When you talk about merging companies, or about how you're listening, it's just, it's great to hear about your thoughts and about what you've accomplished. So check out Cliff walks all over the internet and dial in, if you want to speak with him, and some of that strategizing that he's talking about. Cliff is a very generous man with his knowledge and what he's figured out over the years. So check out those social media posts and check out that book and it'd be glad you did, because Cliff just has a wealth of knowledge that you can benefit from and then use and then pass along to others and it just everybody wins in that situation. So cliff, it's been wonderful speaking with you, Robert, appreciate what you do. And now it's been a lot of fun to interact with yourself and our listeners and thank you what