I was hired to create this internship program, but first I had to convince the guy that hired me there that he should bring me on to do it.
Clay Kirkland, Wisdom and Creativity Consulting
Chad: Tell us about the internship program you created through the UGA Wesley Foundation?
Clay: It wasn’t really about what the interns could do for us there at the program. ‘Cause we knew that they wouldn’t stay with us very long. One or two years, three was the maximum length of our program.
My gauge of the success of the Wesley program was judged by what the interns were going to do afterwards. And so I used to tell every intern class that.
“I can’t measure my success on how you function here, ‘cause it’s pretty ideal. And what you’re about to experience we have fine tuned to where it’s a pretty robust, excellent adventure,” but I said, “I’m going to judge myself two, three, five years down the road when I hear what you’re doing or see what you’re doing in the future. And that we’ll be able to see if what we were teaching you actually worked.”
Chad: So from the beginning it sounds like this was a long term, big picture approach. Were you hired to do that?
Clay: I was hired for it, but I had to convince the guy that hired me there that he should bring me on to do it. I came to him with my “vision paper,” however many pages it was, and the guy, who was very gracious, looked through it, circled one paragraph, and told me I could start with that.
I definitely believed that I was the answer to all their problems and had a lot of growing to do from that point.
Josh: So you start the internship program and grow it to be a very successful thing.
Clay: I’d never trade those first few years where we were failing more than we were succeeding. That built the resilience and grit I needed to stay the course until I saw the success I had been hoping and planning for from the beginning.
The first couple years it grew a little bit, then in 2007 or 2008 it doubled in size and grew from there up until the last year I was there when we had 80 interns.
Josh: How long were you there before you started thinking about doing something outside of that full-time gig you had?
Clay: I had people coming to me and asking me to help them start similar programs on their campuses. And at one point I got certified in the Gallup Strengths-Finder assessment because I wanted to do it with our staff. And six weeks after I got the certificate in the mail, I got a call from a friend of a friend asking me to do it for the staff at their pharmaceutical company.
I had never done it for anyone outside my organization, but I figured fake it til you make it. So I flew up to Boston and worked with a group of nine people for an entire day. And they liked it. That day I got copied on an email to every district manager in the country for that company, labeling me as a consultant for them. Twelve years later, they’re still one of my clients today.
Chad: You weren’t even seeking any work as a consultant but you’re such a growth-minded and competent in your skill and ability that when the opportunity landed in your lap, you were able to jump on it and take it.
Clay: When I got trained, the facilitator who trained us that week knew the answer to every single question anyone asked him. He was a genius in the field of the Strengths Finder assessment.
The thing I walked away with was the idea that if I was going to do this, I had to do it like him.
So I started to do the work by myself, hours a day, creating different scenarios for myself to solve and fabricating them on my whiteboards. Just creating a library of information so that I could become an expert at this assessment.
Chad: So you had the passion of wanting to be an expert already before the call came. Was this driven by the desire to bring value, the desire to leverage it for more money, what made you dive in so deeply?
Clay: I would say two things, and internal driver and an external driver. The first is an internal driver toward excellence. It’s always been a part of who I am.
Growing up I was always taught that a life worth living is worth living well.
The external driver was that I wanted to provide something for people that would actually help them and not just give me a paycheck.
So if I can do it well and it can make them better, it’s a win win. Money and opportunities will come after that.
Josh: So were you all in on developing the skills immediately, or was this call from Boston the thing that created the pressure for you?
Clay: I was already diving into the assessment and learning all about that, the call just forced me to take what I had and put it together into some kind of a usable program. And once I saw the little bit that I had learned and how it brought value to them, it inspired me to see how much more potential I had in that area.
Josh: If you hadn’t already been studying deeper into the program, do you think that call would’ve gone differently?
Clay: I don’t think it would’ve gone anywhere near the same.
Chad: One of the co-founders of Instagram, Kevin Systrom said, “Everybody gets lucky and everybody has opportunity. Your really successful people know how to take advantage of that when the call comes across the board.” And you weren’t prepared, but you saw an opportunity and a way to leverage something.
I think that’s what sets you apart from a lot of people who never start their entrepreneurial adventure.
The opportunity comes to everybody, but you took the bull by the horns and ran with it and were able to develop to be where you are today.
Chad Brown, the SerialCFO
Josh: How long were you running a full-time internship simultaneously as this side-business as a consultant before you decided to go full-time as a consultant?
Clay: Twelve years.
Josh: Walk us through that. A lot of our audience are trying to leverage both a full-time position and a side-gig. And they’re not thinking twelve years down the road. That seems like an eternity to a passionate, excited young entrepreneur.
Clay: The primary thing that kept me going was that vision paper that I made before I started the position and kept on my computer the entire time. It was nine pages long and I didn’t want to leave until I saw all nine of those pages come to fruition in the program.
It wasn’t a fast vision, it was multi-layered and long-term. And most of the reason I was there so long is because I wanted to see what I started with to the finish. I spent the last four years waiting, half in one and half in the other. Then I was finally able to go full-time into consulting.
Chad: I think the place where most people struggle is the transformation of their big ideas and stepping back from the big vision to see what the first and next step is in their process. Discovering the steps to get to that big vision and whether they have the discipline and work ethic to get there.
How did you, as a 21 year old, back up from that big picture to start building out those steps?
Clay: I think a big part of it is determining what the priorities should be and then having the humility to admit when you get it wrong.
It’s so easy to guess and get it wrong, but getting it wrong doesn’t mean you’ve failed.
I think that was a big part of the growth for me personally, to get it wrong and try again, over and over again.
Josh: Did you ever struggle with fear or doubt that your vision wouldn’t come to fruition?
Clay: I had days where I couldn’t see how it would ever work. But I couldn’t turn off the drive I had to see it work. So when I couldn’t see far into the future, I just had to reprioritize my wins to be close-range wins, rather than big, future wins.
Chad: When you decided to leave Wesley, did you create a new nine page vision sheet for your consulting business?
Clay: My approach to that was a lot different than my approach to Wesley. With the consulting, I had time to take my time and let it develop without trying to make it into a thing that would pay my bills or anything like that.
I definitely have a mission and vision, critical actions, and key characteristics about the consulting that I do. But it didn’t all come into this one paper that I slid across the table. I was able to take pieces of it and then slowly accumulate to where I wanted it to be.
Chad: Switching and transitioning from Wesley into consulting… For any entrepreneur on their journey to grow and to scale, you have to continue to step out of positions and step into new positions. This is a major step for you. Not only did you take this step, you transitioned from a place you invented that you grew and put that many years in. Was that hard for you to let go?
Clay: For sure. It was helpful that I’d seen all of the things that I wanted to see come to pass, but it was the thing that I’d given myself to and sacrificed for, my wife and I both, for 19 years. But it got to that point where it was in a legacy place.
It wasn’t just about me and it didn’t even need me anymore.
Josh: How did you switch gears and go all in over here now?
Clay: I went into it with the decision to say yes to every opportunity. And I probably read this idea in a book, I can’t remember, but I went and picked about 20 people and asked them to sit down with me and listen to my story. The only rules were that they had to be older than me and smarter than me. I’d talk for twenty minutes over breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee, even if they knew me and my story.
Then at the end, I’d ask them, “What do you hear in my story? And who do I need to know that you know?”
I did that 20 times. And I had four people in a row tell me the exact same thing that they heard, I’ll get to that in a second. And I had another guy who then asked me to come speak at a north GA business conference he hosted. And from that conference, I got asked to another, and just started building out my contacts and referrals through that cycle of speaking and getting invited to speak.
The four people who all said the same thing were all business-minded people. And I was in the nonprofit world, so I tried to speak as much toward the twelve years I’d spent in the consulting business and then mention the internship program I’d built with young adults. And that was the minor part of the story.
But all four of these guys were fascinated by the fact that every intern who worked at Wesley never got paid. They said, “You have this kind of retention rate and this type of growth rate, and there’s zero financial incentive. They actually have to pay to enter, and to work to get sponsors or get jobs at cleaning companies or other jobs on the side to fund their internship.”
Then they said, “If you can motivate people to stay and do a job where there’s no financial incentive, actually, they lose money doing it. If you can teach people what you’ve harnessed, then you’ll never not have a job.”
Four people in a row.
And so when that fifth guy said, “I have a business conference, you should speak at it.” I said I would. And he asked what I was going to speak on. And I said, “I’m going to speak on the topic of millennials.”
The interesting thing is, people have different opinions one year to next year, whatever else on the determiners of who is and is not a millenial. But there’s a general rule. I don’t know if it was Pew or Gallup or whoever was measuring it, but I looked it up and the year that I started the internship program was the first year a millennial came out of college. And then the last year that I was with the internship was the last year a millennial came out of college.
Chad: Here’s what I feel like is unheard of now in the culture of entrepreneurial environment and people starting or stepping out into another career path. You were at Wesley for 19 years, you consulted for 12 years by all things considered. You’re an expert in both those areas.
At that point, you had grown two extraordinary successful businesses in two very different paths, right? You still were growth minded enough and humble enough to not think you knew everything, with 19 and 12 years of experience. You still called 20 people and wanted to sit down and hear what they thought. Such a valuable lesson for everybody doing anything. Having outside consultants and mentors.
Josh: I think there’s something a lot of your young business owners, entrepreneurs, and young people starting out on their journey don’t realize. For the three of us here, we’re all 20 plus years of experience into doing multiple things. If anybody ever calls and says, “Hey, I want to take you to coffee and get your help or advice,” we wouldn’t ever say no.
As entrepreneurs, as stories, as things we’ve experienced, I feel like we kind of live to give back and to help and answer questions and guide. And I don’t think a lot of younger people realize how open and interested older successful entrepreneurs are in sitting down and talking and giving advice.
So if you’re here today, I would encourage you. Call those 20 people. Reach out. You’ll probably get 20 yeses, which is contradictory to what most people think would happen.
In reality, most people who have reached success in life have done so by blessing and benefiting other people, and by being blessed and benefited by more successful people. So they’re willing to give it back. “I reached out to these guys when I was coming up. So I’m going to return the favor, pay it forward, so to speak.”
Clay: There’s a proverb I really appreciate, and it says, “The first step to wisdom is to get wisdom.”
Eventually I remember several years ago when it sunk in, it was like, “Hey, you have to go get it. Like you don’t have it.” So you have to accept that and you have to go get it.
Here’s a funny story. When I was sitting down with those twenty people, there were a couple of them I didn’t know personally, I’d been recommended to them by others. The third guy I sat down with let me go through my story, and when I finished he didn’t answer any of my questions. He started listing his resume, the businesses he had sold, his portfolio, his income level…
And when he finished he said, “Based on what you want to do right now and based on your skills right now, you’re not going to make it.”
I said, “Wow, thank you for your time.” Just trying to be respectful and end the conversation so I could process what he had told me.
Then he continued and said, “If you could have told me how to deal with all these young people, then you could’ve been successful.” He was one of the four people who told me that.
Nine months later it went full circle, because when I stepped onstage for that first speaking engagement, he was in the front row. He took notes the whole time, and he was the first person to come up to me afterwards. He wanted to shake my hand and invite me to speak at his CEO peer group. And either he was a genius actor or he had no recollection of ever hearing my story nine months before.
Josh: Did you look at the guy when you were talking?
Clay: Yeah. I always pick three people to look at, one left, one right, and one center. He was the guy to my left. And when I spoke for three hours to his CEO peers group, he was super helpful, they went around the circle and gave me critiques.
He offered to help me any way he could, no memory that he had trashed me nine months before.
Chad: Pro tip here. When you’re speaking, you pick somebody to the left, the center and the right. That’s who you keep focusing on during your presentation.
Clay: And they’re either going to be someone who I know isn’t paying attention or someone who nods a lot. This guy was taking notes the whole time.
Josh: So you talk to companies about StrengthsFinder, you talk to them about how to deal with the younger workforce, what other things are you leading companies in discovering?
Clay: I’m doing a lot of business culture work. Either the creation of culture or the maturation of it. I also do a lot of emotional intelligence work. This is another assessment that I work with that’s recently gained in popularity and effectiveness.
There was a Harvard Business Review that came out two or three years ago which said 80% of the performance measures that differentiate between top performers and everyone else are in the wheelhouse of emotional intelligence.
So when you get that kind of endorsement, then people want to want to find out what that’s all about.
Chad: Before we dive into that for part two of this episode, talk to me about how you started determining your rate as a consultant?
Clay: I just asked other people what they charged. I was new, this was my side-gig, I didn’t have to posture myself as more experienced or better than them. I learned to take the time I was speaking for and multiply it times four to cover travel and preparation. A lot of people complain about the cost of team building or culture building exercises, but they’re getting paid to be there in that meeting. So I really just learn by asking people who’ve done more and know more than me.
Join us next week for part 2 of this episode!
Resources:
Find Clay at http://wisdomandcreativity.com
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Josh Melton @sidegigprophet
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