Robert Clinkenbeard is the CEO of The Radix Group which has offices in Greenville, Phoenix and the UK. He is an entrepreneur, an author, senior leader in the Entrepreneur’s Organization, a four-time Ironman, and the author of Ironman Mindset for Entrepreneurs. He’s served on multiple boards of directors and is currently on the Eastern Regional Board of Directors of Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) as an Area Director.
Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Robert Clinkenbeard about how creating an ironman mindset can help an entrepreneur finish at the top.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
- How discipline and preparation are important, whether it’s in the office or on the course.
- How coaching can help you create the team you need to run a successful business.
- Why establishing a finish line motivates you and keeps you running towards your goal.
- How an exit plan should have options to give you the freedom to accomplish anything down the road.
- Why writing a book can help you and others reach their finish line.
Connect with Robert:
Links Mentioned:
theradixgroupllc.com
Guest Contact Info:
Twitter
@theradixgroup
Facebook
facebook.com/theradixgroup
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/robert-clinkenbeard-480a3510
Linkedin.com/company/theradixgroup
Rob Kosberg:
Welcome everybody. Rob Kosberg here with another episode of our Publish. Promote. Profit podcast. I have a great guest for you today. Robert Clinkenbeard is the CEO of the Radix Group with offices in Greenville, South Carolina, Phoenix, as well as the UK. Entrepreneur, senior leader in EO, Entrepreneurs Organization, and a four-time Ironman, which is impressive. You are the author of the Ironman Mindset for entrepreneurs. We’re going to want to talk a little bit about that. You’ve served on multiple boards, and you’re currently on the Eastern Regional Board of Directors for EO as an area director. So, Robert, thanks so much for being with us. Look forward to chatting with you today.
Robert Clinkenbeard:
Thank you. I appreciate the invite. I look forward to chatting.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it. I’d like to just dive right into the book that you’ve written and how it relates to the businesses that you’ve built. We were talking before. You built a great business that you exited from, and of course you have the Radix Group now. Everybody has their various steps, if you will, to their success principles. Tell me, what are the main foundational elements of the Ironman mindset for entrepreneurs?
Robert Clinkenbeard:
My dad has actually written four or five books and I wanted to make my dad proud. So, I started to think, “Well, what can my book be about? I moved from soccer and rugby into doing small triathlons. Eventually, I got into my larger Ironman stuff. I started to think there was a lot of similarities between running a business and doing an Ironman. The main principles I talk about in the book is that, whether you have an Ironman race where you have a training plan, so the training plan may be six or nine months off from when the race starts, you have to build how many miles you are going to do every week, how many hours of swimming a day. You’re building that roadmap or that training plan. Then, you compare that to business. A lot of people would just deal with that day-to-day minutia. You’re dealing with day-to-day challenges in business. If you actually build that roadmap of where you’re going, it could be a year, could be three years, five years, that’s how I built my framework around writing the book.
Rob Kosberg:
There’s a lot of things swirling around in my head. My buddy’s son is a triathlete and we went to Kona a few years ago to watch him compete there. I’m a golfer, and golfers are certainly athletes. I’ve played a lot of sports in my life, and it’s hard to hit that little white ball even though it just sits still. But I have never been so impressed with the athletes that I saw at Kona. He was the number six American that year. He’s an amateur and a really impressive young man. What are some of these specifics? You talk about mapping it out to get to that level where you’re running a marathon and you’re swimming 2.4 miles, all of these things, which is incredible. I understand the challenges in business and being an entrepreneur but relate it more specifically to me. You’re doing this crazy thing, and you’re building incredible businesses. Give me more details on how they’re related.
Robert Clinkenbeard:
I was training, at the height, 20 hours a week. Try and do that while running a successful business with nearly 350, 400 employees. Discipline is probably one of the first things. You have to be super disciplined about your day, making sure that your day is completely mapped out and scheduled, that you’re really prepared for it. If you go into meetings in business, then you have an agenda. You know what you’re going to talk about, and you have outcomes at the end of it. It’s the same in doing triathlon training where you have to be prepared the night before. What’s your goals for the next day? Are you going to do a two-hour bike ride? I need all my nutrition. I need all my water to be successful. I need all my equipment to be ready. A lot has to do with discipline and preparation. When you compare business and triathlons, you’re going to go through challenges. I would get injured. I would get dehydrated training in Arizona. I would get injuries. There’s two ways you could think about it. You either just get down because of those injuries, or you just work your way through them. Maybe you’re training a different part of your body. It’s the same in business. Every day you have some type of employee issue, or maybe you’re getting some type of a legal challenge, or maybe you have an unhappy client. Those types of things can be really negative to you. It’s trying to work your way through those challenges. So yeah, there’s challenges both in training and challenges both in business. It’s that mindset on how you work through those challenges. How are you going to come out in a positive way, either by learning, or maybe by figuring out how to create a solution?
Rob Kosberg:
400 employees. That’s a lot of employees. Tell me a little bit about that company, but also tell me what pieces you had in place to be able to train 20 hours a week while still running your business at such a high level.
Robert Clinkenbeard:
I made sure I brought in some really great people. I brought them in at a lower to medium level and I helped to coach them. So again, there’s that correlation between sports and business where you have to coach everybody individually. You have to mentor them. I coached them to a high enough level to effectively run the business for me. The second part of that is giving them the framework to be successful. I give them the map of where I want the company to go in three years, and five years, whether it be a revenue number, whether it’s going to different states, and then have key performance indicators for each position. Wherever I am, if I’m racing in France or Switzerland, I can always check on my dashboard and see how different parts of my business is performing. Each leader had their three to five KPIs that I was able to check on. Those types of the framework and the tools helped me run my company with the confidence that it was still going to grow without me being there.
Rob Kosberg:
Very impressive. Congratulations on both those feats. I remember at Kona watching them finish. They run down the last 50 yards or so and it’s a red carpet. Then the announcer announces every single person the same way, “Robert, you are an Ironman.” I was like, “Oh my gosh. I want to do that.”
Robert Clinkenbeard:
You get chills in your body.
Rob Kosberg:
It’s incredible. You look like you’re in great shape. Are you still training for Ironman? Are you still running and swimming and doing all that’s necessary for it?
Robert Clinkenbeard:
Yeah, I still do. I’m not as intense because I now have young kids, but I’m still biking, still running. I’ll probably do a half Ironman later this year now that COVID is behind us. That finish line, when you look at it, in business, or some type of a race, if you have some type of a goal at the end, it keeps you motivated when you have those challenges. I remember when I went across the finish line in Nice, France. It was a tough race. There was 6,000 feet of climbing, but I knew that my wife and my two-year-old at the time, were waiting at the finish line. The ability to carry that two-year-old across the finish line just kept me going through the race.
Rob Kosberg:
Very cool. Congratulations on that. One of the key finish lines for business owners is the exit. You exited your business very successfully. You have the Radix Group now. Talk to me a little bit about some of the exiting mistakes that you maybe avoided or maybe some that you made. Maybe spell that out for us. For a lot of business owners, there isn’t much of an exit strategy. That maybe is akin to running a race and there not being a finish line.
Robert Clinkenbeard:
You’re right. I think a lot of businesses I go in and help and coach, I find that they don’t necessarily have that exit plan in their mind. A lot of them are caught up still working in the weeds, so they’re going into their day. They’re being pulled in different directions. They’re coming out at the end of the day just being exhausted. They’re not seeing the needle moving in the company. My goal with them is to try and to come up with some type of an exit plan, whether they’re ready to sell or not. If they have some type of an exit plan, then they have some options. Who’s that right-hand person ready to take over the company from you? Is there somebody that you could promote to allow you to work more on the business, rather than in it? I’ve just been working with this company here in Greenville where this owner was exhausted. He was working 60, 70 hours a week, ready to pack it in. He was still only 40, and after I started to work with him, we’ve now got the seal in place. He’s now able to spend 20, 30 hours with his family. It’s just in a lot better place. Just somebody to give him a nudge and give him some direction in how to position his company for sale, which is now what we’ve done. We’ve now got it in such a place where there’s somebody in place. There’s processes and procedures in place. He’s got everything running financially well. He’s got some good cash flow going through the business. So, it’s just looking at those different steps to figure out what you needed to work on.
Rob Kosberg:
This is obviously what you’re doing with the Radix Group now; you’re primarily coaching, consulting businesses, helping them to put those pieces into place, and perhaps exit, have that finish line. Is there a level that you’re looking for? Does a business need to be doing $10 million a year in revenue, 5 million, 2 million? For somebody listening, what are some of the key things that they should be thinking about when bringing on someone like yourself to help coach them, consult them in this process?
Robert Clinkenbeard:
I’ll look at any company, but ideally, it’s about 5 million and above. I think the first thing I would be asking them to do is, “Who are the people around you that can help you to the next level?” There’s a lot of companies that have had employees around for years, and they’re not necessarily the right people to take the company to the next level. I would come to that owner and talk through who the people are around you that we need to coach, that we need to mentor. Maybe there’s some people we need to change out, and then just look at what processes are in place to help take the business to the next level. Going back to a point you made earlier, I made a ton of mistakes in business. I learned a lot. I made a lot of expensive mistakes, and my goal is now to work with owners. They might see me being a little bit expensive, but I want to prove my value to them by either increasing the revenue, increasing their profit, and taking them to the next level so that they’re not going home exhausted. They’re spending more time with their family. They’re spending more time on golf, or triathlons, or something.
Rob Kosberg:
Clearly, there’s a lot of time that those things take up. You brought up the point on the mistakes. Tell us, everybody wants to know, what are some of the big ones? What were some of the big costly ones that you made, that looking back, you could have avoided had you taken a couple of steps?
Robert Clinkenbeard:
I would say, the first one is hiring the wrong people. I didn’t really have a set of core values or true identifiable culture with my company. When I brought people in, a lot of the time it was through desperation. I didn’t spend enough time making sure they were a good culture fit or enhanced my culture. A lot of the time, they came into the company and just caused chaos, and actually ended up costing us more money. By the time you bring them in, they cause that chaos, and then you fire them, and then you have to find somebody else. I learned after too many years to take my time. What do they say? Hire slow, fire quick. I just took my time later on. I used different hiring techniques. I used personality assessments. I had maybe four or five different types of interviews. I would say people was the first thing. And then, I made the mistake early on of not listening to my clients, not talking to them enough. Once I got a good leadership team in place that allowed me more time to go and talk to my clients and really just find out what they wanted from my business, what were some of the things we’re seeing from some of their other vendors that we could apply in our business? Are we communicating enough? Are we doing the right services? I didn’t talk to my clients enough early on, but I changed that later in my business.
Rob Kosberg:
Let’s go down that rabbit hole for just a moment. I have found, as I have people in better places in my business, it’s allowed me to have more interaction with my clients, and quite frankly, it’s amazing to me when you bring on a client, how much more they want to buy when they have a good experience with you. I think it’s statistically something like nine times easier to sell an existing or past client on additional services than it is to get a new one, and yet, people don’t do it. Did you have a list of questions? When you would go into these conversations with your current client base, what were the things that you wanted to talk about and that you talked about again and again, repetitiously?
Robert Clinkenbeard:
We typically did have a list of questions, but it came around to, “Are the quality of the services we provide at your standard? Did we exceed your standard? How is our pricing related to other services? Is your account manager talking to you enough, communicating with you enough? Are we proposing enough enhancement work to you, so that we could do the basic maintenance, but is there other things that we could be offering to you? What are some of the innovative things that we could be doing in terms of making your life easier?” I think we quickly realized that a lot of our clients were just getting more and more work piled on them and they weren’t able to get to the properties. So, “How can we help?” How can we have that extra set of eyes and ears on the property to make their life easier? So yeah, we started to listen to them more and document it and figured ways to change our business to help them out.
Rob Kosberg:
It’s interesting, probably about a year ago, we started making sure at one key point of our business, when we launch a book specifically, and that launch goes well, we would have a conversation with our client and go through a number of things. What you just said is total gold. We ask a series of questions, much of what you said, but a couple of them that we don’t ask like, “How is our pricing,” I’m going to add. The question that you posed,” What other things can we bring to you of value,” we do that now as well. I bet it has added an additional half a million to a million dollars a year in revenue to our business already this year. I need to put a pencil to paper and actually look at that. It’s amazing to me, the number of current clients that we’re serving in bigger ways now, simply because we’re asking those questions and listening to our clients. For those listening today, that is real gold what Robert just gave you. Thank you for sharing that. Good stuff.
Robert Clinkenbeard:
No problem. Yeah, you’ve already broken through and created that trust with them. Now that you’ve created that trust, what else can you do? If they can deal with one vendor compared to two or three, I mean, that’s again going to make their life easier.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, let’s shift gears. I want to talk a little bit about the book. We’ve talked about some principles of it. Everybody has their different reasonings for writing a book. You shared that one of your reasons was your dad and the books your dad has written. People have their own reasons for writing a book that often are about serving their clients and serving the reader and that sort of thing. You certainly, I’m sure, as an author, feel that. You also had something in mind that you wanted your book to do for you. Maybe it’s to grow the Radix Group, give you speaking opportunities, etc. I wonder if you can talk about that for a minute.
Robert Clinkenbeard:
I think all of the above was on my mind, but it’s gone way above my expectations. So, initially I was going to use my book as more of a fancy business card that I can hand over and just give them a short book. It’s maybe 100 pages, but allows me, puts me in a position that I can elevate myself. So, that’s initially what I was thinking is that I could become that expertise, and Ironman, relating it to the business, and just be a business card, but it has now accelerated into, I’ve now had speaking engagements across in Europe, in Barcelona and Dublin, in Munich, through my EO network. I was able to send books all around Europe, so I’ve had some great speaking engagements there. I’ve now how some opportunities in Asia as well to do some speaking engagements, but what it’s also moved into as well is, now I’ve had people reach out to say, “Well, I really loved the principles,” and, “How can I build my own roadmap? Where am I going in the future? What are some of the tools that I can apply to my life because I feel as though I’ve got so much more in me, so much more capability.” I talk about that in the book, where I only feel as though we only operate at 30, 40% of our capabilities. I’ve had a lot of people approach me and say, “Well, how can I take this further? I love, I’m really inspired by your book,” which at the end of the book, I talk about part of the reason for writing it is to make an impact on a handful of people’s lives. Maybe they start exercising or walking around the block. It doesn’t have to be a full Ironman, but if I could just make them a little bit healthier, then I feel as though I’ve done my job.
Rob Kosberg:
It sounds like the book has done some amazing things for you with your speaking opportunities. I wonder if I can dig, just for a moment, regarding you as a director in EO. You are obviously very, very involved, probably for many years in Entrepreneurs Organization. It’s given you a network to get your book into and to use your book. Talk to me for a moment about what your strategy was. What is your strategy with your book and with EO. Is there a strategy that you’re using there?
Robert Clinkenbeard:
To be honest, there’s not any real strategy there, because there’s some strict rules around promoting yourself and promoting your business. I have to be really careful with that fine line, but I think just by naturally being involved in the organization at a higher level and being involved in different committees and different boards, then I just naturally get exposure. People see my book on my signature or on my website. I’m definitely getting a lot of opportunities there, but I have to be really careful about how much I promote myself.
Rob Kosberg:
Interesting, interesting. I wonder, is there anything wrong with offering your book for free? Is there anything wrong for you having a willingness within the organization to get the book into people’s hands, even if it’s PDF that you could send, would they see that as a value add or would they see that as promotion?
Robert Clinkenbeard:
It’d be a pretty interesting conversation. I have tried that, and I’ve had my hand slapped a couple of times for that. There are people out there who will supply their books for free and suggest a speaking engagement for free at their local chapter. There are still opportunities there. I’m still trying to navigate through that area there. We have now 15,000 members worldwide, and as you say, they’re all great entrepreneurs. They all have different challenges in certain ways. That’s part of the reason why I’m involved at a higher level. I want to be able to help them out, and if they see that I have a book, can that be a value add to them? Then, it’s good for me.
Rob Kosberg:
Exactly. Good. Robert, wonderful. Great stuff today. Thank you for sharing. Where can people get the book? Obviously on Amazon but tell us your website. Let’s give some links. We’ll have them in the show notes for anybody that is interested in learning more about you and getting a copy of your book and engaging with you.
Robert Clinkenbeard:
Thank you, Rob. Of course, Amazon, we can get the book there. You can go to my website, theradixgroupllc.com. The book is there and so are my coaching courses. I’m happy even just to talk to people and see if I can help them stay on that roadmap. They can go to LinkedIn. I’m really active on LinkedIn and Facebook. I’m happy to help people out if they’re interested in learning about my book or my coaching.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, again, thank you my friend. Great to have you on today. Thanks for all the things that you shared and the wisdom. We’ll give the links. Again, it’s your, Ironman Mindset for Entrepreneurs, great book for people to pick up. Thanks for sharing, and glad to have you on the podcast today.
Robert Clinkenbeard:
Yeah, thank you, Rob. I appreciate it.
