Hey, everyone! Today’s guest is Thor Conklin and I have to say I had a great time talking with him. It’s always refreshing talking to entrepreneurs that have been around for quite a while, and Thor has been in business for almost 20 years now. So it’s interesting talking to people that have owned their own companies for that long.
This year’s his 20th year in business, his first company was a global risk management company. He had companies that had a combined revenue of $12.7 billion, and they operate in over 100 countries all over the world. His background in risk management actually came in pretty handy when he lost a third of his team in the World Trade Center attacks in 9/11. If you’ve been in business long enough, you’re going to live through events that no one can see coming. Thor obviously made his way through some pretty difficult times there. Since that time, he started and bought and sold several multi million dollar businesses, making him a sought after cross industrial resource for entrepreneurs and executives in all stages of business. Thor has a talent, and we’ll get into some of this in our interview, for cutting through the noise and distractions that most people get distracted by and keeping people focused and making sure that they achieve the goals that they’re that they’ve set out for themselves.
As you’ll hear, Thor has a no nonsense direct approach, which comes through in this interview. Which is exactly what I really enjoyed talking to him about. About his experiences, the way that he approaches things, and just the way that he presents himself, he’s unapologetic and take it or leave it. It’s his personality, which is incredibly powerful when you can get to interact with someone like that.
Through his consulting firm peak performance group, he teaches the tools tips, tricks, psychology and strategies necessary to be a peak performer. He qualifies the psychology of success in one word, and that’s: execution. Nothing you’ve ever learned matters unless you can execute. So with that, we’ll get on with the show, enjoy!
In this episode we discuss:
- What he did in his 20s that made him earn more than his dad when he was young [4:20]
- Hustling at an early age [5:03]
- Getting a once in a lifetime phone call and starting his first company [5:54]
- How to find the best employees [8:07]
- The story of his failed business and lessons learned from that [10:51]
- Being a senior leader for Anthony Robbins [14:25]
- Being a part of Entrepreneurs’ Organization [16:01]
- Starting Peak Performance after failing in his salon business [17:58]
- Helping entrepreneurs that are close to bankruptcy and crawling out of the depths of despair [19:58]
- The Peak Performance Pyramid: a guide to achieving your vision for yourself and your business [22:10]
- Having somebody else to tell you the hard truths about pivoting your business, especially in a crisis [26:52]
- Types of businesses they work with [28:43]
- Uncommon problems that affect a business [29:12]
- Story of a client who lost money [31:55]
- Where to find Thor [32:54]
- How he got the name Thor [33:55]
Quotable Quotes
- How you show up in life is how you show up in your business.
- A small business with financial issues is easy to deal with. And as that business gets bigger and bigger, and there’s more zeros thrown on top of it, you’re looking at not a $10,000 issue, you’re looking at a half a million dollar issue every week. So I learned my lesson there.
- Unless you’ve owned the business, you don’t know what it’s like to not have enough money in the bank for payroll on Friday.
- And it’s really sad what’s going on in the United States now. So many businesses are not going to be able to reopen because everybody thought it was a go go times that everything’s going to continue. Well, it doesn’t continue forever. And I wanted to share as broadly as possible what I had learned. So others didn’t go through the same thing that I went through.
- And there’s a lot of people out there shouting on the social media platforms saying, you know, buy my course and become the next billionaire that have never done shit.
- Things are falling apart and it’s going to affect the rest if you’re not in great shape or great health. If you’re not gonna be able to show up in the boardroom, the way to execute that you need to so you need a good balance and good foundation.
Links to sources and tools
- If you’re a small entrepreneur who’s just starting out and need advice, send Thor an email at Thor@thorconklin.com to receive a personalized email with a 4 step system to annihilate the problem or at the very least greatly reduce it.
- Find Thor Conklin through these channels:
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