Clay Clark | The Rhythm of Entrepreneurship: Define, Act, Measure, Refine

Audio Transcription

So many different times in my life, I’ve played with broken or hurt things, broken foot, broken leg, broken hand, broken arm, broken sternum, broken collarbone. I could keep going if I just thought more about bones. Why, man? Because I loved it. I loved playing the game. I was passionate about it. One of the reasons I even get encouraged at seeing all of you here, you know why I get encouraged by that is because you could be anywhere doing a lot of different things, but you chose to be here Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show But this show does in a world filled with endless opportunities Why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses? five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use. Because they believe in you. And they have a lot of time on their hands. This started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show starring the former U.S. Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body. Dr. Robert Zunich. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and I’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here to climb Started from the bottom, now we’re at the top Teaching people systems to get what we got Colton Dixon’s on the hoops, I break down the books She’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks As the father of five, that’s why I’m alive So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi It’s the C and T up on your radio And now 3, 2, 1, here we go! We started from the bottom, now we’re here to climb Started from the bottom, let me show you how to get this Not knock who is it? Dr. Z, how are you my friend? I am fantastically. How are you doing, buddy? Man, I tell you what, being here with you in the box that rocks has always been a pleasure. It’s been exciting. It’s been a joy. And then today I brought in pieces of pinion into the box. So I’m just smelling it. I wonder why it was mosquito free in here. Now I know. Now I know the rest of the story. So if you’re smelling your radio right now, we have this new thing I’m working on. It’s called Smell-O-Vision. You know, Thomas Edison did 10,000 failed experiments to create the modern day light bulb. I’m trying to do 10,000 failed show attempts to create Smell-O-Vision. So I’m doing some different things behind the scenes. We’re on Facebook Live right now where folks have told me they can smell the pinyon. It smells like America. That is America. And you know what I love most about pinyon? Not only the smell, but apparently bugs hate the smell. Yeah, it’s a super move. It’s like a win-win. We call that a win-win in business. Anytime it can be a win-win, for you as a business owner, maybe an employee, a customer, that’s success. That’s what you build upon. So, pinion wood is a symbol of business success. It is. It’s a symbol of business success. I’m going to tell you what else thrives. You know, Z said, hey, I’m looking for a win-win in business. Well, I’m looking for a win-win-win-win. I’m looking for four wins. That’s a total of four wins. Wow, you’re kind of a greedy win-hog. So I’ve got another win here. Inside the box that rocks, we have a man who is so tall. He’s so tall. He’s so tall, we had to adjust the lens to fit him on Facebook Live. Hey Sam, can I get a step ladder so I don’t feel so short? Yeah, I mean, it’s a thing. He’s an intimidator. It’s Ryan Myers here. Ryan, how are you, sir? Man, I’m awesome. Thank you. Hey, first, the Thrivers want to know the obvious question. First off, how tall are you? Question number two, what do you do for a living? What is your core business, my friend? Sure. The question most often asked, how tall am I? Yeah. 6’10”. Whoa. Thank God I did play basketball. So I got that going for me. And I own a company, Transit Advertising, Inc. We sell the advertising space on the buses, benches, and shelters, and Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and four other markets. So if I’m listening right now and I want to auto-wrap a bus, or what else I can do? Or a boat. Or a boat. Or trucks. Or a truck. Trailers. Can I auto-wrap a person? Is that a thing? Well, if you can get them to sit still long enough. Oh, I… We have more luck with turtles, because they’re pretty slow and hard. But for everything… Is that ethical? Can you do turtles? Is that a… You bet. Yeah, we can take it off. I’m kidding. We can take it off. Now we have win, win, win. Now we have one more win. My incredible wife of 15 years is inside the box that rocks. She’s the mother of our five kids, and she’s the herder of the cats. She’s a cat whisperer. True. She’s a kind of a, she’s a mother of the chicken whisperer. She has a lot going on. Vanessa, how are you? I’m doing great. All right. Well, today we’re talking about a topic that I’m passionate about. It is the rhythm of entrepreneurship. You know the rhythm of entrepreneurship? You did a dance move with it. The rhythm is going to get you. I can’t believe you’re that cued up, DJ. Again, the telepathic DJ skills are a little bit farther behind your mind. Your synapse is fire very fast. It’s hard to be a mind reader at that level and cue up the songs. And throw in the dance moves. And throw in the dance moves, yeah. Well, that’s why we’re a team. I mean there was Captain and Tennille. There was Laurel and Hardy. Batman and Robin. There was Batman and Robin. It was Batgirl. Now we’ve got the Joker in here. I can tell Ryan is a little bit of a joker. I can just feel it. I was thinking Starsky and Hutch. Starsky and Hutch. I mean it goes on and on and on. Now Thrivers, we’re talking about the rhythm of entrepreneurship, and the rhythm of entrepreneurship really involves these four steps that happen over and over and over. Step number one, you have to define what you want. To define what your business is going to do, what you want, you have to define it. That’s kind of the part where most entrepreneurs, they love that part. It’s the part where you go to the coffee shop, you watch TED Talks, you’ve just read a book called The Four Hour Work Week, you’ve just read Tipping Point, you’ve read a Malcolm Gladwell book, you are now sufficiently motivated, you define. The next part is acting. That’s where about a third of the entrepreneurs drop off. They go, I’ve got to actually do something. It’s a wantrepreneur. Now the third part is measuring. I mean, you’ve got to measure the results. Now, here’s the part. A lot of people measure and they go, ah, frick, my ad didn’t work, I’m done. Well, you’ve got to measure until it works. So the ad numbers are in right now. I’m going to pass the numbers to you. This is from our last conference. This does not factor in the cost of building out the set tables. These just happen. I just printed that out today for you. The ad numbers are in there. Very technical. But you can see that’s how much we spent on the ads, you know. And that’s how much came in. And we want that number to be better and better. But there was a time where we were spending like $1,500 a ticket to explain to people around the world what the Thrive Time conferences were about. But now when people Google Thrive 15 conference, they just find all the reviews and it’s sort of a no-brainer. But you have to measure the results and that fourth step is refine. Once you measure something, you have to refine it over and over and over. And so today to make it kind of fun, we’re going to get into this concept of defining. And we’re going to start with Dr. Zellner’s brain. Oh no. What are we talking about Tim? It’s Thursday. Yeah. Are you sure you want to throw it back that far? Is it shutting down yet? No, you want to throw it back that far? I want to throw it back Thursday. I want to throw it back in the day. Back in the day. How old were you when you graduated from college? Up top to school I was 25. Tough question. What year was that? It was 1990. 1990. This is the 90s. So you’re in the 90s. And so the music back then, you had like Vanilla Ice probably. Oh my goodness. I mean that was the hot song, right? Yeah, Ice Ice Baby. Yeah. Okay, so you know Ice Ice Baby was playing, you were looking cool, things were going good. What was your vision? What did you define your life to look like? What were you going, hey, when I get out of school, this is what I’m going to do. Tell me what was going through your cranium. My vision was completely shattered, by the way. What? Yeah. I had it all mapped out. I had a contract. I had a plan. I had a dude that was going to bring me into his practice and then sell me his practice. I had it all mapped out. It was beautiful. I feel like you’re speaking to everyone right now. It’s glorious. It was just, it was like, I was like, it was like rainbows and, and leprechauns and, and I was riding a unicorn through a field singing Ice, Ice Baby. It was too good. That was the problem. It was too good. I had them parachute pants back like MC Hammer. And you had Gloria Estefan mixed in a little bit. Rhythm is Gonna Get You. You had the quad skates on. Oh yeah, there you go. Now you’re wearing it. I picked it back up. Yeah, this is the, I mean, I was like, you know, because you’re a little bit older than I am, but I was seven. I remember running into you at Rower City and there was nobody who was better on those quad skates. You all hit it off right away. It’s like you knew you were going to be together. You could do the shuffle really well, even at 7. It was weird because I’m a 7 year old. My mom’s like, who is that man who’s dominating at Galaga and all the skating games? And I’m like, I swear to God, I had a headband on because it was just Galaga. And I reached out and I said, can I borrow your denim? And you said, no, but you can have an oversized button with Gloria Estefan’s face on it. And I’ve carried that button with me every day. No, I’m just kidding. The thing is, this is the early 90s. You have this big vision and it’s just shattered. I had to play Gallagher. Oh, it shattered. That’s an extra point right there in Gallagher. So it shattered. It shattered. It’s even worse than that. It was even worse than that because then I think, you know, a lot of people, things don’t work out. It’s kind of like, oh, I meant it to work out, you know? So here’s this dude. I’m getting ready to buy his practice and you know, I had the price all nailed down and then what we did is a caveat, as a little caveat, he said, well I’ll tell you what, until we close on the business, why don’t you come to work for me for not a lot of money, but it’s really to your benefit because you’ll learn the practice and it’s almost like going back to school. I’ll just pay you a little nominal fee until we close on and then you just come in and work for me and it’ll all be good. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe you’re listening to the Thrive Time Show. So I had it all mapped up it was Tulsa my hometown I was coming home I was big smile on my face and and his office was kind of fun and unique because he kind of office shared with his son he was a dentist you know and so they had that some shared spaces but it was really kind of a cool set up. I’m like, man, this is going to be awesome. Awesome. Awesome sauce. Got my contract. Got everything. Oh, Ice Ice Baby’s playing. I think I’m twerking. And being that you’re right out of school, pretty much any job is like you feel like it’s a lot of money. Even if it’s not. Even if it’s not, yeah. You knew it was going to happen. Oh, yeah. There we go. I’m riding my unicorn across the guys. Yeah, yeah. It’s coming up right now. Awesome. OK. So Ice Ice Baby’s playing. You’re feeling good. So it wasn’t a whole lot of money for the practice. I was excited. I had all those numbers. I had my stuff. I even had a suit back then. A suit? My one suit and two or three ties to choose from. I kind of balled them pretty much. So I went into bank after bank after bank after some shady gal on the street doing loans. Anybody I could go talk to that I might be able to get money out of. Question, when you were driving around town trying to get those loans, were you ever listening to the music? Were you an FM guy? Would you listen to music while you were driving around? I’m not an FM guy. They didn’t have FM back then. He’s a DJ today. I’m just wondering, were you listening to music back in the day when you were getting rejected or what were you doing emotionally? I probably was. Yeah, I probably had that in the mirror down. I was looking at it going, you’re okay. I want to ask Ryan. I want to get Ryan’s feedback on this. Ryan, if you went out there and you pitched your idea and you keep getting rejected, would you be listening to FM music or would you go to Oklahoma Joes and just eat until you couldn’t eat anymore? What would be your move? I would do that. I would eat. I would be an eater. You’d just eat? I would go to Oklahoma Joes. Did that exist back in 1990? Let’s not get into the facts. Let’s focus on the questions here, Ryan. I would listen to a little Chicago, hear the inspiration, show up at Oklahoma Joe’s, get those baked beans. Really? That’s it? Now, what would you do? Would you listen to FM radio? Dance party in my car. Really? Yes. Okay, well, since it was 1990, you’re probably listening to Hold On by Wilson Phillips. I was thinking more of a beat dance party. No, no, Zee was kind of somber. Yeah, Zee was at the bottom. I was at the bottom. He was telling me… I was at the bottom. He said he had to hold on for one more day. Just got to hold on. He was singing it too. Try to make it, oh yeah, try to make it to the next bank. Just, I still got gas. I’m going to make this. I’m going to be alright. Would you look into the mirror and tell yourself, hold on for one more day? Hold on baby. Hold on. Let it, pull that fire down. I think it was worth it. You’re okay. And that suit is awesome. And what a great tie you picked out today. You’re gonna do this at the next bank. Oh yeah. You’re gonna do it. And I go marching in that lobby. I own the place. Yeah. My little And he had a mullet, the guy you were talking to had a mullet. I thought he had a mullet. And then it turned out that I wasn’t a real doctor. Well, I’m an optometrist. Oh, frick, this meeting’s over. Yeah, I’m kind of like a doctor. We get to say doctor, you know, on occasion doctor. But, and no, no, no, no, no. And then I finally, I finally found one man out there by the name of Steve. Steve, if you’re listening right now, thank you very much. Thank you, Steve. And Steve said, listen, for some reason I believe in you kid. For some reason, I think you’re going to make it. I’m like, that’s really nice of you. Encouraging. And he said, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll give you the money and you can take half of it and give it to him but he’s got to keep half of it in a CD in the bank for six months and if you make it after six months I’ll release all the money to him. So I thought, home run, score, gave Steve a hug, you know, went and got a sucker from the drive-thru teller people and then left the bank, right? I mean, that’s what you do. Yeah. Well, you know, the thing is when you’re feeling that good and it’s 1990, what you probably would do is you’d probably get in your car and you’d probably listen to the Macarena because that was the hit song back in the day. And so you’d probably… We’re full DJ mode. We’re probably saying… He’s coming back. You’re probably… You’re saying, I just got told by a bank that they’re gonna actually give me money? What? And so you ran to the parking lot, just ripped your shirt off and started doing the Macarena? I went to the bank, I had a couple of suckers from the drive-thru teller, and I was doing the Macarena right there in the bank. I had my jacket off. What would you be doing, Ryan, if a bank told you, you’re in, man, you’re funded, babe, what would you do? It happened, and it was gorgeous. I would be doing the Macarena as well. If it was 1990, would you do the Macarena, or do you have your own original dance moves? You know, I’ll do the Macarena for the sake of the show. I want that. Would you? Because I taught this a lot at weddings. The main key is that you just got to understand there’s a certain group of people called Caucasians that typically won’t get it. You just have to stay in positive. I’ll do the original dance. My own original dance move. Alright, now Zimzi, when we come back, you’re going to tell us what happened. I mean, after they told you that you got the money, you just did the mock run in the parking lot. Things are good. It’s 1990. Your life could not be better. It’s a tragic story, but it has a happy ending. Stay tuned. Thrive Time Show. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation. Green Country, hello. How are you? We are broadcasting today from the left coast of the Arkansas River inside the beautiful dojo of Mojo and inside the box that rocks. And I am projecting to you right now, broadcasting on this beautiful microphone while looking at my dear friend, Tulsa’s mentor, Tulsa’s optometrist, Tulsa’s future mime of the year, Dr. Robert Zillner. How are you, sir? I think it’s the white gloves, I guess. That’s probably the move, isn’t it? White gloves. Well, people always ask us, what do you guys do during the commercial break? I’ll tell you what we’re doing. We’re miming. Miming. We do a lot of miming. And it’s fun. You should try it sometime. Yeah. We have put a lot of energy into it, a lot of time, and we have yet to see a return on it. But we believe that our miming career, you think about miming on the radio, that could be a thing. I mean, mime. We’re going to have smell-o-vision, so maybe we can do miming on the radio. Maybe sock puppets, too. That’s a great idea, see? You’re in Facebook Live, I just did a little hand movement. Okay, so here we go. Now we’re talking today about the rhythm of entrepreneurship, which is you define, you act, you measure, and then you refine. I repeat, you define, you act, then you measure, and you repeat. I repeat, you define, one more time, somebody write that down, you define what you want, then you have to act though, and you’ve got to measure the results, and you’ve got to refine, you’ve got to be comfortable with that loop, that system. If not, your brain explodes. That’s why we brought on two guests whose brains have not exploded yet. We brought on Mr. Ryan Myers. Mr. Ryan, how are you, sir? I am awesome. Thank you. Thanks for having me in the box. Well, people who want to know, what kind of business are you involved in, my friend? What is your business? My business is selling advertising space on buses, wrapping stuff. We print and wrap buses, benches, shelters, boats, trucks, trailers, floors, doors, windows, walls. And what is your website? What is your website? I have a great website actually. It’s TransitAdvertisingInc.com. And where can I find your phone number? You can find my phone number on the website. And what is your phone number? 918-810-3929. Thank you so much. I will check it out. Now, Vanessa, my incredible wife of 15 years is on the show today dealing with my mispronunciations of the sound as I’m working through this. I’m just watching producer Sam lose it over there. He can’t keep it together. Why are you saying it that way? I’m working through it, Thrivers. Listen, we just finished miming and now we’re going audio. It’s like I’ve got to work through this. Now, Z, you were just telling us the story before the break about how you just got told that you’re going to be funded by this bank and it’s 1990. You’re feeling good. You just did the Macarena in the parking lot to celebrate the future funding. Things are going well. What happened next? The world is your oyster. Yes, it was my oyster. And you can cue up, I Feel Good, if you want. By James Brown? Yeah, by James Brown, of course. Oh, wow. You’re going to play that in a little bit. So anyway, I was feeling great and I went skipping I don’t skip I mean literally skipping back in the office of the gentleman’s office I was a little visual fry I mean I am skipping I’m you know boom five and I’m gunning all the girls is for a day whoa yeah daddy’s back with cash it’s we sat down I go back to his office and I say damn home shoot and score. That’s right. You’re doing the shuffle? Oh yeah. Okay, he’s doing the shuffle. Get in there. Come on now. Ha! Do the splits and pop up on his desk, you know, I go down, he doesn’t see me, I pop back up, you know. I can’t go on. I can’t go on. That’s amazing. Anyway, so I’m tickling myself. You’re having a dance party up there. I am having a dance party. So I tell him, I sit down and say, listen, great news, I found a bank, the only one in town, that’s going to give me some money and here’s a caveat. And I told him what I was going to do and he sat there and I thought he was going to be so excited. Yeah, you knew he’d be excited. I knew he was going to be so excited. How can you not be? And he just looked at me and he just kind of shook his head and said, well, yeah, that’s not our deal. And I said, what’s the thing? It’s just, you get half up front in six months, I mean, don’t you believe in me too? He wants his money. You’re selling me the bank. Son, I’m not going to. Here’s what’s going on in your head. We actually had a microphone on in your head back in the day. We were able to get the live audio. Oh yeah. This is what you were saying in your head. You’re saying, oh, this is one of those reverse psychology moves. Oh, I get it. You want to lend me the money because you know that I want what I can’t have, so you’re just playing the, I got a feeling you’re kind of messing with me here because I know that you’re going to make this happen. This is, this is, this is different how I thought it would be, but this is one of those like Moses moments where God says, Moses, do this thing. You know, he’s not, his face doesn’t look like that. So he was thinking that’s what’s going on. You’re not at all, bro, bro, bro, bro, dog, dog. You, you, you missed that mark by just a little bit. Okay. Maybe like, you know, yeah, no, he was serious. I mean, um, I wish that that was the case, but he was serious. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe. You’re listening to the thrive time show. So I was like incredulous. I was like, dude, I mean, we’ve got the money six months. I mean, don’t you believe in me? I mean, half now, half in six months. I mean, let’s make this thing happen. He goes, no, no, man, that’s not our deal. All the money up front. You want the practice you want the keys. Um, but you just keep looking and so I was like, I think I’ve gone every place I can. I mean I can sell a kidney maybe, but short of that I think I’m, you know. Get your kidney, get your kidney. Step right up. So anyway, I kept working for him for another month, started looking. I’m sure there was a few banks I hadn’t gone to, so I keep looking, keep looking. And then I realize, wait a second, I’m working for this dude, I’m working my butt off and he’s paying me peanuts and I brought him a deal. Something doesn’t smell right about this setting. Something is not good here. Something is not good. And so what I defined, what I set out to become, what I thought was going to be the boom, boom, boom came to a tragic end. But I have a notable quotable to encourage your younger self because I think a lot of people struggle with that. They have this big definition, this big vision, and it doesn’t come into the reality they want. This is from Steve Jobs. He’s the co-founder of Apple, the former CEO of Pixar. He says, you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust the dots will somehow connect in the future. You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. The point is you can’t steer a parked bus, you gotta keep going. You gotta keep going. So I left him and I went out and got a J-O-B. Job? A job, I know. How do you say that again? In fact, I had a couple jobs. I was working seven days a week and just grinding away. And then in a year, by delaying gratification, by working seven days a week, by working as hard as I could and living below my means, I was able to start Dr. Robert H. Zellner and Associates on 11-11-1991. I spent about a year, year and a half working for other docs. So anyway, someone said, hey, when I’m coming out of school, I had it all mapped out, I had it all dialed in. And you hear that from young people. They go, this is my plan, this is my future, this is what I’m going to do. And it sounds good and you’re cheering them on and all of a sudden something derails them and it’s pretty debilitating. It takes your wind out of you. Now when we come back, we’re going to talk about Ryan and how he defined his business, how he had in his mind where his business was going to be, how it was going to start, what your big vision was for your company. And we’re going to also ask Vanessa about her vision for her kitchen. Her vision for her kitchen, what she wanted it to be, what she knew it was going to be, and maybe how it’s different than she thought it would be. We’re going to get into that. The thing is you have to start with a vision. You have to start, but you’ve got to know that once you take action, then we’ve got to measure the results and change a little bit. But that’s the thing. If not, you’re going to end up in a van down by the river singing that 1990 greatest hit. It’s one of the top songs from the 1990s. Do you remember Bette Midler from a distance? Yes, yes I do. I feel like every middle school choir was required to sing that song from a distance. That was from 1990. That was the year you were getting rejected for funding. That song from a distance was written in honor of you I think. It was a way to encourage you that in the distance there’s harmony. Well, Bette was speaking to me when she was singing it. I’ll tell you what. Did you ever have to sing that song at a church thing or anything? You were too old at that point I guess. Well, you know, I’m not saying I couldn’t go back and do it. All right. Well, stay tuned to Thrivetimeshow.com. All right, Tulsa, welcome back inside the box that rocks, and I am in your ear. My name is Clay Clark, sent here to teach you how to start and grow a successful business. As always, I am joined with the optometrist turned tycoon, Dr. Robert Zellner. How are you, sir? I am great. You know, on the break, Ryan asked me a great question. He goes, how did you ultimately come up with the name for your business? I was laughing a little bit going, oh, we’re making a joke. And I thought, wait, there is something there. It’s Dr. Robert A. Zellner and Associates. I was forward thinking a little, little, little, little, little prophetic and calm that out. Because when you first came in, it was me and one lady. That was it. Was it Robert Zellner in a person? What’s her last name? Associates? Yeah, no, no, no. That made it easy. Yeah, that’s how I got the name. But I thought, you know what? This thing’s going to grow. It’s going to make it. It’s going to be, so I named it that way. You had that vision and goal. Absolutely. I had that vision. I wanted to find that. That was my definition. That’s where I wanted to go. And even though I got turned down a year and a half earlier by that dude, if that dude if you’re listening right now, you missed out on being partners with him. Be the guy that you saw doing great guys. Random idea. Should you and I ever want to start a microbrewery? I would like to name it. Okay. Responsibly. So you tell people drink responsibly. And that would just be the branding is already done. I like that. I wonder if everybody out there has done that. No, people have talked about it before. I think I’m just actually pulled the trigger on that. That’s just the thing. I’m just telling you. That’s a thing. Someone should write that down and go do that. But anyway, Thrivers, here’s the deal. Here’s the deal. We’re talking about once you define something, you’ve got to take that action. So Ryan here, Ryan Myers, he’s a very successful company in Tulsa. They auto wrap buses, boats, big things, don’t you? Yeah, big things. We do huge stuff and we do little stuff. Right now we’re in the major league fishing and the FLW tour starting and we’re finishing up boats and trucks right now. And what’s your website address? TransitAdvertisingInc.com. So how did you get your idea to start the business? When did you get that idea? Where were you when you had the idea? Kind of walk us through. When did you get that vision to start this business? You know, I started off, I sold insurance. Oh, really? Yeah, and it was the greatest topic killer at parties. Hey, what do you do? I sell insurance. Oh good. See you later. Oh Yeah, it was awesome so we decided I want to do something really cool Yeah then the vehicle wraps had just started and And the printers were tiny and it just come up some big printers that you can actually wrap a car in less than seven layers Of wrap and so thought this would be really cool. We could have like a West Coast customs in Tulsa What year was this? This was ten years ago. So this is like 2007? Somewhere around there. I’m not good with numbers. Do you remember your favorite songs from 2007? There are some great hits. There’s some great music there. I was about the time I started listening to talk radio only. Oh really? You missed out on the whole music genre. We know that the 2000s are the greatest for music. Okay, well I’ll tell you what. We’ll get you some good 2007 to get you in that zone. My incredible wife of 15 years is here. You have to have a vision for anything. Anytime you want to have success in any area, you have to define what it’s going to look like. We purchased a house and we’ve been renovating that thing, knocking out every wall. Vanessa, tell me, what was your vision when you saw the house? What did you envision in your mind’s eye when you began? You’re saying, okay, we’re going to move into this place. What was the vision? Well, I think we, both of us really fell in love with the property, but not so much the house, but we saw that it had potential if we just knocked out everything and tore up everything and started from the beginning. But it’s been so fulfilling to see that being fulfilled, it’s not done yet. We’ve got like a, you know, 20 step plan or whatever but all the walls are out, all the wood floors are in, all the kitchen is pretty much done. But as you say, you know, define, act, measure, refine. About a week after all our new wood floors were in, we had a bathroom back behind the wall. Flood, overflow, something was wrong with the shower and so I want to give a shout out to Farmers Insurance. They came out, wrote me a check so I want to say thank you to farmers. I don’t even know who is Travis. I don’t know. But we had to replace all that wood floor. And that was right there, farmers insurance at 392-4000. 392-4000. Get it. Why just buy a piece of paper? What you want is the promise. You want that promise to be good. Use farmers insurance. 392-4000, baby. So here’s the deal. So we define, we have a definition in our mind. We say, this is what, this is what I want my future to look like. You define it. But now you’ve got to go out there and act. I think this is the part where so many people say this, and if you say this, I want everyone to write this statement down, because if you say this statement, this is an absolute wealth destroying, just absolutely vision killing statement. If you say this statement or you allow this statement to be made to you, Z, this is what’s going to happen. Are you ready for this statement? Oh yeah. So you just got rejected. And your friend Carl, okay, Carl’s been with you since college. And this is what Carl says. You’re out at some place fancy back in 1990, like Casa Bonita. Oh, don’t tease me about that. I love that place. You remember Casa Bonita? Of course. What kid didn’t love that place? You’re probably at Casa Bonita listening to Suavemente. Am I in a cave? Can we be in the cave? The cave room? Yeah, the cave room. They have all those little games in there. And you’ve got like, there’s an inn. Looks like an arcade back. Oh yeah. Remember back in the day with arcades gosh, there’s a treasury you could get the little fake money and then put on my ninja outfit and samurai right there. Was that a little much? I want to go off. I have to go off just for a second. I’m sorry. It’s one of these deals where I’ve been cooping it up inside for so long and it must be said. It must be said, okay? A lot of you people are out there, you’re saying, I want to have a successful… Hey, wait, wait, wait. You want to preach? I do. It has to happen. So here’s the deal. Preach on. You’re out there, you want to start a successful business and so you say, I’m gonna keep knocking on those doors until I get a deal. I’ve been doing that for one day. Come on. Then he said I’m gonna do it for two days. He said three days. You realize no one is answering the door. If you’re an entrepreneur you got three options here. One, you knock the freaking door down. You just gotta get through that door. Move number two is you gotta sneak around. You gotta sneak around and you’ve got to get into that window. Come on, subversion, come on now. And move number three, you’ve got to climb down through that chimney like Santa Claus and get your apostle and what you need because that is how you start a successful business. You cannot stop. Amen. I’m serious, this is ridiculous. There’s so many people out there who are, their effort, their tenacity is so freaking weak and I don’t know what the freak is wrong with you, but I love you so much I want to help you, but it makes me crazy because I hear your idea and you say, oh my gosh, I love Elote. It is such a great restaurant. Well, if you had any idea of the struggle that Libby went through to build that business, you say, I love Robert Zellner and Associates. If you had any idea of the hustle and the struggle it took, you would go, oh wow, now I get it. Vanessa, you had something you wanted to add. Can you share some of your, you know, these business owners needing this tenacity. I have so many memories of you on the phone, oh man, you were just a cold calling machine, and you would get hung up on. And I remember your move, it was so good. They would hang up on you, and what would you do? I’d see you dialing right back and you would tell them? I would just yell at the phone. I mean, once they hung up on me, I would typically hang the phone up and I would just be like, you will buy from me! And you would call them right back and you would say, Oh, I’m so sorry. I think we got disconnected. And you would act like you did. Well, I did the wounded dog move. This is what I would do. You just hung up on me. And I’d call back and I go, Hey, is this Robert? Yeah, man. Hey, I don’t know if I just got disconnected. We were talking and I just… I mean, who does? Who calls someone back who just hung up on you? And people would always feel bad. Yes. And then I would go, and after I deal wheeled around, I’d go, so let me ask, if money wasn’t a concern, what do you think is the main benefit of working with DJ Connection? And they would go, well, I mean, if money wasn’t an issue, I think I could probably do… And I’m like, you know, you’re exactly right, because DJ Connection is the best DJ service in all the… And I would just go back in there like nothing happened. That was my move. That was your move. I like that. The wounded dog. The wounded dog. It’s a patented move. It’s part of the deal wheel. It’s a system. It’s a system. And pay attention. Listen to the Thrive Time Show and learn all the deals. Learn all the moves. All the super moves. Now go to thrivetimeshow.com if you missed earlier segments. We’ll be right back. All right, Thrive Nation. We’re now talking about action, okay? Because once you have the passion, once you make that vision, you’ve got to start to take some action. And there’s a notable quote I’m going to start right off the top with. This is from Chet Holmes. Chet Holmes, who’s he? Who’s Chet Holmes? He is the former partner of Charlie Munger, who’s Warren Buffet’s business partner there. He says this. He says, the missing ingredient for nearly all of the 1,000 plus coaching clients that I’ve worked with directly to improve their businesses is pig-headed discipline and determination. We all get good ideas at seminars and from books, radio talk shows, and business building gurus. The problem is that most companies do not know how to identify and adapt the best ideas to their businesses. Implementation not ideas. Implementation not ideas. I repeat, bring it back. Implementation not ideas. Bring it back one more time. Implementation not ideas is the real key to success. Susie, I want to ask you, if I’m listening right now and I’m going, okay, okay, okay, I get it. I had to define what I wanted to do. But tell me about when you started taking action to actually buy your optometry clinic at the first one, go and start that thing up. What kind of adversity did you have? After you’d saved that money, man, you’re working seven days a week, you know, delayed gratification. What kind of adversity did you run into at that point? Well, I mean, the biggest thing that I ran into in my career early on is that I started advertising very early. You’ve got to understand, back in 1990, there had just been a lawsuit that had been settled by some attorneys. I forget where. I could probably Google it and give you the details of it. But basically it was a lawsuit that said that even though you’re a professional, you can’t advertise. There was a thing back in the day when doctors and attorneys wouldn’t advertise because it wasn’t considered ethical was it the oath of jackassery you all had to take Something very similar to that so you gotta understand one thing is that when I started advertising I instantly became in my profession the black sheep You know you got the power You got the power You got the power Right away DJ. Come on now. You can never right there. So connected there. We go. Oh, yeah Well, I was the black sheep, that’s what I was. I’d go to conferences, I’d be feeling all good, I’d be doing my thing, you know, and everybody would just keep it, I’d walk by, I’d walk in the room and just silence. But whenever you get on top, you’re the black sheep, right? Well, I was working my way up there, I appreciate where you’re going with that, Vanessa, but I mean, day one, I was starting to advertise, and people were like, What are you doing? Stop that. Do you not have any ethics at all? Stop that. That’s wrong. We didn’t teach you in school to do that. But you’re an all-star. You’re walking into like, I mean, you’re an optometrist and you’re walking into fancy places like Ruby Tuesdays and you’re like, I’m going to get some salad. And they’re like, are you Dr. Zellner? And you’re like, yes, I am. Yes, I am. I mean, everybody outside the optometry community, it wasn’t a big deal to them and they appreciated it. They looked at that and they said, hey, that’s cool, that’s good. It is what it was around the business. Business was business, right? But in the optometry culture, that was the thing that probably was the hardest on me, to be very frank with you. You’re a young man, you’re starting your business, and you’re instantly the black sheep. Was that hard on you, really? Yeah, I’ve got some stories I won’t go into. Come on, give me one. You give me a young buck. Give me one story where you’re just, because now you’re like a tough guy. This is the thing, this is what’s happened to you. This is what’s happened. Do you remember, Vanessa, you and I watched the Star Wars where Anakin, he became Darth Vader. I love Anakin, yeah. He became Darth Vader. What happened is that you went through some tough stuff. You decided, I’m not going to become Darth Vader, but you’ve been through some stuff. You got the Anakin fork in the road, but you could have become the Darth Vader of optometry You decided not to do that. You’re kind of a smiley cheerful guy. Yeah, but you could have easily just put on Don’t want it to sound like it’s sour grapes because it’s not now I mean I get it It’s helpful to the entrepreneur listening They want to hear how you dealt with it as a young man who you were unsure of yourself, you were unsure of all the moves you were making, yet you still went for it and you did it even though you were ostracized and it was hard. So tell us about getting through those hard times and encourage these listeners. It’s true. Okay, I’m going to open up my heart just a little bit here and my brain and I’m going to share a story with you that was painful at the time, but you know what? It’s character building. You overcome it. You learn to forgive people and you learn to, as Taylor Swift says, shake it off. Oh, nice. Shake it off. Okay, so here’s the deal. So I get contacted by my alma mater, Northeastern State University, which used to be the Redmond, now the River Hawks. I played soccer there back in the day, back in the day. Back in the day. And I get contacted by a marketing company that they had hired and they approached me and said, listen, we’re doing a commercial for the university and we want you to be in it. We’ve rated alumni from there and you’re in the Tulsa, green country region. You’re one of the most recognizable, so we’d like to use you. We’re not going to pay you anything, but do you want to do it? I said, absolutely. So your professor people are calling. The college that you graduated from is calling you. I mean, that’s gonna be exciting calling They’re going well It’s the advertising company that you hire Okay, they did a bunch of research on on who they were gonna use in course You’re working closely with the school, right? Right and so So anyway, so I’m like I’m honored. I’m flattered. I’m like, oh, that’s cool. That’s very cool, you know, and So they come out and they shoot the commercial and they do a professional job. It was actually Brothers advertising agency here in town and they’re great guys and I know the guy that owns it, Paul, great family, great people. Anyway, so the commercial comes out and it’s well done and just very, it was awesome and I was proud to be on it and it was a neat message and it was boom. So then one day someone calls me up and says, hey man what happened? I said, what are you talking about? They said, well, I saw that commercial the other day, but you’re not on it anymore. What? What? And so you’re right away, this is what’s happening, because this is 19, what year was this? I’d have to do some research, but I’ll let you, I’ll Google it and I’ll do it. It was deep enough into the 90s where you had Michael Bolton queued up, and so you went into your car. It could have been actually early, too, because I started probably in 91, so this was probably early 2000. Let’s pretend it was the late 90s, early 2000s. It was in 2000s, but you still had a car from the 90s. What car were you driving? What car was I driving then? I was driving a, the first car I ever had was a 1974 Pinto Runabout. Okay, so for some reason you still had that car, and you had a tape, and you put in a tape. Yeah. And you sat there, and it was raining, and you just queued up the Michael Bolton and you just, you realize, you’re like, I don’t really normally get into his music, but today I’m asking, how am I supposed to live without you commercial people who previously had my face on there? I’ve played soccer for you. I’ve paid you. I’ve showed up on time. But more can he do. And he’s just, you’re sitting there weeping and you’re like, what am I going to do but play this song again? And because you didn’t have the repeat, because it wasn’t a CD, you had to like play it, rewind it. It was a struggle, but you went through it. I was in struggle mode. So I’m like, that’s weird. So they got my curiosity. So I went on to the website, doot doot doot doot, got on the website. Of course, they have the current commercial, TV commercial. So I play it and I’m watching it. Sure enough, I’m not on it anymore. Holy, holy. True fact. So I was like, hmm, what? So I was like, well, I kind of knew in the back of my mind what had happened, but I was like, you know, it is what it is. And someone at the university, I’m the black sheep, I get it. I mean, I’ll be honest with you, it is what it is. And sometimes, you know, you’ve got to shake it off. And no matter when your peers or other people, they don’t determine your destiny. They don’t determine what you do. They don’t determine your future. None of those optometrists around town were saying, hey man, let me make your car payment. Hey man, let me make your house payment. Hey man, here’s a little cash. Just be cool because you know we’re all in the same profession. We’re all in the same profession, bro. We’re all good. We want you to succeed. We’re all one big happy family. So sure enough, it wasn’t, I don’t know, months later I get a call. And it was a fundraising entity of my alma mater. Oh, come on. So they were, so the person on the phone’s like, hey man, you know we need basically, just the short and gritty of it, we want money. Holy cow! And I said, I’ll tell you what, here’s what you need to do. In order to get a call back or a meeting with me, because I always want to get a face to face with you, I love to have a face to face with you and I love my alma mater and I want to give money and ah, it’s so exciting. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you. But here’s the deal. In order to have a meeting with me, I need you to answer one question. I need you to figure out what happened to that commercial, I get to tell the story, and why I’m not on it anymore. I’m just out of curiosity now, more than anything. And so sure enough, crickets didn’t hear back from me. Crickets? Crickets. Just nothing. Six months, a year later, I get another call from a different fundraiser. Same story. About the third one, I actually had enough nerve to do a little research and found out what happened. Really? So we have a meeting. We have a meeting. Okay. And I’m like, so we’re at the meeting. I’m like, well, I’m glad you, you know, you went to the thing that this is kind of, I’m opening my heart up a little bit. I’m opening it up a little bit. I’m just telling you out there when you, when you’re acting or when you’re defining and when you’re doing your business, adversity is going to come. People are not going to like you, especially if you’re successful. I hate to tell you this, but you think, well, the more successful I am, the more people are going to love you. Yeah, customers will, but your competitors will hate you. That’s why I never leave this building. Because there are snipers up there at the flying D’s looking for you. He was a golf ball. So anyway, I found out that it was the, well, he’s not there any longer, so, and I won’t say his name, and I’ve forgiven him and made up and it’s all good, but it was the dean of the optometry school at the time that said that I wasn’t quite the representative of the optometry school that they wanted in that commercial. Yeah, you’d rather have a poor person who doesn’t advertise. It kind of hurt my feelings, but you know what? I said I’m not, and I said thank you for being honest with me. I thought that’s what the case was, but I’m still going to give to the university, and I’m going to do the right thing, and I’m going to take the high road, because you know what? You take the high road, you’ll never take the wrong road. Now here’s the deal. When we come back, we’re going to be talking to Ryan Myers about some of his adversity stories and maybe any adversity he ran into early in his career. I have piles. All right, Ryan, we’re talking about the rhythm of entrepreneurship, that rhythm of entrepreneurship, which is define, act, measure, and refine. And if you’ve ever defined what you want to do with your life and you’ve ever had the courage to take action, you are eventually going to end up with your head in the toilet. And someone listening right now, your head is in the toilet. And you’ve got three options. One, you could queue up How Am I Supposed to Live Without You by Michael Bolton, and you could just keep your head in that toilet, and your friends are going to say, why is your head still in the toilet, Stan? You got to pull that head out. And you’re like, no, there’s good reverb in here. And you’re just singing into that toilet. And you’re just, you’re just standing there. Or, or you can pull your head out of the toilet, take a selfie, put it up on social media, get a few likes, move on. Or the third is you can just sort of lament about it and talk about it all the time and never get over it. And we want to encourage you, you’ve got to, you’ve got to move past these things. So I want to ask you this, Ryan. You’ve obviously built a successful company. What is the name of your company for anybody who’s new to your brand? Transit Advertising, Inc. And if somebody was eating just seriously, just getting down on some Oklahoma Joes during the break, they’re over there. They went out and got some Oklahoma Joes during their lunch. They have brought it back now to Regent Bank. They’re trying to open up a new checking account while eating the burnt ends and the baked beans and the aroma. They’re getting carried away, and they maybe forgot what the name of your company was. What’s the name of your company again? Yes, Transit Advertising, Inc. Transit Advertising, Inc. Okay, so now they’re focused. So tell us, when you defined what you wanted to do, you wanted to build a successful business, when was the first time where you acted and you ran into a little bit of adversity, a little push back? Well, from the beginning. Every day you wake up and you think that, hey, this is going to be great. I’m working for myself. I’m willing to work 12 hours for myself so I don’t have to work 8 hours for somebody else.” And it was doors closed, doors closed. Now we’ve got somebody we love. Hey, can I get a chance to quit your business? No, we’ve got somebody we love. But you’ve got to keep going. Winston Churchill, I love the guy, says, when you’re going through hell, keep on going. And that’s what you’ve got to do. Now Winston Churchill, this is a little historical context for anybody listening, he was the Prime Minister there of the Great Britain and the United Kingdom during the time where Adolf Hitler was trying to take over the planet. And just as an example, just think about how this would feel, Zee. The United Kingdom. Zee, you’ve traveled to Europe, have you not? Yes, I’ve traveled far. You’ve had the finest cheese in the desert. You’ve had the finest wine. You’ve seen the castles. You’ve been over there. I died with her majesty. No, but seriously, geographically speaking, Europe is, is Europe, I mean, how is it size-wise comparison to the United States? Europe as a whole, all the countries. It’s the size of about Coahuila. I mean, that’s a small land. That makes sense. I don’t know, you’re right, I’ll Google it. I’m just saying, you’ve got about five. You want like the actual square miles? Well, no, I’m just saying, you have about five times, Europe as a whole is about 7 to 8 times larger than Great Britain by itself. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this whole area has been taken over by this crazy fascist Nazi freak named Adolf Hitler. And so he calls up Winston and he says to him, and it’s historical fact, there’s documents that show the letters he sent, he says, if you will turn over your Jewish people to us, we’ll give you a hall pass and we’ll just fold you into our Nazi regime.” And he kept doing that with other countries. Other countries kept just one by one giving in because he’s just bombing everybody. And so Winston’s like, no, we want to stay calm and carry on. That was his phrase. He coined that. And he’d hop on the radio every night and tell people, remain calm, carry on. But people are being bombed constantly. I mean, can you imagine what that would be like? We’re doing this radio show today. And imagine what it would be like. You’re listening to the radio show. And in the background, you hear the… It doesn’t stop. Sometimes they’re closer, sometimes they’re far away. But could you imagine what that would be like for years? And by the way, the Americans have said, we’re not going to come help. We’re not going to come help. And so when you say, he said that, he talks about enthusiasm. He says, if you’re going through hell, don’t stop. He also defines enthusiasm as the ability to maintain enthusiasm while going from adversity to adversity without losing motivation. He talks about that a lot. That’s a profound thing for him to say. When he wrote that, he was going through some serious hell, but you can’t stop. So I want to know, what is the source of your motivation, man? How do you stay motivated? What’s your move? Do you tase yourself? What do you do? I wake up in the morning and realize that I have about 14 families that rely on me to sell something. Not including my own, which they kind of like when I sell something, too. And so that’s a big motivator for me. So when I wake up at 4.30 in the morning, that’s what I’m thinking about. When I go to bed at 9.30 at night, I’m a big party guy. 9.30 at night, that’s what I’m thinking about. Now Vanessa, you and I have built the businesses together, so we’ve been there together doing some crazy stuff. I remember that when we would walk to Wal-Mart over there off of 71st and Lewis, we would walk from the Fountaincrest Apartments. We were walking southbound from the Fountaincrest Apartments and we were walking over there past the Office Depot and we’d go in there and we’d get that chicken panini. Yep, 97 cents or 96. 96, budget gourmet. Good stuff. Vanessa, you know, is a health person. She cares about her health. She would look at the sodium content and go, Ben, I don’t think I was doing too well. But you’re like, it’s 87% sodium. Okay, let’s do it. When you’re going through that section, you’re going, well, what should I eat today? Either ramen or the budget gourmet. There’s sort of a, if you can fall in love with the process of eating that budget gourmet and eating that ramen and knowing that it’s not where you are but it’s where you’re going, if you can get into that, there’s something sexy about it. And I love this, I wanna add to it. When you’re making this process, you’re gonna be in it for a while, so make it something that is sustainable. Don’t go 200%, and then you’re burnt out in three years. But see if you can run at 75 and you’re going to have to make a lot of sacrifices along the way. Enjoy the process and make it sustainable. And because there’s nobody on the show, mainly me, they’re talking about me, who’s ever built an unsustainable schedule. That’s what I do all the time. Could you maybe share a story from, let’s say, at least, let’s go at least ten years ago where I did something unsustainable and you were like, what are you doing? But I just kept doing it because I refused to quit. Back in DJ land, we started small with just you and then we were ecstatic when we hired our first DJ. Of course, we can’t just have anything sustain. We keep growing, keep growing, keep growing, but you love doing the show. So Clay would have DJs go out, but he would be booked personally because he was the best. Awesome. Friday, Saturday, usually he was off Sundays. I think we had that as a thing, which was great. So he’d stand up. Which is good because I would have died. He would have died. So he would be working all during the week doing sales to get in and driving the team hard. And then I would meet everyone to come in because he was out DJing. I’d be pregnant or with the babies, whatever, they’re in bed, people would come back to my garage, we’d unload the equipment, and literally I would sign checks, load in equipment, until he got back. And he would usually be one of the later guys back, because he was so good at like 2 or 3 in the morning, and then he would stay up until maybe 4 or 5 in the morning, because guys would come back from Dallas. Wow. Okay, real quick, there are some DJ rules here, Zee. There’s some DJ rules. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to The Thrive Time Show. So if Ryan was a DJ and Zee and you were a DJ, this is how we would compete. Sure. Whoever’s show went the longest. Whoever’s show went the longest. Because if you’re in the groove and people can’t get out of there, they become a slave to the groove. Unlimited time. Unlimited. Unlimited. But seriously, if you get people where they couldn’t stop, that’s a thing. Two is whoever got the biggest tips. And then what you would do is when you would come back from the show, if you were a real DJ, you would want to come back last because you were the man. So you would come back at 2 o’clock in the morning, 3 o’clock in the morning. Especially if you were in Dallas. You had to drive all that way. We made our DJs drive back from Dallas. So it’s like 7 a.m. in the morning. But you would come back and you’re riding that adrenaline like you just rocked a concert. So it’s there at 4 a.m., 3 a.m. and you want to be the last guy back. You come back and there’s like 20 other DJs on the driveway. And they’re all like, oh bro, how big is your tip? And they’re just all sorts of trash talking, people going, dude, how big of a tip did you get? And then whoever got the biggest tip had to take everybody to Taco Bell. Because it was open late nights, you know? And so you would buy like, yeah, I’m going to have like 64 tacos, 10 burritos. And you would just, all the guys, like seriously, 15, 20 guys, we’d hop in this extended van, like a church van, hop in there, and we’d all go to Taco Bell and just eat, just eat. And that was the move, was every weekend I got to keep the morale going, mentor the DJs, coach the DJs, and they would say, at this wedding tonight, I tried to announce this first dance, and what happened is no one would get on the dance floor to cheer for the bride. What do I do? And I’m like, oh, you have a question for the DJ Yoda? I have the answer. And you would mentor them, and all the DJs would hold court and go, oh, this is the move. This is what you do. The move. You all enjoyed it. You loved it. But this is the thing. So you would be done at six or seven in the morning and literally would crash in the closet. I don’t know why the closet was the move. It was dark and no one would talk to me. That was the move. So he would be sleeping all day Sunday, the only day off. And eventually I was like, this is not going to work forever. You know, maybe when we didn’t have kids and I could keep a crazy schedule with him. But now that we have two kids, how is this going to work? So at that point, I think you declared that you would DJ until you were 80 and die DJing. And so I think you had to get to a point where you had a breakdown. I said 97 in a fit of rage because you said you have to stop DJing. And I go, I will never stop DJing. I will die DJing. When I’m 97 years old, I will still be rocking the mic. So see what I did is I pulled an all-nighter and I took a picture of myself and I put it on Benjamin Franklin’s body, the skullet, and I put it up on the wall and I just put on there DJ Clavis in his 90s whatever and I just was like I am not stopping and then eventually I stopped. But it’s the thing, so when you finally had a breakthrough and that was thanks to Jesus, I’ll just say that, like that is a breakdown that’s when the breakthrough happened because he realized oh my gosh like you couldn’t do any more. You didn’t want to do it anymore. There was just too much drama. You love DJing in itself, but it was just too much. You couldn’t do it. So what happens is you define what you want, then you act, but then you’ve got to… It’s weird. It gets sustainable. Z, you as a DJ, as an entrepreneur, as an optometrist, as an auto-rapper, whatever, somehow you have to have the pride and the confidence and the energy needed to start a business, but you also have to have the self-awareness to measure and go, what the heck am I doing here? Am I getting where I want to go? Are we making progress? Why is it so hard to have that ying and that yang, that ability to be confident, but also be self-aware and humble? I mean, that’s a weird thing. Well, it is, and when you start getting some success, the worst thing that can happen is everybody comes up and pats you on the back and says, you’re awesome. And the thing about it is, is that I’ve found with a lot of entrepreneurs, Clay, is that being self-aware and understanding what you’re not good at is what we don’t want to focus on. But that’s very integral in having a successful business. When you get to the point of, okay, you’re acting. You’ve defined what you wanted to do and now you’re acting. You’re just running all out. You’re just going. Like Vanessa said, you’ve got to make sure that something sustainable is at a pace that you can sustain. Because you’re going to be in it for a while. Hopefully. Forbes came out and said 8 out of 10 businesses fail. So if you want to be one of those 8 out of 10, just go wow, wow, wow. Sprint to that closing of your business. But we’re going to change that here on the Thrive Time Show because we don’t like 80% failure rate. We don’t. You can Google that. That’s an actual thing. But the thing about it, whenever you’re now measuring, that’s one of the most difficult things to do when you go from acting, which now you’re making sustainable, and now you’re starting to really take a hard look at yourself. Here is the soundtrack for successful entrepreneurs who are not self-aware. This is the soundtrack. Okay, this is… Remember Brass Monkey, the Beastie Boys? Sure. These homies were out of control, and they were selling millions of records and they were they were just going 90 miles an hour And no one said like eventually you’re going to die if you don’t stop right? And so they’re just they’re just going and you’re going I’m selling stuff Z. Oh, I’m selling stuff and you’re going you’re And you just can’t stop because you’re so you’re just you can’t stop won’t stop you’re so just filled with just energy and vigor and persistence. And you’re just, ah, ah. And if you start to have any success at all, you start to get really kind of like, don’t talk to me. And you start to get, and I’m telling you, that is the recipe for disaster. So this next step, if you are the kind of person who has the type of confidence needed to start, now you’ve got to hit the brakes a little bit. You’ve got to be self-aware. We’ve got to slow down a little bit and measure. And we come back, see, we’re going to talk about some of the stuff that you measure in your business. Yes, yes. That we measure in our business, that Ryan measures in his business because you got to measure baby. You got to measure. So you got to measure. And guess what? There’s different ways to measure. So we come back. We’re gonna give you all the secret moves of measuring what to measure, what to look for, because without that, it’s hard to improve your business. You want rhymes with measure. It’s treasure. Oklahoma Joe’s baked beans. Hey, it’s Rhyme Nation. Welcome back into the conversation. We are laughing so much off air. It’s like we just don’t care. Now, here’s the deal, Thrivers. I’m not gonna say that, we know that you’re an intelligent listener, we know you have a lot going on, but I don’t ask too much out of you, I don’t say, go do this, go do that. But one thing I want you to do right now, if you’re listening right now, I want you to just put your hands up in the air and wave them around like you just don’t care, but we know you do. We know you do. And then I want you to take those hands, I want you to just put those hands on your desk or something, and I want you to get a pen, get a pen, and I want you to write down the words Oklahoma Joes. It’s the best memorization tool. When you say something and you write it down it begins to become imprinted on your mind. This is how the mind works. This is a teaching moment. So I want you to write down Oklahoma Joes. And it’s so important that we say it in sort of a cultish way. We can just practice two or three times you’re gonna get, Oklahoma Joes. Yeah, one more time, just Oklahoma Joes. And the more cultish and weird it feels, the better it’s gonna help the sales. And so I’ve been working on this. I can almost smell the barbecue now. So, here it is. Oklahoma Joes. Oklahoma Joes. Hot Oklahoma. So anyway, that’s what I’m working on. It’s my new commercial. I pitched it to him. I got rejected by the corporate. I can’t imagine why. Why would you use bagpipes to promote a barbecue business? And I said, listen here, buddy, I’m ahead of my game. I’m like the new Picasso of ads for barbecue companies. By the way, I love having Joe Davidson on, the founder and owner of Oklahoma Joe’s. He’s a great guy. He’s a man’s man. When you meet that guy, you just want to go cook some barbecue and have a cold beverage with him in your backyard. I mean, he’s like, would you just come over and cook something in my backyard and have a beverage with me and just act like you’re my buddy. I’m telling you what, he’s a great guest to have on the show. We have two other great guests on the show. We have my incredible wife of 15 years, Mrs. Vanessa Clark, on the show. We have Mr. Ryan Myers. Hello. He’s a Tulsa treasure. I am a treasure. He auto-rabs big buses and things of that nature. Let me get into this next step. First you define what you need to do as an entrepreneur. This is the rhythm of entrepreneurship. You define, then you need to act, but then you’ve got to measure, and then we’ll get into refining. So measure, Z, what kind of stuff do you need to measure in your business? Well, I mean, there’s a lot of numbers. It depends on your business, but there’s all your daily transactions, the number of transactions you’re doing. Like for me, we measure how many eye exams we did. We measure, obviously, the gross sales. We measure whether that was cash or insurance. We measure, like on the P&L statement, there’s so many things we measure. Percentages, and a healthy business has certain percentage marks that you try to get to. I tell my managers, I say, listen, you can do so much of a percent on employees. In other words, your employee number has to be at this percent. So then they can decide if they’ve got say $30 to spend, they can hire two people at $15 and get a little higher quality person, or they can hire three people at $10. And so that’s kind of up to them, but they have so much money to spend based upon the percentages of the growth that we’ve done. And then we have, you know, you’re trying to beat last year’s, you’re always trying to beat year over year. We call those comp numbers and that’s a very healthy business. And of course we’ve been open for 25 years, so we’ve grown every year, but we used to have these really big growths, and now it’s smaller growth, but still growth in the right direction. You know what happens is a lot of times I see business owners measuring things that don’t matter. Like, give me an example. Like Sinead O’Connor. Her song, Nothing Compares, came out in 1990, the year that you were getting rejected for business loans. Oh, yeah. You think about this song, I mean, I might say, Z, this song, nothing compares. I’m in a meeting with you. Hey, Z, you know, this song by Sinead O’Connor has been played by 331,000 times on the channel by Jay Jr. That’s not her official channel. That’s just the bootleg channel. I just wanted you to know. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Thank you, Sinead O’Connor. Don’t they often tell you how many hits they’ve had on a page, but you’re like, did that convert to a lead? Does that matter? Okay, well let’s look at the online ads for a second. This is something to think about. If you’re paying for pay-per-click, what you want to do is for every hundred clicks you have typically, if you’re the best in the world, you’re getting five people to fill out that form. Wow. If you’re the best in the world. If you’re the best. If you’re the goat. Yeah. And if you are the greatest of all time. And if you’re just terrible, it’s zero. But zero is pretty, oh man, that’s a low number. And five, it doesn’t feel that great. But I’m telling you, if you’re paying, like in some industries, you’ll pay $10 a click. $10 a click and you’re having 100 people click and nobody’s filling out something? That’s a thousand bucks. And you’re going, whoa. Now the thing about radio ads, I love radio, it’s a format, because what happens is when you’re listening to talk radio, we have a lot of wonderful listeners who have actually become sponsors of the show. What happens is they say, you know, as a listener, if I get into the topic, I want to listen through the commercial. I want to listen through the commercial to hear the rest of the story. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to The Thrive Time Show. But on FM radio, typically what you do is if you don’t like the song, you just switch it. Right. So that’s very unique to AM. I mean, that’s awesome. It is awesome. And that’s one thing, though, that like Oklahoma Joe, we talk about this a lot. People come in and say, hey, I heard you on the Thrive Time show. That’s so important to use a listener if you tell them that because it keeps great shows like this on the air. It’s a thing where he measures how many people come in as a result of the radio show. That’s a measurement that he looks at. We’ve had business owners all over Tulsa right now who are looking for small business loans. They’re looking for a local bank that can help them, and they walk in and they say, hey, Regent Bank, I heard about you guys on the Thrive Time Show. That’s a measurement. You can say, well, how many people heard of the business as a result of this advertising? But you’ve got to know certain numbers. Other numbers, I’m going to fire off a few more numbers I would encourage everyone to measure, okay? So I would definitely measure how many sales you’re making per day. I think that’s a big thing, per day. I really think that’s important. Second is how many presentations did you make per day? So let’s just say in your optometry clinic, if I’m the worst salesperson ever, and people are coming in for an eye exam and for a pair of glasses, and for whatever reason everyone doesn’t buy any glasses at all as a result of my presentation, it would be healthy to know, hey listen, Clay does 100 presentations per week, 20 a day, and nobody buys anything. That’s some statistics you want to know, but you’ve got to know your numbers, Z. You’ve got to know them. You have to know your numbers because that’s the only way you can measure because if you can’t measure something, you’re wandering in the dark. I mean, you’re flailing around the dark. If we turn all the lights off in here, board up the windows, and it’s just dark, and we’re like, okay, I was going through here. Why are you touching me? What are you doing? Who are you? Whose elbow is in my mouth? That’s not an elbow. You’ve got to be able to measure the numbers that matter. You’re right. Transactions and how many presentations you’re doing are very important because then guess what? If somebody is not closing, you need to know that so you can one, coach them up to do better or you can, this is going to sound mean, but you can replace them. So that’s important for you to know. Well today in our office for Thrive, for example, we have people all over the world buying Thrive Time conference tickets. And we have one gentleman who every time he talks to somebody, they get it, all the questions are answered, and it’s like 100% of the time he talks to somebody, they end up coming to a conference. We have another lady who’s working through the system and learning things, and it’s about 80%. And you want to bridge that gap. You want everyone to be 100% if at all possible. And when we come back, I’m going to ask Ryan a little bit about what kind of things he measures in his business. And then we’re going to move into this final step about refining. Because once you have the data, once you have the figures, the measurements, you’ve got to act on it. You can’t just have data. You can’t just have numbers coming at you and going, oh, that’s a nice number. Thank you. Z, thanks for sharing that number, man. It was awesome. I love how you text me and emailed me those various numbers. Those are interesting metrics. Yeah, I mean, I have my staff. They text me every day with numbers. You’ve got to stay on top of that every single day. In fact, I’ll even ask my managers, how are we trending for the month in all my businesses? So you don’t just wait until the month’s over. If you’re just month by month, then sometimes if something’s going awry that you don’t know about, you can’t fix the problem until you know there’s a problem. So Thrivers, when we come back, we’re going to get into this whole thing. What do you do once you’ve been measuring? How do you refine? We’re going to get into what numbers does Ryan Myers measure? Stay tuned on the Thrive Time Show and get to Oklahoma Joe’s. Get those baked beans, baby, baby. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation. We are back, and in fact, you’ve been listening to some Michael Jack in your ear. That’s Michael Jackson’s 80s right there. Who’s that? 80s. Michael Jackson for the ladies. Remember that white glove? Not one glove. Remember that? He had those socks he’d pull up. Those pants that didn’t fit. They were too tight. Highlighters? He’d carry around a little monkey with him. Ow! Remember that? Just ow! Just the whole vibe he brought to America was a beautiful thing. The other planets. I remember when he unleashed. One of my favorite moments is when he unleashed the moonwalk. Remember that? The award ceremony? Yeah, it was unbelievable. He popped that thing out and… Beautiful thing. We’ve got to see his concert again. We have the… I can’t say it. Bert, how do you say it? What’s that? Bucharest, the concert. Live from Bucharest. Bucharest, yeah. By the way, Michael Jackson was offended about what you just said there. He wanted you to know that. I apologize. Clay, he’s no longer with us. I think you don’t understand how the Force works. Oh, I’m sorry. What did you just say, Ronnie? He and Elvis are together. Yeah, when someone, a top performer, leaves the planet, they move into the force and they surround us. That’s what binds the universe together. I write exclusively, intensively about this phenomenon in my book called Jack Assery. You can learn more. Too bad you didn’t go up in a firework like your plan. That’s my plan. We’ll get into my death plans later. Here’s the deal, Thrivers. We’re talking about define, act, measure, refine. The path of an entrepreneur, the rhythm of an entrepreneur is define, act, measure, refine. So let’s get into measure. So when you take action as a business person, you need to measure the results. Was your hypothesis correct or not? Was your guess right or wrong? Were you wrong? Don’t get emotional. Just measure the results and determine whether your assumptions and proposed solutions are correct, or how you can improve next time. You know, the inventor of the first fully functional light bulb, and the inventor of recorded sound, the inventor of video, and the founder of General Electric, Thomas Edison, once described his countless failed attempts to make a working light bulb as saying, I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. So you’ve got to measure, you’ve got to just keep on going. So Ryan, I want to ask you, Ryan Myers, sir, what kind of numbers do you measure in your business? Lots of numbers. We’ve got numbers of impressions. People are wrapping things so people can see their business. And it’s out and about. And so they need to know how many people a day, on average, are seeing that business. So we’ve got those numbers. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, you wrapped a bus. How on earth can you tell them how many impressions that they got. You just follow it like a clicker and you just see if anybody’s looking at it. Okay, look. I saw it, Trevor. You pay professionals to drive around with the clickers. Oh, yeah. This is a real thing. Seriously, you’re saying this is a thing. And they measure how many times you look to the left and how many people are per car and they come up with impressions. Okay, I’m going to argue with you for a second. I’m listening right now. Are you serious, by the way? They’ve got to have someone driving with them, right? One’s the clicker, one’s the driver, I hope. There’s a company, that’s all they do. Oh, wow. Traffic Audit Bureau. I’m listening right now, and I have some serious doubt, because I’m saying, listen, I auto-wrap my vehicles, okay? So I auto-wrap my vehicles for my company, because my thought is, my vehicles are already out around town, I’m a plumber, I’m going to go ahead and auto-wrap, it makes sense, right? Sure. Why would I want to auto-wrap a bus? Why? Well, your vans typically aren’t driving around 14 hours a day. Most of the time they’re in a parking lot somewhere, just like your car. They’re in a customer’s parking lot. The transit buses are literally driving around 14 hours a day, six days a week. So they stop to pick up people, but they’re not parked in parking lots. If you were driving around 14 hours a day in your car, you wouldn’t have a job because you’re driving all the time. So let me ask you this. How much does it come down to per, let’s just say that I’m trying to do the math and I’m going, okay, what does it cost me per hour to auto wrap a city bus? Yeah, half a million dollar bus. Yeah, half a million dollar bus. Half a million dollar bus. It costs you about $7 an hour that it’s out there. That’s the wrap. That’s the driver. That’s the fuel. That’s everything. $7 an hour to wrap a bus. Now let me, okay, so I go $7 an hour, okay, well, you know, I don’t know, I mean, I don’t know if the bus people are the people I’m trying to market to. Yeah, that’s true. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to the Thrive Time Show. They’re totally not the people you’re trying to advertise to. It’s all the 50, 60,000 people a day that see the bus driving around that you’re advertising to. Okay, so you’re, okay, so these are measurements, though. You look at these things. These are things you look at. And if you’re listening right now, Thrivers, action step. One, write down what are the numbers you need to measure in your business. I remember when I ran DJ Connection, I used to run Epic Photography. I talked to one of the sales guys the other day, and we had a spiritual conversation because I’m no longer in charge of Epic Photography. I don’t own it anymore. And I had to talk to one of our former sales guys, and he’s adjusting. You know, when you have a new owner, there’s different things and different ways they approach things. And he calls me and goes, dude, I’m having a hard time staying motivated. I said, what do you mean? He goes, you used to come up to me every hour and ask me how many calls I made. Every day, come up to me. Whenever you were in the building, you’re like, how many calls have you made? And if he didn’t say 100 for the day, I would lose my mind. Sometimes I didn’t even feel like losing my mind. I wasn’t too upset. But I focused on 100 calls a day because I knew what it would produce at the end of it. And I think, Zee, for your optometry clinic, you probably have to know how many people per day you need to see. Oh, absolutely, because you have the average you make per person, so you know how many you have to have in the door. I know the cost of advertising, bringing those people in. That’s what makes me just absolutely crazy is when you have somebody in the office and I know how much it costs to get them in the office, right? There’s a set fee there. And they’re having a problem and to fix it is less than it costs to bring somebody else in. And my staff is arguing with this person about not fixing the thing. I’m just like, I’m going to go crazy. I want to ask you, there’s a lot of Thrivers out there who have been listening to some really emotional 90s love songs. Oh no. Because they say, I don’t want to get into politics. So they go into that kind of easy listening music during the morning. And then at noon they flip over faithfully to the Thrive Time show. Some of them have been listening to Taylor Dane, Love Will Lead You Back. And they’re looking at the numbers and they don’t like the numbers. And rather than embracing the numbers, they’re getting emotional and they’re saying, you know, love is going to bring our sales back. Love, my passion, my love, my energy, my belief. It’s going to turn around. It’s going to turn around. That’s a fallacy. That’s not really happening. That’s not a thing. Well, and I feel like if you define and you act, but you fail to measure, you could just be going full force straight over a cliff and you don’t even know it. So it’s so important to do these measurements and then take action from what you find. Can I say this real quick? If I was going to die and I was going to drive off a cliff, I would want this song to be playing. I would want to crescendo. Lead you back and I would want to someday I just know that love. Right here, this is right when I want to come around that edge. It’s like that, what is it, Pike Place? Pike’s Pass. Yeah, and I’d want to go to Colorado. What is that? Pike’s Peak. Yeah, I’d want to be going around there in a race car with this song just cranking, knowing that at any moment I could lose it. And right when you get to the crescendo, that’s when I would want to end it all. That’s when I would want to slam my head in the car door. Clay, it boils down to this. It boils down to this and the measurement part of it. You’ve got to inspect. What you? Expect. Oh! That’s worth the money right there. Yeah, you expect a certain, you’ve built, you’ve defined your business, you’re excited about it, you’re making your cookies, you’ve built your widget, you’re wrapping buses, you’re DJing weddings, whatever it is that you’re doing, you know, and you’ve got a passion about it, and then you put it into action. 2017’s going to be your year, by the way. 2017 market. All these out there that want to be entrepreneurs, this year it’s going to happen. You’re going to become an entrepreneur and start your business. Side note. But then when you start measuring, okay, now we’re measuring. Oh boy. Yeah, now, because you know what that does? That we’re inspecting. What we’re expecting. And you know what’s horrible sometimes? What is horrible? Is you’re in there inspecting and you’re not getting what you expected. That’s not good. That’s not good enough. Thrive is when we come back, we’re going to talk about this concept of refining. Once you’ve got the data, you’ve got to refine. You’ve got to refine. You’ve got to polish. You’ve got to pivot. You’ve got to move. You’ve got to change. You can’t just keep doing the same thing the wrong way and expect things to change. Stay tuned. Thrivetimeshow.com. Baby, baby. All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation. I am so excited to talk about this next aspect of the entrepreneurial rhythm. You have define, you have act, you have measure, and you have refine. And this is how I’m gonna tee it up. Z, I’m gonna tee it up. Here we go, putting the ball on the tee. This is how we’re gonna do it. Here we go. Is there somebody out there listening right now, and you’re a good guy, but you are doing what I had to do. You’re refusing to do what I had to do about 15 years ago. You’re saying, hey listen, the internet, you’re saying, the internet, it could be a thing in the future, but for right now, my money’s on the yellow pages. It’s a fad. And you’re saying, the internet, people might eventually log on to this, but right now, I’m just telling you this, I’ve got a relationship with my ad rep with the yellow pages. No offense to any of the yellow page ad reps out there who are peddling smoke and mirrors right now. But seriously, you have to eventually say, hey, I know we’ve got this great relationship, but Mr. Yellow Page, I love paying you those commissions, but you’re going to have to probably switch to something more relevant because I am measuring the results and I’m not getting any business. But what’s happening is, no, no, no, no, you, you, my friend, you, the listener, you, you, for some reason, you are loyal to this dysfunction. It does not work and it doesn’t generate leads. And so you’re looking at the numbers and someone on your team says, hey, we’re not getting any calls from the yellow pages at all. And rather than saying, okay, that could be a rational thought. This is what you do. You queue up your Taylor Dane, tell it to my heart and you just start singing. You say, tell it to my heart, buddy. That’s my heart. You can’t. My brain’s not listening. Yeah. You tell it to my heart. Cause I’ll tell you what, I’ve been buying these yellow page hats since I was wearing my quad skates going to Rower City. I would go to the concession stand, I’d buy a big old pickle, I’d play Galaga. Putting a picture of my staff in there, that was the move. That was the move! You play that Donkey Kong, you play Donkey Kong all night long, you’re playing pinball, and you’re going, listen, I’ve been buying these yellow page hats since the 80s, baby. I wore denim when it was old school, when it was new school, and now it’s new again. I am not changing those yellow page ads. I will die on the yellow pages. I’ll tell you what, you can tell it to my heart because my brain is not going to listen. That’s the thing. I tell you what, folks, if you’re listening out there right now, and first of all, thank you. We’re glad that you are. We’re glad you’re enjoying the show. We’re here, our heart is, to help you start and grow a business. It really is. That’s what we’re doing this for. You know, Clay and I started a couple years ago with thrive15.com and now we’ve morphed it into this radio show, The Thrive Time Show. But I’m gonna tell you something right now, when you’re in the refined step of the loop of entrepreneurship. Here we go. When you’re in the refined step of the loop of entrepreneurship, insanity is defined as doing the same thing and expecting a different result. So when you measure and you’re not getting what you expected, you’ve got to take a hard look in the mirror. One of the things that we teach on Thrive15.com and our in-person workshops, one-on-one business coaching on the Thrive Time Show, there’s four ways to catch us. One of the things that we teach is that we need, you know you touched on it right there at the yellow pages, that’s kind of tongue in cheek and it’s old school and the transition, but we want marketing to have three legs and if one of those legs, if you’re measuring, is not producing, you can’t get a motive. Hey, it’s nothing personal. It’s just business. You have to measure where those people are coming in from. And if you’re spending money on something, however great the rep is, however great you think it used to be, however great it could be or you think it’s going to be, you know what, stop it and go to a different leg because that’s what we coach is having three legs in our marketing plans. Or you just killed that Taylor Dane and I tell it to my heart, tell it I’m it, own it, I don’t worry. I also think that there’s times when you’re in this, you might feel like it’s monotonous, it’s define, act, measure, refine. Define, act, measure, refine. And I think oftentimes we see entrepreneurs, they define, they act, they measure, and they think, I’ll just try something new. Define, act, measure, try something new instead of refining the tools they have and getting the results they need. And so I know that’s something that Clay is really good at is just honing in on something and staying on it. He’s a honer. And sometimes the business isn’t always a new idea every day, but it’s staying consistent with that goal and just keep refining, refining up. I want to give you an example of something that just sucked my soul recently. Oh good, I love those examples. Very new. They’re soul seekers. Now this is bad here. What happened is we wrote this book called Start Here, which many people all around the world are saying, hey, this is like the best, most comprehensive business book I’ve ever read, which I’m thankful that you feel that way. But here’s the issue. It’s almost like a 500 page book, right? It’s 550 pages. Yeah. A lot of your time. 200 downloadables. Yeah. But many thrivers, I’ve talked to them, and one thriver in particular, he says, I struggle to read. And I said, okay, and I thought isolated incident. Talk to another person. I struggled to comprehend. I’m like, okay. Talk to another person. Pretty soon I realized the majority of people out there are looking for a playbook. They’re not going to read that long book, even though it’s the best business book. That’s why they love the show because it’s fun, it’s entertainment, it’s education. So Zee and I, we sat down, we made all of our plays into a 13 point system and now at our workshops we’re giving people what they want and it’s a two days, 15 hours of power and in this book, the playbook here, these are all the moves. These are our three-legged marketing stool, how to establish the revenue goals, everything you need to know all in a little bite-sized book and even though I’m kind of a long form, I love to get deep into it. I want you to know why everything works. Some people are like, hey, I don’t want to know why, baby. I just want to do it. Broadcasting live from the center of the universe, you’re listening to the Thrive Time Show. I want to ask you this, Ryan, from your perspective with your business. What’s an area of your business that you’ve had to refine over the years? We had to make a pivot that was maybe different from your original hypothesis, but you had to change it because the data was in and you’re like, okay, I need to do something. It happened pretty quick. I thought we were going to start this company that was going to be like the West Coast Customs of Tulsa and focus on custom car wraps for cool guys and found out that really there aren’t that many cool guys and most people just really need advertising on their vehicles. So we had to make that transition from being the custom cool wrap to, hey, how do I help the business owners get more impressions. Now, I want to ask you this here, Vanessa. When you’re working with the kids, we have five kids. We have a lot of listeners here who have business and they have kids. They’re mompreneurs out there. They’re moms that are supporting their husbands, husbands supporting their wives. At the business, at the house. Yeah. How have you as a mom had to evolve your parenting style as you went from one to two to five? How do you do that move? Well, in conjunction with the business, I guess. I tell people there are seasons to your life. In the beginning, it was just you and I, so I was 100% on the business at every show. And then when the kids came, I was at home signing all the checks. And then there were too many kids to do that anymore, so I was out of that season. And then when the time came back, we kind of pivoted and said, you know, this is a great time to jump back in. With the kids, too, of course, they all have very, very, very different personalities. They’ve got little Clays, little Vanessas, and in-betweens. I love them all the same, but I can’t discipline them the same. Some can’t even take a reprimand, and the others need the strongest form of discipline. Now once you have refined and you’ve finally found the groove that works, you finally get into that groove and you know, hey listen, this is working. This is working. Then what you want to do is you want to say that, you know, Tell It to My Heart by Taylor Dayne is probably one of the better kept secrets ever. And when you get to that late night part of a wedding reception and people have had about six too many beverages, this song is just a winner every time. And people don’t even remember what the song is called, but they can all sing it. And they just start singing passionately. And this song would always be a killer right after you played Madonna, you know, Holiday. Remember Holiday? Oh yeah. Remember Get Into the Groove? Yeah. Get into the groove, boy. Oh yeah. See those songs would fit together. Debbie Gibson, that whole deal. That was a proven. So once you refined the playlist as a DJ, once you finally found the groove that would make the people move, you cannot, you cannot change that. That’s why In-N-Out Burger does the same thing over and over. Boom, boom, boom. I was just thinking, it’s also, there’s going to be many different parts of your business that you need to define, act, measure, refine. It could be your sales. It could be your numbers. I love numbers. That’s what I do in our business. But it could be, okay, what are we paying towards taxes, towards employees, towards, like you said, advertising. It could be just even what is it costing for us to hire new people and get them in? But there’s not just one thing that you measure. I wouldn’t think to measure the way you do sales, but you need to. There’s a lot of things to measure with Thrivers, and we’re going to get more into it here. But Z, if someone has a feeling right now, they have that feeling they want to become an entrepreneur. 57% of the people out there want to start a business. They’ve got that feeling right now. There’s four ways we can help you Z. Way number one is what? Do exactly what you’re doing today and that is from 12 to 2, turn into Talk Radio 1170 here in Tulsa, Oklahoma and listen to the Thrive Time Show where we give practical business tips on how to start and grow your business. All right, now move number two, you can go to thrivetimeshow.com and get it on. You could be listening to these podcasts, sharing them with people that you barely met, sharing it with people that you know, sharing it with people, just go on the podcast, Thrive Time Show, hit that share button, and boom, move number 3Z is what? You can log into thrive15.com and there you can find the best business school without the BS. For a measly, I’m talking measly, $19 a month, you can have access 24-7 on your smartphone, on your iPad, on your computer, even your neighbor’s smartphone. OK, for that matter, you say, I forgot my phone. Give me your phone. I got to watch an episode. 15-minute chunks of business gold. And move number four. This is move number four that’s quickly approaching. It is one-on-one business coaching. We’re talking about if you want to work one-on-one with a mentor who knows what you need to do to start or grow a successful business, we have that available for you, my friend. Now, Z, this is all available for the Thrivers. It’s all here for them. All here for them. We’re doing it for you because we want you to be successful in your business. That’s our heart and that’s why we’re here every day from 12 to 2 coaching you up. As always Z, here we go. 3, 2, 1, boom! JT, do you know what time it is? 410. It’s T-Bo time in Tulsa, Oklahoma. During the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th, 2024, Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Growth Workshop. Yes, folks, put it in your calendar this December, the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business growth workshop. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old and a lot of people, you know, if I followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field, and off the field the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well, they’re going to have to come and find out, because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow’s going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Folks, I’m telling you, if you want to learn branding, you want to learn marketing, you want to learn search engine optimization, you want to learn social media marketing, that’s what we teach at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive workshop. If you want to learn accounting, you want to learn sales systems, you want to learn how to build a linear workflow, you want to learn how to franchise your business, that is what we teach at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. You know, over the years, we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. The top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrive Time Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, a company that creates apparel worn by celebrities all throughout the world. Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, has spoken at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshops. We have the guy, we’ve had the man who’s responsible for turning around Harley Davidson, a man by the name of Ken Schmidt. He has spoken at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops. Folks, I’m telling you, these events are going to teach you what you need to know to start and grow a successful business. And the way we price the events, the way we do these events, is you can pay $250 for a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. Yes! We’ve designed these events to be affordable for you and we want to see you live and in person at the two-day interactive December 5th and 6th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. Everything that you need to succeed will be taught at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop, December 5th and 6th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the way we do these events is we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a question and answer session so that wonderful people like you can have your questions answered. Yes, we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a 15-minute question and answer session. It’s interactive. It’s two days. It’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’ve been doing these events since 2005 and I’m telling you folks, it’s going to blow your mind. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Thrive Time Show 2-Day Interactive Business Workshop is America’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshop. See the thousands of video testimonials from real people just like you who have been able to build multi-million dollar companies. Watch those testimonials today at thrivetimeshow.com. Simply by clicking on the testimonials button right there at thrivetimeshow.com, you’re going to see thousands of people just like you who have been able to go from just surviving to thriving. Each and every day we’re gonna add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup, but I encourage everybody out there today get those tickets today. Go to thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s thrivetimeshow.com and some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? What do I do? How does it work? You just go to thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to thrivetimeshow.com. Again, you just go to thrivetimeshow.com. You click on the business conferences button, and you click on the request tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. Did you start out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that. Did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that. I had to work for it and I’m super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton, I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to Thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Jerusalem, Oklahoma. It’s supposed to be Tulsa Ruslim, sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show and Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now, for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office. And so it’s going to be packed. Who? You! You’re going to come! Who? You! I’m talking to you. You can get your tickets right now at ThriveTimeShow.com and again, you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford. And we do have some select VIP tickets which give you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things. And those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop, over 20 hours of business training. We’re going to give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical, it’s actionable, and it’s T-Bow time right here in Tulsa, Russia. Get those tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine, and I’m talking to you right now show dot com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California where I have represented over the last 35 years 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, 43 New York Times bestsellers. I’ve represented a lot of major stars and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies, and I think I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California, in the beautiful, sunny weather of LA, come to Tulsa? Because last year I did it, and it was damn exciting. Clay Clark has put together an exceptional presentation, really life-changing. And I’m looking forward to seeing you then. I’m Michael Levine. I’ll see you in Tulsa. Thrivetime Show two-day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops because we teach you what you need to know to grow. You can learn the proven 13-point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re gonna teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re gonna teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two day, 15 hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur I always wish that I had this, and because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert, Zellner & Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses? Or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever, and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see you. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money, so if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person two-day interactive business workshop, all you gotta do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy at Kings Point in New York, octa non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Keosak University Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re closed, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done his show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. And so Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric, Eric Trump. But we’re also talking about money bricks and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man. And there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought, uh, since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald, who is my age, and I can say or cannot say? First of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorn, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old, working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV, and he said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? And I said, no. And my father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books. And I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner, to the investor. And I owe a lot of that to you. And I just wanted to take a moment to tell you, thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success. And then I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just want to tell you, thank you, sir, for changing my life. Well, not only that, Clay, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. More than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. So that’s why I congratulate you on becoming. Because as you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there, or bad influencers. Yeah. So anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. Yeah. That’s the greatest thrill for me today. Not thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the Academy, King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Whoa!