Entrepreneur Podcast | Why Diligence Is the Difference Maker & Why You Must Treat Laziness Like the Disease That It Is? + Proverbs 10:4 + Proverbs 6: 10-11 + World-Famous PR Consultant Michael Levine Shares How to Deal w/ the Cards You Are Dealt

Audio Transcription

On today’s edition of the Thrive Time Show, we discuss why diligence is the difference maker and why you must treat laziness like the disease that it is. Proverbs 10, 4 from the Bible reads, He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand, but the hand of the diligent maketh rich.” Folks on today’s show we are joined by Rabbi Daniel Lampin and he shares with us what the Bible has to say about having a diligent work ethic. This show right here has the ability to change your life. I’m telling you folks, this might be an uncomfortable message for somebody, but this message here has the power to change your life. Part one of today’s show features a training from the Lion of Judah YouTube podcast. Part two features Rabbi Daniel Lavin. And part three features a real Thrive Time Show success story. So grab a pen and a pad and prepare to enter into the dojo of mojo, fo’ sho’. It’s the Thrive Time Show on your radio and podcast download. The Bible consistently addresses the issue of laziness with a critical tone, especially within the Old Testament’s wisdom literature and the New Testament’s teachings. Proverbs frequently castigates the sluggard and uses the diligent ant as a metaphor for the virtue of hard work, cautioning against the poverty and lack that come from idleness. The consequences of laziness are not just material but also moral, as the Bible suggests that a lack of diligence can lead to an unfulfilled potential and neglected responsibilities. In the New Testament, Jesus’ parable of the talents serves as an admonition against sloth, illustrating the importance of employing one’s gifts and time wisely. Similarly, Paul’s epistles reinforce this ethos, notably in 2 Thessalonians 3.10, which bluntly states that those unwilling to work should not eat, thereby affirming a robust work ethic as an expression of faith. The biblical critique of laziness applies to all. There’s a pronounced focus on men. Men are not to be lazy. The biblical archetype of a Christian man is anchored in the virtues of diligence and industriousness. The portrait painted by Scripture is one where Christian men are dynamic and active participants in their faith, their families, and their communities. The teachings of the Bible go beyond mere rebuke of laziness. They establish an expectation that a man’s faith is intrinsically linked to his work ethic. This connection between belief and labor underscores a broader spiritual principle. That faith is demonstrated through action. The ideal Christian man therefore is not one who is idle or content with mediocrity, but is instead consistently engaged in meaningful work, contributing to the welfare of those around him, and fulfilling his divine mandate. Furthermore, the Proverbs, sluggard, is not a representation of the Christian man. Instead, Christian men are called to model themselves after the industrious ant, tirelessly working, not just for personal gain, but in service to a greater good. The New Testament strengthens this call to action, portraying Jesus himself as a figure of ceaseless service, and Paul, as an apostle who labored with his hands. In this light, to be a Christian man is to be the antithesis of lazy, it is to be energetically involved in the labor of life, ensuring that faith is lived out in the everyday acts of work, charity, and stewardship. This active approach to faith ensures that a Christian man’s life is marked by productivity and purpose, honoring the God who calls all believers to a life of fruitful engagement with the world. God has expectations for a Christian, and one of the many expectations for a Christian man is to provide for his own family. 1 Timothy 5,8 Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. In other words, those who can provide for their families are obligated to do so. If we read all of 1 Timothy 5, we see that Paul is mainly speaking about caring for women who are truly widows, meaning those who have no children to rely on for assistance. Although this chapter also speaks about the relatives in a man’s household, the main focus is about widows. However, today, rather than focusing on widows, we are going to focus on relatives in a man’s household. Before we proceed, it is important to note that the Apostle Paul in this chapter states that a true widow who needs financial assistance from the church is one who has no children or grandchildren. The reason being is that if a widow has children or grandchildren, it is their obligation to look after the widows and their family, whether it is monetarily or anything else they may require. This is not a command for anyone to provide for relatives who are supposed to be providing for themselves, as this would make you an enabler of the sin of slothfulness, also known as laziness. But rather, this is a command to look after those who are truly in need. Family is the first line of care. As a result, this will free up resources of the local church for those with no family support, i.e. children or grandchildren to support them. God made us to work and to provide for ourselves and those in our household. Even unbelievers do this. Paul intentionally called a Christian who doesn’t look after his own worse than an unbeliever, intentionally. This is a purposeful, provoking statement to highlight. A person cannot call themselves a Christian man whilst being cold and uncaring towards the members of his own household. This is not referring to a person who cannot look after his own for reasons outside of his own control. For example, health reasons. No, this is directed to a man who is intentionally not looking after his own responsibilities. God calls men to look after their responsibilities. God calls men to honor their commitments. God calls men to have a sense of duty. And ladies, if you have a husband who goes to work and comes home and pays this bill and pays that bill, thank God for him. A Christian man is not a lazy man. In our world today, we are quick to judge sins like drunkenness. We are quick to judge adulterers, fornicators and thieves. But very rarely do you hear a sermon against laziness. And this is not applicable to all men. Because there are men who are on the other side of the spectrum. Who work too much, and do not have time for leisure and rest. And that itself presents issues. Do not work yourself to an early grave. Rest is a necessity. However, that is a message for another day. Today, we are focusing on laziness. Nobody talks about slothfulness anymore. The Bible does not encourage slothfulness. Look at our Lord Jesus Christ. He was motivated and active whilst he was on this earth. John 9, 4. I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day, the night cometh, when no man can work.” Luke 2, 49. And he said to them, Why did you seek me? Did you not know that I must be about my father’s business? Slothfulness is the opposite of being hardworking. Sloth is when you have something that you’ve got to do, or something that you should be doing, but you don’t do it, because of the physical effort that is required to do it. Hard work and dedication. Hard work and dedication. Do it. If you feel like it, do it. If you don’t feel like it, do it. Laziness. This is something that is seldomly preached nowadays. In our microwave generation, hard work and dedication is becoming a dying principle. People look at the task at hand and say, I can’t be bothered. Or they start the task and after a while they say, that will do or that’s enough. Every time you hear those three words, that will do or that’s enough, you are in the presence of a slothful person. God does not tolerate laziness. The lazier you become, the weaker you become. Laziness is a cycle. It is a hole that will drag you deeper and deeper and deeper. There is a tremendous amount of hardworking men who don’t sleep enough, who need to sleep more often. But there are some men who make sleeping the objective of their day, apart from the time of relaxing, resting, or taking a nap, as a result of tiredness. Too much sleeping makes you weak and too much sleeping is caused by laziness. The Bible talked against sleeping too much because it will result in poverty. Proverbs 24 33 and 34 Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep. So shall thy poverty come as one that traveleth, and thy want as an armed man.” This is how a lazy man rationalizes his neglect of duty. A little sleep causes no harm. Surely we all need a little slumber. The problem isn’t the sleep of the lazy man, it is his neglect of duty. Sleep was created by God, but God did not create sleep for you to neglect your responsibilities. I remember my football coach used to have a saying and it has stuck with me till this day. He used to say, treat laziness like the disease it is. If you have a family to look after, look after them. If you have children to feed, do it. Thank God for fathers, real fathers, fathers that look after their own. Fundamentally, God hates laziness. It is a sin. How is laziness a sin? James 4, 17 Therefore, to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. This is simple to understand. If there are things you ought to do, and refuse to do them because of laziness, there is no other word for it but sin. This is not about judging you. This is about the Bible talking about being lazy and not doing the right thing. Jesus called people like this wicked. Laziness is also wickedness. Laziness is also wickedness. Anyone who is called wicked in the Bible is referred to as the enemy of God. From the parable of Jesus about the three servants who were given money to invest by their master. The first who received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. The second was given two bags of gold and he worked and gained two more. The third servant, one we can call lazy because of his inability to work, he knew what he should do with the gold. He knew what was right, but he refused to do it, and that is a sin according to the Bible. The master arrived back from the journey and asked them about the talent. Matthew 25, 19-25 After a long time, the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. Master, he said, you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See I have gained five more. His master replied, Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness. The man with two bags of gold also came. Master, he said, you entrusted me with two bags of gold. See I have gained two more. His master replied, Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness. Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. Master, he said, I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid, and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you. So I was afraid, and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.” Now I want you to look at the Master’s response. Matthew 25, 26 and 27. His master replied, You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvested where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed. Well, then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest. God does not look kindly towards laziness, but our society somewhat encourages it. This is against the will of God. Laziness travels into different areas of your life. Everything affects everything else. You can’t be lazy in this area and hardworking in another. No, laziness contaminates other areas of your life. Fundamentally, men of God are not lazy God calls men to look after their responsibility God calls men to honor their commitments God calls men to have a sense of duty on today’s show Rabbi, Daniel Lappin explains why people that practice the Jewish faith are so disproportionately financially successful while sharing the secrets of financial success. As you know, the book was spurred by a question I was constantly being asked by good people, people who didn’t have a molecule of bigotry in their entire bodies. But people said to me, why is it that Jews are so disproportionately good with money. On today’s show, Rabbi Daniel Lapin explains why in the original Hebrew language the words work and worship meant the same thing. This might be the most important and powerful point we’re talking about today, which is that the word for worshiping the God, the Lord, is exactly the same as the word for doing your work for six days a week. He explains both the power and the principle of the sixth day work week. He explains why the original Hebrew language intentionally did not include a word for the English term fair. He explains why the original Hebrew language intentionally decided not to have a word for retirement. We think of retirement in Hebrew as obscene. He explains why money should be viewed as a certificate of appreciation. He explains why that in order to get rich you must sell the customer something that they want, not something that you want. He explains why being a good person will not necessarily guarantee you financial success. He explains practical steps to increase your personal earnings and why nobody can become successful when involved in selling something that they believe to be morally reprehensible. And he explains why doing what you love will not guarantee you massive amounts of wealth and much much more money only works because of faith and This is one of the reasons that the planet has never produced an atheistic regime with a healthy economy Never happened ladies and gentlemen this show could be the most profound episode of the Thrivetime show that we’ve ever recorded. Grab a pen and a pad and get ready to enter into the lab in the dojo of Mojo about how to create wealth with Daniel Rabbi Lappin. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. Two men, eight kids co-created by two different women. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Timeshow. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Thrive Nation, on today’s show, we are interviewing the best-selling author, the best-selling financial expert and author, Rabbi Daniel Lapin. And if you’ve ever been out there seeking financial wisdom, financial advice based upon biblical truth, this show is the show for you. Rabbi Lappin, welcome on to the show and how are you, sir? I couldn’t be any better, thank you, Clay. Delighted to be together with you and to share some time with your wonderful audience. Well, I would like to start by asking you what the term Rabbi means. It merely means a teacher with a specialty in ancient Jewish wisdom’s insights into the Bible. Now, I know that you have had a ton of success as an author, and you’ve really developed a career that spans decades, but could you share with us where you grew up and what life was like growing up? Certainly. I was a terrible child, and I grew up in the home of a very famous and distinguished rabbi and his wife. This was in Johannesburg, South Africa, and when I was about 10 years old, the parents were rightfully worried that I was turning into a completely barefoot savage, and so they sent me to boarding school in England. I went to school there and gradually became civilized, but it took quite a while. What is it like going to a school like that? It was shocking. It was shocking to me because it was a school way beyond the standards I was accustomed to, so it took a little while for me to find my feet and to become accepted. I had to work at it, and it taught me a great deal. It really did, but I was 10 years old. What did I know? Rabbi Daniel, when did you decide that you wanted to become a rabbi? Never. Never? My father was a rabbi, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, and so I grew up knowing beyond any shadow of a doubt that of all the careers in the whole world, the one thing I really would never, ever be was a rabbi. I’ve come to the conclusion that the good Lord has your destiny in mind, and He’ll send you one or two soft messages, and if you don’t pay any attention, He begins to get you with a two-by-four. Eventually, He whacks you hard enough that you do start paying attention. I actually became an engineer. I worked for Royal Dutch Philips Electronics Company designing communication equipment and I thought that was what I wanted to do. I certainly did not want to replicate the career path of my family, but as I said, the good Lord has plans and you can ignore them for a certain amount of time, but eventually you say, �You know what? This hurts too much. Maybe I�d better just do what I�m expected to do.� Your book, Thou Shalt Prosper, is just filled with so many nuggets of knowledge that they really don�t teach in college, so many profound ideas. Well, on the contrary, they teach the opposite very often in college. And as you know, the book was spurred by a question I was constantly being asked by good people, people who didn’t have a molecule of bigotry in their entire bodies. But people said to me, why is it that Jews are so disproportionately good with And I realized that this was a question worth answering. And I even thought to myself, you know, I’m going to be absolutely honest about it. I’m going to spend as long as it takes to research this. And if it turns out that Jews are good with money because they routinely rip everyone else off, well, then I’m going to know the truth. But it turned out not to be the case. There are bad apples in every bunch, and no more or less with Jews. Was it that it’s Jewish genes, that the Cossacks killed all the poor Jews, leaving the rich ones available to reproduce? But if that were true, it would need to show a money gene in Jewish sperm, which just doesn’t exist. And we also see that in common with other groups, that very often in Jewish families, after several generations, wealth is dissipated, not created. So I had to really probe, and finally and eventually, after a good few years, nearly seven years, it became apparent to me that the inevitable conclusion, which shocked me, I hadn’t expected that, was that embedded in the Bible, embedded in the Torah, structured within the intricacies of the Hebrew language and 2,000 years of carefully communicated ancient Jewish wisdom with thousands of tips and tools and techniques and specific strategies for how money works and how to be good with it. I decided to condense that into a book called Thou Shalt Prosper, The Ten Commandments for Making Money. The publishers said it was much too big. a good few years, nearly seven years, and it became apparent to me that the inevitable conclusion which shocked me, I hadn’t expected that, was that embedded in the Bible, embedded in the Torah, structured within the intricacies of the Hebrew language and 2,000 years of communicated ancient Jewish wisdom with thousands of tips and tools and techniques and specific strategies for how money works and how to be good with it to begin with. This book and our work was about how do you increase your revenue, how do you make more money than you are now making, and that was what the work was all about. How did you go from your early career to becoming a rabbi and a financial teacher from a biblical perspective? How did you make that jump? What was the transition like? Well I was forced, in spite of the fact that I thought I wanted to become an engineer. And I was forced, before I could even go to school for engineering, I first of all had to go to Bible school and I had to become ordained as a rabbi. My father said, ìLook, I donít care if you donít practice as a rabbi, but I want you to be able to.î I didnít understand it at the time, but obviously today Iím enormously grateful that he insisted. Now Tim Redmond has been a client of mine for years and now we work together on different business ventures and he was actually my boss. When I was 19 years old, I landed an internship at Tax and Accounting Software and he was my boss. I’m telling you, this guy quotes you all the time. It’s almost like he’s a paid advocate of you. He’s a paid sales guy. No, it’s not that at all. He loves you. Tim really gets it. Tim has studied this material. He and I have worked together on numerous occasions, and we’ve spent hours and hours and hours studying this material and researching and working on it together to say he really gets it, and that’s really all it is. Well, Tim, this is the thing. Tim pulls me aside. I don’t remember what year it was, but he pulls me aside and he says, Hey, you know, the Hebrew language was God’s original language, and that original language, the Hebrew language, does not have a word for retirement. And I’m going, what? And maybe I’m losing something in translation there. Can you explain the Hebrew language, and does it have a phrase for retirement? What’s that all about? Sure. Well, needless to say, I’m not the only person. You know, this is not Rabbi Daniel Lapp and Jeremy Hamlin. Hey, Hebrew’s God’s language. No, it’s not like that at all. Many learned people, people who developed the Oxford English Dictionary understood it. Sir William Bradford, who came to North America on the Mayflower, wrote a book in the 17th century called History of the Plymouth Plantation, and the first 20 pages or so in his own handwriting in the manuscript of the book are in Hebrew. And in those 20 pages, he even explains why he studied Hebrew and learned how to read the Bible in the original Hebrew, the Old Testament. And he says it’s because this is the language in which God spoke to the patriarchs of old, and it’s the language in which Adam named all living things, etc. etc. And so, yeah, this Lord’s language does have certain pieces of wisdom in it. One of them is that certain words, concepts for which no word exists in Biblical Hebrew are false concepts. So for instance, there’s no word for adolescent. Now I don’t know if you’ve raised teenagers and adolescents, but if you have, you know that the word teenager or adolescent is a euphemism for somebody who wants all the advantages of being an adult with all the slack cut to him for being a child. It doesn’t work like that in the real world. You’ve got to make up your mind. And that’s how I raise my children. I’m not interested in your chronological age. I’m interested in your behavior. You can either behave in a way that says you’re an adult, or you can behave in a way that says you’re a child. Those are the only two choices, and we will treat you accordingly. There’s no word in Hebrew for hero. Why is that? Well, what is the most common usage of the word hero? Oh, he’s my hero, or who is your hero? That’s what you hear all the time. The word doesn’t exist. It’s a false concept, because God doesn’t want me to be anybody else but me. He doesn’t want me to strive to be like my hero, whoever that is. He wants me to strive to be what he has decided is my destiny. And it’s terribly important, particularly in our financial success, in the development of our business personality, that we don’t try and replicate somebody we admire, but that we use the information and we use the inspiration in order to develop and grow and ultimately achieve our own destiny. Retirement is another word that doesn’t exist. Why is that? It all flows from a really important principle early in the book, Thou Shalt Prosper, and this is fundamental to the disproportionate financial success enjoyed by the people of Israel. And that is that, look, nobody can ever succeed, no decent person can ever succeed at any activity that deep in their hearts they believe to be morally reprehensible. And so, you know, if you’re a decent person and you’re working in sales, but you believe that your merchandise is shoddy and overpriced, you’ll fail. You can’t sell it because your heart’s not in it. And so it becomes very important, very important to understand that we become the kind of people that relate to the moral vision that we hold. And so if you believe that making money is essentially taking money, if you believe that profit is essentially plunder, then you’ll never be very good at making money because you have moral qualms about it, thinking that you’re taking it. By the way, many people are like this. You know, the babysitter we had working for us Saturday night three weeks ago, I noticed when we came home and I wanted to pay her, I said, how much do we owe you? And her eyes went down to the carpet and her toes started tracing patterns. She was uncomfortable to say you owe me $40 Because she felt she was taking my money and So I had to explain to I said look we want to pay you. We want to pay you what you ask for and If it’s too much, we won’t use you again if it’s right, we want to be able to use you again So, please don’t be shy about saying how much you want. You’re not taking anything from us. You gave us an evening out. You follow what I’m saying? Yes, because money is just a certificate of appreciation and performance. That’s exactly right. And the problem with retirement is that what you’re essentially saying is, Hey, I’ve got enough, so I’m getting out of here. To which I say, Hello, you know, you’ve been my doctor or my dentist or my bookkeeper or my shoe polishing guy, or I don’t care what it is, but for the last 20 years, you’ve been taking care of a need I have in my life, for which I’ve been happy to pay you. And now you tell me, sorry, you’re not, like, well, what’s with you? What are you doing? Instead, what, you’re gonna play golf instead of taking care of me? Well, that suggests that all along, you weren’t in this to take care of me, but you were in it just to get what you could get out of it now that you got enough you’re done. So in that sense we think of retirement in Hebrew as obscene. I, this is a verse I know that, can you explain to listeners out there the difference between Christianity and Judaism just so that the listeners out there who… Nope, I can’t for several reasons. Okay. Number one is I only know about Judaism. Okay. Number two that’s theological and I have zero interest in theology. Theology is what men think about God. Much of what men think about men is wrong and silly. I’m certainly not interested in what men think about God. I’m really only interested in what God thinks about men. That’s not theology, that’s Bible. I’m sorry, but that’s a question I simply can’t answer. I love the directness of it. This is maybe I’ll try it this way. I have a Bible verse that I quote often and I quote quite a bit. It’s Colossians 3 23 24. It says, whatever you do, work at it with your heart as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you’re serving. Do you share the same the same view that you’re working as unto the Lord? It’s like you’re working to honor God. Do you view it the same way or no? Okay, so again, I don’t know the New Testament, but I know the Hebrew Scriptures very well. And a crucial aspect of this, and I think this goes exactly to this important point you’re making, and that is that in the Hebrew… Okay, let’s look at this real quick. In the book of Genesis, God put man in the Garden of Eden to work it, right? Right. And we also know that in chapter 20 of Exodus, we got the Ten Commandments, and in the Ten Commandments, in Commandment number four, it says, six days shall you do all your work. So here we’ve got two verses having to do with work. God put Adam in the garden to work, and six days you must do all your work. Now, there are another two verses I want to share with you quickly. One is that God says to Moses, ìGo to Pharaoh and say, ìLet my people go, so that they may worship me in the desert.î And the other one is towards the end of the book of Joshua. Joshua says, ìYou know what? I donít care what you guys want to do. As for me and my family, we will worship the Lord.î Now, in the last 40 seconds, Iíve shared with you four verses. Two of the verses include the word work, and the other two verses include the word worship. What you don’t know, none of our listeners know, is that in the Hebrew text, there’s only one word for all those four instances, which is an incredibly powerful thing. This might be the most important and powerful point we’re talking about today, which is that the word for worshipping the Lord is exactly the same as the word for doing your work for six days a week. In other words, to put it very directly, taking care of business is another way of worshipping God. One of the ways, by the way, that in English we say customer service and worship service, recognizing this fundamental reality that in taking care of our customers, we’re also serving God. I am probably going to have to put that on repeat 40 to 50 times in a row because it’s so mind expanding. I read this book called Thinking Grow Rich years ago by Napoleon Hill. Oh sure, Napoleon Hill, yeah. And I’m reading that book because my boss told me I had to read it or I’m fired. He said I was like a ship without a rudder. You’re a ship without a rudder, you’ve got to read the book. And Napoleon Hill said if you over deliver, eventually you’ll be overpaid. He goes, just exceed the expectations of every person on every transaction. And that really helped me because I grew up without any money. And there’s just so many powerful concepts in your book. I want to ask you about this one. The concept of businessman, a businessman being a business person, how do you, in your book Thou Shalt Prosper, you talk about this a little bit, but the Hebrew concept of businessman, I believe, and again I’m just making sure I’m getting my notes right, because I’ve got notes everywhere, is a man of faith is a businessman. Can you kind of explain that? Where am I getting that wrong? Sure. No, you’ve got that exactly right. In Hebrew, the word for a business professional is also a person of faith. the reason why history’s most effective engine of wealth creation, namely the United States of America, puts not on the walls of its churches where you would have expected the phrase, but on its currency, the phrase, ìIn God we trust.î And thatís because if youíre in church, you canít probably already know that, so you donít need it on the wall of churches. But what you need to know is that money only works because of faith. And this is one of the reasons that the planet has never produced an atheistic regime with a healthy economy. Never happened. And the most religious, the most Bible-centric country on earth, which is the United States of America, is also the engine of greatest prosperity. I’ll go further than that and point out that in the thousand years from the year 900 to the year 1900, no indigenous capital market ever grew in a non-Christian country. So today we have stock markets in Accra and we have stock markets in Hong Kong and Singapore, we’ve got stock markets all over the place, but originally the stock market grew in London and Amsterdam. Essentially the idea of pooling capital, which is the heart of faith, only grew in Christian Bible-based countries. One only has to look at the most prominent and revered structures in every European city, like Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and you’ll find the Christian origins of the wealth building of Western civilization. And Rabbi Daniel, I just want to, and I’m not going to get into a religious debate with you at all, I just want to make sure the listeners understand, because there’s somebody out there who doesn’t understand. Judaism you really have a deep knowledge of the Old Testament. Is that correct for anybody out there who’s unclear in their mind? Yes, it is. And it’s also important for everyone to understand, I’m not saying you have to be Jewish to succeed with this book. I’m not saying you have to be of the Jewish faith in any way whatsoever in order to benefit from the strategies of ancient Jewish wisdom that I share in Thou Shalt Prosper. That is right. I don’t want anybody out there to discount that because I want to make sure we kind of understand where you’re coming from in your background there. Now you rewrite in your book this is highlighted and circled and I have to apologize for the desecration of this book. On the contrary I’m thrilled to hear it. You wrote take out a dollar bill and look at it. Now pat yourself on your back because you’re looking at a certificate of performance. Rabbi can you break that down? Rabbi Shmuley B’Naib Shukri Sure. Look, let me give you an example. And by the way, this is really important, this point you’re bringing up, because if we don’t understand money, we cannot get it. I’m probably one of the worst fishermen in the world, but I like fishing for salmon in the in the cold waters of British Columbia off the west coast of Canada and Something I learned a long time ago and is that the best money I’m going to spend is not on my gear But it’s on the guide Because somebody who really knows the fish will help me catch them I can have the most expensive rod and reel But if I don’t know fish if I don’t know salmon specifically. I’m not going to catch them.” And I really didn’t until I tweaked on to this fact that, hey, I can hire a guide, and all of a sudden I looked like a good fisherman. In the same way, money is like that as well. If you don’t get it, if you don’t understand it, it’s simply not going to work. And so, for instance, in the book we cover the whole question of physical and spiritual, what’s the difference? And by the way, spiritual doesn’t mean godly or holy or religious. Spiritual just means something you cannot measure in a laboratory. I explain why you’ve got to be able to understand the essential spirituality of money. Part of that is that, let’s say my job is a roofer and I was planning on taking my kids fishing or whatever, and all of a sudden I get a call from somebody who says, hey, you’re the roofer. I say, yep. He says, can you come quickly? It’s been raining where we are and there’s a leak in the roof. My wife is going nuts. The water’s coming into the kitchen, making everybody miserable. And so I’m just about to say to him, hey, pal, you know what, how about I come tomorrow? Because like this afternoon, I shut up because I remember to think before I speak. I in fact say to him, ìYou know, Iíll be happy to come. The only thing is, I was about to take my kids fishing, but it would be worth much, much more for them to see how I serve another one of Godís children by fixing your roof. So, if you donít mind, Iíll be on my way, but Iíll bring them along as well. So I’ll pile the kids into the pickup truck, tools in the back, off we go. And the kids help me and we fix it up. We put on some new shingles, roof is fixed. The guy is as happy as could be. His wife is smiling and he says, I appreciate it very much. Would you need some certificates of performance? I say, yeah, please, I would. I need a hundred certificates of performance. So he takes out a roll of green certificates and he peels off a hundred of them and gives them to me and I say, thank you very much indeed. That night I take my wife for dinner and we come into the restaurant and the restauranteur says, yeah, and I think, well, it’s not really a polite way to welcome a diner, but all right. I say, you know, could we please have two big fat steaks and a plate of the largest, biggest French fries you can make.” And he says, what, you want me to go into that hot kitchen and slave over a stove to make you steak and fries? And I said, well, yeah, isn’t that what this restaurant’s all about? And he says, no, as a matter of fact, this restaurant is only for members of a club who take care of God’s other children. I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about. He says, well, let me put it this way. Could you prove to me that you’ve taken care of anybody else today? I said, well, as a matter of fact, I can. He said, how are you going to do that? I said, right here in my pocket. The person I took care of this afternoon gave me 100 certificates of performance. He said, well, why didn’t you say so before? Brings me a great meal at the end of the meal. I say to him now, would you like any certificates of performance? He says, yeah. My kids have to go to the dentist tomorrow, and our dentist only takes care of people who’ve taken care of other people. And he says, I need 60 certificates of performance from you. So I happily peel off 60, and I give them to him, and off we go. We are all part of the club of human beings who take care of other human beings. Beautiful. I don’t understand. I grew up very, you know, without money. I grew up very, very limited resources. I don’t understand the argument mentally, financially, spiritually, as you defined it, the argument for socialism. How can anybody with a sound mind advocate for socialism right now? It’s not an accident that almost without exception socialists are people who do not share biblical faith. Socialism almost always goes together with atheism. Now, what’s this mean? It’s very simple. One of the big differences between a person who has a spiritual awareness and somebody who thinks the world is confined to only the material, is that people who think the world’s confined to the material think that a human being is nothing other than about $10 worth of cheap chemicals like a bunch of nitrogen, a bunch of oxygen, a bunch of carbon, some hydrogen, some potassium and all of this mixed together produces. That biological determinism is an atheistic and physical view of the human being. A person like that says a human being is just a body. I don’t think that’s right. In fact, I’m willing to state with some certainty that it’s not right, not out of faith, but out of life experience and financial experience. I think people are both body and soul. Now, one of the big differences between physical and spiritual, and I can wrap this up and bring it in for a landing very easily, is that an example of a difference is a saxophone is physical because you can take it into a lab and weigh it. You can measure it. You know, a saxophone is made out of five pounds of brass and you know, carefully arranged and structured. That’s what a saxophone is. And if I have it on the table in front of me and when my attention is diverted, you run in and take it away. Now you’ve got the saxophone and I’m without a saxophone. That’s how physical things work because it’s a rule of physics that any physical object can only be in one place at one time. This is an expansion of Einsteinian principles of time-space. Any physical object can only be in one place at one time. However, a tune, a tune is not a physical thing, it’s a see whether it’s the kind of tune that would make people happy or sad or make men march off to war or whatever it is. And so a tune, if I have a tune and you hear me whistling my tune and you learn it and you walk away and you teach it to a bunch of other people, have you taken away anything from me? No. You’ve just made the world a more tuneful place. The difference between physical and spiritual is physical can only be in one place at a time. Spiritual can be in more than one place at a time. Now if money is only physical and sure, socialistic people view the world in materialistic terms. You’ve heard of the Marxist materialistic dialectic and that is that everything is only physical. That’s the essence of Marxism and communism and socialism. Well in that case, money is like the saxophone. If I have some, and this is really important, if I’ve got it, that must mean there are a whole bunch of other people who don’t have it, because I must have taken it from them. The only way for other people to get it is to take it from me. That’s called, by the way, redistribution. The way money truly works is that two human beings can agree on a transaction and that transaction doesn’t exchange money. It brings money into being and I explain all the arithmetic and mathematics of that in the book, Thou Shalt Prosper, but the bottom line is that inflation is when the government prints more money than transactions have created and deflation is when government doesn’t print enough currency to account for the fact that every time you and I did a transaction, we actually brought money into being. Wow! Wow! And Andrew, I think I’m going to have to duct tape my head together and listen to this show at least five times. that in order for people to prosper we have to behave decently and honorably toward one another and live among others who conduct themselves in a similar fashion. Can you explain what this is all about? Yeah, look a lot of people have said to me, well I don’t get it, you know, my rabbi or my pastor is this really holy guy, he’s so spiritual, he’s so wonderful and yet he suffers in terrible poverty. I said, okay, fine, yeah. I would never say a word against your rabbi or against your pastor. I’m sure they’re very beautiful people. Let me give you an example. How about a guy who is a beautiful human being, lovely person, loving, kind, compassionate, spiritual, godly, virtuous in every possible way, wouldn’t hurt a fly. And he climbs to the top of a 20-story building, and he steps out the window. Well, he starts moving towards the ground really, really quickly, and it’s kind of a thrilling ride for about four seconds, but it comes to a very abrupt end in a way that kills him. Then he comes before the good Lord, and he says to him, I don’t get this, Lord, I’m such a good person. I’m so kind to people. I pray to you twice a day. I give charity. I tithe my money. How could you let me die? And God says to him, well, I gave you a set of principles, both physical and spiritual. And one of the sets of physical principles that I put there in the world for you to learn is that if you step out of the window on the 20th floor, you’re going to come to a very painful end. Why didn’t you pay attention to that? Did you really think that the fact that you are good and virtuous can take the place of actual knowledge? And so I say exactly the same thing to the poor rabbi or the poor pastor. I say, of course you’re a good and kind person, that’s lovely, but did you really think that that’s enough to make money? No. God wants you to have certain information, which by the way is why the Old Testament is filled with financial data. I don’t know the New Testament like I said, but if somebody told me there’s a thousand times more mention of money in a positive sense in the Old Testament than in the New Testament, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. Because many, many, many dear, good Christian friends of mine, before they started studying Bible with me and learning the Old Testament, they believed that money is evil. And when you believe money is evil, I promise you, you’re not going to get any. Right! And so the Old Testament teaches these principles about not stepping out of the 20th floor window. In other words, it’s not enough to be a good person. That doesn’t stave off poverty. God wants us to do actual specific things, and what those are are some of the things we’re talking about. In order to be a successful person, you can’t promise more than you’re going to deliver. You have to actually promise less than you’re going to deliver. Can you explain that to me? You’ve got to over-deliver always, yes. Now you talked about how businesses that don’t do something valuable for others do not survive and should not survive. Profit is a way to measure how useful a business is. This doesn’t ever change. I’d love to have you share more about that. Sure. So there is somebody in New Zealand that I’m coaching at the moment, business coaching, and here’s how our engagement began. This person told me the business he started and what he’s supplying to customers in New Zealand and how he’s advertising and marketing, and it’s just not working. And I said to him, what made you decide to sell this particular thing at the particular price you’re selling it at? And he said, I just believe deep in my heart that it’s what people need and that I’m providing a real value. And so I said to him, look, part of ancient Jewish wisdom is that I am sometimes going to help you collide with reality. Like any other collision, a collision with reality can be very painful. I’m going to tell you that we don’t really care about what you believe. That’s not the point. The point is that only the market can determine value. You think that the market needs this thing and that’s because you are in love with this particular type of product. That means you should be buying that product, not selling it. But we need to build you up so as you fall in love with the act of business which is the act of supplying the needs and desires of other human beings. And if that was really what motivated you, you would have done research to find out what people really want in your neighborhood in New Zealand, not decide in advance what you want to sell them. And so that is very much at the core of what we’re talking about. Understanding that it is the market out there, that it’s what people want. The idea of being in business is serving God’s other children. And you can only do that by finding out the things that they want and they need and they desire and then providing them, which is why one of the stupidest things that anybody ever tells new graduates is, oh, now that you’ve finished your studies, you’re finishing, you’re leaving school, you must find a job doing what you love doing. Well, that’s rubbish. What’s, I mean, that’s an unbelievably selfish piece of advice which will never work. Take me for instance. I love boating. I’m yet to find anybody who’s willing to pay me a nice living for going boating. It’s irrelevant. What I’ve got to do is find out what people around me need me to do, and then I’ve got to learn to love it. You are just a man who is filled with so much wisdom, and I just think everybody should go out there and pick up Thou Shall Prosper. There are just so many great concepts in there. I wanted to seek your wisdom on two more questions there, Rabbi Daniel. Yes, of course. What are the most costly and harmful habits that you see stopping most people from having success or growth or profitability with their business or their lives? It’s not necessarily the same thing. There are things that people can do that harm their marriages and their businesses. I’m so interested that the way you phrased the question included both those areas in terms of family. Let me give you an example. One of the most fundamental principles of a sexual relationship is that it has to be between two people. It can’t be one person, and if it is, most people are embarrassed about it and they don’t talk about it. People might say, �You can pick me up at eight, I’ve got to take a shower first. But they’ll never say, pick me up at eight, because I first have to shower and you’ll pardon me, provide myself with sexual satisfaction. Nobody would ever say that, because it’s an embarrassment, because you’re not providing anybody else with anything. And we human beings were created by God to be givers, not takers. And so that’s one of the reasons that that particular solitary activity is shameful, as much as Bill Clinton had a certain general who had a fire, because she was obsessed with trying to normalize and popularize that particular solitary behavior. People weren’t interested in it, because deep down in our souls, we all know that sex is a gift for bringing together two people. It’s bringing joy to another person, and that’s particularly important, particularly to a man. It’s not a case of seeking self-satisfaction. It’s providing somebody else. Now, if you fail to grasp that, you’re just not going to be very good at marriage. Exactly the same thing is true for business, and that is you have to be obsessively preoccupied with fulfilling the needs of another person. That couldn’t be more fundamental and basic. It’s not about you. It’s about the other person. And so in both those areas, both family and business, the idea is learning to find the in bringing pleasure, satisfaction, joy and enthusiasm to another human being. So that’s absolutely fundamental and it’s very, very interesting that you can buy books on how to build a boat, you can buy books on how to build an airplane in your basement, you can buy books on how to build a log cabin and in all of those cases, those things you build are going to work just fine. They really are. Boeing builds planes and other than a few sad exceptions, they don’t fly 98% of the time, they fly 100% of the time. When people build ships with the sad exception of the Titanic, ships float 100% of this guy’s buildings stand. They all stand. But when people set out to build a marriage, the success rate is only about 70%. When people set out to build a business, the success rate is even lower than that. So why is it that it’s so easy to build a building or a ship or an airplane. It’s so reliable, and yet it’s so risky to build a marriage or to build a business. The answer is because it’s very easy to communicate physical data, and to build boats and skyscrapers and airplanes, all you need is physical data. It’s not hard, but marriage and business both involve spiritual data, your chances are very low. Rabbi Daniel, and I don’t want you to take this as an offensive question, you are not Bill Gates, you’re not Oprah, you’re not Steve Jobs, you’re not… So for somebody out there who’s wrestling with this idea, what makes him qualified to give me financial advice? That’s a terrific question and I not only don’t take offense but I admire you for being direct enough to ask the question. The answer is really very simple and if I may say without sounding obnoxious, it’s a very important point. Bill Gates would be probably a more entertaining interview and people who heard you interviewing Bill Gates would probably talk about it for the next three weeks. Oh wow I heard Bill Gates interview because he’s a celebrity and he’s one of the wealthiest guys in the world and this is remarkable. However, with all humility I’m more useful than Bill Gates. Bill Gates is very very helpful in terms of making money as long as your father is a very prominent and well-connected national attorney, and as long as your mother is on the board of directors of IBM, and as long as you dropped out of a prestigious university at the cusp of the computer revolution, if all of those things apply Bill Gates is more useful to you than I am. But if you dropped Bill Gates into Wichita, Kansas with $100 in his pocket and you dropped any student of mine into Wichita, Kansas with $100 in his pocket, I am almost 100% willing to guarantee that at the end of the first month, my student will have a whole lot more success than Bill Gates will. And I’m willing to guarantee that at the end of a year, Bill Gates will be knocking on doors asking for help, and my student will be well on his road, well on the road to a fortune. That’s the difference. And the same thing applies to Bezos or Donald Trump. They are all very specific people. Bezos, by the way, might be a slight exception because he did start a business from absolutely nothing, so he may well be a bit different. But what I bring is history’s most effective longitudinal study of hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women, Jewish men and women, of all colors and all sizes and all shapes and all backgrounds, all of whom succeeded financially beyond your wildest dreams. There are people who started huge businesses in America like CVS Pharmacy and Commodore Computers and Chappelle Construction that were started by people who came out of World War II with their families destroyed, with their backgrounds destroyed, with their wealth destroyed. They came as broken, penniless people. And they became giants of commerce. They became multi-millionaires. Using what? Using the principles of ancient Jewish wisdom. Rabbi Daniel, thank you so much for investing the time in our listeners. I personally will be listening to this show multiple times. One, because I go through and edit every show So I will definitely listen to it once but there’s certain shows where I’ll listen to the show two times or three times And then I’ll and your book. It’s it’s sort. It’s so practical but yet it provides so much context so much richness of wisdom If you had to recommend one of your books to the listeners out there, is there a certain book you’d recommend, and I’ll let you get back to doing what you do? I would recommend either start with Thou Shalt Prosper, and then move on to Business Secrets from the Bible, or you can start with Business Secrets from the Bible and move on to Thou Shalt Prosper. Well, we’re going to put a link to the show notes right now, and let’s get the—you have Thou Shalt Prosper, which I’ve read in the other book title there, Rabbi, was what? Business Secrets from the Bible. Business Secrets from the Bible. We’re going to buy one right now on Amazon. We’re starting a momentum here. Starting a momentum. Thank you for investing in our listeners, and I just hope you have an awesome day. Thank you very much indeed. It’s been an honor to be with you, and I wish success and prosperity to everybody listening in. During our December Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshop, Michael Levine was in attendance. So, who’s Michael Levine? Well, Michael Levine is a best-selling author, a New York Times best-selling author, who’s represented 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, and 43 New York Times best-selling authors, as a publicist. In fact, his former clients include Michael Jackson, Barbara Streisand, George Carlin, President Clinton, President Bush, Michael Jackson, Sandra Bullock, and a bunch of big names that you know. And on today’s show, he’s sharing with us the keys to super success. He spent an entire career in the room with the world’s most successful people, and he’s now going to teach you their secrets. He spoke at the conference and we recorded the audio and now with any further ado here is audio from Michael Levine’s presentation at the 2019 Thrive Time Show two-day interactive December workshop. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show but this show does. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Timeshow. 3, 2, 1, here we go! Started from the bottom, now we here. Started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we here. Started from the bottom, now we here. Started from the bottom, now we here. Yes, yes, yes, and yes! Now Michael Levine is from the great state of California, originally from New York. He has been the public relations consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Pizza Hut, for Michael Jackson. He is a great American. He’s been my PR consultant in years past. He’s a great guy. And Michael is going to talk to us a little bit about hiring people today. And without any further ado, Michael Levine. Let’s hear it for him. I’m going to have you start off on this mic, and then I’m going to get you more mic support over here. Brother Clay, thank you. How are you? How many of you, maybe by show of hands, were here last year when I spoke? Raise your hand. About 20%, maybe 15, 20%. That’s cool. Anyway, let me be, thank you for letting me come to visit you today. I’m very excited. I’m going to be plenty of time for questions, comments, alternative speeches, criticisms, challenges. There’ll be plenty of time for that. Anyway, let me start by confessing to you that I had no training in public speaking. That I fell into it by accident, just like almost everything in my life. And had I gone to some kind of Dale Carnegie course, I probably would have been told to begin today with a story. And so I’ve decided that would be a good idea. I’ll start with a story. And this story, I figured I’ll tell you, is a story about Hollywood. Does anyone here know, probably not, he’s deceased now, who Swifty Lazar is, was, was? famous literary agent ever. Most famous literary agent in the history of Hollywood. He’s passed away now, but he was the ruling king of literary agents in Hollywood. And he spent six years of his life signing his biggest client. Six entire years. That’s a long time. Signing his biggest client ever, Cary Grant. Now here by show of hands, how many of you know who Cary Grant is? Okay. For those of you who don’t, that’s a good amount. Cary Grant would be maybe George, be like the Brad Pitt times a thousand, right? And he was the most famous, most elegant star of his time and he signed him. And in those days there was no email. And so Cary Grant came into the office to sign his contract. Most exciting day of Swifty Lazar’s life. And he signed the contract, which was great. And as Cary Grant was leaving the office, after he had just signed his contract, he put his hand on the door, opened the door, facing to leave, to Mr. Lazar. Mr. Lazar, before I leave here today, I just have one question for you. One final question. Are you Jewish? And Mr. Lazar was reported to have said, Not necessarily. So that is an insight maybe into how Hollywood, the world I’ve been living. And I was born into a bad home. My mom was an alcoholic. My father was a good man, a nice man, a gentle man, but he was at times passive and even a bit weak. And so for those of you who know anything about an alcoholic home, it’s a very, very difficult environment in which you basically have to raise yourself. And you are always waiting for the other shoe to drop. which is a pretty good-sized problem for a young person. I also had a disability. And this disability that I had wasn’t very well-known at the time, though it’s better known today. The disability is that of dyslexia. Dyslexia. Now again, we know a good deal about it today. But, 40 or 50 years ago, we had another word for it. We called it dumb or lazy. And so I barely, barely graduated high school. The key word there was barely. And I went off at age, I left the house at 17. And at this point in the story, I have no money and I have no job and I have no education and I have no parenting. I’m scared, I’m skinny and I’ve got dyslexia. Now we call that bad cards. See, that’s called bad cards. And you know something, friends? The quality of your life now and in the future is going to be largely not entirely determined by your ability to learn how to play your cards. See, some of us get bad cards and we play them good. Some of us get good cards and we play them bad. And some of us get medium cards and we play them medium. How do you play your d*** cards? Write it down, son. How do you play your cards? Now, anybody that knows me for any period of time, and I have a few friends here, will be happy to tell you what I’m above average at watching what bright people do. And you want to know something else? I’m not too bad at watching what dopey people do. I’m pretty good at that too. And so therefore, I figured out since I was scared skinny broke and I like to eat, maybe Maybe a plan might be to follow what the smart people do and stay away from the dumb f**ks. See? Did you get that? Ain’t that something? All right, now, at 17 I had to decide what to do. And since nobody would hire me, because I had no skills or education or confidence, I had to ask myself, or I did ask myself, what is it that I love doing or like doing? Feel, act like, love, like. And there were two things that came to mind. And by the way, one of the best ways I know of trying to ascertain what it is that you love is a rapid passage of time. A rapid passage of time. See when a gardener is gardening, an hour feels like ten minutes. But when he comes inside to do his taxes, ten minutes feels like an hour. Ain’t that something? Write it down. So, I had two passions. And the first, well, the two passions were politics and entertainment. Two passions in my life at a young age. And so, I got to figure out what do I do? Where do I go? What do I do? And after a little bit of concentration it occurred to me that maybe, maybe Hollywood or maybe Washington politics is really just Hollywood for ugly folks. See, maybe Washington is Hollywood for ugly folks. And since I just look stupid, I figured I’d go out to Hollywood where the pretty people are. for a new life, for a new canvas, for a new canvas, for a new chance, to create a new canvas is good, I guess. Yeah, it’s good enough. Since my first canvas wasn’t too great. And through a friend of a friend of a friend, I met a woman who worked at Paramount Studios, and there weren’t a lot of women working at Paramount Studios at that time. Mostly, they were secretaries. And I met a woman and again, the power of proximity. The power of proximity. You meet people. So now, I’ve met a woman who works at Paramount Studios. I said, Darling, what do you do? She says, Well, I work in the PR department. I said, What’s that? She said, Well, I’m a publicist. I said, Well, what do you do all day? She said, what do I do all day? I said, yes, what do you do all day? You’re a publicist. She paused. And she said, I beeped on the phone. And I said, I can do that. And off we go. I start a PR firm. Now I got some disadvantages at this point in the story. One is I don’t know what PR is. It’s a problem. But again, I can’t Did I mention that I’m not very bright? But I’m pretty good at watching what bright people do and above average at watching what dopey people do Yeah, did I mention that? Good write it down Okay so off we go and You know the ladder to success is Really pretty simple but it’s not easy. And Clay talks about this. You don’t really, I don’t think many of you understand how advantaged you are by being here and by talking to Clay and listening to Clay and his people because some of the stuff that you’re hearing will impact you I think, assuming you’re not one of the dopey ones, in ways that you can’t imagine perhaps five years from now, ten years from now, I don’t know. Anyway, it’s very, I had to figure this out fast, the ladders to success are really pretty simple. They’re simple, though not easy. Let’s think of it as a four-step ladder. You got it? Four steps. Write it down. Four steps. Step one, work for free. Now, in this first step, you’re working for free. Your friends are getting $12 an hour. So the score on the first step is you zero, they 12. Who’s winning at that point in the story? But write it down. It won’t be long. Now you don’t have to stay on that step long if you’ve got a brain. If you come in early, stay late, say thank you to the person that gave you the opportunity to work for free, say thank you to them about twice a week, it won’t be long. It won’t be long. But come in about an hour early, stay about an hour late. First one in, last one out. It won’t be long. Now you graduate to the second step pretty quickly. Pretty quickly. Step two is you work below the market. They work at the market. See, let me tell you about that one. That’s where you make six an hour. They make twelve. What’s the score on the second step? They’re still winning. The score, six, twelve, they’re winning and they’re laughing at you and your friends are laughing at you. but not to worry it won’t be long now we move graduate pretty quickly up to the third step that’s you work for market they get 12 you get 12 now we’ve got game time but since you’re willing to come in early and stay late since you don’t believe that Christmas is a month you think it’s a day thank you an afternoon, not a week, it won’t be long. Now in step four, they’re making twelve and you’re making a fortune. And I’ll tell you why that last part happens, which is the part you’ve been waiting for. Write this down. If you don’t hear me say anything else today, you better remember this. Three words. Actually five words. I’m lying. Alright. I told you I was dyslexic. Write it down. Profits are better than wages. What the heck did I just say? You better understand that. Now, son, I don’t want to have to repeat it again. Profits are better than wages. Now, let’s say you don’t believe me. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that. Who said that? Well, let’s ask a question, shall we? Are rich people, did rich people make their wealth through profits or wages? Which one? Right. Did poor people make their money through profits or wages? Which one? Now you’re starting to catch on, b****. Isn’t this something? Now, not at first. Not at first. All right. So I haven’t sworn too much, have I? It’s not too bad. Okay. Good. All right. Now, I became obsessed with a question. For reasons that I imagine you can understand, I became obsessed with a question. This one question that I became obsessed with 35 years ago has driven me to come to see you today. It has obsessed my life for 35 years. The question is, since I was working alongside, unexpectedly, the biggest stars in the world, the biggest, most famous, successful people in the world, which I had no preparation for or no expectation of, I started to ask a question. super successful people knew, did, carried around inside themselves that got them to break out. Was there something super successful people knew, did, habits that allowed them to succeed significantly where other people just may have succeeded modestly. Were there secrets to super success? I said super success. I didn’t say the regional manager of Starbucks. I said the guy who started Starbucks. Are there any? Now, remember, I have a really important reason for asking that question, don’t I? Because I didn’t get good cards. And if there was no secrets to super success, if super success was just a matter of being in the right place at the right time, then I’m screwed. So I had a deep need to ask this question and see if there were secrets and were the secrets transferable in any way, shape, or manner. At first, it appeared that there were none. So I said, okay, what do Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates have in common, except they got a lot of dough? Didn’t seem like anything. What do Michael Jordan and Bill Clinton have in common? Didn’t seem like anything. So at first, my questioning led me to a frustrating answer that I didn’t want. Because that means I’m screwed. But I stuck with it. And I stuck with it not for a day or a week or a month or a year, but longer. I kept asking the question again and again and again and again and again. Over years, I thought I saw at the outer edges of the desert, of the dry desert, I thought I saw a tiny patch of green. Maybe there was some water there. And so I kept asking the question and I came to discover, came to conclude I should say, that indeed there was three qualities present in all super successful people. Now this is not successful people, this is super successful people. Three qualities present, a hundred times out of a hundred, they’re natural laws just like Just like gravity you don’t have to believe in them for them to work Right See this thing here, it’s a Christmas ball Now what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna hold this ball up here Yeah, and then at the count of three, I’d like you all please to say loudly all of you, I don’t believe in gravity. Okay? Here we go. One, two, three. I don’t believe in gravity. Gravity doesn’t give a rat’s ass what you believe. That’s just how it is. That’s just how it is. That’s called a natural law, son. See? Now, here are the qualities. I’m going to try to do them in a memorable way. We’ll call them three magic O’s, write them down. In fact, if I can, I don’t know if I can do this. If I walk out without a microphone, will that screw the filming up? Maybe? Best if I kept the microphone. There you go. All right. First Magico. All super successful people had a quality present 100 times burning Maniacal rage as if their life Depended on it all super successful people had a quality present in them that we refer to as an obsession a Burning maniacal rage as if your life depended on it Obsession is different than ambition. Did you get that? I like it, cool. Now, obsession is different than ambition. See, you all know ambitious folks who can’t find their way out of a burning building. Obsession is something different. More primal, more intense. Number two, optimism. But the optimism that super successful people had was very unique. It was very paradoxical. Let me tell you what it wasn’t. It wasn’t naive. It didn’t sound like Mr. Rogers. If I’m a good person, good things will happen to me. Not necessarily. Not necessarily. It was an optimism that was paradoxical. It was an optimism that was born, created, after a militant need to face the brutal facts. And here, my dear friends, were the brutal facts that our super successful friends discovered when they peered out into the face of destiny. Number one, the game is not easy. Did you hear me? The game is not easy. Number two, the game is not fair. By the way, a little history lesson for you friends. Let me help you. The game was never fair. It wasn’t fair 50 years ago. It wasn’t fair 200 years ago. It’s not fair today and it’s not going to be fair in 50 years. It’s going to be what it is. What is it going to be? About what it’s always been. About what it’s always been, which is not fully fair now we work to make it a little better Whatever it is we try to make a little better, right? But it’s not easy, and it’s not fair But our super successful people had the paradoxical optimism to believe that though. It’s not easy and though It’s not fair With a not burning maniacal rage the God darn game is winnable, though not easy and though not fair. And then maybe Clay will teach us, well, yeah, if you’re willing to pay the price. So the first is obsession. The second is optimism. The third is obligation. Our super successful friends had a weird, wacky relationship with their keeping their word principally to themselves. When they said they’d do something Wednesday at 10 a.m., it didn’t mean Thursday at 4.30. On the very, very, very rare occasions that our super successful friends did not keep their word for one reason or another, who do you think our super successful friends blamed? How about that for rare? They held themselves responsible. They didn’t come into a meeting ten minutes late, breathing real heavy, oh my god, there’s so much traffic. Why is it young people like saying oh my god so much? I don’t get it. And particularly our young female friends, they like that. OMG, OMG, oh. God darn it. Okay. So, they kept their word. They had a reverence for time. Their word was their bond. They didn’t quit jobs through a text message. See, we have a word for people who do that. Right? We have a phrase describing people who do s***. Or don’t even do the text message. What would we call someone like that? That’s called a dumb f***. That’s a loser. See, that’s a loser. And remember one thing, friends, because it breaks your d*** hard. It really does. Remember one thing. If I lend you $20, what’s your name, son? Jared? If I lend Jared $20 and he doesn’t pay me back, let me tell you what we call that. May I? That’s a good investment. See, that’s a good investment for only twenty dollars. I got to find out who that young man is for just twenty dollars. Ain’t that something? And that’s ten Pepsi’s come on alright so with obligation keeping your word your word is your bond particularly to yourself they made goals that were measurable clear written shared they Measurable, clear, written, shared. They made goals that were written, shared, measurable, and clear. Here’s what they did not say, and here’s what they did say. They did not say, you know, Mary, next year I’m going to lose some weight. They didn’t say that. What they said is eight pounds August 1st. Interesting. Goals that are measurable. They have deadlines. Do you see that? Did you notice that? Now, with the third O, which is obligation. The first O was obsession. The second was optimism. And the third is obligation, which is a reverence for your word, time. With the third O comes today’s only voluntary homework. I’m going to give you a homework assignment. It’s voluntary. It’s the best kind of homework because you you don’t have to do it. It will require, you can do this voluntary homework assignment in 10 minutes or less, you can do it for free, and you can do it in the next 24 hours. If you do it, if you make the decision to do this voluntary homework assignment that or less, for free and under 24 hours, I will give you a 100% money back guarantee that it will change your life radically, instantly, and permanently. It’s a pretty big promise. In the next 24 hours you have to go home and make a commitment to fire your flaky friends. In the next 24 hours you have to go home and make a commitment to fire your flaky friends. Because nothing, nothing, nothing will interfere with your capacity to reach your full and greatest human potential, like the second-hand fumes of flakiness. Nothing will interfere with your capacity to reach your full and greatest human potential like the second-hand fumes of flakiness. Nothing will interfere with your capacity to reach your full and greatest human potential like the second-hand fumes of flakiness. And now, without any further ado… 3… 2… 1… Boom! Stop what you’re doing and think about this for a second. What would happen if your company was suddenly able to generate exponentially more quality sales leads? That would be incredible! What would happen if your company came up at the top or near the top of the Google search engine results. Well, I would just feel overwhelmed with all that business. How many thousands of dollars in lost sales, or millions of dollars in lost sales, are you missing out on, simply because your potential customers can’t find you when they go online to search for the products and services that you offer? I refuse to think that thought, because I don’t want any more business. Unless you are a dirty communist that hates money, my new book, Search Engine Domination, will help you grow your business. In my new book, Search Engine Domination, we will teach you the specific steps that you need to take to dominate the search engine results. What do you mean by dominate? You see, in my new book, Search Engine Domination, we will teach you the specific steps that you need to take to dominate search engine results. Download your free e-book copy today at thebestseobook.com. I repeat that, thebestseobook.com. My name is Amy Baltimore and I am a CPA in Covington, Tennessee. I’ve been working with the Thrive Team now for about a year. One of the first things that they did was to update my website and my search engine optimization. I prior had a website, but I was not being found on Google, and all of my new business was coming through referrals from friends, family, etc. And right away, I started to see results. People were calling and coming in saying that they found me on Google. They just googled CPA near me and there I was at the top of the page. And so, it’s been a great help to my business. Again, you can download your free e-book copy today at TheBestSEObook.com. Hey, this is Dustin Huff. I’m with Keystone Harbor Marina. We joined Thrive back in January and have been working with these guys for about seven months. During that time period, we have moved up our Google rank through reviews and SEO processes that we’ve compiled through these guys. Our leads have gone from about four a week to now 165 a week. So the process works. I will tell you from experience, once you begin, you have to stay with it as long as you continually do this week in and week out month in and month out You’ll continually grow the system works, but nothing works unless you do you’ve got to take some action Download the ebook for free today at the best SEO book.com Hello, my name is Daniel Daniel’s heating air here in Amarillo, Texas The way Google has affected my business. We have got a lot of calls from Google right now It’s July and we’ve had the best month ever And it took us about eight to ten months to get on top of Google And I’m glad we did remember nothing works unless you do you have to go to the best SEO book Calm today download the ebook for free just just download that ebook for free and you’ll be off to the races Hi, my name is Christina Niemus. I’m the owner and operator of Angel Touch Autobody and Detailing in Bourne, Massachusetts. We have been working with Thrive and their coaching for, say, eight to nine months. And it took us about six months, five to six months, to get on the top of Google and with their help with the website and marketing and the SEO and retargeting ads with Google and it has been phenomenal. We just have light and day business coming in, phone calls coming in, walk-ins, referrals. It’s just through the roof and we couldn’t be happier. At the moment, we are up 50% this year from the previous year and not only is that part of our own hard work and diligence, but also with the help of Thrive and what they’ve done for us and getting us on the top of Google and you know all their knowledge and coaching And yeah, so super grateful super Pumped to see what the future holds for all of us. Thank you This is your year to thrive Success you will find Today is your day and now is your time Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. Proverbs 10, 4. I’m here to tell you, you can do it if you can just motivate yourself. Twelve dimensions had to cut off a few, so on the day D, you and I could rendezvous. A misshapen tree that I had to prune, I had to make cuts to be here daily at noon. So, like a tidal wave, a knowledge monsoon, I could reign on the parade of those who doubt and you Are you the next Rockefeller or the next guru? Or the next Dr. King who’s changing the rules? If I wasn’t in your way, would you run right through? Like a running back, just the one that’s up to you I remember my days back in the dorm room Tuned to the gloom like the temple of doom Overwhelmed with the doubts that try to consume My hope for the future that I could pursue But from the mountain top now I can conclude That you have what it takes if you want the view to work. This is your year to thrive, success you will find. Today is your day, and now is your time. It’s your year to thrive, success you will find. Today is your day, and now is your time. This moment is profound, cause you’re above the ground Your road might have been rough, but what you got now is now We’re here to pick you up, and to even show you how But you gotta be responsible with that old plow plow Started from the bottom, but I worked my way up Cause by 4am I always been prayed up Rise and grind, now’s your time, don’t give up You gotta get it, don’t quit it, till you see it’s grown up See it, see it, your year to thrive Come on, come on, success you will find Today is your day. And now is your time. It’s your time. If you’re here to thrive. Come on. Come on. Success you will find. Today is your day. And now is your time. It’s your time. We all have a wish and we all want to win. But we cannot begin without self-discipline. If you fall on your face, put yourself up again, I taught yourself to close not playin’ with a friend when the storm’s gettin’ rough and it’s gotta end, you only dealin’ with yourself and what you believe, we believe in you, but not as much as God does, if you’re goin’ through hell, he’s got nothing but love, apply what you’ve learned, increase what you’ve learned, and in due time you’ll have money to burn, apply what you’ve learned, increase what you’ve learned, and in due time you got money to burn, apply what you’ve learned, increase what you’ve earned, in due time you’ve got money to burn, so apply what you’ve learned, increase what you’ve earned, in due time you’ve got money to burn, with this beautiful miracle I’d like to shout down the doubters, kill the weeds that be giving you dream flowers, empower you to devour all the obstacles that make your sweet dreams sour, as for me I used to stutter, but now I’m on the microphone smooth like butter If I can do it, I know you can too But you must stick to it like postage do And while Merton’s on the chorus, singing what he sings I encourage you to dream big dreams Today is your day Today’s your day And now is your time It’s your time This is your year to fly Sing it, sing it Success you will find Today is your day It’s your day And now is your time. Today is your day, and now is your time. Today is your day, and now is your time. I realize I can’t sing like that, but I can talk and play the woodblock. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma. And we have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah. So what we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now. Okay. I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex. They’re both 1.3 billion dollar companies. They both have two to three thousand pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually non-existent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has. By being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on what they’re listing and ranking there with Google. And also we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, you know, asking our customers for reviews. And now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pest and Lawn company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. Okay, so 411% we’re up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now our closing rate is about 85% and that’s largely due to, first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive in the refining process. And that has obviously, the 411% shows that that system works. Yeah, so here’s a big one for you. So last week alone, our booking percentage was 91%. We actually booked more deals, more new customers last year than we did the first five months, or I’m sorry, we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year from before we worked with Thrive. So again, we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. It’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success is by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews. That way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists. Everything gets done and it gets done right. It creates accountability. We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned that has really really contributed to our success, but that like is of the diligence and consistency and doing those and that system has really really been a big blessing in our lives and also you know, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten a success from following those systems. So before working with Thrive, we were basically stuck. Really no new growth with our business. And we were in a rut, and we didn’t know. Oh, sorry. The last three years, our customer base had pretty much stayed the same. We weren’t shrinking, but we weren’t really growing either. Yeah, and so we didn’t really know where to go, what to do, how to get out of this rut that we’re in. But Thrive helped us with that. You know, they implemented those systems, and they taught us those systems, they taught us the knowledge that we needed in order to succeed. Now it’s been a grind, absolutely it’s been a grind this last year. But we’re getting those fruits from that hard work and the diligent effort that we’re able to put into it. So again, we were in a rut, Thrive helped us get out of that rut. And if you’re thinking about working with Thrive, quit thinking about it and just do it. Do the action and you’ll get the results. It will take hard work and discipline, but that’s what it’s going to take in order to really succeed. So, we just want to give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore. I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients the previous year to over 180 new patients in the same month. And overall, our average is running about 40% to 42% increase month over month, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing to use the services, you’re choosing to use a proof-and-turn-key marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you’re looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983, and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. Clay’s done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with like Lee Crockwell, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with like Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, graphic designers, and web developers. They run 160 companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. In the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every 6-8 weeks, he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every 6-8 weeks, he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up. He teaches people a 13-step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires, helping them grow their companies. I’ve seen guys from start-ups go from start-up to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, organizing everything in their head to building into a franchisable, scalable business. One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So amazing guy. Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is like, he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. That’s what I like the most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time, a coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. I was really most impressed with him is when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me he’s like, I’m not going to touch it, I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run and the guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right and anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate. help navigate any time I’ve got nervous or worried about how to run the company or you know navigating competition and an economy that’s like I remember we got closed down for three months he helped us navigate on how to stay open how to how to get back open how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns lockdowns. I’m Rachel with Tip Top K9 and we just want to give a huge thank you to Clay and Vanessa Clark. Hey guys I’m Ryan with Tip Top K9. Just want to say a big thank you to Thrive 15. Thank you to Make Your Life Epic. We love you guys, we appreciate you, and really just appreciate how far you’ve taken us. This is our old house. Right, this is where we used to live a few years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See, it’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing and this is our old team. And by team I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new house with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from four to fourteen and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman. So we didn’t need that. We needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out into systems, into manuals and scripts and actually build a team. So now that we have systems in place, we’ve gone from one to 10 locations in only a year. In October 2016, we grossed 13 grand for the whole month. Right now it’s 2018, the month of October. It’s only the 22nd, we’ve already grossed a little over 50 grand for the whole month, and we still have time to go. We’re just thankful for you, thankful for Thrive and your mentorship, and we’re really thankful that you guys have helped us to grow a business that we run now instead of the business running us. Just thank you, thank you, thank you times a thousand. My name is Taylor Hall. I’m the general manager of the Tulsa Oilers professional hockey team. You know our goal every night here at the BOK Center is to try to fill the seats with with lots of people and create a you know an exciting environment so when somebody comes come back. Working with Clay and the staff at Thrive, they’ve really helped us in many, many ways. Website and graphic design and video production and a lot of things that go along. A lot of businesses, including ours, doesn’t have a staff or a full-time videographer or graphic designer. But the biggest thing that we noticed was the needle mover. More sales, more attendance, more successes in business. We had a record year last season working with Clay for the first time. Our average attendance is higher than it’s ever been. So there’s a lot of really cool things that we did and they worked. That’s the nice thing about working with Clay and the team over there. It’s just not one person, you get the entire team. If you need video design and editing and production, they’ve got that. If you need graphic design, if you need some coaching, your sales people, and call scripts, PR, they offer all that. Clay was instrumental in helping, guiding us, and getting us on the right track so that we could really raise the bar and become ultra successful. So it’s been an amazing experience for us. Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do with like running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with like Lee Crockwell, head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with like Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, graphic designers, and web developers. They run 160 companies every single week. Think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. So in the weekly he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13-step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires helping them grow their companies. So I’ve seen guys from startups go from startup to being multi-millionaires, teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, making it, putting it into, organizing everything in their head to building it into a franchisable, scalable business. One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So amazing guy. Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is like, he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. That’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that we became friends. I was really most impressed with him is when I was shadowing him one time. We went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it. I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right and anyways, just an amazing man. He impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate any time I’ve gotten nervous or worried about how to run the company or navigating competition and an economy that’s like, I remember we got closed down for three months. He helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to get back open, how to just survive through all the COVID shutdowns, lockdowns because our clubs were all closed for three months. And you have $350,000 of bills you’ve got to pay, and we have no accounts receivable. He helped us navigate that. And of course, we were conservative enough that we could afford to take that on for a period of time. But he was a great man. I’m very impressed with him. So Clay, thank you for everything you’re doing and I encourage you if you haven’t worked with Clay, work with Clay. He’s going to help magnify you and there’s nobody I have ever met that has the ability to work as hard as he does. He probably sleeps four, maybe six hours a day and literally the rest of time he’s working and he can outwork everybody in the room every single day and he loves it. So anyways, this is Charles Kola with Kola Fitness. Thank You Clay and anybody out there that’s wanting to work with Clay it’s a great great opportunity to ever work with him so you guys have a blessed one this is Charles Kola we’ll see you guys bye bye. Hi I’m Aaron Antis with Shaw Homes. I first heard about Clay through a mortgage lender here in town who had told me what a great job he had been doing for them. And I actually noticed he was driving a Lamborghini all of a sudden, so I was willing to listen. In my career, I’ve sold a little over $800 million in real estate. So honestly, I thought I kind of knew everything about marketing and homes. And then I met Clay, and my perception of what I knew and what I could do definitely changed. After doing $800 million in sales over a 15-year career, I really thought I knew what I was doing. I’ve been managing a large team of salespeople for the last 10 years here with Shaw Homes. And, I mean, we’ve been a company that’s been in business for 35 years. We’ve become one of the largest builders in the Tulsa area and that was without Clay. So when I came to know Clay, I really thought, man, there’s not much more I need to know, but I’m willing to listen. The interesting thing is our internet leads from our website has actually in a four-month period of time has gone from somewhere around 10 to 15 leads in a month to 180 internet leads in a month. Just from the few things that he’s shown us how to implement that I honestly probably never would have come up with on my own. So I got a lot of good things to say about the system that Clay put in place with us and it’s just been an incredible experience. I am very glad that we met and had the opportunity to work with Clay. So the interaction with the team and with Clay on a weekly basis is honestly very enlightening. One of the things that I love about Clay’s perspective on things is that he doesn’t come from my industry. He’s not somebody who’s in the home building industry. I’ve listened to all the experts in my field. Our company has paid for me to go to seminars, international builder shows, all kinds of places where I’ve had the opportunity to learn from the experts in my industry. But the thing that I found working with Clay is that he comes from such a broad spectrum of working with so many different types of businesses that he has a perspective that’s difficult for me to gain because I get so entrenched in what I do I’m not paying attention to what other leading industry experts are doing and Clay really brings that perspective for me. It is very valuable time every week when I get that hour with him. From my perspective the reason that any business owner who’s thinking about hooking up with Thrive needs to definitely consider it is because the results that we’ve gotten in a very short period of time are honestly monumental. It has really exceeded my wildest expectation of what he might be able to do. I came in skeptical because I’m very pragmatic and as I’ve realized it’s probably one of the best moves we’ve ever made. I think a lot of people probably feel like they don’t need a business or marketing consultant because they maybe are a little bit prideful and like to think they know everything. I know that’s how I felt coming in. I mean, we’re a big company that’s definitely one of the largest in town, and so we kind of felt like we knew what we were doing. And I think for a lot of people, they let their ego get in the way of listening to somebody that might have a better or different perspective than theirs. I would just really encourage you, if you’re thinking about working with Clay, I mean, the thing is, it’s month to month. Go give it a try and see what happens. I think in the 35-year history of Shaw Homes, this is probably the best thing that’s happened to us. I know if you give them a shot, I think you’ll feel the same way. I know for me, the thing I would have missed out on if I didn’t work with Clay is I would have missed out on literally an 1800% increase in our internet leads. Going from 10 a month to 180 a month, that would have been a huge financial decision to just decide not to give it a shot. I would absolutely recommend Clay Clark to anybody who’s thinking about working with somebody in marketing. I would skip over anybody else you were thinking about and I would go straight to Clay and his team. I guarantee you’re not going to regret it because we sure haven’t. My name is Danielle Sprick and I am the founder of D. Sprick Realty Group here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After being a stay-at-home mom for 12 years and my three kids started school and they were in school full-time, I was at a crossroads and trying to decide what do I want to do? My degree and my background is in education, but after being a mom and staying home and all of that, I just didn’t have a passion for it like I once did. My husband suggested real estate. He’s a home builder, so real estate and home building go hand in hand, and we just rolled with it. I love people, I love working with people, I love building relationships, but one thing that was really difficult for me was the business side of things. The processes and the advertising and marketing, I knew that I did not have what I needed to make that what it should be. So I reached out to Clay at that time, and he and his team have been extremely instrumental in helping us build our brand, help market our business, our agents, the homes that we represent. Everything that we do is a direct line from Clay and his team and all that they’ve done for us. We launched our brokerage, our real estate brokerage, eight months ago. And in that time, we’ve gone from myself and one other agent agent to just this week we signed on our 16th agent. We have been blessed with the fact that we right now have just over 10 million in pending transactions. Three years ago, I never would have even imagined that I would be in this role that I’m in today, building a business, having 16 agents. But I have to give credit where credit’s due, and Clay and his team and the business coaching that they’ve offered us has been huge. It’s been instrumental in what we’re doing. Don’t ever limit your vision. When you dream big, big things happen. I started a business because I couldn’t work for anyone else. I do things my way. I do what I think is in the best interest of the patient. I don’t answer insurance companies. I don’t answer to large corporate organizations. I answer to my patient and that’s it. My thought when I opened my clinic was I can do this all myself. I don’t need additional outside help in many ways. I mean, I went to medical school. I can figure this out. But it was a very, very steep learning curve. Within the first six months of opening my clinic I had a $63,000 embezzlement. I lost multiple employees. Clay helped us weather the storm of some of the things that are just a lot of people experience, especially in the medical world. He was instrumental in helping with the specific written business plan. He’s been instrumental in hiring good quality employees, using the processes that he outlines for getting in good talent, which is extremely difficult. He helped me in securing the business loans. He helped me with web development and search engine optimization. We’ve been able to really keep a steady stream of clients coming in because they found us on the web. With everything that I encountered, everything that I experienced, I quickly learned it is worth every penny to have someone in your team that can walk you through and even avoid some of the pitfalls that are almost invariable in starting your own business. I’m Dr. Chad Edwards and I own Revolution Health and Wellness Clinic. Hi, my name is Josh Sperl from Sperl and Associates, Chartered Professional Accountants based out of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. And I started, I met Clay at a conference, at his conference in Tulsa in June of 2018. Started working with the coaching program shortly after there, you know the experience has been great. You really have a partner in the grind. You know most people, I like to say most people are wrong about most things about business most of the time. And it’s very difficult for entrepreneurs to connect with other entrepreneurs who actually know what they’re talking about when it comes to business but Clay and his team really does understand. The tangible improvements that we’ve seen is we’re up over 50% since starting with the coaching program and you know they’re helping to help business owners create time freedom and financial freedom and I know what you’re going to think. You’re going to say what the heck are you going to do with your time, freedom and financial freedom when you’re in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, that’s the most north of the city in North America with a million people. You know we’re probably just sitting in our igloos hoping for some television, but I’ll give you an idea of what we’re doing in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. So over here we have Sandra and we have Emma. Emma say hello. Hi everybody, this is my daddy’s channel. Emma really likes any video. So let’s see what actually the time freedom and financial freedom can do for you in Edmonton. So, believe it or not, we have a beach here guys. And I’ll take you on a little tour of Edmonton’s beach. Now it’s not what you Americans are going to think of as a beach. This is a northern beach. We’ve got a really cool slide here. I don’t know if you can see this purple slide. This purple slide that you’re looking at here is a full loop-a-loop. It’s not completely upside down when you go in here. Let’s see if I can get the right angle here. You know, that does not appear physically possible, but it really is going to knock you upside down. Went on it last time. And here is the Edmonton Beach. This is the Northern Beach. You guys out in Tulsa, you Americans think you have all the beaches here, but here is the Northern Beach, complete with waves. We got 30 degree weather inside here. I’m sorry, 30, that’s 90 for you guys over there. I got to do the translation, the math in my head. We even got a zip line that we can ride down here. And this is what we’re doing with our time freedom and financial freedom in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Thanks to the Thrive Time team. Thanks very much, guys. Hey, Eric, it’s Ron Howell. I just wanted to express to you and to Clay how excited and appreciative we are about this relationship. And, uh, I’ve been here, results of the, uh, just a couple of days run on the rental boats that you guys are extraordinarily good at what you do. So, we’re excited. We want to do more, as all your customers do. So, we’ll keep figuring out how we can move forward on a variety of fronts. I’ve got Dusty from Brownies. Eyes are wide open now. Anyway, the main thing is thanks so much. Really appreciate everything you guys have done for us and are doing. Looking forward to the future. Thanks, Eric. Please pass that along to Clay, if you would, as well. Thanks, everybody. This is Brent Starks with United Slending from Stewart, Florida. To give a shout out to Thrive Time Show and Clay Clark. We’ve been with them for what, three years now. We’ve been working with them to help us with our systems, get our arms around our numbers, get some great systems in place as far as marketing, working with our Dream 100, holding us accountable. And so actually hooking us up with a lot of fine vendors as well that saved us a lot of time and those referrals really helped us out as well. But we’ve seen tremendous success putting those in place, getting our Google reviews, our video testimonials, all of those things coming together as a full marketing plan has really helped us out. So we can’t say thank you enough for Clay Clark, Thrive Time, and Andrew Bloomer, who’s worked with us for three years now. So, wonderful job guys. Thank you for all you do. My name is Joe Lai, and I’m with Kirkpatrick & Law Orthodontics. At Kirkpatrick & Law Orthodontics, we create beautiful smiles by straightening kids’ teeth and adults’ teeth. The services that Clay and his team provide would be something like how to get more customers into my business and get the message out that I’m the best orthodontist in Tulsa. It does that by social media. We get the word out through videos and pictures. Being just top of mind awareness as he would always say. Also how to reach out and create that bond with my referring doctors. He helped me kind of get somebody in house to go out and meet doctors. And help me kind of continue building that relationship while I do the work. Website, the website is so majorly important. We get several patients through our website and what he’s doing is there’s a certain way that you want your website to look and certain content because you want call to action items in your website, and we didn’t have that before so now we get seven or eight new patients just through the website alone. Clay and his team are, I would just say they’re over the top. I mean, nothing is too big, nothing is too grand for Clay and his staff and his team. I mean, he says boom, he really means it. I mean, they over deliver, really, to be honest with you. And they come up with ideas that are just top notch and if you don’t like something, great, move on. He’ll figure out something that works for your style and your identity. But I would just say the biggest thing for Clay and his team is they over deliver. Clay and his team help kind of create that culture also for your business that, hey, we got to get things done in a timely manner. So there is a sense of urgency that he creates, and a lot of it is just through his enthusiasm. He’s always on the go, so it kind of puts you on that same mindset of, hey, let’s get this done, let’s work hard, but let’s also have fun with it. When I went to orthodontic school, we got zero training on marketing. Actually, when we got out of school, when I got out of school 18 years ago, it was kind of taboo to actually do any marketing. The most you could do is put your name in the yellow pages. And so now it’s pretty common knowledge and pretty mainstream to go ahead and get your name out there, tell everybody your story, who you are, what you’re about. If you don’t do that, it’s a leg of your business that you’re lagging behind. Because you could be the best or the honest or the best, whatever, but if people don’t know that, then you won’t get the customers coming in. I meet with Clay and his team on every Friday about 11 o’clock and to be honest with you, at the beginning I wasn’t that thrilled with it, coming in every week, this kind of seemed like a lot, but for me, I find the marketing aspect interesting. I enjoy it, I love working with Clay, I think it’s the main reason why. I’ve kind of built a relationship with him, I think it got to a level now where we’re pretty good friends. And so, to me it’s enjoyable. I really enjoy the creativity and how when you put the energy into it and the work into it, how everything kind of comes back and it works. I’ve worked with Clay and his team for about, I think it’s gotten better and things have grown more every year. I’ve been trying to get my wife and her pediatric dentist office and our partners on board with Clay for a while. I just saw that they were kind of getting stagnant in their practice slow for them and they needed more referrals. And I knew that Clay could definitely help them out by even just one thing which would be change the website. And just by doing that you’re gonna get patients very easily. But another thing too is that they needed to change their culture and their mindset of how to bring in patients and creating a brand as well for them and giving them more of an identity so the whole staff can kind of rally around them. For anybody that’s coming out of school or just starting new with a business of any sort, be it medical or anything of that nature, I would highly recommend Clay helping you create that business model. We’re trained to do what we’re trained to do, but we’re not trained to do the business aspect or the marketing or how to deal with patient or our staff. So Clay can pretty much do all that, but what I like the most about Clay and his staff is that everything’s in-house. I don’t have to go to one place to do my website. I don’t have to go somewhere to do my videos. I don’t have to go to another place to shoot photographs, somewhere else to do web content or team coaching or entrepreneurship. Clay pretty much is the total package. He’s really a great mentor. So if you’re new and starting a business and you want to avoid all the pitfalls, I would definitely hook up with Clay and his team. If someone’s not using Clay and his team to help build their business, they’re missing out on a lot. There are so many details and so many aspects of creating a business that Clay really makes it simple, makes it fun, and you learn so much in a short amount of time that I think he’s the best entrepreneur, business coach, marketer, you name it. The guy and his team’s got it all going on. Well, Thrive Nation, we have so many wonderful people like you on our website every day checking out the podcast. And I wanted to take a moment to celebrate the success of a long-time client that we’ve had the pleasure of working with for a while, so that they can complain and tell you all the terrible things that we make them do en route to growing their business. And so now without any further ado, we have the owners of Cornerstone Fence. Welcome guys, how are you? Hey, we’re good. How are you? I am doing great. Now just so people can know you’re not a hologram, could you guys kind of introduce yourselves, tell us your name and where you’re from, just so people can verify you’re not a hologram. I’m Danica, I’m one of the owners, and this is my husband, Jordan. My name is Jordan. We started Cornerstone Fence about three years ago. I’m a full-time firefighter, so it started as just something to do on my off days, make a little bit of extra money. And about a year and a half ago, we went to a business conference that Clay had out at his place, and we decided that maybe instead of building fences as a hobby, maybe we should actually turn this into a business and start trying to grow the business. How did you originally hear about us? How did that conversation come about? I’ll pick on Danica here. How did that conversation come about? Initially it was the first Reawaken America tour that we went to. One of my friends was like, hey, you should definitely go to the business conference beforehand. It was a shortened version, I guess, in the morning before the Reawaken America conference in the afternoon. Really, one of my friends was just like, this could really help you. Just the tools that you gave us in the shortened version of the business conference were just mind bombs going off. Now, as far as the growth, you two work together, and I’ll pick on Jordan here for this. What kind of growth have you guys experienced, maybe a percentage, or what kind of growth have you seen since we started working with you guys? The first year we were in business, I maybe did four or five fences. Like I say, it was not a hobby necessarily. I don’t consider fence a hobby, but it was three or four fences the first year, so we maybe did $30,000 in fences. Second year, which was still before you, we maybe were on pace to do about $70,000 or $80,000 total revenue. And then we started with you in October of 21. 22. October of 22. And so that first year with you and putting your systems in place, really going after the Google reviews and trying to grow the company, we went from roughly like $80,000 to $700,000 in total revenue. So that was last year. And then this year, we’re hoping our goal is $1.5 million this year. And I mean this, and I’m not just saying this because you’re here. I really do love working with you guys. Our team is always speaking so kindly about you guys. I don’t tell my team, guys, run around saying nice things about these people. But you know, work with a client, I mean we’re working on the website, we’re working on the photography, the video, it’s a lot of interaction. And every week you have a coaching meeting with Andrew. And Andrew loves working with you guys. So can you maybe share Danica what it’s like to have Andrew helping you implement the system and program that I’ve created? What’s it like working with him on a weekly basis? Andrew’s phenomenal. He always brings so much wisdom to our meetings. You know, every problem that we have, he has an optimistic and realistic solution to it. And just the accountability in general, like it’s hard being accountable every single week to update your sheet, to update your tracking sheet, to track all your leads and just the accountability is, I don’t think we’d be where we are if we didn’t have that kind of accountability and just him constantly bringing us encouragement, realistic solutions, different resources we can look to just to continue to find solutions for some of the issues that we run into. Now, you know, I call this the core repeatable actionable processes, aka the crap. You know there’s all these self help books about the big idea and the vision and get your mind set but there’s very few books about the core repeatable actionable processes the stuff behind the stuff and I find that people like yourself Shawholmes.com, Oxifresh.com, Steve Carrington.com people that have massive companies now but I’ve been working with these people for a lot of times, over 10 years. The people that do the best are the ones that like the core, repeatable, actionable processes, or they learn to appreciate them over time. And the people that struggle are the ones that are always looking for the new shiny thing. I’d love to get your idea, Jordan, on just the importance of knocking out these core, repeatable, actionable processes week after week, day after day, because really business coaching is about helping you guys grow, but it’s not an event, it’s more of a process. I’d love to get your thoughts on what it’s like to have those weekly meetings with Andrew. Yeah, they’ve been like Danica was saying, we like to think we’re organized, we like to think we hold ourselves accountable, but without that meeting every single, it’s just, it’s awesome because first we can see on a weekly basis how are we doing, where are we at, are we meeting the goals that we’re supposed to be meeting. So without that weekly meeting I would imagine that maybe we would get to it once a month maybe if we didn’t have the coaching. So first the accountability because we’re showing up every single Friday, same time, same location, and going over exactly what did we do this week. So just staying consistent with that and having the accountability has really changed our business for sure, for just having that business meeting every week. Danica, what do you think would happen without that weekly meeting and then that coaching with Andrew? What would happen with all these ideas you’ve learned at a conference or learned in books? I mean, what would happen to the plan? It would fall apart because then it’s like, oh, like you said, the big shiny thing in front of you, you can always have things that interfere with your day, but unless you have a plan and something that, a step that you know is going to hold you accountable, I mean, that’s one thing we learned doing business as husband and wife is it’s really hard for us to hold each other accountable so just yeah Andrew’s just phenomenal he’s having a plan and having a deadline like every Friday is the deadline so it’s like well half steps we’re supposed to do but if you don’t put a deadline to that and it was just me and her trying to do it by ourselves you know we might get it done in six months or eight months, but having that deadline, which is Friday, every single week is, and then we get like, well, why didn’t you do that? That was what you were supposed to do. It’s like, okay, yeah, we messed up this week, we’ll for sure get it done. Having a plan. And I wanted to touch on some of the things that you said we learn over time to like, it’s like, I remember when you first brought up the group interview, I’m like, that doesn’t work. There’s no way. And then now it’s like, we are group interview savvy. I tell everybody that owns a business, I’m like, do a group interview every single week. Because you never know when people are not going to be loyal. You think that they’re awesome. Well, you do, weekly almost. Having a plan and a deadline, how would you describe the importance of that, Danica? Having the plan and a deadline. Well, you can just get caught up in the roll of your week and before you know it, it’s Sunday and you’re starting Monday, first thing in the morning. So it’s like, just, you get caught up in the tumble and roll of everything. There’s constantly a burning fire, there’s constantly kids that are sick or kids that, something can always distract you and take you away from the necessary things you need to do to be successful and if you just sometimes it’s cram time at three o’clock on Friday before I come down and meet Andrew it’s like oh we’re gonna get the tracking sheet updated but I don’t know what we would do without that we think we’re making money but unless you know on paper and can see it in black and white, it’s a life changer. Now I want to ask you this, Jordan. What I did when I built my first company, DJConnection.com, and I don’t wish this on anybody, but I grew up very poor and I got a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV, just like you’re a firefighter. I was working three jobs, and I didn’t know what to do. So I would go to these seminars where they’d have these get-rich-quick, get motivated people and they would say, you know, for $4,000 a month and a six month contract we’re going to teach you how to become successful. And then every meeting they never really taught the stuff. There was nothing really actionable. And then I would go, okay, now that I finally think I know what I need to do, do you guys do the website? They said, no. Do you guys do the graphic design? No. Do you guys help me with my bookkeeping or my tracking? No. Do you guys actually do print pieces, photography, videography? No. Do you help me optimize my website? No. Do you launch ads? No. Do you actually know the product? No. But it was all this big idea of just work on your business, not in your business. Could you maybe explain how the meetings are with Andrew? Because I think a lot of people when they think of business consulting or growth, they’re thinking of what I thought of was paying people $4,000 a month to talk in generalities and not get into the weeds? So the structure of the meeting, so when we come, first thing is, Wednesday of the week, hey, what’s going on? What’s going on in the business? What’s happening? Any big wins? After that, burning fires, is there anything major that we need to discuss or get off any big problems, fires that we need to put out right now. And then after that, we get into the items, some of our homework that we’re supposed to be working on. Are you guys doing this? Are you doing this? And then we get into our tracking sheet, exactly how much money came in, how much money went out, how many quotes, how many leads, like it’s very, very detailed, like way more detailed than I thought you could get. Exactly what our conversion rate is, how many quotes we did, how many customers we funded, why we funded them, what happened there. Did we do our group interview? Did we do our meetings? So, the tracking sheet, I think, our tracking sheet has probably 30, 25, 30 different metrics that we go over every single week. Everything from money to leads, to where are these leads coming from? Is this working? Do we need to adjust here? So it’s very tailored to our business. Yeah, one of my clients I was talking to, I talked to him just the other day, and he was telling me the story. He said, Clay, when I first hired you 12 years ago, he’s still a client 12 years later, he said, you helped me grow my gym, and then I learned those systems, and I hired you guys to help me grow my next business.” His next business is a lumber business. He sells lumber wholesale log cabins. The materials need to make log cabins. Now, he has a fencing business, but it’s in Idaho. He’s got fencing going on. He’s got the log cabin thing going on. He’s got the gym going on. He also owns a Tip Top K9 franchise. He told me, he said, the reason why I bought the Tip Top K9 franchise is I just knew it was the same systems that I could apply. I’d love to get your thoughts on that, Danica, because now that you’re kind of really learning the systems, is it helping you to view business differently now that you see that, wow, this system over here? Because you come to the conferences where there’s many different industries represented. Has that helped you to kind of view business differently? Oh, yeah, 100%. But before, it’s really easy to get emotional when it is your business and things aren’t working, they’re not systematized. But if you, having those systems in place and just knowing that that’s what you have to do every week, it’s not emotional, it’s a checklist item, or even a checklist, like what, why are we missing these tools? These are all the tools that we bought and this should be on this truck. So what happened here, if you don’t keep track of those things and have it takes the emotion out of it and makes it a system. So my final two questions I have for you guys and I’ll let you get back to having a great Saturday. A lot of our clients who work with our couples, a lot of more couples, this just in, a lot of more couples and you know my wife and I what we do is I run the daily operations and she loves accounting. That’s kind of her sheet music she likes to read. She likes to kind of sing that song, the accounting song. That’s kind of her world. And other couples I work with, they work together on everything. For anybody out there who is working with their spouse, how has that helped you guys? Because my wife and I, we don’t really talk about business at home and we don’t have any work-related conflict at home. It’s sort of like we have our lanes and we’ve figured that out at a young age. But I know a lot of couples, when you don’t have coaching, it can just be like a perpetual debate that never ends about how should we optimize the website or what’s the best route to hiring or what’s the most effective way to launch an ad. And it’s like, there’s a lot of debates going on. I’d love to get your thoughts, Danica. Has that helped at all, like on the home front at all? Oh yeah, we wouldn’t be where we are without the, just not having to think about the website, not having to think about where we stand because we have to discuss it every single week, and that time’s allotted for those discussions. And like you said, kind of our lanes, it’s, I’m like the phones, the at home, uploading pictures to Google, you know, all that, and he’s the face and the person that’s meeting and discussing the logistics of any project and directing the guys. So knowing your wing, staying in it, and just not having to think about our ad, that’s not having to think, that’s all on the back end and you guys take care of that. It helps me sleep at night. All right, that’s great. That’s a bonus right there. Now, final question I have for you guys, and I’ll go back to your husband on this one. So Jordan, for anybody out there who’s thinking about scheduling a 13-point assessment, when we did our 13-point assessment, it was a free assessment, a free initial meeting, or coming to a conference. We have scholarship tickets so that everybody out there can afford to go. So we tell people, it’s $250 for a ticket or whatever you want to pay. What would you say to anybody out there that’s thinking about coming to a conference or scheduling a 13-point assessment? I highly encourage it. When we came to the very first one and we had we didn’t know about your coaching stuff and the first part of that conference was a condensed version of the coaching and then you guys offered the 13-point assessment and Danica was like, I think we really need to do this. I was like, man, I don’t know. You know, we, like last year, you know, at this point, we’re doing like 50 or 60,000 in fences, total revenue. I was like, I don’t know, it’s just, we’re a tiny business. We don’t have like the skills to run a massive business. I was almost scared first to grow it, but very doubtful that something that we were running maybe could be a big business. It still sounds weird to say that we did $700,000 last year and this year that we’re hopefully on track and our goal is over a million dollars. In my mind, that still doesn’t compute because I guess I don’t consider myself like a successful business owner or I didn’t at least before. And so doing, really it all started with that coming to a conference and then doing that 13 point assessment and talking with you. Our first meeting was we came in and visited with you and I don’t know, it was just, it was totally, it freaked me out but it’s really changed the way that we view business, number one. How we run our business and has gotten us to this point where maybe we will this year be over a million dollars in total revenue. Can I give you a little little pro tip on the show? This is my little pro tip for you on the show. Do you want to hit two minutes? Yes. This is a real thing. This is a real real advice I would give you. One of my wonderful clients named Don Calvert with Score Basketball, he did this move and I’m giving you this move and everybody listening to the move. And what he did is he said you know in the future I’m going to start providing basketball Consulting for a wasso and soon. I’m going to start gathering I’m going to start servicing broken arrow now the time he was just in Bixby So I said so Don let’s go ahead and register the Google map for the office that you’re building Or the location you’re going to service and let’s go ahead and put a sprinkling of articles on Those search engine content and on those markets so that your phones will start ringing before you actually open up the new basketball training facility. And no exaggeration at all, his leads almost tripled by doing that, and then that created the growth and the justification. And I’m telling you, just a little secret between you and me and everybody watching, Oklahoma is in need of some serious professional fencing installers. I mean, I’m just telling you. So if you guys were to do what you’re doing and kind of start going down a little bit further down the highway, like registering a map in Owasso or Oklahoma City, or whatever markets you’re thinking about going to, and begin putting not a lot of energy, but a little bit of energy into calling your current happy customers and getting reviews and writing that content, you’ll start getting massive leads, and you’ll probably hit two million in the next 12 months. I’m just telling you because you guys have the systems, you’ve worked so hard to build these systems and I know you guys can continue to scale. Thank you guys for carving out time. Are you guys in like a pole barn here? Is this the man cave? Where are you guys? This is our big win of the week. Yeah, that’s the win of the week. We’re finally working on getting the shelf finished so we get better pricing on materials, storing it, and saving time instead of the crews. Right now the crews get here in the morning, then they go to the supplier, get materials, and then they go to the job site. You built this? Yeah. This is awesome. This is exciting. Yeah. This is a 40 by 60. Anyways, it’s exciting because this has been one of our big hangups is we need to get better pricing on materials, which is happening now. And the way you do that is you buy it in bulk, but you’ve got to have somewhere to store it. And so it’s all… Anyways, this is our big win of, I guess, really… Can I get a little tour? Can I get a tour real quick? Can you kind of walk us around real quick? This is awesome. I’m so excited for you guys. I love… Yeah. Does it smell like new wood? It does. Oh, yeah. Look at this. All right. So this is the front of the shop. And really, it’s at our house. So a lot of things is like, we wanted a commercial facility, but right now, that’s not in the budget. So we’re making do with what we have. So we got a 40 by 60 going in. So we got all the work trucks here behind us. Anyways, right now, it’s going to get us by until we hit that 1, 1.5, maybe 2 million. At that point, we’re going to go and start looking for commercial lanes. So, anyways, we’re going to store a lot of 2x4s, pickets, steel posts, like the bread and butter of what we do will be stored in here. And so garage doors are coming, hopefully in two or three weeks. Those take a little while. But we just got the concrete poured. So, it’s really a blank canvas right now. So, we got today we’re planning out shelving and we’re going to start storing everything and how to, I guess, try to make the best use of it. You’ve got to be pretty pumped up about this, huh? I’m super excited. We’re both very excited. Oh, this is awesome. Well, congratulations, guys. I know you guys have been putting in the hard work there. It’s good to see the paying off for you. And again, thank you so much for carving out time. And we’ll see you next week. Okay. Thank you so much, Clay. Take care, guys. Bye bye. Hey, Clay Clark and my Thrive peeps. Steve Currington, as you can tell, although I’m not wearing my signature green shirt as usual, but I am of Thrive and all the guys at Thrive Time and the show and everything that you guys have done. At Total Ending Concepts we have had tremendous growth and a lot of things changing, especially on the marketing front. And from a coaching perspective and from a web presence and branding and our internet leads are up, everything is hammering on all cylinders, and really we’re just trying to figure out how we can leverage the systems and the processes that we’re learning at Thrive more in our business. So now we’re setting up a lead tracking system that has been long overdue, and we’re doing lots of stuff, but I wanted to take a minute and say thank you, thank you, thank you to Thrive and Clay Clark and Dr. Z and everybody for all the help and helping us grow our business and hopefully buy more Lamborghinis like this the more we sell. So appreciate it guys. See ya. The Thrive Time 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 systems that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise cap? 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 with 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, but I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and 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 built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. 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’ve got to 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 tickets and if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you.