Holi-Plagues | How to Avoid the Self-Inflicted Poverty Caused By the Holi-Plagues | “A Little Sleep, A Little Slumber, A Little Folding of the Hands to Sleep, So Shall Thy Poverty Come As One That Travelleth.” – Proverbs 6:10-12

Audio Transcription

The house sure does look swell, Clark. Thanks, Eddie. It enhances your holiday spirit, dear Catherine. Eddie? The house is gorgeous, Clark. Eddie? I hope you didn’t do this all on our account, Clark. Kids, come on out here and see what Uncle Clark’s done to the house. Ready? Over eating and deadlines forgotten. Making excuses why your business does rotten. Because nobody else cares about how small your bank account’s gotten. Taking more time off will only make more problems. The hollow planes will kill us all. If we take off the Wednesday before the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. You have questions? America’s number one business coach has answers. It’s your Broda from Minnesota. Here’s another edition of Ask Clay Anything on the Thrive Time Business Coach radio show. Thrive Nation on today’s edition of the Ask Me Anything Thrive Time Show Podcast. I’m answering a question that’s been asked to me by our employees and our clients alike for years. They say, Clay, what are the holla plagues? There’s the holidays. You’ve all heard of the holla days. But a lot of people haven’t heard of the conjunction of taking the word holla and combining it with plagues, known as the holla plagues. So, Chup, I have written down what I believe to be the most accurate description of the holla plagues. But the holla plagues are the self-imposed famines and cash flow problems caused by small business owners who spend more money than they have, while simultaneously, you have to do both, simultaneously spending less time in the business. Good examples of the holoplegs would be the week of Thanksgiving, maybe fall break, spring break, the last entire two weeks of December, the week and the weekend of Memorial Day, the week and weekend of the fourth, etc. Small business owners also kill themselves throughout the year by acting like they have unlimited paid time off and paid sick days throughout the year. I call this the holoplegs. Chup, Andrew, Andrew you’ve been with us for a while now. How real are the holoplegs? It’s crazy. People just decide that it’s a specific day that the nation’s decided to celebrate and they must take off the business even though their bills are still coming in and they’re not making any money. What about taking the entire week off around a holiday? How often do you see that scenario? That happens all the time. Everyone decides the week, the day before, the day before Festivus, the day before the day before Festivus. All these days you’re supposed to take off just because it’s expected. It’s what’s the standard for our culture. When you think about it, Chris, Thanksgiving is on a Thursday. We’re not going to work Friday, so you might as well take a Wednesday off. And you can do that if you have the financial resources to do it. Right. But just simply taking off an entire week and acting like you’re an employee when you’re not. Well, and the crazy part is, it’s not just that. It’s that your customers are still out there wanting you or your services or your products. And so you’re like literally turning down growth. You’re turning down more money, not just… So let me explain this to the listeners so we get this idea. Elephant in the Room, our men’s grooming lounge chain, we close the business every Sunday. Why? Because it can be profitable in six days and it’s a value that I have. I want to have the employees, I want to give them the time to be off on Sundays. I want it to be a family day. I want them to be able to observe the Sabbath. I want them to be off to do whatever they want to do on the seventh day of the week. But if we weren’t profitable, it wouldn’t make any sense to give them off on Sunday if we couldn’t sustain ourselves. Another example would be elephant in the room. We don’t open our stores, I believe, until 11 in the morning, right, Andrew? Yes, sir. And the reason why is because people want to get their haircuts up to 8 o’clock at night, and I want our employees to have some semblance of life balance, and so we don’t open the stores until 11. We were closed on Thanksgiving and the day after Thanksgiving. Why? Because I wanted our employees to have some semblance of balance and to be able to enjoy time with family. I know a lot of family comes in out of town, and I wanted all the employees to be able to enjoy that time. However, we do work on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. However, we do stay open till 8. There’s a balance there. At Thrive, what time does our typical workday start, Tevin, up there at Thrive offices? We start typically around 6 for the coaches and then 8 I think the team starts getting there. And we work until about 5 o’clock typically and we go 4 days a week. Why do we work Monday through Thursday, Devin? What do you think the move, why have we decided to go Monday through Thursday? Because we work really hard. I believe that we have the best team and the best coaching program in the world. And to do that, we have to grind and work really hard. And so what we can get done in four days is usually even more than some places can get done in a month. Also, we have conferences that are once every two months. That requires working all weekend. And we have the Thrive. We have the motto for our clients that we’re going to stay until our to-do list is done. So I see a lot of people staying at work on a Tuesday till 8 o’clock at night. I see people getting to work at 5 a.m. or 4 a.m. Our whole philosophy is just get it done, right? But again, we’re not sitting there taking off massive portions of the year while we have a failing business. I see this terrible idea. I’ve termed it deserve-ism. I don’t know if this is a real word or not, but I see a lot of people, they say, but I work so hard, I deserve that day off. I deserve the day off. I deserve to take that Friday off. I’m entitled to it. And like Clay said. Holy cow. Thank you, Harry. Thank you. Thank you. Like Clay just said, no you don’t until you’re profitable. I don’t care how hard you’ve worked. If you haven’t built a business to a profitable standpoint, you don’t deserve the day off because you haven’t done your job yet. Okay. Thrive Nation. Sorry. I’m sorry. That is what the hollow plagues are all about. So again, if you’re out there and you’re going, gosh, my kids are off for fall break. I should be off too. I just want to over clarify this idea. Just because your kids are out of school for fall break, none of your customers care. Right. At all. Just because you have the sniffles or a headache or you feel sick, nobody cares. Nobody cares at all. You’re going to have to be Starbucks as an example. Just think about this idea. Starbucks, when you get there, they’re always open, right? McDonald’s, always open. How many times, Chuck, have you been to a local burger place and they weren’t open? It happens. It happens a lot. Because their philosophy is that if the owner’s sick or someone’s out of town, we’ll just close it for a day. But that’s why everybody turns to the big brands like Starbucks and McDonald’s. It’s because you can count on them. They’re going to be open. And whether you like McDonald’s or not, people go there over and over and over because you know they’re going to be open. Quick Trip is always open. There’s all these small gas stations everywhere that are only open during certain hours. And I have no problem with you if you’re out there and you’re saying, look, buddy, I want to be closed on Saturday and Sunday. That’s fine, but be profitable! But don’t tell me that you’re not profitable and don’t make it not even an option to be open an extra hour on the weekends if that’s what’s standing in the way of your profitability. Don’t let the holoplagues be the disease that poisons your family’s pocketbooks. Don’t have the poverty mindset. Say no to the holoplagues and then you won’t have to be ringing a bell and hoping that people make donations to support your family. To you and not Salvation Army. I’m here with the Salvation Clay Foundation. Saving Clay’s family foundation. I was enjoying the Hall of Flags for the last decade. Support your local chaps. If you just support your local chaps. Yeah, so again, Thrivers, if you choose to continue to enjoy the Hall of Flags while not making money, we’re going to have a future podcast on how to find a piece of cardboard and how to find a sharpie. Because that’s what you need. You need cardboard, you need a sharpie. These are the components you’ll need to be able to support your family. You’ll need a big sharpie. Notice all homeless people have a huge sharpie. It doesn’t matter how poor they are, they always have access to the largest sharpie ever. And cardboard. Never any other kind of writing material. Never a dry erase board. Never a big chalkboard. Never a printed sign like an election sign. They always have cardboard. And you want to have a cart there. And you want to have some semblance of a tent or the materials needed to make a tent. And then you want… Thick beard helps sometimes. And you want to say on that sign, you want to write, will work for food. And that’s how you survive the holoplegs if you choose to continue to observe them and your business is not profitable. And now with any further ado, 3, 2, 1, boom! You surprised? Surprised, Eddie? If I woke up tomorrow with my head sewn to the carpet, I wouldn’t be more surprised than I am right now. Although it’s not legal to text and drive, to our knowledge there are no laws against broadcasting while driving. Here’s yet another edition of the Hummer of Love on the Thrive Time Show. I’m recording today’s show on the Wednesday before the Wednesday before Thanksgiving 2017. So right now we’ve got the, it’s the Wednesday before the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. So, you know, Thanksgiving falls on a Thursday and the day before the Thanksgiving Thursday is always a Wednesday. I’m talking about the Wednesday before the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to talk about something I call the holoplegs. Now, the holoplegs are a time of the year where small business owners start acting like employees and start having financial problems as their income goes down while their life spending habits go up. You see the rest of the world who are employees they typically spend more money during the holidays. They buy Christmas gifts and food for Thanksgiving. They travel, that kind of thing. However, they have jobs. They work in a business. So they’re not impacted too much by the fact that they’re spending more during the holidays than other times of the year because they’re actually spending more, but they’re making the same income. Maybe they’re on a salary or they have a consistency of an income and a job. But for self-employed people, I have noticed over the last 12, almost 13 years coaching, that most self-employed people take off the Wednesday before the Wednesday of Thanksgiving. They start taking off then, and they really don’t get it back together until the Monday after Thanksgiving. So they miss an entire two and a half week period of time, and then they also do the same thing on the week of Christmas. So the week of Christmas, the Tuesday off, they take the eve of Christmas off, they take the eve of Christmas eve off, they take Christmas day off, they take the day after Christmas day off, they take that weekend off too, they take New Year’s Eve off, they take New Year’s Day off. And what happens is when you are self-employed, therefore you are reliant upon yourself for an income, and you work less than any other time of the year, you generally make less. So if you have a heat and air company and you service less customers during the holiday season and you spend more money you’re spending more and earning less. Which I the profundity of this has never ceased to amaze me. So today I just thought I would keep a log because it’s the Wednesday before the Wednesday of Thanksgiving. I just kept a log of what happened today so you as a listener could see the kind of microcosm of what happened. So my first meeting of the day on the Wednesday before the Wednesday of Thanksgiving was at 6 in the morning with my coaches. That’s what my first meeting was, 6am with the coaches. Now my next meeting is at 7 and I’m not going to mention the name of the client but again the next client was it was it seven seven in the morning on the Wednesday before the Wednesday before Thanksgiving they made their appointment oh yes they did now the next client was at eight and they made their client to or made their appointment to they they showed up they they showed up. Boom. Now my 9 a.m., my 10 a.m., my 11 a.m. they all couldn’t make it due to the fact that they are getting ready for the holidays the Wednesday before the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Now my noon they one did not show up. My two did not show up. My three did show up. My four showed up. And my five showed up. Now, if you look at the clients that didn’t show up for their meetings on the week before the week of Thanksgiving, if you think about it, the clients of the clients that didn’t show up on the Wednesday before the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, do you think the clients that missed the Wednesday before the Wednesday of Thanksgiving, do you think that those people make more money on average or less money on average than the people that showed up? What do you think? I’ll give you a hint. The people that missed their meetings on the Wednesday before, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, those people always struggle. They’re always struggling. They can’t start their meetings on time. They can’t seem to call their leads. They can’t seem to call their clients back. They can’t seem to gather Google reviews. They can’t seem to… And there are fundamental things you have to do to grow a successful company. So step one, every week you have to maintain consistent marketing activities. And the people that missed the meeting, the Wednesday before, the Wednesday of Thanksgiving, these are the people that can’t seem to do it. They can’t seem to do their Dream 100. They just can’t seem to do the Dream 100 marketing. They can never quite find the time to call their leads. They just can’t do it. They can’t quite start their staff meetings on time. They’re always having tax problems. It’s because that is how they live their life. They live their life that way, where it’s like, oh my gosh, the Wednesday before, the Wednesday of Thanksgiving, I’m going to revert into employee mode and I’m going to not show up because I’m self-employed. I can impose self-poverty on myself. This is the phenomenon known as the holoplagues that I talk about each and every year. It’s bizarre why you would be self-employed and increase your spending while decreasing your income for an entire month of the year. It makes zero sense. Now big businesses, they make a killing during the holidays. They sell more stuff than ever during the holidays. They’re super profitable. The average business does more business during the holidays. They make more money during Thanksgiving and Christmas. They make more money during the holidays. Why? Because they know that the average person is out there buying things. They’re taking time off of work and buying. And so in order to sell them something, they have to be there. But, but the vast majority of small business owners don’t get this idea. They want to take off too. They say the whole world is taking off during the holidays. I want to participate in that too. I want to take the time off. And then they’re shocked when they’re financially struggling. The whole world is out buying. The average consumer is out buying things right now, which means your business needs to be in business. You need to be open. And I always like to release this show a couple of years after the actual date so people can’t guess what clients I’m talking about. I’m just trying to give you real specific examples. We live in such an easy-to-offend world that I wanted to record this thing, like a time capsule from 2017 here, and then air this at a later date so we can all benefit from it. I want to give you some stats real quick. In America today, according to our Census Bureau, there are 330 million Americans right now. 330 million Americans. Now if there are 330 million Americans, how many Americans do you think every year say that they are self-employed? They check the little box under taxes where they say yep I’m self-employed, I’m a sole proprietor or I’m a LLC or S-Corp. What percentage of people are choosing to designate themselves as being self-employed or the owners of a company. Time’s up. 16 million. So in a population of 330 million people, just 16 million are self-employed. So if it was 10%, there’d be 33 million self-employed people, but it’s not. So it’s like 5% of our population to begin with will ever become self-employed. Like 5% of our population will ever become self-employed. So okay. But then what percentage of businesses fail within 10 years? They just shut down the doors. They can’t shut the doors. They can’t possibly make it. It’s too hard, too challenging. What percentage of businesses fail within those first 10 years? What do you think? 96% 96% of businesses fail my friends and that means that you have a 0.0019% zero, zero, one, nine percent chance of being a successful self-employed person for a decade. It’s two-tenths of a percent! That means in a city of the size of Tulsa, where we have four hundred thousand-ish people, there’s only seven hundred some odd successful business owners who’ve been around for a decade. It’s just so rare! So I encourage you, do not let the hall of plagues kill your business. Don’t let it happen. I encourage you, go ahead and take off for Thanksgiving. Take off for Christmas Day. But you don’t need to take off the day before Thanksgiving. You don’t have to do it. You don’t have to. Most people will do it. That’s why most people are not successful. We’re all going to sit down on Thanksgiving and watch professional athletes who are playing on Thanksgiving Day. Why? Because they’re successful and they committed to being there on Thanksgiving Day. We’re going to watch the NBA play a Christmas game and the athletes will be there. Why? Because they’ve committed to it. Act like a pro athlete. Act like the best of the best. Commit to being the best of the best. And the number one thing you can do to be the best is be consistent about over-delivering. Don’t take off. You don’t have to take off the Wednesday of Thanksgiving, you don’t have to. And you don’t have to take off the Friday after Thanksgiving either. You don’t have to. We have a Saturday and a Sunday every week. You don’t have to take off Thanksgiving Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday. If you want to take off Thanksgiving, that’s fine, I get it. But you don’t need to put yourself in a tough spot financially to just sit there on Friday knowing about all the sales you’re missing out on. People are still gonna need heat and air calls. People are still gonna need plumbing. People are still gonna need haircuts. Don’t impose the hollow plagues on your business. It’s a spreading, insidious, wealth-destroying disease and nobody gets it. Nobody gets it. Because just.0019% of the population is successful as a business owner so that you can go ask the average person what they think about this because they’re wrong about business they might be right about things in life but as it relates to business consistency is king think about quick trip the gas stations those homies are open the billion dollar company quick trip is open on thanksgiving they’re open on christmas think about target think about walmart these places don’t take the whole week off. That’s why they’re big businesses. Think about Walmart, think about Microsoft, think about Google. These people don’t take off for the entirety of a month. Unless you want to stay small, with small dreams and small goals and small wallets, don’t act like a small business owner. Get out there and get serious about being consistent. My name is Clay Clark and I’m avoiding you to avoid the holoplegs. Avoid the holoplegs. It’s a contagious thing now. Everybody around you, the vast majority of people around you, these people have been infected with the holoplegs. They’ve been infected. They have a dangerous disease or a dis-ease. There’s no ease in their house. It’s called poverty. And poverty loves company. The average person has no money and poverty loves company. They have no money and they want you to also be poor with them, whether consciously or subconsciously, and therefore they’ll give you advice like, Darryl, how come you’re not taking off the Wednesday before the Wednesday before Thanksgiving? Darryl, how come you’re not coming home early on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving? Darryl, why do you have to work on the Friday after Thanksgiving? Because I have a commitment to my customers and to my own success. I’ve committed to it. That’s why. I encourage you, my friend, do not let the holoplagues destroy your family’s financial success. This should be the time of abundance, a time of winning, a time where you can get things done. Do not let the holoplegs kill your business. I was looking to learn how to take my business, like they’ve said today, from being very successful to being systematic. I’ve got a very successful practice in three different cities. I make good money. I just want to take it to the next level with systems and processes to where I can drive my cars more. Paul Hood. I’ve been a CPA for 33 years. And what kind of growth have you and your great team had here over the past, let’s say, five, six years? The last five, when I met you five years ago, we were doing 3 million. This year we’ll do 24 million. So we’re gonna talk about that. So Paul introduced me to Bob, because he said there’s a guy that came into my office looking to raise some capital, I think that was the thing, and he needed to get some sales going. That’s how sales go, and that’s how, and so if we tell, Paul, from the accounting perspective, I’m gonna pass the mic to you, you do accounting. Why do you have to have a website make sense, and all that branding stuff? How has that impacted your brand, having websites and all those branding things in place? Well, when I met you, like most CPAs, I thought my clients only come from referrals. But we get five leads in a two month period every month to start from Google. And so this is my face. This is, we have 17 offices across four states. We have in every state. But this is our face. Like what you were, it’s visual. And it also has to say why we’re different. That about us from there is spectacular. And it’s an industry that is changing. We’re modifying it. We’re going to offer our services in a subscript model to where it’s all inclusive. And it’s just been awesome. Well determine the level of success. Success in business is not what you know how to do. It’s actually doing it. The thing that I would tell you is stop it. Get a guy like this guy and let him go after it. It’s insane because then you can be doing what you do well and take that time and invest in something else on top of that as contacts. And I’m not, this is not, I don’t get anything for selling. He’s just telling you what he’s done for us so that we could focus. And then he’ll come in and I’ll say, you know, I think I’ve got it all. And he listens for five minutes and he makes one and I want to slap myself in the face. Well, why didn’t I think about that? That’s idiotic. But they’re sick freaks. They just get it done. I don’t know. I think it’s merit-based pay in our office. So the people here, they get paid. So if we were taking on your account, and someone else to do this, but if you hired a different marketing company, I’m just giving you best practices, you want to make sure that they win when you win. So in our office, if we grow Dave Basie’s podcast, that benefits our company, to the extent it benefits them, but we actually benefit if they benefit. Does that make sense to you? My name is Paul Hood and I’m from right here in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. I’m a CPA with offices in Bartlesville, Tulsa, and Claremont. I originally heard about the Thrive Time Workshop through some friends, a guy named Steve Carrington, who has a very successful business. He said if you want to be successful, you need to be. My business, it consists of I’m a CPA and a financial advisor. We’re very successful. I want to go from successful to systematic. I wanted to learn systems and processes so that the business can run without me. The atmosphere here at Thrive and Clay’s office and the team is very upbeat, very positive, very proactive, very forward-looking. They have very specific things that they can offer. Clay’s delivery is very unique. He’s one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met, but he’s also one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met. So he combines those in a very, very awesome way. One of the most valuable things I’ve learned at the workshop is to be very deliberate, to be very specific, to have a plan in mind and then they can help you put together the processes to get it done. A favorite aspect is probably just how entertaining it is and the fact that I pick up one or two or three things every time I come to take my business business to the next level. Well, if people are people are missing out on basically a plan, a guaranteed plan pretty much if you’re willing to work it to be successful. Most people, I think everybody should attend one of these workshops at least once because you don’t know what you don’t know and we’re not taught to be successful in school. What I’ve learned is my college degree is great for preparing me for to be a technician but to be a business owner and to create a process or a business that can continue without me, I’m not there. I’ve been looking at it, looking for such processes for a while and what Clay is showing me is how to do that step-by-step. Well, I’ve enjoyed the entire workshop. What I’ve liked the most is Clay’s presentation style. You go to seminars, I’m 49, I’ve gone to seminars for 30 years, and this first seminar I’ve gone to that is entertaining, both entertaining and it’s very usable information. The atmosphere of Thrive headquarters is really actually kind of convincing me to change the atmosphere of my offices, even though they’re traditional CPA practices. The static, non-inviting environment here, I want to come back. When I came here a few weeks ago, I couldn’t wait to come back. Clayton’s presentation training style is really like nothing I’ve seen before. Most business seminars I’ve gone to, suit and tie, try to stay awake, drink a bunch of cups of coffee, but he plays very entertaining. And the information he has is, I haven’t heard before, I’ve heard pieces of it, but the way he puts it together in a total package, and his presentation style is both entertaining and very knowledgeable. Well, I guess what people are missing out if they don’t come to Thrive Conference, it depends on them. If they like working 60, 70 hours a week and barely getting by or making decent money but you can’t replace your time, that’s fine. If you’re in a position like me, you make good money, but you like to buy back your time. You’d like to still make the money but not have to show up, not have a business that’s dependent upon you showing up. Coming here, if you don’t come here, you’re not going to get that. What we’re going to do today is we’re going to give you a little tour of the house that we just bought. In Oklahoma, this is what we call a big old house. So come on in and check this out. All right, we bought this house about a year and a half ago and we’ve been finishing it. It was partially constructed and so everything’s under construction. So this is kind of a sneak preview So follow me. This right here is the living room, family room, whatever you want to call it. It’s got a bar for watching football, of course, go Cowboys. It’s got, you know, 50-foot ceilings, windows out to the pool, really, really nice kitchen over here. We flew the Ben Hood in from Mexico, it was handmade. Let’s go this way. This is a really unique room. There’s a six-story tower in the middle of the house. Don’t know why. It’s got six rooms straight up top. You can go 85 feet in the air, shoot deer, take pictures, whatever you want to do. See the sunrise, sunset. This will be a photography studio, actually. But you see, it’s got 25, 30-foot ceilings up here. It’s got a… We had to get a special permit. It’s got an elevator that goes up six floors. Normally in a residence, you can only get like a three or four-story elevator. But again, just six rooms like this. On the third floor, I’m gonna have, I suck at golf, I love golf, but I suck at golf. And we’re gonna have a golf simulator up there so I can play golf for 30 minutes. I get mad and I can leave, but it’s all inside and air-conditioned. Over here off of the photography studio, there’s actually a safe room. It’s all concrete walls. We had a steel door made for it, and so tornadoes come or people we don’t really care, you know, whatever, it’s a safe room. We can come in. It’s going to have security cameras and everything else in there built in. Now down this hall is my favorite room. Well, two favorite rooms. One, there is a pantry and there’s a stairwell right there in the back of the pantry that actually leads from my bedroom. So if I want a snack in the middle of the night, it comes straight down from the bedroom. There are 109 interior doors here, 33 exterior doors, 25,000 square feet. It’s got five garages, different garages. This is the best room in the place. We teach success principles at Hood & Associates CPAs and one of them is just to have balance between your personal life, your finances, your fitness, your friends, your family. And so for fitness, I’ve got this. This is, I’ll spend a lot of time in here. And of course, right out here, it’s all under construction. There’s stuff everywhere. But about a 70,000 gallon swimming pool. It’s got a swim jet, so you can exercise against the current, or it can make waves. It’s got a huge hot tub that you can two places you can stand, and it’ll massage you from your neck to your back. Because when you’re out being successful, making money, you get kind of tensed up. It’s got a layout shelf, a walk-in, a beach entry, and water shooting everywhere. It’s got about eight different waterfalls. It’s got a cave in it. It’s got a little lazy river, a little lake thing, pond thing up on top where you can lay out and play in the water. So you know all the necessities of life. Now we’re on the second floor. This is the master suite. It’s actually two stories and has three staircases to the second story one over here one there and then one in another room it’s got five fireplaces in the whole house just one here in the master second story the masters up there which will go up there here in a minute this is the master bathroom just a little bathroom if you notice in the shower there’s no there’s no knobs to turn the water on. Everything is digital. We have to have Wi-Fi for it, so it talks to your phone or a tablet. And you program it for Paul’s summer shower, Paul’s winter shower, or what have you. Also, in the top there, it’s got a builder where if you want to take a shower in a thunderstorm, it has sound, lightning, thunder, all of that good stuff. I guess that’s the thing, take a shower in a thunderstorm. The bathtub is heated. It’s actually heated, not just the water, but it’s heated. And then over here is the bathroom, and there’s two things in there. I know what that one does. That one is called a bidet. Does anybody know how to This is the master closet. One of them. I think there’s six closets, but this is, I don’t know how, this is probably a thousand square feet or give or take. All over here. Keeps going over here. I don’t know who needs that many drawers, but apparently we do. This is the wife’s craft room. She likes to craft. We have grandkids and daughter-in-laws, and this will be full of stuff, and they’ll sit in here and make things and make memories. Of course it’s off to the balcony, there’s a balcony off to the pool all the way around. Those of you that know me or that will get to know me know I like shoes and so there’s tons of places to put my shoes in that closet. That’s what I’m excited about. This is, the house has three laundry rooms. This is the master bedroom laundry room. This is just part of the master suite. So we do laundry right here. This is just a little storage room. You know, you’ve got to have a place to put suitcases and shoe boxes and stuff like that. Just a little extra thing. It’s wired for the smart home. So this is one of the brains. Now, we’re circling back. If you get lost, we’re circling back to the master bathroom, another closet. Right here is that stairway I said that goes down to the pantry in case I want a snack. This room here I’m excited about. This is, we have three grandkids and a fourth on the way. And the house is so big that if our grandkids come and stay with us, we want them to be close. So this is just like an extra bedroom attached to the master suite. Now let’s go upstairs to the second floor of the master. This is a stairway, one of the second of three stairways to the second floor, it’s actually third floor of the house, second floor of the master. We think we’re going to make this a slide because that right there, where we just came from was the grandkids’ bedroom, so they’re going to be able to come up to our second floor, slide down into their bedroom. What do you think about that? I think that’s a necessity. This is the third story of the house, second story of the master bedroom. This room right here is kind of cool. It’s going to be like a little spa room. We’ve got a commercial tanning bed that goes in there and a massage chair and all the relaxing music and all of that. This would be like a library or reading room off of the master, still part of the master. It’s got a separate balcony out there. Every room in the house is wired for speakers for entertaining. There’s a lot of speakers I can tell you why and they suck putting them up. I put a bunch of them up but there’s a lot of them. These fans are really cool. They spin like this and then the fans inside of them spin so it’s just got like three different motions going on at once. Okay we’re now back on the second story of the house over by the tower. This is my office. This is where my office will be. And then we can go over here and you can see the second floor of the tower. Now on the third floor of the tower, I’m going to put a golf simulator, like I said earlier, because I suck at golf, but I want to play. But you can see, we just got to keep our grandkids because we have three granddaughters. They’ll be okay, but I have a grandson coming and I know he’s going to want to be climbing. We’re going to have to be careful of that. This is a, this will be just an entertaining room, a game room. There’ll be a pool table here. Kids play Fortnite. Now over here is when you have a game room, you also got to have a place to have snacks. So this is our snack kitchen. This is one of three kitchens in the house Like say there’s three laundry rooms three kitchens. There are 13 bathrooms This is kind of cool. But this is for entertaining Hello, my name is Charles Kola with Kola 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 has 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 Crocker, the head of Disney with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with like Mike Wendell. 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, and 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. 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. Like 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. And that’s what I like most about him. He’s like a good coach. 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. My most impressive thing was 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. 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. Anyways, just an amazing man. Anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate any time I’ve gotten 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 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 the 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 sales people 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 gone through the process over just a few months, 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. And 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 literally an 1800 percent increase in our internet leads. Going from 10 a month to a hundred and eighty 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 the 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 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 a 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. The Thrivetime Show, two-day interactive business workshops, are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13-point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. 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 capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter Bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, 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. We’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. 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.