Entrepreneur | 4 Billion And Still Funding The David Nilssen Story

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show! We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re on the top. Teaching you the systems to get what we got. Cullen Dixon’s on the hooks, I’ve written the books. He’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks. As the father of five, that’s where I’mma dive. So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s C and Z up on your radio. And now 3, 2, 1, here we go. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, and that’s what we gotta do. David, I appreciate you letting me be here, my friend. How are you? I’m doing great. How are you? I am enjoying Seattle. The weather is, it’s a little bit colder than what I expected. I know it’s kind of a winter thing here, but it is gorgeous. It is gorgeous. The view. We went to Bainbridge Island there. Oh, yeah. You ever do that? Absolutely. All the time. All right. Well, we today we are talking about your story. And I wanted to start, though, by asking you the question. I think a lot of thrivers all around the world. We have got a new thriver in Shanghai, and I know he wants to know this question. So I’m going to ask. It’s a tough one. Can’t wait. So your basketball team, formerly your basketball team, the Seattle Supersonics and Kevin Durant, they moved to Oklahoma City. I want to know, do you feel like the team was stolen? Do you have any bitterness there? How do you feel about that whole thing? Do I have any bitterness? Yeah, I mean is it a source of… Not towards Kevin Durant. Okay, towards the team moving, are you upset? Are you okay with it? I think everyone was a little bit disappointed that Howard sold the business. But they’re obviously doing very well. Yeah, people are still buying Starbucks. So things have smoothed over there. Still buying some. I don’t think there’s much that Howard could do to get us to not continue to buy Starbucks. All right. Well, I want to ask you this now. Where did you grow up? Where did it all start? I mean, today you’ve done 10,000. You’ve helped 10,000 business owners get the funding they need. Over $4 billion of funding you’ve helped these business owners secure. But you started somewhere. Where did you start, my friend? Well, I grew up, originally was born in the Bay Area, so was an Oakland Raider fan for a long period of time. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when I was seven or eight years old, we moved up to Washington State. I’ve been there ever since. So, okay. Grew up in Maple Valley, which is right outside of Seattle, about 30 miles. Small town, and family still lives there. Are you still a Raider fan? No, no. No Seahawk fan. OK. Jumped on that bandwagon about five or six years ago. And it was perfect timing with winning the Super Bowl. Awesome. OK, so what was your childhood like? Were you raised in this entrepreneurial family? Was everybody in the business mindset? Or how were you? What was your childhood like? Yeah, so come from a family of seven. I’m the second of five children. My father, a very entrepreneurial-minded individual. Growing up, he was the general manager of one of the largest Christmas tree brokers in the country and shortly after I moved out of the home he actually bought that from the owners who had had that for 70 years prior. So, grew up in a very entrepreneurial family, you know, led by dad. A couple things here. Seven kids? No, seven people in the family, five kids. Five kids. Now with the five kids, where did you fit in that? I was the second. The second, OK. And are you all tall? Are you all tall? I mean, you’re 6’4″? I’m 6’5″. I’m the tallest, but both my brothers are 6’4″. OK, OK. Now, what is a Christmas tree broker business? What is this? So Christmas tree brokers buy Christmas trees from farmers and then sell them to large retail locations. So for example, if you were to go to, say, a Whole Foods or a Safeway or a Kroger. Those trees that were placed there were placed by a Christmas tree broker and likely by my father’s company. Wow. So when did you remember first getting the entrepreneurial bug yourself? When were you like, I’ve been bitten and I want to start a business? When did that happen? Yeah, so when I was 15 years old, the local Subway sandwich store hired me. I was playing basketball and I needed a flexible schedule and I went in to sell the local Subway owner an advertisement for one of our basketball handbooks. She was impressed by that interaction and offered me a job on the spot. So I started working at a Subway sandwich store. I was a sandwich artist back when. Oh, sandwich artist! Yeah, they don’t say that anymore. Why? I don’t understand. We’ve got baristas. Why can’t we have sandwich artists? Why do they take that away from us? I have no idea, but I’m still hurt by it. But yeah, so I worked there for three years. And over that period of time, I went from working at that one store to managing three different locations and just really enjoyed the leadership opportunity, the interaction with the customers, the employee engagement. All of that was a lot of fun for me. So I think that’s where I originally got the bug. I feel like, I don’t know if this would help you. I know you’ve helped 10,000 business owners get a loan. But I’m just thinking if you would say, Guidant Financial, home of the sandwich artist. I feel like that might help a little bit. That’s just a tip. I’ll just let you think about that. Yeah, we’ll take it under consideration. OK. So now, what were you doing right before you started Guidant Financial? I mean, were you lending some money to some buddies, and you’re like, hey, we should do more of this. I mean, when did you get the idea to start Guidant Financial? Yeah, so if you go backwards, so in 2001, obviously 9-11 happened. And at that point, they had reactivated the Navy base here in Washington state due to the war on terror. That area, however, didn’t have the infrastructure to support the activity that was now going on in that area. So myself and another couple of individuals went into the area, started buying up raw lots, raw pieces of property and developing those, getting them ready for manufactured home dealers. So we would go in, we would buy the lot, strip out the timber, bring in utilities, cut out a pad and then sell that to manufactured home dealers. What started happening though is we were starting to take on larger projects and more projects. And one day we were talking to a group of people and they said, hey, we may be interested in investing. So we sat down with an attorney and she suggested we look at self-directed retirement plans as a way to fund these transactions. And I knew enough about retirement investing from the stock market standpoint, but I had never heard that you could use your retirement assets to invest in things like real estate. I found that fascinating, in fact, helped a couple people invest their own retirement assets into one of our projects. And going through that process, we realized, wow, this is a huge opportunity because there’s great profit in real estate. It gives you more tangible control over the investment’s performance, and yet we don’t know anybody that’s investing their retirement assets in things outside the stock market. So we decided to launch a consultancy around helping people to do that. More specifically around our real estate projects, but over time that became its own business. And that was really kind of the evolution. Myself and my business partner found out that we can invest retirement assets into real estate. That transitioned into the consultancy, which now we’re helping people as part of our services. We help people find SBA loans and unsecured credit and things like that. But we’re also helping people invest their retirement assets directly in their own businesses. You said three things that kind of blew my mind. I’m just trying to duct tape my head back together here. So one, as you said, we started by buying raw land and helping develop it there. Do you remember buying the first piece of land? Absolutely. Were you scared out of your mind? Totally. What did you buy? So we bought, I don’t remember the specific details, it was about an acre and a half. It was a lot that had a lot of timber on it. And it was up a hill, a gravel road. I mean, that was just kind of what the market bear, that area is what it’s like. So we bought that property. I was excited by it because in that area, buying that property was $15,000 or $16,000. So it wasn’t a significant amount of money. And then when you cut out the pad, you have to remove the timber within that area. We were able to sell the timber, which paid off half of the property that we had purchased. And then, you know, to bring the utilities in, we were bringing in a dozer to cut a pad and a track hoe to dig out the utility ditch. Were you doing this yourself? I was. I actually got pictures of me, you know, building a retaining wall and actually laying rebar and pouring concrete. See, George Washington Carver, he’s a guy that David Robinson introduced me to his writings. And it’s just interesting. But he talks about how don’t wait for the perfect time. You have to start with the tools you have and just go for it. So I mean, you’re just sitting there with your buddy of yours. And you guys are like, we’re buying a piece of land. I mean, you’d probably talked about it and thought about it. But eventually, I mean, you’re going, we’re going to buy the land. I mean, almost, it’s crazy. Well, I had actually taken a year off, so I had, for years previous, been trading my own portfolio. And as you know, prior to 9-11, the stock market performed very, very well. And so I had done well in that area. When we decided to take on this opportunity, I knew that this was an industry that I wanted to learn more about. And the only way that I learn is to just roll up my sleeves and jump straight in. So I took the year off, I went in and started actually doing all the work myself. I talked about it, I was chief cook, I was bottle washer, and it was fun. It was really exciting to learn that side of the business. Now, I don’t ever want to do it again, but I’m glad that I have that knowledge. So you jumped right in there and you just began to discover this niche as a result of taking action. I mean, you were moving forward. When did you come up with the name for Guidant Financial? I mean, when did the name come, you know, when did that happen? Well, I was talking about, you know, we were, we are a conduit to funding sources, right? So what we’re providing is guidance. And we’re talking about our brand essence and that brand essence being guidance. And so as we were, we were, you know, doing what a lot of entrepreneurs do, we were at GoDaddy and we’re looking up URLs and seeing what’s available, and we’re talking about cool names and then Googling them. Are they trademarked? Are they not? And just out of the blue, the word Guidant was one of those that came up, and we felt like it was important to speak to the financial aspects in which we serve the industry. So we added financial to that as well, and it turns out it was available. I want to ask, when you were starting Guidant, what time were you waking up every day, just on a practical level? I mean, because now you’re in a new business. You’re getting it going. You’re all in. I mean, was it, I guess, what time were you waking up every day at this time? Were you getting up early every day? Were you working long nights? I always do. I wake up at 5.30 every morning. I always have. It’s just been, you know, whether I was actively trading in the stock market, when the market opens, you’ve got to be up and have already done some research and see what’s going on in the market. So I’ve always been an early riser, so I get up at 5.30. Now instead of turning on CNBC, I go to the gym, try and get some exercise in the morning. Now where were you living when you started this? Did you use, you and a guy, you and a partner started it. Were you in an apartment? Were you in a house? Where was Guidant first started? Was it in an office? Was it? Yeah, so I was talking about the fact that I had this real estate development business. At that time, I met a real estate broker here in Bellevue who had his own real estate agency. And it was really, they were at the time carving out a niche in speculative real estate investments. So they were helping investors find properties. He and I eventually partnered to create Guidant Financial. So when we started the business we actually sublet office space from the real estate agency here in Bellevue. Okay, now when you guys, so you’re in this building, you’re sub-leasing the space, what did your days look like? I mean were you working, do you remember back when you were getting it going? Were you working 12-hour days? Were you working 7-hour days, going on break? I mean, what was your day like? I mean, you’re on 24-7. I mean, I don’t even think you can say it was, you know, 8-hour days or 12-hour days. We’ve got, you know, you have cell phones, which tie you in constantly, but in the early stages, you take on that list of tasks with blunt force. And sometimes there’s no clear priority because you need a website, you need customers, you’ve got to have an operational system in place, you overwork. Well, I want to hammer this home for a second because I know I’ve talked to a lot of thrivers. I talked to one guy last week, and he was a subscriber that actually was in Iowa. I talked to him and he says, hey, you know, I work right now at a job nine to five and I’ve started this business. And I’m realizing I’m gonna have to work. I can’t just work nine to five and make it work. How do you find the time? You know, and I said, well, I get up, I have the five kids, you know, my wife and I, so I get up about five. Now that we’re doing something massive and it’s growing, I’m getting up at three and four and I try to get five, six hours of sleep. But I’ll go, I’ll pretty much sprint until five or six, you know, and I said, you can probably do 12, 13 hour days, maybe five, six days a week. I mean, you know, there’s just, if you’re crazy enough to start a business, you have to be willing to keep the fire going, right? I mean, don’t you? I mean, what advice would you have for a guy like that? Well, so I just wanted to hammer something home that you said a minute ago, because a lot of people look at successful business owners and they say oh my gosh he works six to eight hours a day you know the business runs itself you know he’s spoiled he makes too much money this whatever right but what they don’t recognize that that he or she has spent a tremendous amount of time and exerted a lot of effort and made a lot of sacrifices both them personally and their families to allow them to get to that place. In the early stages of a business, I think it’s absolutely ludicrous to think that you can work an eight-hour day and build a massively successful organization. It takes a huge, a Herculean effort to build a business. And one of our previous episodes where we were talking about what you look for when you fund a business as an angel investor, you’re looking for that work ethic of the entrepreneur, you’re looking for that mentality. I just love you said it’s absolutely ludicrous to think that you can work the eight hour days and get ahead there. Now, I want to ask, what was the most challenging part of launching Guidant? Because now people, a lot of the Thrivers we’ve talked to, what they’ll do is when they watch episodes, sometimes they’ll Google the companies and they’ll be like, well, I want to do business with that guy. Or, wow, that company’s great. And they start to think, well, they’re way up here and I’m way down here. I could never get to here. What was the most challenging part as you went from here to here? What was the part that you were just overwhelmingly… Yeah, so I think a couple things come to mind. In a previous episode, we talked about the fact that business plans have to evolve. We originally built our business plan, and we knew the marketing strategy that was just going to hit this one out of the park. And we were in a unique place because we were trying to create an industry, really, a category that most people don’t know about. There’s relatively low brand awareness. Small business financing is where we’re at today, but that’s not how we started. We started as really more of a self-directed retirement services business. Eventually, we let go of the real estate portion of the business, we sold that to a trust company, and we are now exclusively focused on helping entrepreneurs access capital. But the business evolved, and the original strategy was we were gonna go through channel partners. That didn’t work out. In fact, the amount of time and energy we had to exert to get to a person who would then start referring to us was disproportionate to the opportunity. So eventually, we then started to dabble in internet marketing. And that’s when things started to really turn for us. But the first eight months, we had relatively no revenues. No revenues. No joke. No joke. And I should say that for nearly the first year and a half, I didn’t take a dollar out of the business. We work for free. So the sacrifice, the time investment, the investment that you’re making from a sweat equity or even a personal equity standpoint, it’s big. Now you, so you discovered internet marketing and that became like your I guess sort of like your lifeline, I guess. That’s when you started selling some stuff, right? Or making some money, I guess. Did you ever feel like you weren’t going to make it? During that six-month window, that seven, where you hadn’t brought in any money at all, where you hadn’t paid yourself for a year and a half, did you ever go, to your journal, month 18, haven’t paid myself. I mean, did you ever get to a point where you’re just, you know, felt like it wasn’t going to work out? Every day. Really? I think one of the greatest things, at least about some of the entrepreneurs that I know, is that our sense of insecurity is what drives us, right? It’s the fear of failure. It’s the desire to get ahead. It’s the, you know, so every day you wake up, you go, gosh, can I make it today? I remember doing an event one time where I’m speaking in front of like 50 real estate professionals, and I’m talking about how we can help them and their clients to find better properties, to make more money, so on and so forth and we walked out of there I felt like we hit a home run and the next day phone didn’t ring and the next day the phone didn’t ring you know and you do that you take a lot of swings at the plate and yeah you hope that you’re gonna hit a single a double maybe a home run but oftentimes you strike out and it’s just we talked about the important attributes of an entrepreneur resilience is the number one for me because again, once you write your business plan, it’s wrong. You just have to continue to figure out how to modify your approach to finally hit that. There are a lot of people that could argue, well, we’re still in a recession, no we’re not, but the point is, you went through the great crevasse. You have gone through the hell of economic turmoil. Was there a moment there where you thought, oh, Billy, we’re in trouble? Was there a time where you thought? Yeah, sure. I mean, we’re in the credit access business, right? So in 2008, the markets crumbled. Real estate evaporated. So the main source of collateral. Interest rates plummeted, which meant that lenders who are in the business of providing capital, not servicing capital. So oftentimes, you get a loan, and then two days, or excuse me, two months later, you get the notice from the bank that they’ve sold your loan. Well that secondary market, the people that are buying that paper, evaporated when rates started plummeting and the economy is going the wrong direction, the market collapsed, real estate’s gone away. Yeah, there were certainly times there where we were concerned about what the forward-looking opportunity looked like, given the fact that the world froze. You mentioned this a moment ago about insecurities. And I talked to Lee Cockrell. He ran Disney World for over a decade. And Lee says his insecurities are what drove him. That’s what drives him. I think if every entrepreneur watching this is being honest, in some way, we just want to prove everybody wrong. And we just want to go, I know I can do it, but I hope I can do it. And you’re kind of fighting these insecurities. Did you have a mentor or someone along the way who was kind of saying, you can do it, you can do it? Or were you tasering yourself? Or what was your tip to sort of keep yourself encouraged? So for me personally, the greatest source of professional and even personal development is come through mentors. So my entire life, I’ve tapped into that opportunity. And Guidant is just one of the catalysts by which I’ve done that. Yeah, I mean, early on in 2000, so we started the business in 2003. We had the concept in 2002, started in 2003. In 2004, I took on a mentor. His name was Dave. Dave had successfully exited a couple of different businesses, all technology oriented, so not a perfect match. But the thing that I found about entrepreneurship is that the same principles apply for most businesses. And so one of the things that I love is this thing called gestalt learning. And that’s learning through the experiences of others. So finding people that are in non-competitive industries who are willing to share their experience and how they’ve dealt with similar problems allows you to pull context from their own experiences. So I joined an organization called the Entrepreneur Organization which allows me to connect with people under those same expectations. We have our own formal board at Guyton Financial. We’ve also got individual advisors. My business partner and I both have people that we tap into because we don’t have all the answers. We’ve built a business around us and brought in experts, people that are really good in areas where we’re not strong. But even still, there is a level of experience, context, and consultancy that we want outside of that. So you’ve had mentors that have helped you. And so I want to ask you this here. I know there’s a lot of people. I talked to one guy, fabulous, he’s actually a guy who’s won during one of our months. He’s the Thriver of the Month with the most points. And he had said, hey, here I am at this age of my life, my wife and I, we’ve never had a mentor. Never had one. I didn’t really have one growing up. Never really saw success. Never saw anybody successful. Stumbled on your website. There’s just a ton of mentors up here. This is great. I mean, for somebody who wants to get that real life mentor, and maybe they came from that background where they didn’t have a mom and dad that were involved in business and they haven’t had, what would you recommend? Would you recommend joining something like that entrepreneurs organization and begin to reach out? What would be sort of your step one for someone watching this who feels like they need a mentor, but they don’t know where to start? Yeah, I mean, the mentors that I’ve personally brought on have come through networking. So I’m talking to people about our business and I’m sharing some of the challenges we’re dealing with and that person I’m having coffee with says, you know, you should talk to this person. And then just asking for them to be generous and making that recommendation. The thing that I’ve found about Seattle in general, and I believe this to be true with just entrepreneurs in general, is we love to share, there’s this supportive, entrepreneurial undercurrent, right? You and I are business owners. We love to get together and talk about the things that are going well, but probably even more importantly, talk about the things that aren’t going well. Because that’s the thing that drives us nuts. It’s the success that we expect, it’s the things that aren’t going well that we want to solve. Now, do you have a move that you do to kind of reinvigorate yourself when you feel like things aren’t working out well. I watch Rocky IV. I watch Rocky IV. I’ve got kind of my music I listen to. I listen to epic music in the mornings. Hearts on fire. Yeah, got it. Yeah. That kind of just gets, when he beats the Russian, I’m just like, yes! And if any Russians watching, we love you guys, too. But I just love that he was beating the Soviets, I guess. But is there something that you do that kind of helps you stay motivated? Is it working out? Is it reading every day? Is there sort of a mantra or a mojo that you do to keep yourself going? Yeah, for sure. So I made the comment earlier. I get up every morning and try to get a workout in. Okay. Sometimes it’s just taking a walk in the morning. Sometimes it’s actually hitting the gym. The reading. I’ve always got two or three books that are on my bookshelf next to my bed. Yeah. I think it’s important to keep the brain fresh. But there are often times during the day where I can feel that my productivity is sliding, my attitude is going in the wrong place, I walk around our block here. We’ve got a pretty big block, so a walk takes still 20 minutes to get around this thing. But just getting outside, getting some fresh air, getting the heart pumping, that’s what I do. Now let me ask this. What was the turning point where you realized that Guidant Financial was not only going to make it, but it was gonna thrive. I mean it was gonna be awesome. It was gonna succeed. It was gonna be… and I know it’s not even begun to be what you want it to be. I mean it’s already great, but I know in your mind you want to make it better. But when did you realize this thing is working and it is gonna continue to work? You know it’s funny. I’m not sure I could tell you the moment. It happened over a period of time. I think we saw some very exciting success, you know, after the first year, which was a total slog. After that, you know, we started to see some really great success and really accelerated the growth of the business. I think there was a couple of things where we had set this goal. We wanted to be an Inc. 500 company. We said, hey, if we can be an Inc. 500 company, we’ve made it. And in 2008, we became an Inc. 500 company. So it took us five years, but we became, you know, one of the 500 fastest growing companies in the entire country. And at that point, you know, we had hit our goal, which probably means, you know, we didn’t set a big enough goal. But I think that was a moment where we said, we’re making an impact. We’re seeing success. Now, I know that you’re a guy, from what I know, the people I know who know you and then what I’ve read about you and what I’ve been able to ascertain by being around you, I know you’re a guy who doesn’t sit around and go, well, we’ll start this meeting by talking about this award, and then this award, and this. But is there any milestones or achievements that you’ve hit, you mentioned Inc. Are there other ones you’ve hit where you’re like, I cannot believe that, or I guess you’re ones you’re the most proud of, or the ones you’re most excited for for your team, or? Well, so yeah, I’ll answer that directly. So I think the one that I’m most excited about is that we continue to make CEO magazines best places to work. And I think that we’ve always kind of had this attitude that if you take good care of your employees, then the employees will take good care of your clients, and ultimately it’s the client’s level of happiness that determines our eventual success. So I think from an awards standpoint, that’s probably the one that is most exciting. Some of the things that have been the most impactful for me have been the client visits that I’ve done. So oftentimes I’ll go out into the market and I’ll actually go meet some of our clients. So one of my favorite stories is this company Dry Fly Distillery. These are two guys that came from food services. They love fly fishing. They also wanted to learn how to distill vodka and so they created the first vodka distillery in Washington state since Prohibition. Really? And they use their retirement assets and an SBA loan to capitalize this business. When I went and visited them, they had gone from two partners basically to this huge warehouse. They were shipping thousands of cases per year. They had been named the, they won the International Spirit Awards for the best tasting vodka, I think it was 2007. And they had one employee. I thought, well, how the heck did they do this? And it turns out they’ve created this experience around teaching other people to build their own distilling business. So they allow people to come in on the weekends for free, learn how to distill vodka, learn how to bottle vodka, and they get a free t-shirt at the end of this experience. So they’ve created an experience around really training their competition but creating a labor model that scales very, very fast. That is genius. Now if there’s somebody out out there who says, okay I’m inspired, I really do want to become the next success story. I want to be like the vodka guys or I want to build my business. But they’ve been that ready, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim mode. You know, maybe they went to college, they went back to the NBA. They’re still aiming, aiming. They’ve been working the corporate America for a while. Now they’re like, I really want to do it. What advice would you have for someone who’s kind of stuck in that perpetual aiming mode? I’d certainly want to understand why I’m still aiming. You know, I wrote a book in 2010 called Making the Jump. And the reason I wrote it is because I felt like a lot of people were coming to me saying, Hey, I want to start a business. Where do I start? What book do I read? And there was a lot of great books on how to be a good manager. There was a lot of great books on how to build a culture, how to conduct meetings, but there was nothing that says, do I have what it takes? Do I understand what I need to invest in order to become an entrepreneur? I actually don’t believe everyone should be a business owner. It is a massive, massive investment of time and energy and resources and so on and so forth. So if they’re still sitting there in aim mode, I would question, why am I in aim mode? Do I feel like I know the right business? Do I have the right information? Do I believe I can be successful? So that’s what I would start with is trying to understand why I’m still aiming. There was a Colin Powell quote that he had years ago. And he’s obviously a decorated military hero. And I read it and he said, sometimes great leadership requires pissing people off. And I remember that was the time when I started the business, but I was afraid to ever put the goals of the company or the goals of the customer ahead of, you know. So if an employee was chronically late and the customer was inconvenienced, I would hate to tell the employee how disappointed I was or would hate to. And I had to get to that point where I had to realize, like, I’m going to, if I’m going to grow this business, I kind of have to, for me, it wasn’t taking the jump, because I guess I’d already taken the jump, but it was like taking the full jump. And I feel like, in your book, do you talk a lot about the mindset you need to be an entrepreneur? Absolutely, and one of the things that we see often happening is people that are in that aim mode. Some of it is, I don’t believe I can be successful in this. I don’t think I have what it takes. That’s one issue. But oftentimes, what you’ll also see is that they’re suffering from that crab in the crab pot syndrome. They wanna make that jump, but everyone around them, their spouse, their brother or sister, their parents, their friends are saying you’re crazy You could lose everything. Why would you do that? You know you may have to put your house up as collateral You know what if what if you fail? What will you do with your kids if you can’t pay the bill like they have all these people that are helping to just? try to more fear yeah, and You know and so sometimes if you want to upgrade your life You have to upgrade your friends. And that’s one of the things that I think is really important for people to understand is, why am I holding myself back? That is a lesson nugget right there. Sometimes if you want to upgrade your life, you have to upgrade your friends. That’s a quote from Tony Robbins. That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. Well, my friend, I appreciate you letting me harass you about your history and ask you. Because I think it’s just fascinating. And I know a lot of people who are wanting to take the jump maybe got some inspiration from this. But thank you for your time. It means more than you know to me and I know that the people you’re mentoring really appreciate it too. So thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. 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 2,000 to 3,000 pages of content attached to their attach 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 Pessimon 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%. 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 the first 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 by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented our group interviews. That way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists that when 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 it 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… 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. They implemented those systems, 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 gonna take in order to really succeed. So, we just wanna 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 that we’re seeing every month, year over year. One month, for example, we went from 110 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 services, you’re choosing to use a proven turnkey 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 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 has done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with like running the business, building the system, the checklist, 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. So 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 and 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 of 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. 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. My 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 anytime 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. 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 years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s uh, 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 being 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 14. 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, tons of thousands. Whoa! 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 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, and 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 gonna be the best business workshop ever, and we’re gonna 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 for And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you.