Entrepreneur | 5 Keys to Unlock Fast and Sustained Growth – Part 1

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrivetime Show! Look, look, as a 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. We started from the bottom, and that’s what we gotta do. Welcome into the Thrive Time Show. So happy to have you with us. Josh Merrill here. Today in the studio, we got Dr. Z. That’s right. Hey, Josh, how you doing? Dr. Z, I am doing so good. It’s great to have you back here. It’s good to be back. Oh, you look so good. You look refreshed. You look renewed. Very Vegas-y. Very post Vegas-y. Post Vegas-y, yes, which is usually not those adjectives that you just used. That’s true, but you’re ready to help people dominate their businesses. Absolutely. Just like we dominated in Vegas. Boom. Also, we’ve got Clay Clark, America’s number one business coach. Clay, how you doing? I am doing very well. I’m excited because we’re talking about something today that I’m going to tell you at least half of our audience is going to go, okay, I’m going to pull over and take some notes. If you learn these moves, these five moves we’re teaching today, this is a game changer. We’re talking about the five steps that you need to take to unlock your company’s fast and sustainable. That’s the fast and sustainable. Sustainable is the little part. You don’t want to do a quick Ponzi scheme, get a bunch of guys in, bada-bing, bada-boom, it all crumbles. I did one back in junior high, and it did pretty good. You did a Ponzi back in junior high? It wasn’t really a Ponzi, but it was a scheme. Do you have any brothers? How many brothers do you have? 18 brothers? I’m not sure. We’re not sure. Do you have a brother, hey, just invest in my little business idea, and I’ll kick out a return to the next guy? Yeah, I’m just going to go around to family and get checks. No, I’m only giving the checks, I think. So since we’re unlocking, would these be the five keys? I would say they are the five keys. And I’m not going to argue with a man who’s freshly back from Vegas. He’s returned to the temple of boom. He’s ready. And you’ve got that sharp wit today. I’m not going to argue with you. We’re going to call them the keys, the five keys. And I’m drinking a Rockstar, so. You’re ready to go. You’re raring and ready. You can probably just drop the mic and just go to commercial at this point, but anyway, boom boom All right, let’s jump into it We’re gonna do our first key here to unlocking your company’s fast and sustainable growth key number one survey your current customers Now here’s the deal years ago. I was working with a dentist that was I do a lot of business coaching So I work with companies and there’s a dentist down in Dallas And so I took explain this to guy said step number one We’re gonna call every single patient you’ve ever worked with in the past five years. We’re going to call them all at least three times each. We’re going to track it on a spreadsheet, and we’re going to ask them, what other dental-related services have you purchased over the past year or the past five years from somebody other than us? Well, we start making a list, and pretty soon we start discovering this thing called Invisalign. Z, are you familiar with Invisalign? Yes, I am. It’s kind of like what, invisible braces, but you don’t have to go with the hardware in the mouth kind of thing. And then we have veneers, and veneers are basically cosmetic teeth, you know, they have those custom built. A lot of TV people have those done. Hey, I’m rocking some veneers. I’m rocking some veneers. Am I the only one that’s veneer free in this room? Yes. Oh my gosh. What a judger. You hate me. Wow. You’re always talking bad about us. Sorry. So here’s the thing is that we start making a list. Well pretty soon, Josh, what do you think we do? What do you think we do when we discover, hey, we’ve called a couple thousand patients and 400 of them had, they purchased A, B, and C from somebody else. What was the genius move we came up with? Maybe you offer them A, B, and C. Boom! And we found out that many people weren’t using us because we did not quote unquote offer in-house financing. Well, we found out that actually we do offer in-house financing, but no one on our team was ever asking the patients if they were aware of it. There’s a program called Care Credit that most physicians are aware of. We began to just systemically go, based upon what our ideal and likely buyers are already spending money on elsewhere, we should probably bring that in-house. I want to ask you, Zee, with your optometry clinic, what are some of the services that you offer in-house beyond just come in, I’m going to test your eyes and say some glasses. What are other services that you offer inside your Taj Mahal of optometry? Well, we do basic primary eye care, which is eye exams, of course, and people that come in with minor eye abrasions, minor red eyes. We see a lot of those because they can get into our office very quickly. We’re open seven days a week. You know, welders and people grind and get stuff in their eye. And of course we do contact lenses, but there’s a whole myriad of contact lenses we do. I mean, there’s quite a few different varieties of those. And then of course, glasses and glasses can be safety glasses, can be fashion glasses, can be like the glasses you have on. Very fashionable. And I got those from Dr. Zellner’s optometry. No wonder you look so sharp today. Don’t you look sharp, Josh? I need some glasses. You’ve both got glasses. I need some glasses. You know what? That may be the missing key because a lot of people come in and they get them because studies show that you look smarter. And not that you don’t look smarter. Sure. Okay. Okay, you got me. You got me. Don’t hit that loud. Don’t hit that loud. Well, I do. What happens is for me is you’re actually an optometrist who’s turned into this entrepreneurial tycoon. For me, I don’t have a college degree and I’m not really that smart in terms of taking tests so I have to wear a suit every day. If you’re watching right now on Facebook Live, you can see I’ve got a suit on here. I have to wear glasses. I do all these moves to trick these two guys that I’m actually just baseline intelligent enough to be on this program. So each week it’s a move that I try to pull off here. But this is the main thing. If you’re listening right now, what is the action item? The action item for you right now is to make a list of all of the customers you’ve ever worked with and literally call them. Just call them and say, Hi, what are other products and services that you purchased not from me in this past year? You’re listening to the Throckton Show on Talk Radio 11 Central. Now Clay, let’s say with DJ Connection, when you owned that, was there something that you did that you called your customers, you surveyed them, you asked them, did you serve them after a gig or after their wedding? What was your move? Well typically what I would do is I’d call the brides and grooms after their wedding and I would say, hey, what are some other products and services that you used for the wedding that we did not offer? And they would say, oh, catering, and they would say, oh, photography. And at a certain point, Z, you know what they said? What would they say? We purchased a chocolate, we rented a chocolate fountain. You guys remember those things? Oh, they’re great. Let me tell you the secret to a chocolate fountain. You take about one part chocolate, 18 parts Crisco, and you just pour that stuff in that thing, and you just start heating it up, and it starts to flow. And so I realized, you know what? Everyone’s buying these chocolate fountains. They’re not buying them from me. They’re renting them not from me. And they’re all renting margarita machines not from me. They’re all renting dance floors not from me. They’re all getting margarita machines not from me. They’re getting up lights, up lighting, to decorate. Like in our studio here, you can see. You’ve got to love up lighting. They’re getting all these mood lighting. It’s kind of that lighting that says, so Zee, how you doing? Usually when I go over to Zee’s house for man cave sessions here, this is what he has queued up here. It’s kind of weird usually, but. But you’re used to it now. And then I always ask you, did you bring your chocolate fountain with you? Did you bring that chocolate fountain? Is it a chocolate fountain? Because I’ve got some marshmallows out back we could dip on in there. Nothing weird going on there at the Z Ranch. But in all sincerity, you start to ask your customers what are the things that you’re buying in addition to what you’re buying from me. I made a big list and Josh, I talked to my wife and I said, hey, if I buy a chocolate fountain and if I buy a margarita machine and if I buy a dance floor, the dance floor I bought it from a company called Master Dance Floors. They’re $16,000 a piece. I said, if I buy these things, I’m going to make so much money, but I’m going to really irritate X, Y, Z. I encourage you, this is the next step. Write down all of the people it’s going to irritate when you start expanding your territory. You have to ask yourself, is it worth it? For me, I was going, well, I get about 2% of my business as a referral from party rental companies and I don’t care what people think, check. Copious amounts of money I would make if I did this, check. And on top of that, any time you want to break out your chocolate fountain at your house, I mean you’re having a slow Wednesday night. Yeah, again you just. And you just, you know, what do I do tonight? Kids, what are we going to do tonight? Well. Dad, can we get the chocolate fountain machine out? And you got one, you don’t even have to go rent it. If you don’t want to create that romantic ambiance with your kids, I recommend you cue that. You kind of cue up this song here. All right, kids, who wants to do a chocolate fountain? All right, kids, who wants to have a margarita? Forget that question. No margaritas for the kids. But who wants to use the dance floor? Who wants some up lights? See, that’s like father of the year kind of stuff working right there. That’s how I got my father of the year trophy that I gave myself years back. Oh, that’s awesome. Now, here’s the thing. When you survey your current customers, you’re actually getting ideas that otherwise wouldn’t have just come to you naturally. Well, because you’re so busy working in the business. Dan back there in the studio, he knows about this, but we used to set up these crazy dance floors and those were heavy things. They were heavy, terrible things. Heavy, terrible, terrible things. They were made of hate. They were just made of pure hate in wood combinations. But what happened is, none of the DJs, I don’t think any of our guys working with us would have said, hey boss, we should start buying dance floors. I never thought of it because you’re too busy in the business working. You’re too busy, in the case of the dentist, taking care of patients to look up and think of these solutions. But when you start to ask, I mean, Z, would you have thought when you first started optometry that like designer frames would be such a big thing like they are now? Was that a big thing when you first started, designer frames? Not as big. It’s gotten bigger, for sure. And people buy multiple ones and people, a kind of new move is people having multiple pair of glasses for different outfits. I mean, you know, you don’t wear one dress. I know you wear the same suit. Every day. Every day. Five of the same ones, beautiful. It’s a beautiful thing. But another thing I love about the survey, one thing that it really does is it strengthens your customer relationships. In other words, people think, oh my gosh, you called me. You care. You know me. I’m somebody. I’m not just a number in a computer. And you’re asking me questions and you act like you care what I’m saying. And I have the six questions you ask every time. We’ll go through them real fast. Question number one is you say, hey, I want to call you to pick your brain. I want to ask you, how happy were you with our service, or our product, on a scale of one to ten with ten being the highest? That’s the first question. And no matter what their answer is, say, can you tell me why? That’s question number two. Tell me why. Okay? Then question number three you want to ask is you want to say, if not a 10, what can we do to get that to a 10? And they’ll tell you. And then you say, why is that? And then the final two questions you ask, and you want to ask them this is, are there any other products and services that we should be offering that we didn’t? And I’m telling you, you’ll be amazed how people will say, well, hey, if you guys started offering videography, we would have used you guys for our video for our wedding. Our video company we used was a disaster, and if we would have known that you guys did that, then we would offer that. And you know what? We started offering videography, then we started a photography company. We really started doing everything. I mean, it was pretty amazing over time. One-stop shop. One-stop shop. But just by asking the questions, it always starts with a good question. So again, ask your customers right now. Do it. Commit to doing it. Survey these customers. Invest the time to learn from your ideal and likely buyers. I want to say this real quick. This also helps you to become better at what you do. They’ll tell you maybe what you did wrong so that you can fix those problems right away. We have thrivers who listen to this show on the Thrive Time show. Every week they listen to it and they’ve said, do you have any templates for performas? Do you have any cold calling scripts? Do you guys do web analysis? I mean, do you do? And yes, yes, yes. We keep listening to you and giving you what you want, Z. That’s right. Get on thrive15.com, thrivetimeshow.com. Welcome back to The Thrive Time Show. Josh Merrill here with Dr. Z, Clay Clark. We’re talking about the five keys to unlocking your company’s fast and sustainable growth. Right now, we’re on number one survey your current customers and surveying is huge Clay. Yeah and you know we kind of rushed through them to the break. I know some people were pulling over trying to write them all down there but I want to really unpack it and really get into it. And so Zee I want to ask you why is it so important to ask your customers how likely they are to refer your business to a friend? Why is that just so critical that you ask that question? Well I said he came out and said that that was the most important number that you could have. It’s called your net promoter score. Because the most powerful advertising you can get is word of mouth, and word of mouth is people happy with your business. And as we know, being business owners, someone is upset with your business, they tell three, four, five times the number of people than the ones that are happy with the business. And I want to really, this is a fun example, and it’s not like a thing where I’m just trying to brag on ourselves. I want to give you an example. I’ll give you the one that’s really positive, and I’ll give you the one that’s really negative. The positive is we had a Thriver last night in Australia, who somebody in Oklahoma heard the show, went to Thrive Time Show because they liked it, and they shared the podcast to somebody else. All of a sudden, I’m talking to a scaffolding company in Australia. It’s crazy how word of mouth can just grow. People will refer you because they were impressed or they were happy or whatever that experience was. And then when they called in with a question, our crazy customer service team does these crazy things where we actually call people back. We respond to people’s business questions. It’s awesome and there’s a certain virality to it. I like to refer to it as the, Harvard calls it the net promoter score. I also call it the viral score But it’s like your likelihood of your business to grow to a to a viral level when when when every customer tells two people Guess what you’re viral. It’s taken off man. It’s awesome now on the negative side of things when I first started my business And I don’t know if you can relate to this, but there were people there’s customers There’s probably one or two percent of the population who are like this a Harvard They wrote a book called the service profit chain and Harvard refers to them as the terrorists. Oh yeah. And they come in, and they are mad at their spouse, they’re mad at your business, they’re mad at the economy, they’re mad at the weather, they’re mad at the election, they’re just mad. And they would come in, and I remember I was in my office, and I just decided, I’m not letting this one go. This guy, I’m going to beat this guy. So seriously, this guy was going, listen, you guys, I want a refund. You guys screwed up my daughter’s, you know, it was a daughter’s birthday party. And I said, how did I screw up? I didn’t even want to get into it, but I want a full refund. And I was the one who personally did it. And he goes, your DJ ruined everything. And I demanded that I speak to the owner. And I’m like, I am the owner. I went ahead and humored the guy. Well, I am the owner. And he’s like, well, I’ll tell you what, you ruined it. He went on this tangent. And I just decided, I’m going to fight this man. Uh-oh. Like cage fight? I did not physically. Like in the octagon? I just got to a point of like, I’ve said this often, but I decided to fight crazy with crazy. And so he was like, I’ll sue you. And I’m like, I will sue you. And we start getting just radical. Wow. And do you know what happened there Z? And Harvard says one upset customer typically will tell five to ten people how upset they are, and a happy customer will only tell one or two. It’s the human nature thing. And so I ended up getting a firestorm of emails. Now, this was before social media, thankfully. But it was all over the internet, emails flying in, and they were quoting me things I said on the phone that I did say and not telling the other side of the story. And it was just a bad deal. So all I’m just saying right now, if you’re listening to this right now and you’re having any type of frustration with a customer, it’s important that you try to resolve it. And Z, I want to ask you, if somebody came into your optometry clinic and there was an error or an omission or a problem that you caused, what is your approach to solving those problems versus duking it out? Well, first of all, you get the patient, the customer, and you get them into a private area to where it’s not a public conversation. Not everybody’s listening and watching to the drama unfold. That’s number one. You don’t want to hop on the PA system and… You don’t… That’s right. On lane four, we have a fight right now on a refund. That’s right. You know, we don’t do that. Okay. So you get private, and then you listen, which is painful because a lot of the stuff they’re saying you want to maybe argue with or you want to maybe interject, but you sit there and you listen. You close your mouth and you open your ears and you nod and you listen and you let them vent. These are glasses I bought. I noticed that when you put them outside for the weekend, it starts to take off the color on the sides of them and it starts to get foggy and I want a complete refund. Yeah, absolutely. I wasn’t told. You’re right about that. Oh no, I have to add that to the checklist of things to tell. Do not leave your glasses out for an entire weekend outside the backyard. There was only a weekend. Only a weekend. Only a weekend. So after listening to them, then I would calmly look at them and I would say, I would apologize if necessary because oftentimes, you know, one of my staff made a mistake. You know, maybe it wasn’t as horrible as we’re making it out ruin my entire life And I would did apologize sure own it I would own it at being the boss the buck stops with me and I I would explain to them how How embarrassed and and sorry that I was and that that’s not what we wanted from their experience And that’s not the way that it was meant to be. And then I would look at them and I would say, what can I do for you? Basically what I’d like is to have free glasses forever. Just forever. I mean, I have five kids and so it’s all of them have eyes and I just figured maybe we can get just one for all of them. Every now and then. Would you give me a little Farm Logic? I would love to. Oh, beautiful, beautiful. We’re going back to the farm here. Getting ready. Farm Logic. There we go. You see here, most people won’t be greedy. And my number one rule in business is, pigs get fat and hogs get butchered. Alright? So, if you were to say what you just said, Clay, you would have been a hog, you would have been greedy, and that would have been unrealistic, and you would not have gotten that. But if you had been a pig, and said, you know, I just, I’m glad you listened to me. Thank you for apologizing. If I could just get some new frames, just replace these with some new frames, and now that I know not to leave them outside in my backyard for a weekend, now that I know that, then I’ll be happy. I think that most people are reasonable when you, and again, if you read the service profit chain, it’s a case study written by Harvard. It was referred to me by none other than Mr. Caggio, the president of Quick Trip. And he said, this is the book you must read. And he says, if you increase the level of quality of your service, if you map it out, if you make these workflows and these systems, and you really focus on building these apostle customers, Harvard breaks them into these five groups. I’m going to give them to you, OK? The first one is the apostle. That’s when somebody loves you to the point that they run around telling people, oh my gosh, that movie was so great, you need to see it. Now the second group, those are loyalists, and they say, I’m loyal to you, but I’m not a talker. I’m not going to run around talking about you, but I’m loyal to the product, I’ll keep buying from you. The third group is the mercenary. The mercenaries are people that if the price is cheaper here or there, they’re going to go wherever the price is the cheapest. The fourth group is a hostage, where they buy from you, but they hate you. And that, unfortunately, if you’re in a business where you have a market share and you have customers that you irritate and you just consistently do it, I mean, that could create a hostage situation. And that final area is a terrorist. That terrorist is that 2% to 3% of the customer base who is just a hateful, awful person. And so you really want to ask yourself, what are you doing wrong if more than about 2% or 3% of your customers are freaking out? Yeah, are terrorists. Yeah. So that’s kind of the idea. So right now as an action item, I encourage everybody, pick up the phone, dial the digits, and let’s begin surveying our customers. And remember, when you’ve got that irate patient in and you’re dealing with them, the key question is, what can I do to make you happy? Ooh, that’s nice. Hey, it’s the Thrive Time Show on Talk Radio 1170. When we come back, we’re going to be talking about the second key to unlocking your company’s fast and sustainable growth. You don’t want to miss it. It’s the Thrive Time Show. Josh Merrill here with Dr. Z and Clay Clark. We’re talking about the five keys to unlocking your company’s fast and sustainable growth. Right now, we are on key number two, Clay. Now, here’s the deal about key number two. This is something I want you, again, I know you’re driving, and so if you ever go, what did you guys say again? Or I want to learn more about that. I want to hear it again. You can always go to thrivetimeshow.com to re-hear it. We also have downloadables where it’s kind of like show notes so you’re able to unpack these. But the second key here is you want to identify your ideal and likely buyers. And then once you’ve done that, you want to find their needs and sell them solutions. I’m going to read it to you again. Identify your ideal and likely buyers, find their needs and sell them solutions. So as you think about an example, there’s an example that comes to mind here. My good friend Dr. Zellner over here to my left, he has an unbelievable auto auction. Now it’s for, who can buy these cars? Well, you have to have a used car dealer’s license. Okay, so it’s not for the masses. But the thing is, is that that is your bread and butter, that’s your niche, that’s who you focus on. And so if you were to run commercials all over everywhere promoting these ads that were heard by people who are not Resellers people who are not you know you don’t fit that criteria Hypothetically you can be throwing away your ad dollars Absolutely, so how so if you could describe right now Who are your ideal and likely buyers as it relates to your auction who are these people well? They’re used car dealers and the good thing about that every state has its own Association that they have to register and have to register every year so every year we get a fresh and updated who are these people and so I know it’s easy you know yeah it’s like they here’s the barrel there’s the fish in that barrel and I don’t have to go to any lakes or ponds there’s my little barrel of fish I can fish out of okay here’s what I would say though is a lot of people want to argue about this so I coach with clients all over the world and I literally got off the phone with a guy yesterday and I almost, I just, I got to that point where I care so much, I want to help him make money and I’m taking the call and I just said, listen, you can’t tell me that your market is everybody. Quit saying that. Yeah. Stop it. And he goes, no, no, I don’t want to limit though my growth. And I go, homie, you don’t have enough ad dollars to shoot at everybody in the marketplace. You have a rifle, man. You’ve got to focus. It has to be like a laser scope. You have very few shots. Most businesses, according to Forbes, check this out, we have 22.5 million entrepreneurs in our country right now, self-employed people, and most of these people have 10 employees or less. So if you’re listening, the chances are you don’t have a $400 million marketing budget. You have to focus on those ideal and likely buyers. And the second part of this is we want to find their needs and sell them solutions. So what kind of needs do your ideal and likely buyers have at the auction? Well their needs are that most of them have a certain price range of car that they’re looking to buy. Okay. Okay. So you find that out, hey, you know, I’m buying for a new car store so I need what we call frontline ready cars. In other words, cars that are, you know, newer, less miles, and they’re more expensive, obviously, on the wholesale price of it. And then we have guys that are like, buy here, pay here, and they want the old clunkers that you trade in, that, you know, the old, you know, thousand dollar car, still running, and they take it to the lot, and they do financing on it. So there’s a wide range of needs with the different, with the different buyers, and even, and the sellers have their own needs, too. Hey, can you detail my car? Can you fix a bumper? Can you provide transportation to and from? Can you drive my car back and forth? I won’t belabor this point too much, but I am in awe of this place. I’m just telling you, there is probably… You would make a good auctioneer, I bet. Hibbidibbida, hebidibbida, hustle! Whoa, Josh just bought one. The thing is, is that there is at least, I’m just going to fire off at least five ways that I see your auto auction meet the needs, because you’re listening. But one is you serve these people lunch. And people who are buying cars are looking for something to eat on a Friday, right? Well, food is kind of a big deal. Who came up with that idea? Was that you, or did you survey the customers, or did the customer tell you, or did your wife give you that idea? I know your wife is kind of like your business coach. So who came up with this idea? Well, I used to have an auction before, and we did it, and we started it then. And so then when I got back into the business, it was just a natural progression to start with. If you’re going to be that way, I’m going to make you answer this question. But when you owned the first auction, who came up with the idea for lunch? Whose idea was that? I think it was mine. Okay, so you had the lunch idea. And I’ve noticed, though, that that is a galvanizing thing where the buyers enjoy hanging out. Yeah. They enjoy eating lunch. And food’s, like I said, kind of a big deal. So I worked with a, it was a dermatologist years ago, and I stole your move. I have never told you this publicly. Uh-oh. But it’s a company down in Austin, Texas. Nice. And I got hired as a consultant to come in and help fix their business. You know what I suggested by stealing your idea? I sincerely did this. What did you suggest? I said, well, how long is your average wait? They said, oh, well, some people have pre-cancerous screenings. Some people don’t. Some people are here a long time. There’s usually about a 20-minute wait. I said, have you ever thought about serving lunch? They said, no. They brought in kind of like a Camille’s, kind of a Panera Bread-esque sort of atmosphere. And there’s a business called Vitology down there in Austin. It’s not my idea, but it’s just more of presenting them with options. And they sat down and listened to their customers and realized, this will work. And so people get fresh smoothies and fresh lunch, that kind of thing. And it’s your auction. Time for me to go down to Austin. It’s beautiful. Now, and the move number two you do, though, is you have quick service. I mean, you check. How many cars are you selling on a typical Friday? Typical 800. And so, it’s not like, how many hours does it take to sell all 800? Oh, you know, you got to get it, three, three and a half hours. So you have these fast service, you have multiple lanes, how many lanes do you have out there? Seven. Seven? And then you have a detailed service that cleans the cars and maintains, I mean, you have all that, and then as far as the title work and all the paperwork, you do it right there. Yes, full service. So you’ve sat down and listened to your ideal and likely buyers, found out what they want, and you’ve given it to them. Wow! We did a good job. Well, I mean, I’m just saying the profundity of this idea is that you actually did it. I’m just saying a lot of us, I’ve been guilty of this before in my first businesses, I’m just guessing. I’m just saying. So, with the DJ Connection, our ideal and likely buyer was women, right? But when I met with Lori Montag of the Slap Watch and Zany Band fame, she sold like 60 million dollars of these slap watches and zany bands. She’s like, Clay, it seems like all of your wedding packages are named after Star Wars characters and various pieces of metal. And I’m like, yeah, because I’m a dude. And she goes, well, are you selling to dudes? Maybe you should survey those brides. And so, all I’m just saying is it’s so important that we do this. We now have the rose package. The lilac. Black, serious love, so much romance. Hey, when we come back, we’re gonna continue to talk about the five keys to unlocking your company’s fast and sustainable growth. You don’t wanna miss it, it’s the Thrive Time Show. Talk radio 11. Welcome back, it’s Josh Merrill with Dr. Z and Clay Clark. We’re talking about the five keys to unlocking your company’s fast and sustainable growth. Okay, we’ve already done two keys. I’m gonna go over them real quick. Number one, survey your current customers. Number two, identify your ideal and likely buyers, find their needs and sell them solutions. Okay, and we’re talking about number three here, identify the quick paying ideal and likely buyers. What do you mean by this exactly? Okay, well, today I’m currently involved in a company called Sprick Realty. It’s S-P-R-I-K Realty. I work with those guys. But back in the day, I was involved with a company called Fears and Clark. And Braxton Fears was the Fears, and I am the Clark and so what we did is we went out there and we decided we would get into the commercial real estate business. Now Z you own some commercial real estate so you could probably empathize with the plight of a commercial real estate person but like when you decided to buy your land where auction is now situated from the time it popped into your head to the time you closed on it how long was that? Too long it was actually when the three deals I was like going oh I should do that deal, I gotta do that deal. It took about a year and a half. A year and a half from the time you had the idea until the time it closed. No, the idea was a lot longer than that. I had to know compete, I had to wait out. So the idea was was probably, when you look at idea, probably three years. So Josh, we’re gonna role play through this. You, you my friend, okay, are gonna be a business owner. That’s me. You’re a business owner, and I’m going to cold call you. Here we go. I’m going to try. Hey, is this Josh? Hey, this is Josh. Josh, this is Clay Clark at Fears and Clark Realty Group. How are you, man? I’m doing so good. Hey, quick question. I saw that you own this beautiful restaurant right here. Yeah. And I was curious, do you own that or do you lease that? It looks like I wasn’t sure if you owned it or leased it. I’m going to go with I own it. You do? Okay. Wow, you’re a baller. Would you be willing to sell it or have you ever thought about selling the property? You know what I have? I’m sick of serving mac and cheese and I want to sell this place. How long do you think from now you would sell it ideally? You know, I mean, if we had a deal right now, cash in hand, how, I mean, when do you want to sell it? I don’t know, three to six months. Okay, timeout. Right there. So then I would put on my sheet, I’d put right there, I’d write down on this big whiteboard, he wants to sell it within three to six months. Next call. Next call. Next call. Now I have another guy calling buyers. Calling buyers, when do you want to buy? Other group, when do you want to sell? So one guy’s calling buyers, one guy’s calling sellers. Huge whiteboard. And Braxton and I, without any exaggeration, it’s fun, we did $27 million of transactions in less than 24 months. Wow. And so it wasn’t that I was really good. Braxton’s very good. He’s not a transactor. That guy understands how to get deals done. But do you know how we made 90% of our money? It was blowing up people that weren’t going to happen soon. So we talked to a guy and he goes, well, you know, my vision, bro, is more of like to open an organic coffee shop in the heart of downtown. It’s going to serve more of the community. It’s not going to be like coffee so much. It would just take the guy like a half hour to explain. So you have a coffee shop. No, it’s more of like yoga fusion, bro. But what I need to do is I got to build out. So do you have a drawing? Well, I’m working with my brother. It’s in my head, bro. And they would just talk. And you realize, and at first, I’m an entrepreneur, and that’s kind of my Achilles heel, and I love to help entrepreneurs. If you have a big vision, I want to help you. And so I would listen to these people, and Braxton says, hey, that’s not a realistic buyer. And I remember, what a horrible person. He hates people. It’s a coffee shop with yoga and fusion, right? Yeah, yeah. And so, and then, in commercial real estate, it’s inappropriate. It’s probably going to offend somebody listening, but I got to be real with you, okay? You get calls every day from people that will call, and they have no clue what they’re doing with their business, and they’re just trying to… They’re kind of like tire kickers. They’ll call, and they’ll go, hey, man, I was just calling to see how much a building is, and you say, well, what kind of space do you have, how much square footage? I don’t know, man. I’ll tell you what, though, man. I’m just looking. Then they want to do a tour. So then being the nice guy, I did this for like eight days. Every day for the first week or so I worked with Braxton, I would do the tours, I would take people around, I would do the thing, thinking I’m a nice guy. And then at the end of like the eight or nine days, Braxton goes, have you sold anything? And is anything even close to selling? And I’m going, I’m working on it. And so eventually Braxton taught me, he coached me through the process of looking for people that were realistic and that were going to be fast buyers. So as an action item, I encourage everyone right now, think about your customers you’re working with and think about the ones who are likely to buy now or close to now and figure out what is it that you could ask or what is it that you could say, what is it that you could do to filter your quick buyers from your long-term buyers. You’re listening to the Thrash Time Show on Talk Radio 11. And Clay, do you know what you do with the ones that are not going to be quick buyers? What do you do with those, my friend? You icebox them. Now, this is a phrase that you’ve introduced me to over the last couple, three years, and at first when you said it, what I heard… I knew you were offended. Well, yeah, when you said, well, let’s icebox it, I’m thinking, is that a non-answer? Is that a, you can’t decide what to do with it? But explain what you mean when you say I’m going to ice box this potential deal here. Instead of spinning your wheels and waiting for someone who doesn’t return your calls, who acted all excited one day, now three weeks later they won’t return an email, that they want to just eat up your time and there’s, like you said, the tire kickers, the ones that don’t really want to go now, you have to put those in the ice box. What that means, you just cool them off, you set them in the icebox until a later day, until they heat back up and the deal’s back on again. And so you have to do that. If you don’t, you spend all your day on these deals or customers or situations that are just time killers. And if you want to make copious amounts of cash and you are in commercial real estate, I’m going to give you the secret sauce right now. Get a list. If you don’t have a list, I need you to do crazy things like get into the building and make a list of the businesses. Go in there and make a list of the directory. But literally cold call. Cold call. Does anyone cold call? Yeah. Can I Facebook them? No. Can I Instagram them? No. You cold call them. You say, who handles your real estate? You don’t text them. You get them on the phone and you say, hey, when does your lease expire? And if the answer is not in the next three months, go, I’m sorry, I have the wrong number. Hang up. Next call. Go, go, go, go, go. Once you get the first 100 people that have a lease that’s expiring in three months, those are the people you focus on and you help them find a new location or a new office or whatever. You mean pick people off from the competition? Absolutely. It works. It’s the move. Here’s my question. Does this translate to smaller transactions, like if you own some kind of bakery, ice cream shop? I mean, is there something that we can do with that? OK, right now, this is a good example. You make awesome videos. We have a couple of clients right now we’ve made some great videos for, and I know how some people process information mentally, and some people just cannot make decisions short term. So I’ve told these people, hey, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to call you back at the end of the month, and I want you to give me your revisions, because I know that you’re processing, and I just know how your mindset works. I’m kind of iceboxing for a few weeks, but you’ve got to find a way to somehow filter, you know, because otherwise I would spend my time calling them, calling them, calling them, calling them, keep asking them for feedback that I’m not going to get. So what I want you to do right now, if you’re listening, this is how you do it. When we go to, for DJ Connection, we went to the bridal shows and I wrote three questions that are designed to filter my short-term buyers, my likely to close now buyers, from my long-term. So icebox or not? Icebox or not? So here we go. I asked them, what date are you looking at? Every bride, I said, what date are you looking at? And why did I ask that question, Josh? You tell me. Well, I asked them that because if they don’t have a date, they’re going, well, it’s 2019 probably. I’m still looking for the boy, actually. There was women who would come to the bridal show and you would ask them, you’d say, so when are you getting married? They go, well, I just really, I mean, I don’t want to like, we don’t know yet, but it’s going to be in the summer of 2016 and like it’s going to be awesome and it’s going to be either at the Mayo Hotel or in Arkansas or at my house or I don’t know and it’s In your and that’s a great person. That’s a great story, but you know what here’s a brochure a great story You say here’s a here’s a here’s a brochure now you say so what day are you looking at and they go? Oh, June 5th. Oh really? Where’s it gonna be at Mayo Hotel? Okay, and then the third question, how many guests? 227. And if they know those three, boom, it’s on. They’re hot. It’s a hot deal. I mean, stop dropping girls. They’re on fire. And you have to put all your energy on them. So when we went to the Tulsa wedding show, we had to ask these questions. And people aren’t mean, but some people are going to the wedding show to just get free stuff. Some people are there because they’re like, hey man, I heard there’s something dating here and there’s ladies everywhere and, you know, they just would run around. I heard there’s girls that are looking for grooms. If you ever see a dude at a wedding show, it’s like a unicorn. Everyone stops. It’s like, what? Is that a dude? What’s he doing in here? It’s usually a dude that either A, was dragged to the event, or B, he’s just looking for some free cake. Yeah, well, you know. All I’m saying is you have to find a way, Josh, to filter it. Whether you’re a videographer and you’re editing videos, you’ve got to find out. You can’t spend all your time with people that can’t make decisions. Or, hey, when do you want to shoot this commercial? Do you want to shoot the commercial before the end of the month? Or do you have to find some sort of way to sift and ask yourself, is this person likely to buy soon? Because you can’t, you got to eat while you’re dreaming, man. You have a big dream. You got to eat. A lot of people are waiting for the customers to come to them. And you’re saying, go out and get those customers, find the customers. Okay, here we go. You got to dial and smile. This is, this is, this is the, to quote George Bush, you know, this is the strategy. You know what I mean? The strategy? Yeah, this is the strategy. This is what you have to do. You need to call them all until they cry, buy, or die. So that means, what’s the strategy? You make a list of your ideal and likely buyers, and you call them all until they cry, buy, or die. What does it mean, cry? What, do they have to literally cry? Cry is where somebody, you’ve called them like 13 times. And by the way, I will call you 13 times. But you call somebody and they say, I am not interested. Take me off your list. And if I wasn’t doing a radio show right now, what I would tell you to say is you would call them and go, so when you said not to call you, what do you mean by that? And I would still call you. Yeah. Until you, I would, because I’m going to sell some stuff. I don’t care. No, but because we are on a radio show, I would not give that kind of advice. But then we say bye. That means they’ve agreed to move forward with you. And die means that they just fell off the face of the earth and you can’t reach them. But you’ve got to put that full court press because nobody’s going to give you business. 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. I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex, they’re both $1.3 billion companies. They both have 2,000 to 3,000 pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually nonexistent 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, asking our customers for reviews. And now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed pest and lawn company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. Okay, so 411% we’re up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now, our closing rate is about 85%, and that’s largely due to, first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one-and-done deal. It was a system that we that we followed with Thrive and in the refining process and that has obviously the 411% shows that 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 and 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 is by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews. That way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists. Everything gets done and it gets done right. It creates accountability. We’re able to make sure that everything gets done properly both out in the field and also in our office. And also doing the podcast like Jared had mentioned that has really, really contributed to our success. But that, like I said, the diligence and consistency in doing those in that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives. And also, 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. You know, 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, year over year. The group of people required to implement our new digital marketing plan is immense, starting with a business coach, videographers, photographers, web designers. Back when I graduated dental school in 1985, nobody advertised. The only marketing that was ethically allowed in everybody’s eyes was mouth-to-mouth marketing. By choosing to use the services, you’re choosing to use a proof-and-turn-key marketing and coaching system that will grow your practice and get you the results that you’re looking for. I went to the University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, graduated in 1983, and then I did my pediatric dental residency at Baylor College of Dentistry from 1983 to 1985. Hello, my name is Charles Colaw with Colaw Fitness. Today I want to tell you a little bit about Clay Clark and how I know Clay Clark. Clay Clark has been my business coach since 2017. He’s helped us grow from two locations to now six locations. We’re planning to do seven locations in seven years and then franchise. And Clay’s done a great job of helping us navigate anything that has to do with like running the business, building the systems, the checklists, the workflows, the audits, how to navigate lease agreements, how to buy property, how to work with brokers and builders. This guy is just amazing. This kind of guy has worked in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crockerill, head of Disney, with the 40,000 cast members. He’s friends with Mike Lindell. He does Reawaken America tours where he does these tours all across the country where 10,000 or more people show up to some of these tours. On the day-to-day, he does anywhere from about 160 companies. He’s at the top. He has a team of business coaches, videographers, graphic designers, and web developers. They run 160 companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running 160 companies. In the weekly, he’s running 160 companies. Every 6-8 weeks he’s doing Reawaken America tours. Every 6-8 weeks he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up 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-ups 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 it into a franchisable, scalable business. One of his businesses has like 500 franchises. That’s just one of the companies or brands that he works with. So, amazing guy. Elon Musk, kind of like smart guy. He kind of comes off sometimes as socially awkward, but he’s so brilliant and he’s taught me so much. When I say that, Clay is like, he doesn’t care what people think when you’re talking to him. He cares about where you’re going in your life and where he can get you to go. That’s what I like him most about him. He’s like a good coach. A coach isn’t just making you feel good all the time. A coach is actually helping you get to the best you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that, we became friends. 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 and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it. I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right and anyways, just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate anytime I got 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. This is where we used to live years ago. This is our old neighborhood. See? It’s nice, right? So this is my old van and our old school marketing. And this is our old team. And by team I mean it’s me and another guy. This is our new van with our new marketing and this is our new team. We went from 4 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 times a thousand. The Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops because we teach you what you need to know to grow. You can learn the proven 13 point business systems that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re gonna teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re gonna teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two day, 15 hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems. So now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur I always wish that I had this and because there wasn’t anything like this I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter Bunny but inside of it it was a hollow nothingness and I wanted the knowledge. 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 going to be the best business workshop ever and we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money. So if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person, two-day interactive business workshop, all you’ve got to do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets and if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable tickets and if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you.