Business Podcasts | What It Takes to Become Super Successful w/ Dr. Robert Zoellner + How to Lead Your Team + Why Anything w/ More Than One Head Is a Monster w/ Long-Time Client Success Story Aaron Antis & Pastor Jackson Lahmeyer

Audio Transcription

Get ready to enter the Thrive Time 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 give 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 three, two, one. Here we go. We started from the bottom. Now we here. We started from the bottom. And that’s where we got to get. OK. We’re going to go rapid fire into a lot of really, really good stuff. What I’m going to try to do is to make this more doable or attainable or realistic or actionable or practical or whatever that is. I’m going to bring up a few more people just so you can meet real people that are actually going down the path. Pastor Jackson Lawnmower covering up here, sir. OK, I bring a pastor Jackson Lawnmower and let’s hear for Pastor Jackson Lawnmower bringing him up here. Yeah. OK, here we go. And then I’m bringing up Aaron Antus. Aaron Antus here, Pastor Jackson, along with him. OK, and to give you a little context, if you’re watching online, Pastor Jackson, his church is Sheridan.Church, Sheridan.Church. And Pastor Jackson, how would you describe the kind of ministry you have there? Oh, I would say, one, we love the Bible. It’s a Bible church. Yeah. Through and through. It’s a novel idea. Yeah, it’s kind of a, it’s a good concept for a church, right? Yeah. Verse by verse teaching. Verse by verse, yeah. And how many weeks in a row did you spend on the book of Genesis? We did a 52 part series on Genesis, 32 part series on Revelation, and right now we’re in the book of Acts, and I’m opening chapter 8, and it’s part 30. I basically highlighted the entire book of Genesis. It’s all good. Okay, and I’m going to bring up a lot of different people, but I’m just bringing up some folks so you can kind of hear how these principles can be applied here. Let’s go through the questions on the board, then we’ll get back into the book here. Do you believe in servant leadership? No, but it’s a fast answer. Maybe someone else does. I’ll explain to you the idea of it. Certain people believe in servant leadership. I don’t, but maybe you do. So I’m not saying you shouldn’t or you should I’m just telling you I don’t The thing about conferences is most conferences people will say things that you want to hear therefore you cheer I do the opposite people hear mine. They go I Don’t I I’m not Gonna go with the flow. So the flow is servant leadership I don’t I don’t do it but you could and Aaron let me just give example of this I’ll pick on you and then you can rebuke me or something. Yeah. So Jesus, you believe in Jesus? I do, yeah. Jesus, you believe in Jesus? Yes, sir. We don’t have to agree on the same conclusion. And what we’re going to do, and Jesus had these 12 homies, 12 guys, 12 dudes. I say that, I’m not being sacrilegious. I’m just saying, these are not like the elites among us who are following Jesus. What kind of people were following who were these twelve apostles eleven of them were very common people one of them made sense but the one that made sense who would have had an educational background and a high family esteemed background he was the one that betrayed jesus okay so jesus correct me if i’m wrong you tell me if i’m just getting the bible wrong there’s a guy who’s like hey i want to follow you but i got a lot going on right now i gotta bury somebody and how did jesus respond to that? He said, let the dead bury their dead. He is not a pastor. He said, let the dead bury their own dead. What did that mean? Because he’s not a pastor. He can’t understand the Bible. He went to Bible college, but he didn’t, you know, he’s not a pastor. So in that whole story, the first one comes up to him and says, I’ll follow you wherever you go. And Jesus says, foxes have dens, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Then comes that person, and then another person comes and says, let me follow you, but let me wait until after my father is dead. And Jesus says, no one who puts a hand to the plow is worthy to serve in the kingdom of God. And so basically what Jesus is saying to all three people that are given right there is, in order to follow me, there are no negotiations, there’s no procrastination, and there can be no hesitation. It is, you’re either all in, or you’re not in at all. And so that was kind of the standard that Jesus had to follow him. Okay. I feel like he could keep going on a sermon here. We’re not going to let him. No, no, no. We don’t do that. We don’t push religion, but you should all worship Jesus on anybody here. We don’t do that. Okay. But no, Aaron, so you and Shaw Holmes, though, you have a business that when I first met you, I mean this with all due respect, and I’m not going to follow up with an attack. That’s how you normally do it. All due respect, then you attack. You were a guy that, in my opinion, again, disagree if you want, I feel like you were all in on really believing the best in every single person and believing that they were actually, every single person was doing the best possible, and that you had a very non-cynical, very optimistic view of the American employee. I think that’s how I would describe it. I think you accurately described it. I love people in general, and I looked at everybody in my team, and I still look at them this way, that there is a better version of you inside of yourself, and I want to try and help draw that person out of you. So the only thing that I would say is different now is there are some of you who don’t want the better version and you want to just make my life a living hell. I put those people out of my life. That’s the difference now. What I have found, and it’s for me in business, is most owners that I work with, most business owners I work with, if I had to give a bias, most of the business owners let the employees completely dominate their life and they end up creating what I call a wage cage where they’re like a slave to their business and the employees call in sick and so they have to fill in and so they end up becoming a slave to their business and if that’s on average I’d say 90% of the business owners I meet they’re that way and I ask them why and they say well my job is to serve the employees and I said well I don’t know what that means but I you shouldn’t do it that’s my response to that but I’m not a pastor. So now, but you are a pastor, so how would you respond to that question? What was the question? Servant leadership. Servant leadership. How do you try to lead? What’s your plan? Well, anything with more than one head is a freak, and so in every organization or any church or ministry, there does have to be a head. And it was very clear, was Jesus a servant leader? Yeah, Jesus served as he washed the feet of his apostles, but when it came to making decisions Jesus did not have a committee Jesus did not have a board Jesus was the sole executive decision maker and so was he a servant Yes, but he was definitely a definitive strong leader So I’m gonna bring up JT real quick here cuz JT can maybe sort to the cobwebs if he’s here and Devin I’m really up Devin cuz Devin’s been here for 10 years, which means that he now has white in his beard, and he used to not have white in his beard when I hired him. That’s what that means. And then I’m going to bring up Andrew if he’s around, if he’s on the phone. If he’s not available, that’s fine. So let’s bring up Devin first, and then JT. So Devin, you’ve been here for a long time. Yep. How many web developers have been here since you’ve been here? A bunch. At least 10. How many of them hired a prostitute at work? At least one. How many of them would intentionally break the website to fix it later? At least three. How many of them would download crazy stuff on their computer and we would have to find it? Almost all of them. I think all but one. So if I would have run around asking them, do you care that I care, do you know that I care? How would that have impacted them in your mind? Yeah, they wouldn’t have cared. They wouldn’t have cared. Which is good, because I don’t care. So that’s, you know, so I’m like, hey, you downloaded the wrong thing, over and over and over, you’re fired. But there’s somebody else that wants people to care. I just don’t know what that is. So I really care about Devin a lot. He’s been here a long time, but he had to earn that, and he earned, you know, so he actually started working for free. Remember that? True. And Devin said, I would like to work for you, and I didn’t have a job. And I said, okay, well, you have to work for free. And he said, okay, and you did. And he earned my respect, and it took about 30 days to earn my respect, and then we’ve had a good flow. But how would you describe what it’s like to work here? It’s very, you have to like want to better yourself. It’s an environment where if you wanna grow as a person, that you have that opportunity. There are opportunities everywhere to learn To become a better version of yourself But I don’t run around worrying about if you care True that I care that you care that we care because I don’t care Unless you do a good job, then I care if that makes any sense if you do a good job now if you’re late Late is like a disease and I have to like quarantine myself from it like if you’re late. I’m like oh, that’s a later That’s a later? Oh, no. Put a mask on him. Get him away from me, because it’s contagious. Jackassery. I don’t want it. So people that are on time or early, those are my people, people that do what they’re going to do. That’s part of my culture that I try to create. So for me, I just, me personally, I’m not saying you have to have this culture. But for me, I’m not really going to invest a whole lot of time in getting to know you until I’ve discovered that you’re diligent. That’s what I do. Now, we switch to ministry. That’s why I’m bringing up totally different spectrums. So I’m trying to help answer some questions here. You’re in ministry, okay, and I’m gonna throw out a hypothetical situation. Let’s go back, how long have you been in ministry full-time? Pastor in Sheridan now, seven years. So let’s go back to the first year, that way no one knows these people. Okay. Did you ever have like a worker who’s supposed to, they volunteered to watch the kids, or a video person, or some sort of person who works within the church that just couldn’t understand the concept of time or space and doing what they’re supposed to do. Oh yeah, yeah. I’ll tell you a funny story and it kind of applied to the whole church back then, but whenever I first stepped in there was like 40 members left at the church and if you have 40 members, how many show up on Sunday? 25. You know that’s good attendance. And so everyone would always show up late, you know, because late is like a contagious thing, disease. And the first song I always felt bad for the worship team because they were singing just the chairs. And so the service started at 1030 and everyone volunteered. Everybody was always late. It was just the culture. And so I was like, I have a great idea. I’m going to move service to 11 o’clock, which means they won’t be 15 minutes late. They’ll all be 15 minutes early. And so me being the genius, I’m like, this will fix it. And so I moved service from 1030 to 11 o’clock and guess what time everybody still showed up. Hello. 1515 is the wildest thing I’ve ever seen. So I realized something catering to the problem wasn’t going to fix the problem. We had to have a new culture with our volunteers and require excellence and so it took time to get there, but making that change of the service time, it didn’t fix the problem, it only just magnified the problem that was already there. I’m going to tell you a story about me, a young jackass. I was 20 years old, there’s a guy who invented, he didn’t invent, he marketed an invention. So who remembers the Stairmaster? Stairmaster? Shawn, you can look him up the the guy who launched the stair master’s name is Clifton Talbert. He’s the first black individual west of the Mississippi to open a bank, the first black man to open a bank west of the Mississippi, and he earned his wealth by introducing the stair master. And he was a mentor of mine, but it wasn’t a mentor of mine. I wanted him to be a mentor of mine. I went to the same church with him. And if you went to Christian Chapel back there, he would always be sitting in the front row to the right, always dressed in a suit. And I’m like, I’m going to get to know this guy. He’s going to teach me, because I grew up poor, and I want to figure out. So I, Mr. Talbert, sir, could I meet you at your office? Absolutely. When do you want to meet? I said, well, I don’t. So he tells me a time. I set an appointment. I book it. It’s supposed to be like at 2. And I roll up at 2.16 with an earring in both ears, dressed like I’m in the Wu-Tang Clan, but I wasn’t. And he said, hey, Mr. Clark, how are you? I said, good. He says, his assistant, his office manager, she greeted me and she was like, Mr. Clark, do you have an appointment with Mr. Talbert at 2? I said, yeah. She said, okay, well, he was expecting you. And I said, okay. So I sit down, he says, Mr. Clark, I just want you to know that what you do and what you say are not related. A lot of times you want to make sure they’re in alignment. So because you don’t respect my time I don’t respect yours so it’s been a good meeting. And I’m like this is a good mentorship and I’m not even paying why are you know so I leave and she’s like he could brief schedule if you want but you you really screw that up. I’m like geez get in my car no one to talk to but me you know I’m going this guy’s an ass, he hates people. He’s racist. Oh yeah, that’s what you know. So I come back, book the appointment, because I’m ready to go. I show up early now, I’m ready to go. And he said, Mr. Clark, I’m glad to appreciate you showing me that you honor my time, I honor your time. What questions do you have? And he was super nice, super cordial. And then he said, I said, how did you introduce the Stare Master into the marketplace? He said, I met these guys who invented the Stare Master, they came to my bank, they didn’t have any sales. And I told them that if you’ll give me the master agreement, I’ll do the sales as long as you guys, you take your product, I get a percentage of all the sales. I’ll sell it if I can have the master agreement to sell it. And I go, and then what’d you do? He said, I cold called every single gym in America over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. And I’m like, thinking that, you know, he’s having like a seizure or something and over and over and over and over and over and over and I’m like he’s he’s blacking out on me we’re losing him here and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and I’m like and over and over and over and I’m like this is a guy he hates me and over and over and over and over and then I sold one and then I called over and over and over and over and over. And I’m like, yeah, but what else did you do? He’s like, you asked me what I did, this is what I did. And that’s how I did it. And I was like, well, I don’t know if this is, this isn’t effective. I mean, I thought you’re, anything else would you, you know, he’s, do you not like facts? This is over, we’re done. And I’m like, God, over, and it did not go well with Clifton for the first three or four times because I wasn’t ready to be taught. You know, like I wasn’t ready. I was just so pissed. So I went to Dr. Zellner and Aaron, have you ever been to Zellner’s? You ever driven by it by the mall? Come up past the mic to Aaron real quick here. So how would you describe his location? And Sean, maybe you can look it up. I would say it feels like you’re at like a lounge, nightclub-ish, nice restaurant. Yeah. And you come in and there’s like a concierge type person that greets you and and he was my wife’s boss so he’s my wife’s boss so I show up to pick my wife up from work and I have subwoofers I used to listen to a lot of Jay-Z you know so it’s like you hear like massive bass in the place can you look up can I get a YouTube and this was like my normal I pull up and just… I’m pulling up in front of his optometry clinic with bass all over the place because I was a DJ, you know? So, I’m dating Vanessa, she’s 19, I’m 19. I pull up and… Now, just being real, Aaron, just crank it up though. Because I have massive subwoofers and I just pull up and… How many of you have ever pumped gas next to this guy? No money in the tank, but he’s got spinners. When the car stops, the wheels keep going. Pause. Okay. So I said, Dr. Z, I said, Kylie, can I, can I, by the way, Kylie is still there. She was my wife’s manager. She’s still there. She’s been there for 23 years. I said, can I meet Dr. Z? She says, no. I said, why? She goes, I’m like, what? So finally, I got a meeting with him. Now I meet with him at Ruby Tuesdays. I found out he liked croutons at Ruby Tuesdays. So we met at Ruby Tuesdays and I went over this stuff with him and Aaron, I want to get your reaction to this. I’d like to get your reaction to it Jackson, because I think we’ve all had a mentor that was helpful, but it hurt our feelings maybe because our feelings mattered more than the reason we wanted our feelings to be validated more than we wanted to be educated. So Dr. Z says, what’s the problem? And I said, I need to grow my DJ business. We’re doing about three weddings a week and I don’t have any money to advertise. I wanna know what’s the most effective way to advertise. And Z says, well this is back with the yellow pages. Who remembers the yellow pages? Who remembers dinosaurs? Okay, same thing. So the yellow pages, he said, you gotta have the biggest ad in the yellow pages if you wanna increase your wages. I do well with it, when it rhymes, it works for me. I go, oh, so you’re saying if I advertise in the yellow pages, I make more wages? You know, it’s gonna be the biggest ad. Clay, it has to be the biggest ad in the yellow page. Who remembers the yellow pages? Not like page one of Google. You open up to D for disc jockey, remember that? And it’s the biggest ad, you got the A listing if you have the biggest ad. And I said, well, how much is that? He goes, it’s probably $2,500 a month, my man. I said, a month? He says, yeah, but you know, you don’t want success. So, as a young guy, why would you think for me and for many people that are looking for mentorship but they want their feelings validated, why is the answers that we want, why are they different from what they need to be? Why is that different? I would just say people have a cognitive dissonance where they just, it’s like they see a world that doesn’t exist. It’s just inside of their own head. And they think that success looks one way when it actually looks a completely different way. It looks like getting up at four in the morning. But what they see is somebody staying up until midnight partying on the scene. Like that’s not what it is. It’s getting up at four in the morning and doing the tasks you need to do. Now, Devon, pass the phone to Devon real quick. So Devon, he tells me to spend $2,500 a month. Now I’ll remind you, I’m working at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV doing three weddings a weekend, three events a week. How many of you worked at Target? It’s like $7.25 an hour back in the day. My total income was like $1,100 a week. If I DJed a show or two, I might hit $2,000 of gross revenue. And I’m going $2,500 a week? And he’s like, well, you just don’t want it. So Devon, if you and your wife today were in a spot where you were like man We need to come up with $2,500 a month What are some options that are within the realm of reason that you could do if you really had to within the realm of reason? sell a car So everything Maybe sell a kid. I mean I got a I got a few of those All right, so I go back to my wife and I’m like I have the magic system I figured it out Z has said if we want to increase our wages, we need the biggest ad of the Yellow Pages. I found the system, here it is. We’re gonna turn off the air conditioning, turn off the heat, sell a car, and that’s our plan. Oh yeah, and my wife said, I’m in. Now that was great, because she said that if not, we would not have five kids. So she said, I’m in. So that’s what we did. So I called up Jeremy McCaslin, boop, boop, boop, boop. I said, hey, Yellow Pages, how can I help you? I want to buy the biggest ad in the phone book. Now the phone book guy shows up. Who remembers the phone book guy? Phone book’s like, now did you want it to be colorful? Color, did you want, I’m going, oh yeah, all of it, yeah. And he says, sir, you recognize, this is like a $2,700 a month commitment, 12 months. Who remembers that? 12 months! Google ads! If I work with you now and you’re a client, it’s so much easier. Because I can turn on your ads and test it for 30 days and turn it off. It was a commitment. $2,700 total a month. You can’t change it. So I’m like, phew! He says, do you want to sign your proof? Do you want to sign off? And I go, I don’t know. How many of you have had that moment where it’s like, should I sign? Should I not? Should I stay? Should I go? So I said, can I think about it for 24 hours? So I go back to Dr. Z and he says, we’re gonna have some fun with this. So we get out the ad of my competitor and their ad said, been in business since 1985. He says, you gotta beat that thing. I go, how? He goes, put conceived in 1980. That’s when you were born, right? I’m like, boom. And then it was like, we offer any music. He put, put any, we offer more selections than anyone in, my competitor was called Infinity. So he said, shove it in their face. He said, we offer unlimited song selections to Infinity and beyond. And he’s like, that way they know you’re naming them. They know it. You attack. And I’m like, okay, attack, what else? And he’s like, their ad says, best prices. You say will be anyone’s price guaranteed. Your first booking is a dollar. If you know, your first book a dollar, and I’m like a dollar, and we started, he’s just crazy ideas he’s throwing out there. Like your first booking is a dollar, beat anyone’s price, and he’s going, you need a no brainer. You’ve gotta have something that just is a kung fu punch. The way he describes it, he says it needs to throat punch the person who’s reading it, and they’re like, ah, I can’t handle it. He’s like, is that a good thing, to throat punch? He goes, shut up, I’m talking to you. This is exciting, this is advertising. So we’re getting into it. So I run out, I get my ad, and it’s gonna be anyone’s price. We’re gonna be, we conceived in 1980, unlimited music, unlimited time. And my phone starts ringing. That was huge. But that wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I thought that I could just do a little small micro-improvement and it would make a change But you’re gonna have to go like all into that and so I just encourage if you’re here today and you’re hearing so many things and they’re like counter of What you are doing by default again, I go back to it in America You’ve got only only like eight point nine nine million self-employed people in a population of 330 million I got three percent of our country. It’s self-employed and only it’s not 96 percent of that self-employed group fails. So you’ve got a one out of a thousand chance that you’re talking to someone who’s successful. Even when you’re asking, if you’re just running around the community asking for, how many of you are getting business pro tips from people that don’t know what they’re talking about? You ever had that? Lots of, and everyone wants to give advice, you know? So, and the people that like Dr. Z or Clifton who know what they’re to do and they’re not really Typically running around wanting to teach it because they’re busy running their own thing, right? So just be really careful with that. Let’s go to the next question here Aaron next question How do you use equity in the company to optimize growth? Pastor Jackson? I go to you because you’re a church I think this is a funny question With the church You’re the pastor of the church your church has only had three or four pastors in the history of Sheridan Church? Four pastors in 72 years. No scandals? No scandals. Okay, so for me, what I would say is I would recommend that you would never ever ever give equity to somebody, but I’d give them a percentage of revenue. That’s what I would recommend for a lot of reasons, but it’s mainly because most people I know get divorced and don’t pay their taxes. What did I just say? Most people I know get divorced and don’t pay their taxes. What did I just say? Most people that I know get divorced and don’t pay their taxes. And now all of a sudden you’re dealing with their exes and you’re dealing with their lack of solvency on their tax situation. Aaron, have you ever met somebody who doesn’t pay their taxes? I have met way too many people who don’t pay their taxes and I’ve met about 50, at least 50% of the people I’ve ever known have gotten divorced. And that’s a rough deal if you’re partnered with that person. So I’d be very careful in the equity game. For you to bring on someone who’d be like a key leadership pastor or a core pastor or an associate pastor, I mean, what kind of trust would you have to have at a church level to bring on a co-pastor? I don’t even know what that looks like. Well, it would be a major trust in regards to an associate just because you don’t want to corrupt the culture that you have, and especially when you’ve kind of gotten to a rhythm of things. And ministry is also very difficult because, you know, business people will stab you in the back, but let me tell you something, ministers are just as dirty and tricky as business people. And so you just have to be careful. You have to be careful. Now, the equity thing, I want to answer that question about the equity. Who here wants to know about equity? Who’s wanting to know about the equity? So what was your question about equity, Zach? Mainly, do you recommend giving like, if at 40, at ground level, giving them 10% equity to help them grow? I would not, but I love splitting revenue. Because I just want you to know, this is just being real. You know, the other day, it was yesterday, way back in the day, I called Dr. Sherwood because everyone in my family got sick for a while there. And I was like, I need an IV thing. So he comes by here and checks me with God knows what, now I’m here, I’m fine. But I just don’t do sick. I haven’t had a sick day in 25 years, I guess. I just don’t do sick. But I’ve had people like, like Devin has been here a long, long time, or JT, or Andrew’s been here for years, and they’re wonderful people. But like when people move on to the different phases of their life, I don’t want to be stuck in a situation where I have to treat them like they’re my wife, if that makes any sense. So I’d be low on the, I’d be very, I would be really stingy on the equity idea, but I’m all about like paying them a percentage of profit or something like that, if that’s helpful for you. Okay, next question, yeah. What is the first step with a service business after knowing your numbers and what you want to produce? Who’s asking that question? Okay, what is the service that you sell or want to sell? Bookkeeping, yeah, okay, I’ll walk you through it real quick here. So we’re going to go to this diagram, and then I’m going to pick on Jackson because he has no idea what I’m going to pick on him. So here we go. With your church, you had 40 members when you took over? 40, yep. 40. So the main thing is, you’ve got to get in front of new people. So if you could think about those first new members, where did they come from? Do you remember? Initially, it was just like word of mouth. Word of mouth? Yeah. Okay. Aaron, Shaw Homes, before you nailed down the marketing thing, where did the first deals come from? Word of mouth. Yeah, a lot of word of mouth. So I’m going to give you very specific stuff, but this is what I would do. I would step one, I’d get a Google map or a Google My Business, so step one. And I would, so step one. Step two, I’d optimize that. I’d optimize it because what happens is most people only go to page one of Google. Very few people go to page two. So I’d get a Google map. Are you based in Tulsa or what city are you in? California. Great, awesome. Let’s do a Sacramento bookkeeping. Let’s look it up real quick. So you want to get a Google Map and you’ll register it. Now the way Google Map currently works, you have to have a sign and a door and a verified address. That’s the rules for Google, okay? So right now you would only need… are you Wong’s Bookkeeping? Okay, so and you’re not Sacramento bookkeeper and you’re not Capital Books, right? Okay, so you would only need to have 10 Google reviews to be top in Sacramento. I met a chiropractor from Chicago and I told him, you know, you could become a multimillionaire as a chiropractor in Chicago for 80 Google reviews. He’s like, what? At the time there was like 40, the chiropractor with the most reviews had 40. And I’m like, if you get 80 and we optimize your website, you could become a multimillionaire. Because 99% of the American population, that’s not a hard stat, it’s just what I see, it could be higher than that, have no idea how Google works, but they use it. So if you’ll just get a Google Map, step one, register that Google Map, then optimize it, and then go out there and get the most reviews possible from your current and former clients. You know, that’s what I would do. And then if you’ve hit all those reviews, I would call everyone you’ve ever met and ask them for a character review because I don’t want you doing my bookkeeping unless I can trust you. And then after you’ve done that, I would get a booth at a trade show. And then after that, I would just keep that process going over and over and over because you want to have the most content and the most reviews to come up top in Google. Is that helpful? And you’ll start to get calls. Who here? Yes. Real quick. Do you need to wait until your business is up and going before you get that? No. Talk a little bit about that. Yeah, okay. I started the region’s largest wedding photography company without knowing how to take photos. So this is what I did. A true story. Because I understand how it works, okay? So there’s a guy I met at a trade show, and he’s a great guy. And he had, you know the guys who dress up like they’re National Geographic people? Photographers, have you met these people? Have you met these people? Okay, so he dresses, you gotta kinda dress like a photographer to sell it for seven grand, that guy, you know? Ryan, have you met these people? Okay, so he’s dressed like a photographer. He’s at the bridal show and he’s not making any money. And I said to him, here’s the deal, you take great photos. He’s like, yeah, I won this award, that award, this award, whatever. I said, can I pay you 5% of my gross sales? I’m gonna open a photography company in Tulsa, you’re in Dallas, I’ll open one up in Tulsa and I’ll pay you 5% of sales if you’ll teach my future photographers how to take photos. He said deal. So we signed an agreement, it was like a five-year deal, and so I got a booth at the trade show and I’m trying to help this bookkeeper. So if you’re in a trade show, a big bridal hall, who’s been to a bridal show? Okay, so I actually started the Tulsa wedding show that I just later sold, but there’s other big bridal shows. And when you’re in a trade show, what’s the first step to get in the business? People got to see your booth and recognize it. Yeah. Draw into it. So I got the tallest booth in the, always the tallest, tallest booth, one that gets the most attention. I put up a sign that says free bridals, free and great engagements, won a $25,000 honeymoon package. So what booth do you think Aaron, the brides came to? All the brides came to your booth because they could see it from across the venue. They could see the $25,000 vacation, no brainer. And I said, free bridles, free engagements and a chance to win. The bride said, how’s it work? I said, you book your bridles or engagements for free. Then you’re entered in for a chance to win the trip. And the brides were like, okay. Now there’s a guy in my booth and I won’t mention his name, but I want to, because he just, I just almost fight this guy. I also physically assault him in my booth because he would say, because he was a carryover from one of my other businesses. And he would go, you don’t know how to take photos. And I’m going, stop speaking. Everything you say is making me dumber. Just sit in the corner, watch the wizard work. Here we go. So I’m like, oh, here’s the deal. Free rattles, free engagements. If you book one, it’s free. And then you get a chance to win a cruise, win a chance to win the vacation. And the brides were, big line, like from here to the back of the room, big line of brides. They’re all like, like a line for lunch. Everyone’s in line. And the other vendors are like, we know you because I was a DJ. They go, we know that you own the biggest DJ company in town. And we know that you don’t know photos, but yet you are pitching it. Oh yeah. Now the brides, we booked the time. Okay. We scheduled a time. It’s the week of the bridal shoots. My photographers who don’t know photography, cause I just hired them. They’re like, what are we going to do? We don’t know what to do. I said, well, we’re going to get up there and we’re going to screw up some bridles and engagements. And we’re going to learn. And Derek’s going to teach you guys. So Derek’s going to be the lead photographer. You guys are going to be the secondary. And so they’re talking to Derek and Derek’s like, he dressed up like a wizard, dressed up like a photographer, dressed up like a natural geographic guy. And he says, guys, here’s the deal. You just put the thing in auto and you spray and pray. I really don’t even know what I’m doing. No real story. And they’re like, what? You’ve won every award. Who does photography? Who knows that? He’s like, if it’s jacked up, you say it’s artistic. He’s like, I just take pictures of stuff. And he’s like, you talk in circles. People think it’s amazing. You dress up like a National Geographic guy. And people are like, no way. He’s like, you signed the deal. I think it’s hilarious. You’re paying me 5%. I don’t know what I’m doing. I just take photos. He’s like, say crazy stuff to make the groom smile. Like, picture yourself naked, if that doesn’t work. Picture me naked If that doesn’t work picture us not naked just smile. Come on You’re taking photos and so we’re taking photos and after about probably 20 engagements the guy who was telling me that the business would never Work, he started taking photos that were pretty good, you know, and then pretty good pretty good pretty and pretty soon You know a lot of brides stop complaining about their free bridal because they were free But they were still back. How many of you know if you do a bridal she get dressed up some brides like i got all dressed up it was the worst wedding experience ever it’s like your diet never taken photos before and i can on the guys like tritate linds cap off for what should i do not cut but you just learn and how many of you know that’s how you learn do not you learn by doing in my career at bats sir isaac newton you learn by doing right i mean i think you can shoot a free throw or a layup or some sort of thing? Don’t you learn by doing it? Like a baby, are you mocking the baby? This crazy baby can’t even walk, stupid baby. No, a baby learns by walking. You have kids. I mean, how long does it take a kid to learn to talk? What is that, like two years? I got five kids. Two years, three years, something like that. I mean, Aaron, do you mock the kid that can’t walk? My kids learn to talk a lot faster than Pastor Jackson’s. They were like 18 months. Okay, you’re a better parent. But I just think it’s really important to you, we learn by doing. So what happened is after doing all these free bridles and engagements, pretty soon we started actually doing a good job. It took us a couple months, but they were free and we still got complaints by the way. We still got a lot of complaints. You’re going, this is terrible stuff. It’s like, you know, it’s not even worth the free. But then after a couple months we got pretty good. And then we grew it and grew it and then it became the largest wedding photography company in the region. But it was started by a guy who knew nothing about photos. And my one rule that I had only to break at one time is thou shalt never touch a camera. I like I’m never gonna touch a camera just to prove the point. I only had to do it one time because we had a guy that called in for a wedding, couldn’t make it, so I had to go shoot a wedding. And I was like here we go, you know. And I would just throw in one other thing just in another concept for you since you’re doing that, along the same lines is at the beginning, when you don’t have any market share, do it for below market value until you get a lot of business going, then bring it up to market value. Then when you really get it rocking, you can charge more than market value for what you do when you have an incredible reputation and tons of testimonials and all those things. That’s what we did at Shaw Homes. We started a little bit low and we just got a lot of practice at it and got really good at it. Got tons of testimonials. So you can do it that way for a little while and then slowly crank it up as you go. I’m gonna bring real quick. I’m bringing up Captain Kirk. Kirk, can I bring up here? I’m gonna bring up Captain Kirk here. Jackson, thank you very much. I appreciate you. What’s your name? Pastor Jackson Laumeyer. There he is. Okay. And I’m gonna bring up Randy. Can I bring up here, Randy? I’m gonna bring up Ryan too, okay? So this is like, and I’ll bring up Claystairs. I’ll bring up. This will be awesome. OK? This will be kind of a fun little Q&A. OK? So Aaron, I’m going to cold call Kirk. I’m cold calling Kirk. All right. OK? And you, what you are is you’re the discernment guy. OK. Tell me if this sounds plausible. OK. But I’m cold calling you. I’m trying to pitch you bookkeeping services. I’m trying to help you. OK? So step one, you get that Google map going on. Step two, cold call. Dial and smile until they cry or die, okay? And the thing about the cold call is how many of you have ever given a toast at a wedding? I’ve personally DJed over a thousand weddings. And usually the best man’s like, bro, I need a shot of something. And if they do that, it usually gets really bad or really good, but something changes, you know? So my whole thing is people that cold call, you gotta have to like just let it flow, let it go, get used to rejection. Kind of, I don’t know, bend the knees, let it flow. Just get rejected, put a helmet on, whatever. Just get to a place in your life where you don’t care about rejection, okay? So I’m gonna cold call you, ready? And I’m gonna call you on behalf, you own an insurance company, I won’t mention the name of the brand, but here we go. Boop! Hello. Is this Kirk Friars Insurance Company? Yeah, you got me. Hey Kirk, real quick, I know you weren’t expecting my call. I’m with Clay Clark’s bookkeeping service. Basically, what I’m doing is I think I could save you thousands of dollars a year on your bookkeeping, and I know you probably don’t think that, so I’ll pay you $40 if I could sit down with you for 10 minutes to show you what I do differently from the other bookkeepers. I like to say no to these things, Clay, but- I’ll pay you $40 cash. You’re going to give me $40 just to listen to you? Cash. And I promise you, I’ll set the cash down when I get there, and I promise you I will be out of there in nine minutes and 58 seconds. All right. I’ll set the timer at 10. Do you have time to 11 tomorrow? There it is. And that’s what I would do. Now, the guy who I bought my printer from in here, he came into my office 10 years ago, and he shows up, my assistant at the time. He says, I’d like to meet with Mr. Clark. And at the time, she said no. And he goes, I will pay him $100 to meet him about his printer service, cash. And she said, I don’t know. He goes, I’ll pay you 100 and him 100. So he gave her $100. So the next week I look at my calendar, I’m like, why am I meeting with the printer guy? And she goes, he paid you and me $100 for 10 minutes. I thought it was a good deal. So you’re gonna have to, now you get a lot of cold calls. I do. You get a lot of cold calls. You’ve trained a lot of cold callers. Actually, I don’t even get the calls. I’ve got the screener in front of me that you’ve got to get through before you can text me. Okay, so to get through your screener, what kind of an offer has to be made for her, the bookkeeper from Sacramento, to get through? That’s really interesting. Usually, they’ve got to sound like one of my best friends. They’ve just got to be confident in who they are and what they want to do. And she goes, hey, I think you know this guy. I’m like, ah. And usually I don’t, but that’s the move I would say. That’s the move. Is, hey, John? Yeah. Got Mr. Fryer cut off. My actual name is Larry, so if that comes out, it really is a no-go. Now I’m going to call, this time I’m going to call Randy. Okay, Randy? And I’m going to try to sell you, because you buy a lot of wood, a lot of lumber. How much, like, can you give people kind of a context of how much lumber you’re buying? We buy ours by the rail car, and we buy about $150,000 a month. Okay, so I’m trying to get ahold of you, and let’s pretend somehow I got ahold of you, okay? Buh-duh-duh-duh! Hello. Hey, is this Randy? It is. Randy, hey, this is Clay Clark. I sell wood by the rail car, and I know you weren’t expecting my call, but I think I could save you 50 grand a year or more, and I’d just love it if I could pay you 40 bucks for a 10 minute consultation. Okay, I’d be interested in that. Do you see that move? Because it’s like, I’m focusing on saving you time and money. Do you see that? But most cold calls you’ll shut down. So what kind of pitches do you shut down all the time? My phone doesn’t ring so it all goes to the office. What time would your office shut down though? What kind of calls would your office shut down? They pretty much shut all of them down. They just tell them to send me an email. Got it. So, stairs, what kind of calls would you shut down? What kind of cold callers would you shut down? Should I help Ms. Sacramento here? I usually shut down the ones that start out really high energy and with huge claims right at the very beginning. So, you’re going to have to cold call. And then I know you’re in California. And this is where I have a problem with the law. How many of you cut through parking lots when there’s a red light? I haven’t ever not done it. If you’re behind me, like, where’s he going? I don’t know. I just want to stay in motion, man. You know what I mean? I don’t want to stop. I’m serious. So there’s all these rules and regulations and people start to worry, common law, is it common law, is it okay, is it not? Okay, great. You can have a baby and murder it, that’s fine because California says so, but you can’t record your own calls so you can get yourself better at calling. I don’t know. If I were you, I’d record your call. I wouldn’t run it by Gavin Newsom, who’s a Nazi and a communist. I wouldn’t ask him. He’s probably too busy hanging out with Hitler wannabes, you know what I mean? So don’t talk to him. I would just record your call so that you can analyze your call. And I want to go to Clay Stairs on this, and I’ll go to Randy on this. How does it help you to hear your own call? Clay Stairs, when can you hear your own call? Yeah, it starts out really painful because you don’t think you sound like that on the phone. It’s hard. It’s embarrassing. It’s weird. It’s emotional. It is a wonderful exercise because you will hear things, you’re going, I never knew that that’s what I sounded like. I didn’t realize that I said um so many times. Man, the way that I’m saying those words, it sounds like I don’t have any confidence. And you hear yourself, it’s just like when I played sports, it would be watching video and seeing yourself play, you’re going, okay, now I see what I look like, so I see where I can make some change. I’m going to pitch over to Randy, and then I’m going to go to Ryan. So, Randy, when you have a sales guy that goes from like 0 for 13, 0 for 18 on appointments, 0 for 12, 0 for 7, at what point are you like, we got a problem here? You have to have a 30% close ratio to even work for us, but O for 13, I’m definitely having a sit down one-on-one and I’m going through each job with them. I’m actually requiring them in front of me to call them and I’m going to listen to what they’re doing on their follow-up. Now, Kirk, you’ve trained a lot of insurance people. If someone’s cold calling 100 people, how many appointments should they be able to set out of 100 calls in your world, back in that world? One or two out of 100 calls. And with your business, if you do like the $40 offer, you should be able to do like one or two per 100. Because 90 of them won’t pick up the phone. Four of them hang up on anybody, you get the idea. Ryan, your business, you guys do real estate photography. Yes. With your business, do you get a lot of cold calls? We get a lot of calls from people that like they start off, would you like to be number one in Google search results? And my wife takes these calls and it’s hilarious because she she says well we’re already number one and just hangs up the phone. So you get a lot of those calls. Yeah we do. Done. And so your business though you offer your first real estate photography shoot for how much? One dollar. Okay so you’re you at certain point you guys have to cold call real estate agents. Yeah we do and what I tell the guys that are making the calls is you’re here to preach one message and that’s it. The $1 photo shoot. That’s all you’ve got to say. We’re not talking about all the different services that we offer because they’re probably familiar with it already. We market ourselves to realtors, so they know what real estate photography is. But they’ve never ever heard of anybody that would be willing to do it for a dollar. And so that’s what we preach over and over and over and over. So Miss Sacramento, so you get your Google map, okay? Step two, you get the call script going. Step three, you got to optimize your website. You got to optimize the website. And your website has to be optimized in a way that converts. So I’m going to pull up some website examples I’m going to teach you. This is very helpful for everybody. I’m going to teach you website conversion over the next 20 minutes, okay? So we’re all get this. We’re going to pull up, let’s go to pmhokc.com, that’s your website, and we’ll pull up Flow Photos, let’s pull up shawholmes.com, and then Clay Stairs. If you can be sort of like the weatherman to coach us through, kind of point out some things. Brian, I’m going to take that mic, give that to Mike at the stairs real quick, and we’re just going to go through, and we’ll get a tap of everyone’s wisdom here. On the website, stairs, Aaron Antus has a no-brainer. Can you maybe show us where the no-brainer is and what the no-brainer means? No-brainer. 23 specials include, looks like right here. Is this correct? Permanent interest rate buy-down. Yeah, right here. Okay, so the permanent rate interest buy-down thing, okay, that’s a big thing, okay. Now look here, you’ve got here the reviews. Why do you have to have a button where you can click out to read those reviews? Why do you have to have that stairs? Oh, you ask me? Because you want people to read the reviews and you’re literally telling them what to do. Read reviews. Yeah. Don’t say click here. You want to tell them, you know, why am I clicking there? Read reviews, learn more. Okay, now go back to the website. Apply now, join now. Go back to the website. Okay, so you have testimonials. Why do you have to have testimonials up there, Stairs? Testimonials, again, people are going to come. I imagine if you have a product or even a service, but a product, people are going to want to know how do people talk about you? Can I trust you? This is where you build trust, right here. People will come here, they’ll watch reviews, they’ll listen to reviews. You will literally get phone calls of people saying, I am calling to hire you. I’ve read your reviews, I’ve watched the videos, you’re the one. Now what I’m going to do, Steer, is I’m going to bring up- You’re no longer kicking tires. I’m going to bring up a Charles Koehler, and if you can pass the mic to Ryan. I’m just trying to show you a lot of examples. Charles, is it okay if I borrow you and your wife? Can I do that? Amber, can I borrow you too? Oh, yes! Dr. Zellner is here! Yes! What’s up? How’s everybody doing? Where’s the Mariachi band? I did not expect to see you here. Wait a second. Is this not the Cinco de Mayo party? Am I at the wrong place? Folks, this is Dr. Robert Zellner and I did not know he would be here. Let’s hear for Dr. Zellner. Surprise. We’ve got to tap into your wisdom. Here we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I’ve got to be the slowest author in the world. I’m writing a book and I still haven’t finished it. And so Clay says, hey, I want you to get a book called… I ran all the way up here, sorry, got a little winded, get a book called The Purple Cow. I thought, man, I read that about 15 years ago, but I think I gave away my copy. So, we’ll get it, it’ll inspire you, get it. So, I went through and read it and I thought, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to purple cow today. Purple cow is being remarkable in your business. How many are business owners here. Now how many are wannabe business owners? Cool, okay. Well, Seth Grodin wrote it, driving with his wife in France, and every time they passed a pasture that was beautiful, iconic, had all these cows in them, brown, white, black. He said after about 15, 20 minutes, all the pastures just kind of looked alike. He didn’t even, they didn’t hurt to look at the cows anymore and it was all just kind of the same thing over and over and over and over. And you say, wouldn’t that be something if you drive by one of those and there’s a bright blue, bright purple cow in the pasture? He goes, that would stand out. In fact, you might slow down at least. You might get out and take a picture. You might even be so moved as to walk up to the farmhouse and knock on the door and say, dude, do you know you got a purple cow in your yard? Right? Something different. So you say to yourself, how does that matter to my business? Well, you have to stand out. There’s a lot of competition for brain width in the brain, and you want people to click on you, you want people to choose you, you want people to call you, so you have to be remarkable. Now, you can start off small in your business to be remarkable. Being remarkable may be how you answer the phone, right? I mean, that may be something so special that kind of stands out a little bit. It might be how you take an old item you already have and just repackage or repurpose it. For example, he tells a story in the book, 1912 a gentleman by the name of Otto Redweiger invented, he literally invented sliced bread. Pretty cool. He invented the machine that sliced bread. I’m like, how could this not be a home run? Because that’s pretty remarkable. But no marketing, no sales, no, it was a failure. Didn’t go anywhere. And then 20 years later, a company by the name of Wonder comes on to it, says, huh, I think we can use this bread slicer. So they package bright colors, circles, dots. And since they’re in the middle of the depression, they knew who their likely customer was, and that’s moms. So they put on the side of the bread, they put Wonder Bread, helps build strong bodies in 12 different ways. I’m like, 12, why not 14? Why not 10? 10 probably would have been enough. And they just blew it up. So you may say to yourself, listen, my business isn’t very sexy or very fun or whatnot. I mean, when I came to Tulsa as an optometrist, I mean, being an optometrist wasn’t anything sexy or fun about that. I mean, everybody in Tulsa could get an eye exam, could get a pair of glasses, and could get contact lenses, right? I mean, nobody was going blind in town because there wasn’t enough optometrists. I wasn’t first in. I was 100th in. Because first in is an advantage, if you take advantage of it. So what do I do? I had to be remarkable. So what did I do? I thought, hmm, you know, you don’t want to copy people that are in your own area, your own category. It’s like if Clay comes tomorrow in a bedazzled suit, you’d go, he’s not very remarkable, he just kind of copied Z, right? But if he came in like a sumo wrestler costume, or maybe a speedo, remarkable would be bad, but still remarkable. So I said to myself, I got to stand out. I got to stand out. I got to stand out. What are the moves is to copy another business sector and find out what they do. So what I did is I said half the people need glasses and tools, so that’s the average. And most of them shop about every one and a half years. So I went and looked at men’s warehouse. They have half the people need their business and be able to buy a new suit every couple of years. So I studied them and I thought, what makes them special? For $99 you could come in and get a suit, a shirt, and a tie. Remarkable. And men did it. They leave there just spending $99? No. They bought shoes and belts, underwear, little squares you put in your thing, another tie, another shirt. So I went and I made a $99 deal. I’ve had it now for 34 years. And what I did is I wasn’t selling glasses at the time because I was next to Imart Express. So I did a pair of colored contacts and a pair of clear contacts because I knew that people wanted to kind of play with the color but they wanted the safety of a clear pair, right? Because if your significant other says, I don’t like your green eyes. Take those off. They look creepy. You know, they don’t want to feel bad. So I get two pair of contact lenses. I examine everything included for $99. But wait a second. I had to get the word out. So another way you become remarkable is do something maybe taboo in your industry. Nobody was advertising in Tulsa if you were a medical professional, because that was below the dignity of your office. What we do is we just put a small name on a door and we hand out business cards at church and that’s how you grow your business. So I started advertising. Became the black sheep of optometry. Pissed them off. If you’re not pissing off your competitors, you’re not doing something right. You’re not advertising enough, you’re not saying they’re the right thing. If they don’t want to come up and punch you in the nose. I remember one time a guy came up to me in a conference and goes, you know the pie’s big enough for us all, Zellner, why are you trying to take too much of it? I said, well the time you paid my, when you started making my house payment, my car payment, and the braces on my kids, and oh it’s a certain college fund, and maybe I’ll slow down, but until then, not gonna happen, right? So, so I started advertising. What’s the, what’s the move in advertising? I found a parade and I got in front of it. So, when you saw the parade, you thought, oh man, that’s Zeller’s parade. Wow, look, he’s even got some balloons, and that’s a big deal. Now what parade did I get in front of? I figured everybody was listening to the radio. The radio was actually kind of a big deal back then. And everybody listened to the on-air personalities. And they trusted them. They let them into their house. They let them into their car. You know, they got to know them. They almost sometimes think that they’re a friend. So I would get the online personalities to come to my office, become my patient, and then we would go write a commercial. And in the commercial, they would be like, hey, I’m here with my optometrist, Dr. Robert Zellner. He’s a great guy. His office is spectacular. I went in there last week. I took my kids. Hey, Z, what’s going on this month? Then I would talk and we’d go back and forth and have a conversation. So the parade was, is I already had that trust and faith that you had listening to that online personality, right? So that’s another way you can become, you know, the purple cow in the field. After a while, other people started advertising, other people started doing discounts, so now I needed to kind of redo myself. So I was the first guy in town where I built my own building. You could drive around town and it’s over by 71st Memorial. So I became relevant. I became stand out again in my crowd because I had my own two-story, looked like a building that you’d see in LA or New York or something kind of cool when you’re inside of it. So you want to be remarkable whenever you’re doing. It doesn’t have to be anything, you know, like super, super big. You have to get your business and go, okay, I’m starting all over from scratch. It can be small little things you do along the way that can make you stand out, you know to the people I mean if I told you right now, okay, you guys all inherited a salt company salt Sell it What are you gonna do to sell it? How you gonna sell it? Boring. I mean most companies really are the nets and bolts of what they’re doing. They’re just kind of boring You know So what would you do? Well, I’d advise you to go one of two ways, probably. Either go value, package it up, make it look value, best salt for the least amount of money and sell it like that. Or go fancy, right? Maybe do Egyptian salt, used by the pharaohs. Egyptian salt, yes. Yeah. And all the salt shakers would be little pyramids. And then we were coming to be Egypt salt LLC, and then you put on the side you put imported from Egypt salt LLC Hey Don’t hate the player hate the game. I know a business that grew tulips in the United States They’d pay money to slow boat them to Holland. And then as soon as they got to Holland, they got stamped on their boxes or whatever from Holland. And then they would float them back to the United States. Tulips imported from Holland. They’d made so much more money from a Holland bulb is the same dumb bulb. Here again, don’t hate the player, hate the game. No, don’t hate the game. Use the game and be the player, right? Find out that little niche in there. So be remarkable, be a purple cow, don’t copy the ones in front of you, but look at other businesses that you can pull some stuff from them. You know? Like I didn’t look at car lots because people give me four or five years. I didn’t look at some liquor stores because people are going by there every week or two weeks or if you’re an alcoholic, every day, I don’t know. But, so that’s one thing you can learn from other companies. And then you can also think to yourself, how do I repackage, how do I rebrand? What’s a small thing I can do? I can wear a mariachi suit. You guys won’t forget this now, you know? You’ll be like, man, that crazy dude popped in with the bedazzled suit, you know? Hey, how long you gonna be here? How long you want me here? That’s good, okay, so let’s start there. Okay, so for anybody who doesn’t know, this is Dr. Zellner, and I consider him to be my dad. So my dad passed away. He reached out to me and he was like… I wasn’t that close with his mom. I’ll just put it like that. Okay, so… Well, my dad died of Lou Gehrig. He’s been a mentor of mine, but he called me up. He’s like, hey, how you doing? And it was not going well. And so Z’s really filled in as sort of a father figure in my life, but he’s also been a great mentor. I did not know you’d be here. So I’m excited. I didn’t want to tell you. So we’ve got some great people. So I’m going to kind of stir it up and we’ll ask Z anything until our heads explode. Okay, perfect. And just to give a little context, if you’re looking him up, some of you might know who he is, some of you might not. He runs Oklahoma’s largest auto auction, where you sell about a thousand cars every Friday. Is that right? Yeah, more than that, but yeah. And he used to be the chairman of the board at Regent Bank when you guys bought the bank at the peak of the recession. Oh yeah. Right in time for it to fail. Smart move there. Okay, and then they built Regent Bank into a very fast and successful growing bank. And then he also has a medical center, A to Z Medical. You have Z’s Sleep Center, which is a sleep center. You have a diagnostic, a lot of businesses. That’s just it. The first one was my, I’m an optometrist by education. So I’m kind of a faux doctor. So when they call me Dr. Z, it’s like, you know. So I’m gonna ask you a question. We’ll let Randy or Ryan, we’ll just fire through and we’ll put any questions on the board too. So here we go. Question we wanna have for you. Most people who are here, except for the ones sitting here, but the ones who are outside, struggle to manage people, and they feel bad about holding people accountable. How do you hold people accountable? Because you have hundreds of employees, how do you do it? First of all, if you’re not hiring character and training skill, you’re missing the boat. So you want to hire character. If they’re not high character, then you’re probably, you’re swimming upstream, okay? Hire character, and then train skill, all right? Now, whenever you’re managing people, you have to set expectations and they have to follow through. It’s kind of like parenting. You know, if you say to your child, don’t do that, and they do it over and over and over and you never discipline them, who’s the fool? Right. So, you got to set good expectations. You’ve got to give them a good guardrail of what you expect from them. And that’s through communication. That’s through having it written down. Here’s your job description. Here’s what I’m hiring you to do, here’s what I expect you to do. And if they fall short on any of those, now you can come back and say, look, you signed the job description, right? Yeah. We were here that day, right? Yeah, yeah. You know what you’re supposed to do. And then you have to correct them, and then you’ll correct them until you’re tired of correcting them, and then you’ll fire them. Now, Charles, Amber, you guys are wonderful, wonderful clients. Anybody else who has any questions for Z, I’ll let anybody ask him any questions. Maybe you don’t have any questions. I want to go to Randy. If you have a question for Dr. Z. Can I say one thing too on that? Yeah. I got a super power move on firing somebody. Go for it. This will save you hours of frustration. This will save you hours of grief. It’s a proven method. It’s the super move. When you are ready to fire someone, that means you’re done, right? You’re going to fire them. As painful as it is, you’re going to fire them. What you do when you fire them, you have them come into your office or wherever it is you choose to fire them at, and you look at them and you say, what’s your name? Aaron. Aaron? Aaron? Aaron’s a good guy. Things just aren’t working out, you are fired. You need to pack up your stuff, clock out, and leave right now. You’ll get your final check in the mail. Bye. Bye two words But bye And what’s Aaron gonna do? Oh, he’s He’s gonna plead his case. He’s gonna set three hours of your life away from he’s gonna cry He’s gonna throw a fit He’s gonna go through all the stages of grief right there in front of you all five stages And what you do with Aaron is you look at him and you repeat it again, things just aren’t working out. You’re fired. You need to leave now. Because what will happen is as soon as you give him, well, you know, you’re late too often. Oh, then he goes through the whole list of all the other employees that are late. Oh, you didn’t complete your project on time. Oh, he goes through how Carl never completes his projects and Carl’s still there, you know. So anyway, that’s the secret sauce. Things just aren’t working out. Shut your mouth. Nothing more, nothing less. The line I like to do is, hey, help me be a better employee. What do I need to do better next time? And you know what it is. Do your job and be here on time and have a good attitude, right? But you’re not going to say that. That saved me so much. What you just said there saved me just infinite amounts of time. Now, Randy, what question would you have for Dr. Z? Any question you got at all? Maybe you don’t have a question. And if you don’t, we’re going to go to… Do you have a kind something to say? I mean, you kind of covered it all. I don’t really have a question. Okay. Okay. Go for it. Yep. Yep. So let’s say you have a good book of business, clients that you’ve worked with over and over and over again. What would you say would be a great way to re-engage the base that already loves you? Like maybe to get upsells or get more out of them kind of a thing? Well, if you’ve got the data on them, you know, what you could do is you always want to make an offer that’s so good they bang their head on the table and they have to call, they have to click, they have to do something, right? So, if you’ve got the access to them, now it’s up to you to dazzle them, right? Put on your bedazzle, put on your bedazzler and go get them. I remember one year I put up big billboards in Tulsa. Everybody knows what LASIK eye surgery is, right? I put up there LASIK for $1. I had to get extra phone lines. AT&T said we nearly burnt down phone lines. I mean, it was crazy. My wife worked for you at that time. It was crazy. My competitors were super pissed at me. I mean, the optometry board was, I mean, they were trying to put me in jail. I’m like, what are you doing? How can you do lacing for $1? And half the people were just curious, they’re like, okay, what’s the catch? I know there’s a catch. Aaron, there was a catch. I know there’s a catch, but what is it? So what’d they do? Is it called? Yeah, the first eye is $3,900, the second eye is $1. Well, I could have done both, you know, each eye for 1,900, but there was a shock of that. It was something that they had to call. They had to just reach out and get, you know. They had to go, okay, what’s going on here? And that’s what you do. If you’ve already got them gathered up and they love you, and you’ve already got them engaged, and they’ve already used you, and I mean, that’s the low-hanging fruit. Just go, poof. See, I’m gonna shift into management mode. Kirk, you’ve managed a lot of people. I’ve managed a lot of people. Charles, I want to shift to management mode because a lot of people have management questions. One of the things you do is you have the shortest meetings possible. That’s like almost like a, if it’s not a stated goal, you can see it in your eye. Oh yeah, I hate meetings. So a lot of times a meeting will start and a lot of times people will sit down. And I noticed what you’ll do is you usually don’t sit down to start the meeting. You’ll go, all right. And you can tell you’re trying to get through the meeting as fast as possible. Can you tell why? Tell us why. Meetings is the biggest waste of time. If I had a clock for every time an organization was in a meeting, you know, and then the memos and the emails and the time suck of what those are. I mean, if I had to tell you how to do your job, if we’re not doing a pivot, why are we having a meeting? If we’re not doing a pivot, why are we having a meeting? I hired you to do your job, you’re doing your job, you’re doing your job, Aaron, you weren’t, I fired you. And I hired Carl in the background, hey Carl. But my point is that when you think about a meeting, what is its goal? And then get to that as quickly as possible. Because everybody will bring their own agenda, everybody will bring their own little thing, everybody will bring their, you know, hey, you got a minute for a meeting? No, I don’t. You know, but anyway, my idea is keep them as short as possible because your employees, you want them out there working, not sitting in a meeting with you. You did a really good job tracking the metrics, getting into what matters. It’s phenomenal. Now, we had a listener who had a question, or an attendee, named Gordon, and Gordon wrote down here, or he asked me the question, I wrote it down. He says he’s selling business to businesses. So he sells to engineers it’s a business to business which reminds me a lot of your businesses because a lot of your businesses are business to business yes somewhere where’s Gordon at Gordon Gordon okay so Z if you were going to said Gordon can you come up here real quick Gordon clear if you were gonna sell b2b because you have a lot of businesses you sell business to business mm-hmm and you were selling this man services I want him to be able to share with you his conundrum here and then we’ll open it then we’ll open it up for some more questions here. Okay. So Gordon, what questions would you have for? Hi Gordon. How are you doing? Good. How are you? Fine. So I have a small tech company. We make single board computers, very custom, pretty high-tech, fast. They’re used for communications like in, they can’t hear you Anthony. If you get on a 737 today, you are probably, your Wi-Fi goes through one of our access points on the plane. You sold a whole bunch of equipment. So my question is, how do I build lead generation for such a technical product? I’m selling to companies that are $20 million to $1 billion companies, right? They have their own engineering departments. Their own engineering departments might be our biggest competitor really and so What we need to do is sell time to market experience know-how quality product. It’s all made here in the United States How do you sell it Z? How would you sell that? How do we generate leads? Well, it’s good. You answered a couple questions already. You know, you’re most likely customer you can find them They’re not out there hiding, right? You can get to them now that now what you need to do is you need to be able to get the golden look. The golden look is when you can get to a decision maker because there’s a lot of key holders in that business. You know what I’m saying? A lot of doors that ain’t gonna get unlocked to get to that person. And there’s a lot of fun moves you can do. You can just flood, find out who the decision maker is and then flood them with goodies. Say, listen, I just need 30 minutes of your time. I just need an hour of your time. I’ll buy you lunch. Find out what their favorite place is for lunch and say, I want to take you to lunch to Mahogany’s or wherever their favorite place is, okay? That’s one move. That’s the gift move where you give them so much, just trickle effect, trickle effect, trickle effect, you know, that finally they’ll be like, okay, get this guy a meeting. He’s impressed me. His tictuidness, his kindness, his things that he’s saying. You can’t just send an email and expect to get a meeting at that level. Gordon, he turned 50. He turned 50, which was last week. Yep. Two years from now. So last week, at his birthday party, I was at his birthday party, and the guy got up, people got up to give toasts, you know, and this guy gets up to give a toast, and it was awesome, Gordon. He gets up and he says, I just want to thank everybody for being here and being here for Dr. Zellman’s birthday. He gets up and he goes, but before I tell the story, I want you to know, I only know Dr. Z because of his relentless cold calling. That’s a weird birthday toast. I’m like, what? He goes on to say he’s a car dealer in Tulsa. Basically, you guys kept calling him every month for, I don’t know if it was years or months. Yeah. He’s like, and then eventually I got a meeting with Z, it was a sales meeting, and you guys hit it off. And now he’s at your birthday and he sings your praises. And after the meal started, I pulled him aside, I go, did he really cold call you? He goes, the Z’s team at the auto auction cold called me for years. I finally- And that was part of it too. And then finally, I found out he liked cigars. So I went to the place where he bought them and I asked the guy, hey, do you know Rob Sticker? And he goes, sure. I said, what’s his favorite cigar? He bought a box of those. I mean, you just, you find out what pushes their little love buttons, and then you go push them, and you just keep pushing until they buy, cry, or die. You know? I mean, you just got to stay relentless on them. Right? Shunda! And if you don’t have guys that are staying relentless on them, you know? And then the other move is, the gift move is one, and then the, a deal’s so good that they’re so curious as to what the heck’s going on here. You know? So you said you sold high-end computers? Right, right, very custom, a lot of engineering involvement. Yeah. So it’s a very technical sale. So for us, a lot of it is lead generation. We can convert. His golden look that he talked about though, is just so important that you get that appointment. And for the bookkeeper from Sacramento, same thing. Ms. Spence with real estate, it’s so important. It’s just like you gotta get that first consultation. It’s so important. Does that answer your question, Gordon? I think it does. We have work to do in our marketing. But cold calling is not part of our drill right now. Oh yeah, you gotta learn to love cold calling. Oh, you gotta learn to embrace the suck of cold calling. You gotta embrace the hang up. You gotta embrace the, he’s not here right now. You gotta embrace it. Can I leave another message? Sure. All right thank you very much. You’re welcome. I’ll bring up Charles and Amber Kola real quick. Now Amber and Joseph are Gordon. Let’s hear for Gordon. Good job Gordon. Okay I did not know you’re gonna be here so I’m gonna tap into your wisdom. Dr. Z what’s up my brother? All right that’s Charles and Amber Kola. A little context. We’ve worked with Amber and Charles for many years. They have a gym called KolaFitness.com. KolaFitness.com. They’ve got many locations. They’ve grown from one location to how many now, Charles? We have six locations. Okay, and you’re managing a team, you’re growing. What questions, core questions would you have for Dr. Zahn? Okay, I think right now, how many here have turnover and employee issues? How many here? Only you. Only me. But, so how do you, what would you say for like, if you’re having employee turnover issues, like you’re trying to keep employees, good people, what are your first things that come off the top of your head? What’s the key to retention for you? Well, first of all, let’s assume that you’re treating them as well as you could treat them, that you’re a great boss, you’re humble, you’re there, you’re attentive, you’re there for them because in a business, listen to this, folks, if you put your employees ahead of your customers, in the long run, it’ll do better. If you put your employees first, your customers second. That’s going to freak a lot of you out out there. Herb Keller taught that. Probably one of the most successful CEOs of all time, Southwest Airlines. You put your employees first. If they feel that, that’s one thing. You want to build it like it’s a family. You want them to think, man, I can’t leave. These are my people, right? Financially, you’ve got to make sure you’re taking care of them with benefits and the things that push their buttons, okay? So if you don’t have a full benefit package, 401ks, health insurance, all that, that matters to them, okay? And then also, if you’re realizing that, I don’t know if there’s a time of year that is most important to have them, but you might give a financial incentive. Hey, listen, everybody that’s working here on January 15th gets a $500 bonus. Everybody that’s working here on a pick a day that’s best for you and you do a cash bonus. Now if you’ve worked all that year, you get that. If you haven’t, it’s a prorated amount. But then that way they know, they get a job offer in January, they go, why don’t I stick around two more months? And then by the time they look up, that job offer’s gone and they’re still with you. You know, you give them incentive to stick around. And then also know that there’s just, it’s different. The attitude of kids is different these days. Some of them want a participation trophy for just showing up on time. One thing you told me that was powerful for me, Charles, he told me, is great, is hire fast, fire fast. Right. I was talking to Z about turnover. My turnover was so high with my DJ business. He was like, well, it needs to be really high until you find your guy. Right. That’s good. I was like, it kind of rhymes. I’m writing this down here. We that helps me You know, but it was like it needs to be really fast. You got a fire fast until you find that right? Yeah, people I was I would course statement in my body that says people change seldom powerful so if they’re an idiot, you’re not gonna and I told I don’t play we were on my back porch and I was having a glass of whiskey because I’m a man. He was drinking a little a little rose or something wine. I don’t know because something very unmanly I was always embarrassed to end it but this guy sips on lagavulin which is made from peat moss you’ll get drunk just looking at it and he just sips right I’m like true so I told him I said I said I said clay you’re going about it wrong now is your job a life coach and he said no I hired DJs and do events. I said, then why are you trying to be a live coach? So helpful. Why are you trying to be a live coach? They can go find a live coach. You want to be their boss, you want DJs that’ll follow your protocol and do a good job, then hire fast, fire fast until you find your guy. How many contractors do we have here? Okay, one thing you also told me that changed my life, you said if you’re not, unless you’re a bank, don’t be a bank. Right? That was powerful too, because I would offer ridiculous financing terms for my DJ customers who would never pay me. Yeah. And you were like, are you a bank? How’d that work out? Stop acting like a bank, that’s powerful. Yeah. Just like, I think it’s like a common sense, very Trumpian logic you have. No, that’s true. It’s very Trumpian. Charles, any other questions you or Amber have for Dr. Z? Oh, any tips for hiring good talent superstars pro tips what is your tips for finding superstars pro tips for finding super not just regular guys but superstars do you have any superstars on your team yes yes like two or three you gotta say hey listen why don’t you bring your friend in I’ll give him a free gym membership superstars run with superstars okay idiots run with idiots. Average runs with average. You know? The worst thing you could do is hang on to a bunch of C-level employees, because if you’re not trying to replace them with an A or a B, shame on you. Don’t put up with average. The Fs never stay around, like Aaron says. He’s already gone. Come on, Aaron’s a great guy. Unbelievable. Aaron’s already gone. The Fs are easy. The As, Charles, what you’re saying to the A’s the superstars are easy you know you put up with a lot more crap from them than you will but the F’s are easy I mean they’re like okay you’re out of here I mean I’m making that’s easy even the D’s are fairly easy to get out of there it’s those C’s that do just enough they’re just late just enough you know they’re You’re okay. Barely good enough. Barely good enough. You know, you don’t get any Google reviews that mention their name ever. You don’t get people that check it out going, man, Carl was awesome. You know? He’s in the steam room a lot, but he’s awesome. You know? Yeah. See, one thing that you did for me that was powerful, and I want to, any questions you guys have, this is like one of the most successful people in Oklahoma, and I’m so glad you’re here. One thing that you did, when my dad was dying from Lou Gehrig’s, which was like the worst moment for me, when he told me he was gonna die, it was just like, that was rough. But one thing that you told me, we were in a meet and greet at your man cave, and you said, you gotta like, put that over here, and then do your job, take care of your family, and you can deal with that over here, but when you’re at work, you know, you’ve gotta deliver, you gotta provide, you gotta, you gotta, like, you have to do both. But if you ever need something, you talk to me, I’m here for you. But it was really powerful for me to hear, it’s okay to have like an emotional situation, but you can’t bring that into the workplace, you know? And so one thing you’ve always talked about was, it’s showtime? Yeah. And that was really hard when my dad was dying. But it was like written on my wall, so I was like, I can do it. But can you talk about that? Because you’ve gone through a lot in your life, good, bad, etc. But when you’re a leader, you don’t bring the funk into the meeting. You don’t bring any weird, emotional… You know what I mean? Except that one time. No, but I mean, you’re a normal person. You’re a great friend. But also, in business, you as the leader don’t bring in weird, emotional baggage. Could you talk about that? Well, it’s even kind of step beyond that in today’s lives, is that is being there. Being there, you know, nothing worse than having a conversation with somebody and they’re staring at their phone the whole time. You know, just being there fully is now harder and harder to do. That’s step one in Showtime. So whenever you have a meeting, that’s important. Gordon, whenever you get that, whenever you get that meeting and you’re there, is, did Gordon go back and sit down? I thought he was talking to somebody. Gordon, I promise you when you get to that meeting, do not answer text messages when you’re in that meeting, okay? Do not. Leave your phone in the car. So step one is be there. Step two is, like before I would go into an exam room, the most important thing in the world was my connection with that patient and making them happy and wanting them to use me this day for their goods and services but also for them to want to come back and for them to want to become a, what we call it, a prophet, someone that goes out and just spreads the good word of your business and you, right? And that was all through connection. So I would literally stop, it was still paper charts at the time, take a deep breath, and I know it sounds cheesy, and I would say to myself, showtime. And I put the biggest smile on my face and I’d enter that room and it was on and nothing else mattered. The toilet that was leaking in the upstairs bathroom, my kid who was in the hospital with a broken leg, my this, the that, all the stuff, nothing mattered. And I was laser focused on that individual. And I tried to connect with them as best I could. I’ve got to tell you this one story. So I walk and went down to the exam room and and sitting in the chair, it’s an older couple, the wife’s in the corner in the little chair just all buttoned up, you know, and it’s a what I would call an elderly farmer kind of guy in the chair. So I pop in I could tell it’s just the atmosphere is just like stoic, like no emotion. I mean, they’re just you know, look like that picture with the pitchfork in that couple there. That’s what they look like. And so I come in and I say a little, you know, I’m trying to get a smile. I’m trying to, hey, connect. Hey, I’m Dr. Z, Dr. Zunner. You know, how you doing? Nothing. So I’m like, ooh, button up Z. These people are serious now. So I said, so, so sir, Mr. Johnson, what do you have here for today? And he kind of points real quickly over to his wife and he goes, she ran over my glasses with the pickup truck. And I said, I was bad move, but I went for it. I said, I’m gonna try one more time to get him to smile. And I said, I hope they weren’t on your face when it happened. He looked at me and he said, he looked, he gave me that look like, boy, something wrong with you. Anyway, there’s a really, there’s so many principles that Dr. Z lives by. I’m going to, I got 10 more minutes of questions for you, okay? Okay. So one thing with Dr. Z that was so helpful for me is growing up without money or poor and then seeing you be successful, you didn’t allow me into your life very easily. Kylie, who’s still there, was my wife’s boss. Oh yeah. And she would tell me, you cannot meet with Dr. Z. And I’m going, why? Because, Clay, the subwoofer thing outside, you just got to stop it. You were a thug. Right. So it was just like, and so, and my wife is sweet ladies, great ladies. And he would sometimes make comments like, how did you guys end up together? What does she not see you? My wife told me in the last 24 hours, my wife told me the only reason she married me was to try to save me. That’s, that’s, there we go. True story. She actually said that statement. So so anyway, so I you you don’t allow a lot of people into your world. But Rolling Stone reached out to you because during the lockdowns, who remembers the lockdowns? There’s a long haired praise and worship guy, Sean. Look him up, Sean Foyt. OK, remember Sean Foyt, praise and worship guy. And then there’s me. So there’s we’re doing the reawaken events. Sean’s doing the praise and worship events. Let us worship and the role called let us worship. And the Rolling Stone reporter is doing his investigative research and he’s determined that the two people in America that are the most outspoken against the lockdowns are as Sean point and Clay Clark and they both have the same mentor, which is Dr. Zellner. And so the reporters like, so is he in control of the right wing? Is he, no, I’m not kidding because your name is Z Certain people think there’s some sort of like numerical. They’re like so the reporters like is he in control of the QAnon movement? And I’m like, no, no, definitely not because I’m gonna call him and see and I’m like don’t call him Hey I’m gonna call because what’s the probability that the two people causing the biggest issue about the lockdowns have the same mentor and I remember you telling me you got a call from the Rolling Stone. Thankfully, they didn’t patch the phone through. But I just wanted to ask you, for somebody out here who’s building a successful business, what would be the rules to who you decide to invest time in? Because there was somebody asked a question about servant leadership. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs really, really want to mentor their staff, but they end up using up all their family’s time and all of their time to mentor someone who leaves them and screws them over. Yeah, exactly. So are there any life coaches in the audience? We got one. We got one. We got one. Okay, good. So this doesn’t apply to you. Two. Two, okay. So yeah, life coaching, that’s your job, have at it. You start asking the question. I want everybody to repeat after me, okay? Repeat after me. Ready? I’m gonna say the word, then I want you guys to all say it, okay? No. No. No. Never. That’s how you keep your sanity running a business. I was at the Thrive headquarters. I was at the Thrive headquarters the other day and I know this is going to sound mean. This is going to sound mean. I’ll just call it what it is. But a young man comes running up to me. We just finished a podcast or something, I forget. This was at the old one. He came up to me and says, Dr. Zoner, you’re Dr. Zoner, right? I go, yes, yes, yes. My name’s Carl. And I’d really like to pick your brain about some stuff. So now I’m kind of going, OK. He goes, I’d like to come to lunch, maybe start hanging out. I mean, I think you could really help me with some stuff.” And I looked at Carl and I said, Carl, that’s not going to happen. I wish you well. You can listen to the podcast. You can sign up for the online. You can do whatever, but I am not going to spend any of my personal time with you. And instead of saying, sure, Carl, give me your number and I’ll call you and then never ghosting. When you’re breaking up with someone, instead you show they’d rather you just say I’m breaking up with you, then ghost them. They hate being ghosted. You know, like I’m sure Betty got my text. She’s just probably busy. You know, I was in the shower. Might’ve missed for the 87th side of the day. Betty, are you okay? Now I’m just worried she’s not okay. You know, just let your yeses be yes and let your nos be no. And understand, if you don’t set your schedule, your calendar, somebody else will. So. Okay, my two final questions. There was a guy who wanted to know you and I told him it’s not gonna happen, the one-on-one mentorship’s not gonna happen. But you had a Christmas party and you kinda opened it, you said, hey, you can bring some folks it’s kind of open so I brought the guy to your he was a chiropractor brought him to your house oh yeah and he said I’m having a hard time getting my staff to call the leads and you’d said well you just need to make him call the leads and he was like yeah but I’m having a hard time and you said can you go out to the man cave and I don’t know if you’d had a beverage or run the thinking I don’t know I don’t know where you were at mentally but you were particularly froggy. And you said, you need to go out there, you need to get your guy out there. So you come back, and you have this hammer in your hand, I don’t know where you got it from, but you were like, I want you to take it out, and hit it with a hammer. And the guy’s like, what? And you go, because that’s less painful than you not making your team called elites. Yes, exactly. And the guy was like, what? And he’s like, just hit yourself in the junk over and over and over I tell you finally build up the courage of either fire them or get them to do their job, but this is stupid I guess this such a dumb conversation. You’re a doctor You’re asking me how to get you to do what you supposed to do to get that person to third-person You think I hammer on hit yourself with it? I was like better about myself But this guy’s heavily educated he’s coming back for more and you were in party mode You weren’t in mentor mode and he’s like yeah, but my staff, a lot of them, I don’t want to micromanage, and they don’t want to be micromanaged, I’m trying to create a culture of leadership, and all this, and you were like, family, you mentioned family. You gotta get it out, and hit it with a hammer. Because it’s less painful than this. You talk right now. So, I guess my question would be, for somebody here who’s got an employee that just will not call the leads, won’t do the thing. I’ll just pass the hammer around. Okay, okay, and then my final question, JT, I’m gonna bring you up here real quick for a question. Okay, that hammer. Okay, my final question for you is being around you though, it was super helpful for me, even though I didn’t have access to you, to just watch the way you ran your business. So I would just show up to work about 30 minutes before my wife was done with her shift. I would sit there in the lobby. Which is creepy, by the way. But I was like, how is the bathroom always clean? And Kyle is like, we have a checklist. I’m like, oh my god, this is… I would say, I’d be looking through my one-way mirror going, why is that guy always pissed off? He always looks like he wants to fight somebody. And I’m like… He looked like an Eminem with the bigger head, you know, the rapper, skulking around there. And then, like, I would watch your team, they had these, like, up-serve or up-sell moves. They would go, hey, by the way, we got your glasses now, did you want to get a second pair, or did you want to add UV protective, whatever. And I’d watch it like a machine, and I learned so much from observation, but it was very helpful for me to watch you do that. You grew up poor though. Yes. You worked at Chiquita Brian’s as a dishwasher. 13. So when did you? Probably one of the only few professional dishwashers in this room. Okay. You were Tom Hatch? No brothers, we’ve got a secret code as professional dishwashers. Somebody who wants to make this conference a life-changing conference, and they’ve maybe been in poverty, not successful, struggling, just new idea, start, and idea, fail. Start an idea, new idea, fail. They haven’t ever had traction. What would you say they need to say to themselves in their dialogue or whatever that is, because you went from poverty to not poverty, what would be the thing you would say? Well, first of all, you’ve got to delay gratification. A lot of people aren’t willing to do that. You’ve got to delay gratification. And whatever area you want to go into, if it’s not something new and innovative, which most of them aren’t, like me, I was on optometry. You know, so I mean, there’s already optometrists around, you know, I mean, auto auctions, there are already auto auctions around, but, you know, we bedazzled them and made them special, right? So what you do is, is whenever you’re going to go into something, go work for somebody else in that area. And if they’re not hiring, be an intern. You know, keep your side hustle, keep a job. J-O-B, one of the best things you can do. And work as if you’re working to the Lord. I mean, give it all, give it, you know, be, you know, every time the boss passes you, he looks at you and goes, thumbs up, you know, you’re an A, you’re an A guy, right? Live below your means, save money. Because if you’re not willing to put some skin in the game, it’s hard to find anybody else, even your Aunt Matilda, to put skin in the game if you don’t have any money to go. And then sit back and wait for your brilliant idea. Or reinvent the wheel, or repackage it, or come up with something that you can make something remarkable that’s already out there. Like Steve Currington, you know, he sells mortgages, but he puts, he makes it remarkable, you know, it’s kind of like a lot of guys sell glasses in town, but since, you know, I’ve bedazzled my office, people come in and go, yeah, but I got these at Dr. Zellner’s, you know? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You had value. People put that on their dating profile. So if you want to be, if you want to be the best, if you want to start a DJ company, then go be a DJ. Go intern. Go be a DJ. Learn from it. Get someone. And then you get the skills to do it. I got a guy one time who goes, hey, I’m going to open up a coffee shop. I said, well, have you ever been a barista or anything? No, bro, but it’s going to be awesome. I just need $250,000. It’s going to kill it. I’ll be the next Starbucks. I’m like, well, have you ever really worked in a coffee shop? No, bro, but I’ve been to a couple of them, you know, bro. And it’s awesome. And my ideas are just phenomenal. Bro. Bro, how much is that two feet you can’t get out of here, bro, because it’s going to kill it, bro. I’m like, yeah, it ain’t going to work. You know? So I think it’s the baby steps that also understand that, you know, it depends on what you want to be when you grow up. Like for me, it required school. So I had to grind through school, you know, took student loans out, worked several jobs, you know, all kinds of stuff. I remember one time I was in optometry school, I was playing soccer, so my schedule was real busy, but I found a job I could work at, was the weekend overnight dishwasher at a truck stop. Freddy’s or Frank’s, I forget, I forget. It was an F. And I remember, he’d always come and pay me in cash. Dude was shady as shady, you know. So he always paid me in cash. And I’d go in at 10 o’clock at night, work till six in the morning. It was the only job I could really get it down, you know. And I had to work, I had to hustle. And I remember one time he came up to me, and I mean, my station was clean. And it was one of those where I was, the dishwasher was like at the bar. You know, it was almost like a bar back, but not, I mean, you’re doing dishes and you know, but so people are relatively close to me. Sometimes I’m in the back in the kitchen back when I was 13, you know, and you didn’t really, so I’m, I meet with people, I’m trying to upsell them, I’m just being myself, you know, and I remember one time he’s paying me, he’s pulling out the money, he looked at me, he goes, who, who are you, what are you doing here? I said, Frank, I’m Robert, you know me, and I need a job. This is the only one I have to schedule that could work. So 10 a.m. I mean, 10 at night until 6 in the morning, you know. Sometimes you’ve just got to do what you’ve got to do to get through to the next step. And if you fail, just get back up and go again. No plan B. Go for it. You know? Hey, when are you going to finish your new book? Your first book, your new book? I know. I need to. Business big. I know. I need to. You’re on the verge of it? I’m on the verge of the verge. Okay. JT, what question do you have for Dr. Zellner? Yeah, well, I mean, I listen to you and Clay a lot on the podcast. Sorry, sorry to hear that. I know. So much that I wrote a book about the stuff I learned from you guys. But I would love to know, because I feel like a lot of people would get a good answer out of this, but a lot of people struggle with work-life balance, and they bring that up, I think, as an excuse just not to do stuff But how would you talk to somebody if they say I’m really struggling with work-life balance I don’t know how I can fit all this in and have a family or a wife or kids and all the stuff that’s going On here’s how you do it when you start a business. It’s like launching a rocket I mean you just work like hell you just I mean it takes all thrusters It takes us a lot of energy to go and I mean you are working as hard as you can My beautiful bride is over there in the orange right over there. Hi Amy. Hi Amy. I was telling a young man that I was mentoring at the time, we’re talking about this same question, and I said to him, I said, oh you’ll know. The pendulum swings both ways. And what will happen is, is your significant other will sit you down and say, Steve, you got to get your ass home. That’s the hot seat. That’s where you’re going to get fired. Your kids forgot who you are. And whenever you hear that, that’s your adjustment. Now, if you’re not starting a business with significant others, they’re not behind you 100% and understand what goes into it. But everybody reaches a breaking point. And when they do, when your family reaches that, you have to then take a deep breath and go spend some quality time with them. Not on your laptop returning emails while your kids sit next to you watching Baby Shark, you know, or whatever they’re watching these days. Baby Shark, is that a real thing? Baby Shark. Okay, so I don’t know. Here, let me sing it. Baby Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Shark, Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, till that rockets up into the atmosphere to where all now we need is just little adjust thrusters on it. And now you can schedule your life a little easier, a little better, and you can have more quality time with your family, you can have more quality time with your friends, and have more quality time with yourself. So understand that when you’re signing up to start the business, that’s the model it’s you gotta work 80, you know, pick whatever 80 hours you want to work in the week, but you know, you got to, you got, no one’s gonna want that business to succeed more than you, and no one’s gonna work as hard as you, and no one’s gonna care as much as you, right? So you gotta listen to your family, they’ll tell you every single time, and the guys that don’t listen to the guys that didn’t say, okay, I’ll come home tonight for dinner, and then they’re still working while they’re at home, that’s work, that’s it, that’s a no, be there, right? That was a theme earlier. Be there and know that when you walk in your own home, take a deep breath and say, what everybody? I got whatever. Showtime. It’s showtime for you to be checked in to be a husband. Showtime for you to be checked in to be a father. It’s showtime for you to think, make your dog think you care about it. I mean, you, it’s, it’s, that’s all that’s important right then. Everything else can wait. Did you say make your dog think you care about it? Yeah. Okay, there’s a dog training tip right there too. I was just trying to cover all basics. That’s a bonus, that’s a bonus. It’s a bonus. Now, any final question for Dr. Z? Because there’s very few people that have run as many companies as he has. Yes, ma’am. Can I get an exam? Yeah. Eye exam. You don’t want to see me personally because I would get an exam in a hot minute. You and my family’s like, hey Rob, can you come by and do an exam? You don’t want me to. I haven’t done an exam. These guys are doing 100 a day. Go see one of the, you know. And now I have two kids that are in my practice as doctors too. So yeah, and they’ll take you. So you betcha. All right, JT, so hypothetically, in your mind, what is the purpose of having a business? To get you to your goals. So it’s a vehicle to get you to your destination. And would you need profits to get there? I mean, when you have a business that’s successful, in your expert opinion, would you need profits to get you to your goals? Yeah, because if you have a $15 million business but you have $15 million of expenses, it’s kind of pointless. Holy crap! Alright, so the question I would have here for you, if you could take, I don’t know, 10 minutes or less and see if you could save $3,000 a year by reducing your credit card fees. Would you do it? Yes, absolutely. Holy crap. Why would somebody out there who’s listening right now, who has a sane mind, why would they not go to Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card, Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card to schedule a 10 minute consultation to see if they can reduce their credit card fees by at least 3,000 bucks a year. Why would they not do it? Yeah, why would they not do it? Maybe because they don’t understand how you set the website. This tree is a symbol of the spirit of the Griswold family Christmas. That’s clear. Okay, so that could be true. So I encourage everybody to check out Thrivetimeshow.com forward slash credit dash card what would be another reason why someone would not be willing to take ten minutes to compare rates to see if they could save three thousand dollars or more on credit card fees maybe they think it is a waste of time and that it won’t it’s not possible there’s somebody out there that’s making more than three thousand dollars every ten minutes and they’re like nah! that’s not worth my time there’s probably some someone out there. Okay. Well, I’ll just tell you folks, if you’re out there today and you’re making less than $3,000 per 10 minutes, I would highly recommend that you go to thrive. Time show. Dot com forward slash credit dash hard. Because you can compare rates, you can save money. And you know, the big the big goal, in my opinion, of building a business is to create time, freedom and financial freedom. And in order to do that, you have to maximize your profits. Holy crap. Now, one way to maximize your profits is to increase your revenue. Another way to do it is to decrease your expenses. It’s a profit deal. It takes the pressure off JT. Is there any other reason why somebody would not be willing to take 10 minutes to compare rates to see if they could save a total of $3,000 a year on average I Am at a loss and I cannot think of any other Shampoo is better. I go on first and clean the hair Good this night is better. I need the hair silky and smooth Oh really fool really? Oh, really, fool? Really? Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh! Hm? Stop looking at me, swan! Well, let me tell you a good story here, real quick. Here, I actually, uh, years ago, compared rates, uh, with this company here. It’s called IPS. It’s Integrated Payment Services. And I, I scheduled a consultation. I, I don’t know if I was skeptical. I just thought, whatever. I’ll take ten minutes. I’ll compare rates. I can’t tell. You can tell me I’m a doctor. No, I mean, I’m just not sure. Or can’t you take a guess? Well, not for another two hours. You can’t take a guess for another two hours? And in my case, in my case, my particular case, I save over $20,000 a year. Holy crap! Wow. Which is like groceries when my wife goes to the organic stores. Find everything you need today? Yeah. Great. Okay. Oh, God. Everything okay, ma’am? It’s just that you’ve only scanned a few items and it’s already 60 bucks. I’m so scared. Okay, I’m a trained professional, ma’am. I’ve scanned a lot of groceries. I need you to stay with me. It’s just that my in-laws are in town and they want a charcuterie board. This isn’t going to be easy so I need you to be brave all right. What’s your name? Patricia. Patricia all right I need you to take a deep breath we’re about to do the cheese. You know that’s the difference between eating organic and not organic. So because my wife eats organic I had to take the ten minutes needed to compare rates to save the twenty thousand dollars a year on credit card fees just for one of my companies. One question what’s the brand name of the clock? The brand name of the clock Rod, do we have it? It’s an elegant from Ridgeway, it’s from Ridgeway. Let’s buy the clock. And sell the fireplace. I encourage everybody out there, go to ThriveTimeShow.com forward slash credit dash card. You schedule a free consultation, request information, a member of our team will call you, they’ll schedule a free consultation. It should take you ten minutes or less and they’re going to compare rates and see if they can’t save you more than $3,000 a year off of your credit card processing. You were hoping what? I wouldn’t owe you money at the end of the day. No, you don’t owe us money. Because at the end of the day, the goal of the business is to create time freedom and financial freedom and in order to do that you need to create additional profits. The number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. We are Jared and Jennifer Johnson. We own Platinum Pest and Lawn and are located in Owasso, Oklahoma. And we have been working with Thrive for business coaching for almost a year now. Yeah. So what we want to do is we want to share some wins with you guys that we’ve had by working with Thrive. First of all, we’re on the top page of Google now, okay. I just want to let you know what type of accomplishment this is. Our competition, Orkin, Terminex, they’re both 1.3 billion dollar companies. They both have two to three thousand pages of content attached to their website. So to basically go from virtually non-existent on Google to up on the top page is really saying something. But it’s come by being diligent to the systems that Thrive has, by being consistent and diligent on doing podcasts and staying on top of those podcasts to really help with getting up on what they’re listing and ranking there with Google. And also we’ve been trying to get Google reviews, you know, asking our customers for reviews, and now we’re the highest rated and most reviewed Pessamon company in the Tulsa area. And that’s really helped with our conversion rate. And the number of new customers that we’ve had is up 411% over last year. Wait, say that again. How much are we up? 411%. Okay, so 411% we’re up with our new customers. Amazing. Right. So not only do we have more customers calling in, we’re able to close those deals at a much higher rate than we were before. Right now, our closing rate is about 85%, and that’s largely due to, first of all, like our Google reviews that we’ve gotten. People really see that our customers are happy, but also we have a script that we follow. And so when customers call in, they get all the information that they need. That script has been refined time and time again. It wasn’t a one and done deal. It was a system that we followed with Thrive and 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 and more new customers last year than we did the first five months. Or I’m sorry, we booked more deals last week than we did the first five months of last year, from before we worked with Thrive. So again, we booked more deals last week than the first five months of last year. It’s incredible, but the reason why we have that success is by implementing the systems that Thrive has taught us and helped us out with. Some of those systems that we’ve implemented are group interviews. That way we’ve really been able to come up with a really great team. We’ve created and implemented checklists 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 a diligence and consistency and doing those in that system has really, really been a big blessing in our lives. And also, you know, it’s really shown that we’ve gotten the 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 going to take in order to really succeed. So, we just want to give a big shout out to Thrive, a big thank you out there to Thrive. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without their help. Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Moore. I’m a pediatric dentist. Through our new digital marketing plan, we have seen a marked increase in the number of new patients 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 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 has 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 is working in every single industry. He’s written books with Lee Crocker, the 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, and graphic designers, and web developers and they run a hundred and sixty companies every single week. So think of this guy with a team of business coaches running a hundred and sixty companies. So in the weekly he’s running 160 companies. Every six to eight weeks he’s doing reawaken America tours. Every six to eight weeks he’s also doing business conferences where 200 people show up and he teaches people a 13-step proven system that he’s done and worked with billionaires helping them grow their companies. So I’ve seen guys from startups go from startup to being multi-millionaires. Teaching people how to get time freedom and financial freedom through the system. Critical thinking, document creation, 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. 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 of you. Clay has been an amazing business coach. Through the course of that, we became friends. My most impressive thing is when I was shadowing him one time, we went into a business deal and listened to it. I got to shadow and listen to it. When we walked out, I knew that he could make millions on the deal and they were super excited about working with him. He told me, he’s like, I’m not going to touch it. I’m going to turn it down because he knew it was going to harm the common good of people in the long run. The guy’s integrity just really wowed me. It brought tears to my eyes to see that this guy, his highest desire was to do what’s right and anyways just an amazing man. So anyways, impacted me a lot. He’s helped navigate anytime I’ve got nervous or worried about how to run the company or you know navigating competition and an economy that’s like I remember we got closed down for three months, he helped us navigate on how to stay open, how to 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 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. with our new neighborhood. This is our new van with our new marketing, and this is our new team. We went from four to fourteen, and I took this beautiful photo. We worked with several different business coaches in the past, and they were all about helping Ryan sell better and just teaching sales, which is awesome, but Ryan is a really great salesman, so we didn’t need that we needed somebody to help us get everything that was in his head out Into systems into manuals and scripts and actually build a team so now that we have systems in place We’ve gone from one to ten locations in only a year in October 2016. We grow 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 today interactive business workshops are the highest and most reviewed business workshops on the planet. You can learn the proven 13 point business systems that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. When we get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise 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. And 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 loan. We built this facility for you and we’re excited to see it. If we go back eight years ago, think about the number of clients you had back then versus the number of clients you have now. As a percentage, what has been the growth over the past eight years, do you think? We’ve got to inspire somebody out there who just doesn’t have the time to listen to your call. Well, okay, so Clay, it’s like I would go up and down from about $10,000 a month up to about $40,000, but it’s an up and down roller coaster. And so now we’ve got it to where we’re in excess of 100 clients. That’s awesome. And so I would have anywhere from 5 clients to 20 clients on my own with networking, but I had no control over it. Without the systems, you’re going to be victimized by your own business. For somebody out there who struggles with math, if you would say that your average number of clients was 30 and you go to 100, as a percentage, what is that? I have doubled every year since working with you. So I’ve doubled in clients, I’ve doubled in revenue every year. That’s a hundred percent growth every year I’ve worked. Now so I’m looking, we’ve been good friends seven, eight years and I’ve got doubled five times. Which is just incredible. I mean the first time you do it that’s one thing, but when you do it repeatedly, I mean that’s unbelievable. We’re working our blessed assurance off this year to double. We’re planning on doubling again. We’re incorporating some new things in there to really help us do it, but we are going to double again this year. I started coaching, but it would go up and down, Clay. That’s when I came to you, as I was going up and down, and I wanted to go up and up instead of up and down. That’s when it needed a system. Creating a system is you have nailed down specific steps that you’re going to take, no matter how you feel, no matter the results, you lean into them and you do them regardless of what’s happening. You lean into them and it will give you X number of leads. You follow up with those leads, it turns into sales. I tell you, if you don’t have a script and you don’t have a system, then every day is a whole new creation. You’re creating a lot of energy just to figure out what are you going to do. Right. And the best executives, Peter Drucker is a father of modern management, he said, the most effective executives make one decision a year. What you do is you make a decision, what is your system, and then you work like the Dickens to make sure you follow that system. And so that’s really what it’s all about. So with a script here, we have a brand new gal that just came in working for us. She nailed down the script and she’s been nailing down appointments. Usually we try to get one appointment for every hundred calls. We make two to 300 calls a day per rep, and she’s been nailing down five and eight appointments a day on that script. So she’s making how many calls a day? She’s making between two and three hundred calls a day. And our relationship is weird in that we do… if someone were to buy an Apple computer today, or let’s say about a personal computer, a PC, the computer is made by, let’s say, Dell. But then the software in the computer would be Microsoft, let’s say, or Adobe or whatever that is. So I basically make the systems. And you’re like the computer, and I’m like the software. It’s kind of how I would describe our relationship. Tim, I want to ask you this. You and I reconnected, I think it was in the year 2000 and, what was it, maybe 2010? Is that right? 2011, maybe? Or maybe further down the road. Maybe 2013? 2012. Okay, so 2012. And at that time I was five years removed from the DJ business. And you were how many years removed from tax and accounting software? It was about 10, 11 years. We met… How did we meet? What was the first interaction? There was some interaction where you and I first connected. I just remember that somehow you and I went to Hideaway Pizza. But do you remember when we first reconnected? Yeah, well, we had that speaking thing that- Oh, there it was. So it’s Victory Christian Center. I was speaking there. My name is Robert Redman. I actually first met Clay almost three years ago to the day. I don’t know if he remembers it or not, but I wasn’t working with him at the time. I asked to see him and just ask him some questions to help direct my life, to get some mentorship. But I’ve been working with Clay for now just over a year. The role I play here is a business coach, business consultant. I work with different businesses implementing best practice processes and systems that I have learned here by working with Clay. And the experience working here has, to put it real plainly, has been just life changing. I have not only learned new things and have gained new knowledge, but I have gained a whole new mindset that I believe, wherever I end up, will serve me well throughout the rest of my life. Since working with Clay, I have learned so much. I mean, I would like to say it was everything about business in terms of the different categories. I haven’t learned it all, but I’ve learned all about marketing. I’ve learned about advertising. I’ve learned about branding. I’ve learned how to create a sales process for organizations in any industry. I’ve learned how to sell. I’ve learned how to create repeatable systems and processes and hold people accountable. You know, how to hire people it’s almost like every aspect of a business you can learn I have learned a lot in those different categories And then again the the mindset that I’ve gained here Has been huge, you know Working here You can’t you can’t be a mediocre person You are a call to a higher standard of excellence. And then as you’re called to that standard here, you begin to see those outcomes in every area of your life. That standard of excellence that you want to implement no matter what you’re involved in. I would like to describe the other people that work with Clay, are people that are going somewhere with their life. Marshall, in the group interview talks about how, you know, the best fits for this organization are the people that are goal oriented. So they’re on their own trajectory, and we’re on our own trajectory, and the best fits are those people where there can be a mutually beneficial relationship, that as we pursue our goals and we help the business pursue those goals, the business helps us pursue our goals as well. And so I’d say people that are driven, people that want to make something of their lives, people that are goal oriented, they’re focused, and they’re committed to overcoming any adversity that may come their way. Clay’s passion for helping business owners grow their businesses is, it’s unique in that, I don’t know if there’s anyone else that can be as passionate. You know, whenever a business starts working with Clay, it’s almost as like Clay is running that business in the sense that he has something at stake. You know, he’s just serving them. They’re one of his clients, but it’s as if he is actively involved in the business. Whenever they have a win, he’s posting it all over his social media. He’s shouting it across the room here at Thrive. He’s sending people encouraging messages. He can kind of be that life coach and business coach in terms of being that motivator and that champion for people’s businesses. It’s, again, unique because there’s no one else I’ve seen get so excited about and passionate about other people’s businesses. The kind of people that wouldn’t like working with Clay are people that are satisfied with mediocrity, people that want to get through life by just doing enough, by just getting by, people who are not looking to develop themselves, people who are not coachable, people who think that they know it all and they’re unwilling to change. I would say those are the type of people and in short anyone that’s content with mediocrity would not like working with Clay. So if you’re meeting Clay for the first time the advice I’d give you is definitely come ready to take tons of notes. Every time Clay speaks, he gives you a wealth of knowledge that you don’t want to miss. I remember the first time that I met Clay, I literally carried a notebook with me all around. I was looking at this notebook the other day actually. I carried a notebook with me all around and I just took tons of notes. I filled the entire notebook in about about three or four months just from being around Clay, following him and learning from him. And then I would say come coachable. Be open to learning something new. Be open to challenging yourself. Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted.