Tim Redmond | “Clay Clark, I Am A Man That Is Grateful That Is Grateful Because of You & For You. You Have Had An Amazing Impact On My Life. My Life Is Different Because Of You. I Have Doubled Ever Year Since Working With You.” – Tim Redmond

Audio Transcription

Tim Redmond, welcome to the Thrived Time Show. How are you, sir? Clay Clark, I am a man that’s grateful because of you and for you. You’ve been an amazing impact in my life. I’ll just say that up front. Well, you and I have a unique relationship because you were my boss for a long time, and then I had the opportunity to work with you as a consultant, and we’ve been able to work back and forth with each other. You’ve been hugely helpful. My life is different because of you. So I want to ask you this. When you meet with business owners today, where do you find that most business owners are stuck? Say you’re talking to somebody out there and they have an accounting practice, a dental practice, a contracting business, and they’re stuck. What are the areas where you see people, most business owners, where were they most predictably stuck? In the same place that I was stuck when I reached out for your help. In marketing, I did not have a process of constant stream of leads coming in because because of lack of marketing. And then I lacked a sales workflow that once the lead came in, that I could aggressively process it through to get them to come on board so that I could help them out. I didn’t have those before I started working with you, Clay, and you helped me out with that. And those are probably two of the most common problems I run into in consulting our clients. You know, one of the things I like to do, and I like to explain this to clients, is that you have to view your business as a linear workflow, kind of from left to right, like a timeline. And so you have to start with fixing your branding, and then after you fix your branding, then you want to fix your marketing, and after you fix your marketing, you fix your sales, and then after your sales, you fix your hiring and firing, and then you fix your accounting, and you just follow down the path. And how often do you find that business owners need help finding good people? That’s never been a challenge for me to find, to hire, train, and retain good people, especially during the COVID, during the COVID moments. A lot of people said, well, I can’t find the people now. I still have never had a hard time finding people. But I mean, have you, what are your thoughts on that? How often are business owners having, how often are they struggling to find good people? Well, most of who we get is we have specialty docs and contractors. We market aggressively to go after contractors, so that’s most of our clients. And that, I would say, Clay, that that is the number one need and one of the biggest reasons they come on board to get our help here is they cannot find decent people that will show up and actually work. Huge problem. Finding good people. Finding good people, keeping good people, getting people that will actually want to work. Yeah, which that could be defined as a good people. Yeah, it’s a huge problem. I know that with the systems we teach people, they will learn how to hire, inspire, train, and retain great people. I think people view hiring as a one-time event, but it’s really a process. I’ll give you an example. Harley is a young guy that’s a member of your team. I’ve met him. It’s his first day working with you. He’s been a great member of your team and a great guy. But a lot of people, I speak what they say, I have a hard time retaining employees for more than a month or two. If you had to give people tips on how to hire, inspire, train, and retain good people, what would you say to them? If anybody’s listening and they’re struggling to find and hire, inspire, train, and retain good people. Yeah, well, there’s a number of things here. First of all, you want to create an environment that people are attracted to. So one of the biggest requirements or the biggest ways that a leader becomes affected is they create an environment. Most people respond and react to an environment, a lot like a seed. Some grows up, you know the Bible story about some fell away by the side and by the stones and all that, they didn’t grow up very big. But those planted in good soil or a good environment, they’re going to grow and they’re going to really produce. So number one, you’ve got to create a good environment for people to join and if it’s reactive and people are yelling and it’s just an ego clash, that’s not gonna attract decent people. Good people are gonna leave and they’re gonna find another place that’s got a better environment. Number two is you’ve gotta be really clear on what you want them to do. And we have a lot of clients, Clay, and we’ve shared many stories together, we’ve spent many hours together, is a lot of folks here just, they hire people and they just throw them to the dogs and say, I hope you can figure this out as you go. There’s not a training, there’s not a clear expectation. And so as a result, they don’t know how to win in their job. And there’s a lot of people, Clay, that they’re dissatisfied because they don’t feel like they’re winning their job and they don’t know how to win in their job. Tim, at the business conferences that you and I have done, you’ve actually appeared at a lot of them and you’ve MC’d and speak at them. I think one of the things people have enjoyed about those is the ability to ask any questions that they want to ask and not to be mocked publicly, but to have somebody that actually answers their questions. What are common questions that you get asked by clients as a business consultant? Like if you could just think through sort of the Rolodex, the mental Rolodex of most frequently asked questions. What do people typically ask you? Because I know as a consultant, what I get asked a lot, but I want to get your thing. What are their questions? Yeah, okay. So this is a good question, sir. So most of the time, they’re either looking for leads, more leads, or how to hire more staff. And so what has happened is they’ve already gone to two or three or five or seven other marketing firms or hiring firms, and they’ve been very unsuccessful, and so they come with a lot of frustration, and sometimes they’re almost like mad at us to say, well, this is what everybody else said. And I say, well, we’re not just a coaching company that tells you what to do. We’re gonna do it for you, coaching companies. So we’re gonna do a lot of this stuff and implement it yourself. I mean, I still hire your staff to get our SEO there and to keep the websites up to date and to get the marketing, digital marketing straightened up. So, you know, it’s really important to be able to deliver something. Can you give me enough leads is a big question or how are you going to help me find decent people? Because I’ve been out there and there’s nobody else out there. And I said, well, we have a host system that we introduced but unless you apply this system on a consistent basis, it won’t work. Casualness causes casualties, you know. And so those are big questions. Another big question is, how do I get this business off my back? It just seemed like I’m stuck as a slave in my business. So how do I get out of this business here? How do I get it to, when I’m working in the business, I want to work on the business, not just in it. Those are some of the common ones. Now you and your wife just celebrated an anniversary, I believe, correct? Yeah, 33. 33? 33 years, yes. The reason why I bring this up is because, you know, my wife and I, we’ve been married 21 years, and I find that in the world of business, there’s a lot of business coaching platforms, a lot of consulting platforms that exist, and I’m not gonna mention the specific names today, but I want to. So instead of mentioning them, I’m just going to pull up video clips to show what I’m talking about here. I’m not going to mention them, I’m just going to show examples of them. But they have these, and this is not you saying this, this is me saying this. So what they do is they project a world that doesn’t exist, okay? So I’m going to just type this in. And so this would be oh Ty Lopez come on Okay, here we go. This is this is a lot. There’s a lot of people come to me after having been to a Workshop that’s similar to this one this guy’s name is Ty Lopez in Ty Lopez This is an actual commercial that he’s running right now on YouTube watch this you know what I like more than flying in a private jet like this? My books. Actually not, but I do bring books with me. Okay, now I don’t know, and maybe I have a different world, maybe I come at the world from a different angle than a lot of people, but I’ve never been in a private jet with a guy like this and a girl like that and a girl like that and a guy like that talking about books. Nor have I ever been in a private jet with people like this But the point is the idea that he’s selling look at this The question was how to figure out what you should do with your life like your destiny what you’re meant to do What’s your purpose is and I don’t know that I want life advice from her or from her or from him Or from him and then you go and again and people say Clay why are you mentioning him specifically because I’m trying to speak to my specific to your specific potential ideal and likely buyer there’s only a certain number of clients we can work with at any given time and I just want to be very clear so this is another example of what we are not let me just hit play here. Here in my garage just bought this new Lamborghini here. Oh God. Here in the Hollywood Hills but you know what I like a lot more than materialistic things? Oh, here we go. Knowledge. Oh! In fact, I’m a lot more proud of these seven new bookshelves that I had to get installed to hold 2000 new books that I bought. It’s like the billionaire Warren Buffet says, the more you learn, the more you earn. Now, maybe you’ve seen my TEDx talk where I talk about how I read a book a day. You know, I read a book a day not to show off, it’s again about the knowledge. In fact, the real reason I keep this Lamborghini here is that it’s a reminder, a reminder that dreams are still possible because it wasn’t that long ago that I was in a little town across the country. Here we go. Sleeping on a couch in a mobile home with only $47. $47, that’s exactly how many dollars he had. And Tai Lopez, I mean, he’s got an unbelievable, he has so many different examples of what he does. This is just Tai Lopez, these are, you know, this is Tai Lopez, he’s. So a lot of people when they think of consulting, that’s what they think of, and that’s not what we do. We work with dentists, doctors, lawyers, contractors to help them grow their business. So if you had to contrast what you do, Tim, as a consultant, you know, that I’ve had the honor of working with for basically a decade. How would you describe what you do versus that of which Tai Lopez does? Because again, if you say business consultant or business coach, immediately people picture Tai Lopez due to his shameless jet-based marketing? Well, I got some similarities with Tai in that I do have some books. I actually read them and I read them next to a super attractive woman which is my wife. That’s about as far as it goes. I know I’m not supposed to say bullshitter but he’s the biggest bullshitter on the internet, I’m sorry. And I think you’ll have to probably beat that out. But what we do is we are an outcome-focused company, and so we measure our success. The client has to be happy, but we really look at what are the numbers. We have the sales, we got net profit, we have gross profit, gross profit and cost of goods sold, we have that. We’ve got how much money you have in the bank account, we actually measure that, we count it. And so the big difference here is can you count and visibly and tangibly see the results of the coaching and if you can’t kick us out and get rid of us and find, hire Ty Lopez. Please don’t hire him. And you’ve been married for 33 years. I mean this because I’m not saying that you’re a marriage guru. Nor am I saying I’m a marriage guru. What I’m saying though is that you really wanna look at the fruit of the lives of the people that you’re listening to because if you look at Ty Lopez and who he’s hanging around with and what he’s all about, if that’s what you want in your life, then maybe you pursue that. But I call that lifestyle jackassery. It’s fake. It’s smoking. Jackassery. Didn’t you find his address as being in the middle of some cow pasture in England or somewhere? I did. The address that he was using at one point led you to an abandoned warehouse district there. So Tim, we’ve got listeners from all over the country that tune into the show. Oh, good. And they’re always taking notes. If you had to give the listeners one final pro tip or one final thought before we let you go, what would that be? What would that statement be you want to share with the listeners? I would say that create a cadence in your business. You do that by having a daily planning that you do, and then every week you touch every aspect of your business, meaning a meeting, an accountability meeting with whoever’s in charge of whatever you’re looking over. You visit that aspect of the business, like for accounting, that’s gonna be Monday at one o’clock. For sales, that’s gonna be Tuesday and Thursday and Friday. We have specific times where we touch every aspect of our business. And so creating a cadence in your business is creating this predictable pattern of making sure your business is on track and you’re addressing issues as they go. Tim, I appreciate you carving out time to be here. That’s Tim Redmond from redmondgrowth.com. That’s redmondgrowth.com. Tim Redmond, thank you for allowing me to interview you today, sir. Thank you, Clay. And we will talk to you later. Appreciate it. Take care. Very good. Awesome. 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 our call. 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 was up and down roller coaster. So now we’ve got it to where we’re in excess of 100 clients. That’s awesome. So I would have anywhere from 5 clients to 20 clients on my own with networking, but I had no control over it. I didn’t. Without the systems, you’re going to be victimized by your own business. For somebody out there who struggles with math, let’s 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. Clients have doubled in revenue every year. It’s 100% 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 yeah 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 new some some 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. And so that’s when it needed a system. So 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. Well, 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, and 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. 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 100 calls. We make 200 to 300 calls a day per rep. She’s been nailing down five and eight appointments a day. Somebody out there is having a hard time. On their 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, and 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 even further down the road, maybe 2013? 2012. Okay, so 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 challenging yourself. Be open to learning and adjusting parts about you that need to be adjusted.